Hundreds of Tibetans protesting against a Chinese dam were rounded up in a harsh crackdown earlier this year, with some beaten and seriously injured, the BBC has learnt from sources and verified footage.

Such protests are extremely rare in Tibet, which China has tightly controlled since it annexed the region in the 1950s. That they still happened highlights China’s controversial push to build dams in what has long been a sensitive area.

Claims of the arrests and beatings began trickling out shortly after the events in February. In the following days authorities further tightened restrictions, making it difficult for anyone to verify the story, especially journalists who cannot freely travel to Tibet.

But the BBC has spent months tracking down Tibetan sources whose family and friends were detained and beaten. BBC Verify has also examined satellite imagery and verified leaked videos which show mass protests and monks begging the authorities for mercy.

The sources live outside of China and are not associated with activist groups. But they did not wish to be named for safety reasons.

In response to our queries, the Chinese embassy in the UK did not confirm nor deny the protests or the ensuing crackdown.

But it said: “China is a country governed by the rule of law, and strictly safeguards citizens’ rights to lawfully express their concerns and provide opinions or suggestions.”

The protests, followed by the crackdown, took place in a territory home to Tibetans in Sichuan province. For years, Chinese authorities have been planning to build the massive Gangtuo dam and hydropower plant, also known as Kamtok in Tibetan, in the valley straddling the Dege (Derge) and Jiangda (Jomda) counties.

Once built, the dam’s reservoir would submerge an area that is culturally and religiously significant to Tibetans, and home to several villages and ancient monasteries containing sacred relics.

One of them, the 700-year-old Wangdui (Wontoe) Monastery, has particular historical value as its walls feature rare Buddhist murals.

The Gangtuo dam would also displace thousands of Tibetans. The BBC has seen what appears to be a public tender document for the relocation of 4,287 residents to make way for the dam.

The BBC contacted an official listed on the tender document as well as Huadian, the state-owned enterprise reportedly building the dam. Neither have responded.

Plans to build the dam were first approved in 2012, according to a United Nations special rapporteurs letter to the Chinese government. The letter, which is from July 2024, raised concerns about the dam’s “irreversible impact” on thousands of people and the environment.

From the start, residents were not “consulted in a meaningful way” about the dam, according to the letter. For instance, they were given information that was inadequate and not in the Tibetan language.

They were also promised by the government that the project would only go ahead if 80% of them agreed to it, but “there is no evidence this consent was ever given,” the letter goes on to say, adding that residents tried to raise concerns about the dam several times.

Then, in February, officials told them they would be evicted imminently, while giving them little information about resettlement options and compensation, the BBC understands from two Tibetan sources.

This triggered such deep anxiety that villagers and Buddhist monks decided to stage protests, despite knowing the risks of a crackdown.

The largest one saw hundreds gathering outside a government building in Dege. In a video clip obtained and verified by the BBC, protesters can be heard calling on authorities to stop the evictions and let them stay.

Separately, a group of residents approached visiting officials and pleaded with them to cancel plans to build the dam. The BBC has obtained footage which appears to show this incident, and verified it took place in the village of Xiba.

The clip shows red-robed monks and villagers kneeling on a dusty road and showing a thumbs-up, a traditional Tibetan way of begging for mercy.

In the past the Chinese government has been quick to stamp out resistance to authority, especially in Tibetan territory where it is sensitive to anything that could potentially feed separatist sentiment.

It was no different this time. Authorities swiftly launched their crackdown, arresting hundreds of people at protests while also raiding homes across the valley, according to one of our sources.

One unverified but widely shared clip appears to show Chinese policemen shoving a group of monks on a road, in what is thought to be an arrest operation.

Many were detained for weeks and some were beaten badly, according to our Tibetan sources whose family and friends were targeted in the crackdown.

One source shared fresh details of the interrogations. He told the BBC that a childhood friend was detained and interrogated over several days.

“He was asked questions and treated nicely at first. They asked him ‘who asked you to participate, who is behind this’.

“Then, when he couldn’t give them [the] answers they wanted, he was beaten by six or seven different security personnel over several days.”

His friend sustained only minor injuries, and was freed within a few days. But others were not so lucky.

Another source told the BBC that more than 20 of his relatives and friends were detained for participating in the protests, including an elderly person who was more than 70 years old.

“Some of them sustained injuries all over their body, including in their ribs and kidneys, from being kicked and beaten… some of them were sick because of their injuries,” he said.

Similar claims of physical abuse and beatings during the arrests have surfaced in overseas Tibetan media reports.

The UN letter also notes reports of detentions and use of force on hundreds of protesters, stating they were “severely beaten by the Chinese police, resulting in injuries that required hospitalisation”.

After the crackdown, Tibetans in the area encountered even tighter restrictions, the BBC understands. Communication with the outside world was further limited and there was increased surveillance. Those who are still contactable have been unwilling to talk as they fear another crackdown, according to sources.

The first source said while some released protesters were eventually allowed to travel elsewhere in Tibetan territory, others have been slapped with orders restricting their movement.

This has caused problems for those who need to go to hospital for medical treatment and nomadic tribespeople who need to roam across pastures with their herds, he said.

The second source said he last heard from his relatives and friends at the end of February: “When I got through, they said not to call any more as they would get arrested. They were very scared, they would hang up on me.

“We used to talk over WeChat, but now that is not possible. I’m totally blocked from contacting all of them,” he said.

“The last person I spoke to was a younger female cousin. She said, ‘It’s very dangerous, a lot of us have been arrested, there’s a lot of trouble, they have hit a lot of us’… They didn’t know what was going to happen to them next.”

The BBC has been unable to find any mention of the protests and crackdown in Chinese state media. But shortly after the protests, a Chinese Communist Party official visited the area to “explain the necessity” of building the dam and called for “stability maintenance measures”, according to one report.

A few months later, a tender was awarded for the construction of a Dege “public security post”, according to documents posted online.

The BBC has been monitoring the valley via satellite imagery for months. For now, there is no sign of the dam’s construction nor demolition of the villages and monasteries.

The Chinese embassy told us authorities were still conducting geological surveys and specialised studies to build the dam. They added the local government is “actively and thoroughly understanding the demands and aspirations” of residents.

China is no stranger to controversy when it comes to dams.

When the government constructed the world’s biggest dam in the 90s – the Three Gorges on the Yangtze River – it saw protests and criticism over its handling of relocation and compensation for thousands of villagers.

In more recent years, as China has accelerated its pivot from coal to clean energy sources, such moves have become especially sensitive in Tibetan territories.

Beijing has been eyeing the steep valleys and mighty rivers here, in the rural west, to build mega-dams and hydropower stations that can sustain China’s electricity-hungry eastern metropolises. President Xi Jinping has personally pushed for this, a policy called “xidiandongsong”, or “sending western electricity eastwards”.

Like Gangtuo, many of these dams are on the Jinsha (Dri Chu) river, which runs through Tibetan territories. It forms the upper reaches of the Yangtze river and is part of what China calls the world’s largest clean energy corridor.

Gangtuo is in fact the latest in a series of 13 dams planned for this valley, five of which are already in operation or under construction.

The Chinese government and state media have presented these dams as a win-win solution that cuts pollution and generates clean energy, while uplifting rural Tibetans.

In its statement to the BBC, the Chinese embassy said clean energy projects focus on “promoting high-quality economic development” and “enhancing the sense of gain and happiness among people of all ethnic groups”.

But the Chinese government has long been accused of violating Tibetans’ rights. Activists say the dams are the latest example of Beijing’s exploitation of Tibetans and their land.

“What we are seeing is the accelerated destruction of Tibetan religious, cultural and linguistic heritage,” said Tenzin Choekyi, a researcher with rights group Tibet Watch. “This is the ‘high-quality development’ and ‘ecological civilisation’ that the Chinese government is implementing in Tibet.”

One key issue is China’s relocation policy that evicts Tibetans from their homes to make way for development – the same fate awaits the villagers and monks living near the Gangtuo dam. More than 930,000 rural Tibetans are estimated to have been relocated since 2000, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Beijing has always maintained that these relocations happen only with the consent of Tibetans, and that they are given housing, compensation and new job opportunities. State media often portrays it as an improvement in their living conditions.

But rights groups paint a different picture, with reports detailing evidence of coercion, complaints of inadequate compensation, cramped living conditions, and lack of jobs. They also point out that relocation severs the deep, centuries-old connection that rural Tibetans share with their land.

“These people will essentially lose everything they own, their livelihoods and community heritage,” said Maya Wang, interim China director at HRW.

There are also environmental concerns over the flooding of Tibetan valleys renowned for their biodiversity, and the possible dangers of building dams in a region rife with earthquake fault lines.

Some Chinese academics have found the pressure from accumulated water in dam reservoirs could potentially increase the risk of quakes, including in the Jinsha river. This could cause catastrophic flooding and destruction, as seen in 2018, when rain-induced landslides occurred at a village situated between two dam construction sites on Jinsha.

The Chinese embassy told us that the implementation of any clean energy project “will go through scientific planning and rigorous demonstration, and will be subject to relevant supervision”.

In recent years, China has passed laws safeguarding the environment surrounding the Yangtze River and the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau. President Xi has personally stressed the need to protect the Yangtze’s upper reaches.

About 424 million yuan (£45.5m, $60m) has been spent on environmental conservation along Jinsha, according to state media. Reports have also highlighted efforts to quake-proof dam projects.

Multiple Tibetan rights groups, however, argue that any large-scale development in Tibetan territory, including dams such as Gangtuo, should be halted.

They have staged protests overseas and called for an international moratorium, arguing that companies participating in such projects would be “allowing the Chinese government to profit from the occupation and oppression of Tibetans”.

“I really hope that this [dam-building] stops,” one of our sources said. “Our ancestors were here, our temples are here. We have been here for generations. It is very painful to move. What kind of life would we have if we leave?”

Tributes have been paid to a nine-year-old boy who was killed in an attack on a German Christmas market.

André Gleissner died after a car drove into a crowd of shoppers at the market in Magdeburg on Friday evening, a local fire department said.

A social media post, reportedly attributed to André’s mother, called him “my little teddy bear” and said he would “always live in our hearts”.

Four women, aged 45, 52, 67 and 75, also died in the attack. Authorities are holding a suspect in pre-trial detention on counts of murder, attempted murder and dangerous bodily harm.

Another tribute came from a fire department in nearby Schöppenstedt.

In a statement it said André was a member of the children’s fire brigade in Warle, which is about an hour’s drive from Magdeburg.

The children’s fire brigade is a youth organisation open to kids aged six to 12 with an interest in firefighting.

“Our thoughts are with André’s relatives, who we also want to support during this difficult time,” the statement said.

The Lower Saxony youth fire brigade also paid tribute to the nine-year-old.

“Our condolences go out to his family, his friends and everyone who was close to him,” it said in a statement.

“We stand by their side in these difficult times and express our deepest sympathy,” it added.

An online fundraiser reportedly set up to raise money for André’s family has received more than €60,000 (£49,900) in donations so far.

The attack on Friday left at least 200 people injured, with some left in a critical condition.

The four women who were also killed have not yet been identified.

The car ploughed into the crowded market via an emergency vehicle access lane about 19:00 local time (18:00 GMT) on Friday, police said.

Eyewitnesses described jumping out of the car’s path, fleeing or hiding. Unverified social media footage showed the vehicle speeding through a pedestrian walkway between stalls.

Police said the driver then returned to the road and was forced to stop in traffic, where he was arrested.

Around 100 police, medics and firefighters attended the scene, according to city officials.

A 50-year-old man has been remanded in custody on suspicion of five counts of murder, multiple attempted murders and dangerous bodily harm, police said.

The suspect has been identified in local media as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a Saudi-born psychiatrist who arrived in Germany in 2006.

The motive behind the attack remains unclear but authorities say they believe the driver acted alone.

German authorities are facing questions about security after reports they were warned last year that the suspect could pose a threat.

The Saudi foreign ministry said it warned the German government about al-Abdulmohsen’s extremist views, but received no response.

The Pelicot rape trial, which ended in France on Thursday, held a terrible fascination for almost every woman I know. As it unfolded in an Avignon court, I found myself following every awful detail, then discussing it with my female friends, my daughters, colleagues, even women in my local book club, as we tried to process what happened.

For nearly a decade, Gisèle Pelicot’s husband had been secretly drugging her and inviting men he’d met on the internet to have sex with his “Sleeping Beauty” wife in the marital bedroom while he videoed them.

These strangers, ranging from 22 to 70 years in age, with jobs that included fireman, nurse, journalist, prison warden and soldier, complied with Dominique Pelicot‘s instructions. Such was their desire for a submissive female body to penetrate, they blithely had sex with a retired grandmother whose heavily sedated body resembled a rag doll.

There were 50 men in court, all living within a 50km (30 mile) radius of Mazan, a small town in southern France where the Pelicots lived. They were, apparently, just like “any other man”.

One woman in her 30s told me “When I first read about it, I didn’t want to be around men for at least a week, even my fiancé. It just horrified me.”

Another in her late 60s, so close to Gisèle Pelicot’s age, couldn’t stop thinking about what men’s minds could be harbouring, even her husband and sons. “Is this just the tip of the iceberg?”

As Dr Stella Duffy, 61, an author and therapist, wrote on Instagram on the day the verdict was delivered: “I hope and try to believe #notallmen, but I imagine the wives and girlfriends and best mates and daughters and mothers of Gisèle Pelicot’s village thought that too. And now they know different. Every woman I talk to says this case has changed how she views men. I hope it’s changed how men view men too.”

Now that justice has been done, we can look beyond this monstrous case and ask: where did these men’s callous and violent behaviour come from? Could they not see that sex without consent is rape?

But there is a broader question too. What does the fact that so many men in a relatively small area shared this fantasy of extreme domination over a woman say about the nature of male desire?

It is hard to imagine the scale of the orchestrated rapes and sexual assaults of Ms Pelicot without the internet.

The platform on which Dominique Pelicot advertised for men to rape his wife was an unmoderated French website, which made it easier to bring together people who shared sexual interests, with no holds barred, than it would have been in the days before the internet. (It has now been closed down.)

One of Ms Pelicot’s lawyers likened the site to a “murder weapon”, telling the court that without it the case “would never have reached such proportions”.

But the internet has played a role in gradually changing attitudes to sex in consensual and non-abusive settings too, normalising what many might have once seen as extreme.

In the shift from old school skin mags and blue movies bought in a murky Soho sex shop to modern-day websites like PornHub, which had 11.4 billion mobile visits globally in the month of January 2024 alone, the boundaries of porn have expanded hugely. Adding in more and more extreme or niche activity ramps up the expectation, so “vanilla” sex may become mundane.

According to a survey of UK online users in January 2024, almost one in 10 respondents aged between 25 and 49 years reported watching porn most days, the great majority of them male.

Twenty-four-year-old university graduate Daisy told me that most people she knows watch porn, including her. She prefers to use a feminist site whose search filters include “passionate” and “sensual”, as well as “rough”. But some of her male friends say they no longer watch porn “as they couldn’t have a nice time having sex because of watching too much porn when they were just kids“.

A 2023 study for the children’s commissioner for England, Dame Rachel de Souza, found that a quarter of 16 to 21-year-olds first saw pornography on the internet while still at primary school.

At the time Ms de Souza said: “The adult content which parents may have accessed in their youth could be considered ‘quaint’ in comparison to today’s world of online pornography.”

Children who regularly viewed porn on mobiles before puberty inevitably grow up with different sexual expectations than those aroused by Playboy in the 20th century.

While no direct causal link has been established, there is substantial evidence of an association between the use of pornography and harmful sexual attitudes and behaviours towards women.

According to government research before the Covid-19 pandemic: “There is evidence that use of pornography is associated with greater likelihood of desiring or engaging in sexual acts witnessed in porn, and a greater likelihood of believing women want to engage in these specific acts.”

Some of those acts may involve aggressive, dominating behaviour such as face slapping, choking, gagging and spitting. Daisy told me: “Choking has become normalised, routine, expected, like neck-kissing. With the last person I was seeing, I told him from the start that I wasn’t into choking and he was fine with that.”

But she believes that not all women will speak out. “And in my experience most men don’t want a woman to be dominant in the bedroom. That’s where they want to have the power.”

Forty years older than Daisy, Suzanne Noble has written about her own sexual adventures and now has a website and podcast called Sex Advice for Seniors. She believes that the availability of porn that depicts rape fantasies normalises an act that is rooted in violence and depicts rape as an activity women crave.

“There’s simply not enough education about the difference between re-enacting a fantasy that involves a pseudo-rape, with a completely non-consensual version of the same,” she argues.

Just as the internet brought porn out of backstreets and into bedrooms, it has also facilitated easier access to events in real life. Previously people into, say, S&M (sadomasochism), might have connected through small ads in the back of “contact” magazines, using Post Office boxes rather than mail to their own homes. It was a very slow and arduous way of setting up a sexual encounter. Now it’s far easier to connect with those groups online then plan to meet in person.

In the UK, it has become mainstream to find love and relationships through dating apps, and so too is it easier to connect with people who wish to try out particular sexual kinks, with a plethora of social apps such as Feeld, which is designed for people to explore “desire outside of existing blueprints”. Its online glossary includes a list of 31 desires, including polyamory, bondage and submission.

Albertina Fisher is an online psychosexual therapist who, in the course of her job, talks to her clients about their sexual fantasies. “There is nothing wrong with having a sexual fantasy — the difference is if fantasy becomes behaviour without consent,” she says.

Male and female fantasies are different she tells me, “but they very often include submission and domination. The key thing about sexual preferences such as BDSM (bondage, discipline or domination, sadism, and masochism) is that it is safe, sane and consensual. What two people want to do together is absolutely fine.” This, she stresses, is the case when both consent.

All of this is, of course, entirely separate to the Pelicot case. “That is sexual violence,” she says. “And it’s extremely distressing that this can happen within what appeared to be a loving relationship. Acting out a fantasy without consent is an extreme form of narcissism.

“With the partner incapacitated, all their needs are denied. So you have a fantasy of a woman who you don’t have to worry about pleasing.”

A key and problematic aspect of the whole question of fantasy is desire. In the post-Freudian age it has become a truism that desires should not be repressed. And much of the liberation theory of the 1960s emphasised self-actualisation through the realisation of sexual desire.

But male desire has become an increasingly contested concept, not least because of the questions of power and domination often entangled within it.

The men who stood trial in the Pelicot case struggled to see themselves as perpetrators. Some argued that they assumed Ms Pelicot had consented, or that they were taking part in a libertine sex game. As many of them saw it, they were simply pursuing their desires.

There is a dark borderline where a very basic form of heterosexual male desire – (or the primal urge to have sex with a woman, or women, in the most uncomplicated manner) – can grow into a shared endeavour, creating an esprit de corps of boundary-pushing that may pay little heed or care to the female experience.

This perhaps explains why an OnlyFans performer, Lily Phillips, recently drew a huge queue of participants in her quest to have sex with 100 men in one day.

The tendency to objectify women may in some cases also develop into a desire to annihilate the whole question of female desire, let alone agency.

Obviously male desire takes many forms, most of an entirely healthy nature, but it has traditionally been constrained by cultural limits. Now those limits have shifted radically in the UK and elsewhere in the West, and the underlying conviction that the realisation of desire is an act of self-liberation amounts to a potent and sometimes troubling combination.

Andre de Trichateau, a therapist based in South Kensington, London, brought up the appeal of masculinist influencers such as Andrew Tate, a self-proclaimed “misogynist”, who has 10.4 million followers on X.

Mr de Trichateau says that he has encountered men feeling demeaned and displaced by the rise of feminism. “Some men don’t know who to be,” he says. “Men are socialised to be dominant but also expected to be in touch with their emotions, able to show vulnerability.

“This confusion can lead to anger, directed to the feminist movement, and [in turn this can lead them to] people such as Tate.”

With a 60% male client base, Mr de Trichateau observes that “men can be socialised to view power and dominance as part of their identity”.

“This is not to justify anything like the Pelicot case,” he continues, “but objectively I can see that such behaviour is an escape from powerlessness and inadequacy. It’s tantalising and forbidden.

“The case is disturbing because it shows the extremities that people will go to.”

He also pointed out that online groups such as the one Mr Pelicot used can be very powerful. “In a group you are accepted. Ideas are validated. One person says its OK then everyone will go along with it.”

Many of the conversations during and since the Pelicot trial have focused on how to make the distinction between consensual and non-consensual sex and whether it should be better defined in law – but the problem is that what consent amounts to is a complex question.

As 24-year-old Daisy sees it, some women of her age tend to go along with men’s sexual preferences regardless of their own feelings. “They think something is hot if the man they are with thinks it’s hot.”

So, if heterosexual men, in particular, really are increasingly taking their sexual cues from pornography, then that prompts further questions about the changing shape of male desire. And if young women can feel that the price of intimacy is to go along with those desires, however extreme, then arguably consent is not a black and white matter.

Ultimately, there may be widespread relief that the Pelicot case is over and that justice was served, but it leaves behind even more questions – questions that, in the spirit of an amazingly strong French woman, are perhaps best discussed out in the open.

A man has been arrested in New York in connection with the death of a woman who was set on fire on a subway train in Brooklyn.

Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch described the incident on Sunday as “one of the most depraved crimes one person could possibly commit against another human being”.

She said the woman was on a stationary F train to Brooklyn when she was approached by a man who used a lighter to ignite her clothing.

The victim died at the scene, she said, adding that the suspect had been arrested following a tip-off from a group of high school students as he rode the subway later on Sunday.

Police said the woman, who has not been named, was in a subway carriage at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station in Brooklyn at about 07:30 local time (12:30 GMT) when a man approached her.

There was no interaction before the attack, police said, adding that they did not believe the two people knew each other.

The man got off the train as police officers on patrol in the station rushed to the fire.

“Officers were on patrol on an upper level of that station, smelled and saw smoke and went to investigate,” Ms Tisch said.

“What they saw was a person standing inside the train car fully engulfed in flames.”

Police are still working to identify the victim and the motive for the attack.

“Unbeknownst to the officers who responded, the suspect had stayed on the scene and was seated on a bench on the platform just outside the train car,” Ms Tisch added.

She explained responding officers were able to get a “very clear, detailed” look at the man and images were disseminated by the New York Police Department (NYPD).

Later, three high school-aged New Yorkers called 911 to report they recognised the suspect on another train, Ms Tisch told reporters.

The man was then located after officers boarded the train and walked through the subway carriages.

He was arrested at Herald Square station – which is located in near to the Empire State Building in Manhattan.

The man was found with a lighter in his pocket, the police commissioner said.

“I want to thank the young people who called 911 to help,” Ms Tisch added.

“They saw something, they said something and they did something.”

The man, who was not publicly identified, emigrated from Guatemala to the US in 2018, the NYPD’s Joseph Gulotta said.

Gulotta explained detectives are still trying to establish whether the victim was asleep when she was set on fire.

“She’s definitely there, she’s motionless,” Mr Gulotta added.

“So to say if she’s asleep or not, we’re not 100% sure, but it appears that she’s motionless at that spot.

“There is no interaction between the two. And when the incident happens, there is no interaction between them.”

Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico has made a surprise visit to Moscow for talks with Vladimir Putin – becoming only the third Western leader to meet the Russian leader since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago.

Fico – a vocal critic of the European Union’s support for Kyiv in the war – said they discussed supplies of Russian gas to Slovakia – which his country relies on.

A deal with Russian gas giant Gazprom to transit energy through Ukraine to Slovakia is due to expire at the end of this year.

“Top EU officials were informed about my journey and its purpose… on Friday,” Fico wrote on Facebook.

Fico said the meeting in Moscow was a reaction to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky telling EU leaders that Ukraine remains opposed to Russian gas being piped through its territory.

The Slovakian PM, who survived being shot earlier this year, also said he had a “long conversation” with Putin and the two “exchanged views on the military situation in Ukraine”.

Both discussed “the possibilities of an early, peaceful end of the war” and mutual relations between Russia and Slovakia, Fico wrote on Facebook.

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Slovakia and Hungary, which both depend on Russian gas, have raised concerns about the prospect of supplies being interrupted.

In October 2023, when Fico became prime minister again, he ended Slovakia’s military aid to Ukraine.

But, he has insisted he wants to be a “good, friendly neighbour” to Ukraine.

Fico’s meeting with Putin came as the leaders of Italy, Sweden, Greece and Finland met on Sunday for a security summit.

Speaking afterwards, Finland’s Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said Russia was a “permanent and dangerous threat” to the EU.

He also stressed the need for increased defence spending and support for Ukraine.

On the night of 9 December, a 34-year-old Indian man killed himself. Next to his body was a placard reading “justice is due”.

Atul Subhash left a detailed 24-page suicide note and an 81-minute video in which he blamed the trouble in his marriage and divorce proceedings.

The letter and the video, which contain distressing details about his life, have gone viral on social media and caused outrage.

The software engineer from the southern city of Bengaluru accused his estranged wife Nikita Singhania, her mother and brother of sustained harassment and torture – accusations they denied. The three were arrested a few days later and a court has remanded them for 14 days.

News of Subhash’s tragic death has also galvanised men’s rights activists and started a wider debate around India’s tough dowry law.

Many argue that with cases of divorce steadily rising, the law is being misused by women to harass their husbands, even forcing them to kill themselves. India’s top court has also weighed in, with one judge describing it as “legal terrorism” that was “intended to be used as a shield and not as an assassin’s weapon”.

Women’s activists, however, point out that dowry still continues to kill thousands of women every year.

Subhash and Singhania married in 2019, but had been living apart for three years and Subhash said he was not allowed to meet their four-year-old son. His wife, he alleged, had filed “false court cases”, accusing him of cruelty, dowry harassment and various other wrongdoings.

In the video, he accused the Singhania family of “extortion” and said they had demanded 30m rupees ($352,675; £279,661) to withdraw the cases, 3m rupees for visitation rights to their son and asked to raise the monthly maintenance from 40,000 rupees to 200,000 rupees.

He then spoke about the dozens of long trips he made over the past few years to attend court hearings and accused a judge of harassment, seeking a bribe from him and mocking him. A notice which appears to have been issued by the judge refers to the allegations as “baseless, immoral and defamatory”.

News of the suicide prompted a firestorm of protests in several cities. Many took to social media to demand justice for Subhash.

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They said his suicide should be treated as a case of murder and targetted Singhania, demanding she be arrested and sent to prison for life.

On X (formerly Twitter), thousands tagged the American multinational firm where she worked, demanding that they sack her.

Following the outrage, the police in Bengaluru opened an inquiry against those named in the suicide note. On 14 December, Singhania, her mother and brother were arrested on charges of “abetment to suicide”.

During interrogation, Singhania denied the allegation that she had been harassing Subhash for money, Times of India quoted the police as saying.

In the past, Singhania had also levelled grave charges against her husband. In her 2022 petition for divorce, she had accused him, his parents and brother of harassing her for dowry. She said they had been unhappy with the gifts her parents had given during the wedding and demanded an additional 1m rupees.

Dowries have been outlawed in India since 1961, but the bride’s family is still expected to gift cash, clothes and jewellery to the groom’s family. According to a recent study, 90% of Indian marriages involve them and payments between 1950 and 1999 amounted to a quarter of a trillion dollars.

And according to the National Crime Records Bureau, 35,493 brides were killed in India between 2017 and 2022 – an average of 20 women a day – over dowry. In 2022 alone, more than 6,450 brides were murdered over dowry – that’s an average of 18 women every day.

Singhania claimed that her father died from a heart attack soon after her wedding when Subhash’s parents went to him to demand the money. She also alleged that her husband used to threaten her and “beat me up after drinking alcohol and treated the husband-wife relationship like a beast” by demanding unnatural sex. Subhash had denied all the allegations.

• India top court orders changes in anti-dowry law to stop misuse

Police say they are still investigating the allegations and counter-allegations but Subhash’s suicide has led to growing calls to rewrite – even scrap – India’s stringent anti-dowry law – Section 498A of the India Penal Code.

The law was introduced in 1983 after a spate of dowry deaths in Delhi and elsewhere in the country. There were daily reports of brides being burnt to death by their husbands and in-laws and the murders were often passed off as “kitchen accidents”. Angry protests by female MPs and activists forced parliament to bring in the law.

As lawyer Sukriti Chauhan says, “the law had come after a long and hard fight” and “allows women to seek justice in cases of cruelty in their matrimonial homes”.

But over the years, the law has repeatedly made headlines, with men’s activists saying it is being misused by women to harass their husbands and their relatives.

India’s top court has also warned against the misuse of the law on many occasions. On the day Subhash’s suicide was reported, the Supreme Court once again flagged – in an unrelated case – “the growing tendency to misuse the provision as a tool for unleashing personal vendetta against the husband and his family”.

Amit Deshpande, founder of Mumbai-based men’s rights organisation Vaastav Foundation, says the law is being used “mostly to extort men” and that “there are thousands of others who are suffering like Subhash”.

Their helpline number, he says, receives about 86,000 calls every year and most cases are about matrimonial disputes that include false dowry cases and attempts at extortion.

“A cottage industry has been built around the law. In each case, 18-20 people are named as accused and they all have to hire lawyers and go to court to seek bail. There have been cases where a two-month-old baby or an ill nonagenarian was named in dowry harassment complaints.

“I know these are extreme examples but the whole system enables this in some manner. Police, judiciary and politicians are turning a blind eye to our concerns,” he says.

Mr Deshpande says according to the government crime data for more than 50 years, a large majority of male suicides were by married men – and family discord was the reason for one in four suicides among them.

Patriarchy, he says, also works against men. “Women have recourse to laws and they get sympathy, but people laugh at men who are harassed or beaten by their wives. If Subhash was a woman he could have had recourse to certain laws. So, let’s make laws gender neutral and extend the same justice to men so lives can be saved.”

There should also be stringent punishment for those who misuse the law, otherwise this will not be a deterrent, he adds.

Ms Chauhan agrees that women who misuse the law should be punished, but argues that any law can be misused. The Bengaluru case is in court and if it is proven that it’s a false case, then she should be punished, she says.

“But I do not support it becoming gender neutral. The demand for that is regressive as it disregards the need for special measures that acknowledge that women are disproportionately impacted by violence.”

Those going after Section 498A, she says, are “driven by patriarchy and because it’s a law for women, attempts are made to strike it down”.

“It came after years of societal patriarchal injustice. And this patriarchy remains the reality of our generation and will continue for generations to come.”

Despite the law, she says, demand for dowry is rampant and thousands of brides continue to be killed over it.

The need of the hour, she adds, is to “make the law stronger”.

“If three out of 10 cases that are filed are false, then it is for the courts to impose penalty on them. But women are still suffering very much in this country so do not ask to repeal the law.”

Ten members of a family have died after a private plane crashed into the city of Gramado in southern Brazil.

Brazilian businessman Luiz Claudio Galeazzi, who was piloting the plane, was killed in the crash alongside his wife, three daughters and other family members, a statement from his company said.

The small plane reportedly hit the chimney of a building, as well as a house and a shop as it fell.

Local authorities say 17 people on the ground were injured in the accident, including two in a serious condition.

Mr Galeazzi, 61, was taking his family on a trip to Jundiaí, in the São Paulo state, according to reports in Brazilian media.

All 10 victims of the crash were members of Mr Galeazzi’s family, Rio Grande do Sul state governor Eduardo Leite told a press conference. He added that the plane had taken off in unfavourable weather conditions.

The plane reportedly flew for 3km (1.8 miles) before falling into the urban area of the city just minutes after take-off on Sunday morning.

“At the time, it was revving up. You could see that it was accelerating a lot,” an eyewitness, Nadia Hansen, told Reuters news agency.

“Then there was a bang as it hit the building and then it passed close to my house and then it fell, and I thought it had dropped in front of the house,” she said.

Pictures from the scene show emergency workers attending to the smoking wreckage among debris from badly damaged buildings.

Mr Galeazzi was the chief executive of Galeazzi & Associados, a corporate restructuring and crisis management firm based in São Paulo.

The company issued a statement on LinkedIn, paying tribute to the 61-year-old.

“Luiz Galeazzi will be eternally remembered for his dedication to his family and for his remarkable career as the leader of Galeazzi & Associados,” the statement said.

“We also sympathize with all those affected by the accident in the region,” it said, adding that it would co-operate with investigations into the accident.

The plane crashed near the centre of Gramado, hitting a house, a furniture store and a hotel, according to Brazilian media.

State governor Mr Leite said the cause of the accident was being investigated by the Aeronautical Accident Investigation and Prevention Center (Cenipa).

“The entire state is mobilized here to provide the necessary assistance,” he told reporters at the scene.

Gramado is a popular tourist destination, known for hosting events during the festive period.

The region was severely hit in May this year by unprecedented flooding, which claimed dozens of lives and displaced around 150,000 people from their homes.

Rome’s world-famous Trevi Fountain has re-opened after a three-month restoration.

Built in the 18th Century by Italian architect Nicola Salvi on the façade of the Poli Palace, the historic fountain is one of the city’s most visited spots.

Between 10,000 and 12,000 tourists used to visit the Trevi Fountain each day, but a new queuing system has been installed to prevent large crowds massing near the landmark.

Speaking on Sunday Mayor of Rome Roberto Gualtieri said imposing the limit will “allow everyone to better enjoy the fountain, without crowds or confusion”.

Gualtieri also said city authorities were considering charging a modest entry price to finance the fountain’s upkeep.

Sunday’s re-opening took place under light rain in the presence of several hundred tourists, many of whom followed the mayor by throwing a coin into the fountain.

The three-month cleaning project involved removing mould and calcium incrustations.

The fountain and other key city sites have been cleaned ahead of the jubilee of the Roman Catholic Church which begins on Christmas Eve.

Its poor structural condition was exposed in 2012 when bits of its elaborate cornice began falling off after an especially harsh winter which required a multi-million euro renovation the following year.

Making a wish and tossing a coin into the water is such a tradition that the city authorities used to collect around €10,000 (£8,300; $10,500) a week.

The money was donated to a charity that provides meals for the poor.

• Commissioned by Pope Clement XII in 1730
• It is the end point of one of the aqueducts that supplied ancient Rome with water
• The Acqua Vergine runs for a total of 20km (12 miles) before flowing into the fountain
• Tourists can drink from a special tap tucked away at one side
• According to legend, the water source was discovered in 19 BC by thirsty Roman soldiers directed to the site by a young virgin – which is why it is called Virgin Waters
• The tradition of throwing coins into the fountain was made famous by Frank Sinatra’s Three Coins in the Fountain in the 1954 romantic comedy of the same name

At least 28 people, including children, have died in a wave of Israeli military strikes throughout the Gaza Strip, according to Gaza’s civil defence agency.

A school sheltering displaced families was among the facilities struck, killing eight people including four children over the weekend, the agency said.

It comes as the UN issues a plea for Israel to cease its attacks in the vicinity of a hospital in Gaza’s north.

The Israeli military claimed a Hamas command centre was inside the compound of the Musa bin Nusair school in Gaza City, and has not commented on reports of attacks by the hospital.

“Hamas systematically violates international law,” the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on social media, adding that Israel’s response would be to “act with force and determination against the terrorist organizations”.

Gaza’s civil defence agency spokesperson Mahmoud Bassal told the AFP news agency that the school had been repurposed as a shelter for Palestinians displaced by the war.

One displaced man who had been staying at the school, Abu, told BBC Arabic that the attack came while he was asleep.

“We were sleeping peacefully, then suddenly we woke up to the sound of a very powerful explosion,” he said.

Another man Mahmoud said he was asleep in a tent in the schoolyard when the attack took place.

“Stones and shrapnel were flying, the school’s walls fell on our heads,” he told BBC Arabic.

On Sunday, Pope Francis condemned the Israeli attacks on Gaza for a second day in a row.

He expressed pain thinking “of such cruelty, to the machine-gunning of children, to the bombing of schools and hospitals”.

The director of the Kamal Adwan hospital, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, said its generators had been hit and claimed the Israeli army was targeting the fuel tank.

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, issued a plea to the IDF to cease attacks in the vicinity of the hospital.

Saturday night’s reports of “bombardment near Kamal Adwan Hospital and order to evacuate the hospital are deeply worrisome,” he said in a statement on social media.

“We call for an immediate ceasefire in the vicinity of the hospital and to protect the patients and health workers.”

The hospital’s director also released a statement that said Israeli forces were treating the hospital “as if we were a military installation”.

“Anyone who steps outside the hospital is at risk of being targeted,” Dr Hussam Abu Safiya said.

He added that relocating the operations of the hospital would jeopardise the patients, and called for health staff “be allowed to operate without the threat of evacuation”.

Israel has not commented on the reports of an evacuation order.

The BBC has approached the IDF for comment.

Palestinian groups involved in the fighting have told the BBC that a ceasefire deal is “closer than ever”.

More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed during the 14-month war between Israel and Hamas, according to figures from Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

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

The rhetoric on social media following the murder of healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York earlier this month has been “extraordinarily alarming”, US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says.

“It speaks of what is really bubbling here in this country, and unfortunately we see that manifested in violence, the domestic violent extremism that exists,” he told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday.

Some on social media have celebrated Luigi Mangione, the man accused of shooting dead Mr Thompson, and shared anger at America’s private health insurers.

Mayorkas said he was “alarmed by the heroism that is being attributed to an alleged murderer of a father of two children on the streets in New York”.

Mr Thompson, the 50-year-old CEO of the largest US health insurer UnitedHealthcare, was gunned down outside a Manhattan hotel early on 4 December triggering a massive manhunt for the killer.

Mr Mangione, 26, was arrested days later in Pennsylvania and flown to New York where he is facing both federal and state charges, including first-degree murder in furtherance of terrorism.

Investigators accuse him of carrying out a targeted killing, pointing to evidence that suggests a long-held animosity towards the US healthcare industry. On social media, support for Mr Mangione has often been accompanied by grievances and complaints with the health insurance sector.

• The dark fandom behind CEO murder suspect

“We have been concerned about the rhetoric on social media for some time,” Mayorkas said on Sunday. “We’ve seen narratives of hate. We’ve seen narratives of anti-government sentiment. We’ve seen personal grievances in the language of violence.”

Mayorkas, whose homeland security department is in part responsible for protecting Americans from domestic terrorism, said his department sees a “wide range of narratives” that “drive some individuals to violence.”

“It’s something that we’re very concerned about,” he said. “That is a heightened threat environment.”

But the 65-year-old, whose time at the helm of the department will end next month, stressed that Mr Thompson’s killing was “the actions of an individual [and] not reflective of the American public”.

Mr Mangione will remain behind bars in New York as his lawyers said last week that they would not present an application for bail. He is in federal custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center Brooklyn, the same facility where Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs is being held.

He will likely be assigned a roommate and have daily visits from medical and psychological services, law enforcement sources told the BBC’s US partner CBS.

While New York does not have the death penalty, he faces four federal charges, including murder and stalking, which could make him eligible for the punishment. He also faces multiple state charges.

He is expected to be arraigned on those state charges in New York on Monday. Mr Mangione faces 11 counts, including murder in the first degree and murder as a crime of terrorism.

President-elect Donald Trump has demanded Panama reduce fees on the Panama Canal or return it to US control, accusing the central American country of charging “exorbitant prices” to American shipping and naval vessels.

“The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous, highly unfair,” he told a crowd of supporters in Arizona on Sunday.

“This complete rip-off of our country will immediately stop,” he said, referring to when he takes office next month.

His remarks prompted a quick rebuke from Panama’s president, who said “every square metre” of the canal and surrounding area belong to his country.

President José Raúl Mulino added that Panama’s sovereignty and independence were non-negotiable.

Trump made the comments to supporters of Turning Point USA, a conservative activist group that provided significant support to his 2024 election campaign.

It was a rare example of a US leader saying he could push a country to hand over territory – although he did not explain how he would do so – and a sign of how American foreign policy and diplomacy may shift once he enters the White House following his inauguration on 20 January.

Trump’s comments followed a similar post a day earlier in which he said the Panama Canal was a “vital national asset” for the US.

If shipping rates are not lowered, Trump said on Sunday, “we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us, in full, quickly and without question”.

The 51-mile (82km) Panama Canal cuts across the central American nation and is the main link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

• Can the Panama Canal save itself?
• Will Trump’s victory spark a global trade war?
• What Trump tariffs could mean for consumers

It was built in the early 1900s and the US maintained control over the canal zone until 1977, when treaties gradually ceded the land back to Panama. After a period of joint control, Panama took sole control in 1999.

Up to 14,000 ships cross the canal per year, including container ships carrying cars, natural gas and other goods, and military vessels.

As well as Panama, the president-elect also took aim at Canada and Mexico over what he called unfair trade practices. He accused them of allowing drugs and immigrants into the US, although he called Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum a “wonderful woman”.

Trump made his remarks in front of thousands at Turning Point’s annual conference, one of the country’s largest gatherings of conservative activists.

Turning Point poured huge resources into get-out-the-vote efforts in swing states designed to bolster Trump and other Republicans during the election campaign.

It was his first speech since a deal passed Congress this week to keep the US government open, after several provisions were removed including one that would have increased the country’s debt ceiling.

Trump had supported raising the debt ceiling, which restricts the amount of money the US government can borrow.

But his speech on Sunday avoided that issue entirely, instead recapping his election victory and hitting on themes – including immigration, crime and foreign trade – that were mainstays of his campaign.

He did, however, mention Elon Musk.

“You know, they’re on a new kick,” he said. “All the different hoaxes. The new one is that President Trump has ceded the presidency to Elon Musk.”

“No, no, that’s not happening,” he said. “He’s not gonna be president.”

Several speakers here at the conference were critical of government spending and of politicians in both parties – however the divisions inside the Republican Party which have played out in Congress in recent days were mostly muted.

The Saudi authorities, I am told, are currently working flat out to collate everything they have on the Magdeburg market suspect, Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, and to share it with Germany’s ongoing investigation “in every way possible”.

Inside the imposing sand coloured and fortress-like walls of the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Riyadh there is a perhaps justifiable sense of pique.

The ministry previously warned the German government about al-Abdulmohsen’s extremist views.

It sent four so-called “Notes Verbal”, three of them to Germany’s intelligence agencies and one to the foreign ministry in Berlin. There was, the Saudis say, no response.

Part of the explanation for this may lie in the fact that Taleb al-Abdulmohsen was granted asylum by Germany in 2016, one year after the former Chancellor Angela Merkel threw open her country’s borders to let in more than a million migrants from the Middle East, and 10 years after al-Abdulmohsen had taken up residence in Germany.

Coming from a country where Islam is the only religion permitted to be practised in public, al-Abdulmohsen was a very unusual citizen.

He had turned his back on Islam, making himself a heretic in the eyes of many.

Born in the Saudi date palm oasis town of Hofuf in 1974, little is known about his early life before he decided to leave Saudi Arabia and move to Europe aged 32.

Active on social media, on his Twitter (later X) account he labels himself as both a psychiatrist and founder of a Saudi rights movement, together with the tag @SaudiExMuslims.

He founded a website aimed at helping Saudi women flee their country to Europe.

The Saudis say he was a people trafficker and the Ministry of Interior’s investigators, the Mabaatheth, are said to have an extensive file on him.

There have been reports in recent years of dissident Saudis coming under hostile surveillance from Saudi government agents, in Canada, the US and in Germany.

There is no question that the German authorities, both federal and state, have made some serious errors of omission in the case of al-Abdulmohsen.

Whatever their reasons for not responding, as the Saudis claim, to the repeated warnings about his extremism, he was seemingly a danger to his adopted host country.

There is also, separately, the failure to close off, or at least guard, the emergency access route to Magdeburg Alter Markt that allowed him to allegedly drive his BMW into the crowds.

German authorities have defended the market’s layout and said an investigation into the suspect’s past is ongoing.

But a complicating factor here is that Saudi Arabia, although considered a friend and ally of the West, has a poor human rights record.

Until June 2018 Saudi women were forbidden to drive and even those women who publicly called for that ban to be lifted before then have been persecuted and imprisoned.

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, still only in his 30s, just, is immensely popular in his own country.

While Western leaders largely distanced themselves from him after his alleged involvement in the grisly murder of the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, which the crown prince denies, at home his star is still in the ascendant.

Under his de-facto rule, Saudi public life has transformed for the better, with men and women allowed to associate freely, and cinemas reopening, along with big, spectacular sports and entertainment events, even gigs performed by Western artists like David Guetta and the Black Eyed Peas.

But there is a paradox here.

While Saudi public life has flourished there has been a simultaneous crackdown on anything that even hints at more political or religious freedom.

Harsh prison sentences of 10 years or more have been handed down for simple tweets.

No-one is permitted to even question the way the country is run.

It is against this backdrop that Germany appears to have dropped the ball with Taleb al-Abdulmohsen.

He had a licence to charm on screen, with his sultry voice and suave, chiselled good looks. But in private, actor Sir Roger Moore – who played James Bond in seven films – was equally as comfortable behind the camera.

A new BBC documentary to air on Christmas Day will reveal never-before-seen home video footage, filmed by Sir Roger himself, of his family and very famous friends – including actor Kirk Douglas and singer Olivia Newton-John.

A young Sir Elton John is also spotted descending from the skies in a helicopter ready for lunch with Sir Roger and other celebrity guests – the likes of Joan Collins and David Attenborough.

Sir Roger’s son Geoffrey, who found the old video cassettes in the cupboards and garage at his family’s home in Switzerland, remembers the gathering in France well.

He played a game of tennis with Sir Elton, he recalls, in an exclusive interview for BBC News, before the singer flew off to Cannes to film the music video for his hit song, I’m Still Standing.

Sir Roger also got behind the camera to film much more intimate occasions with his three children – Geoffrey, Deborah and Christian – and their mother, his third wife, Italian actress Luisa Mattioli.

Bringing the memories of the past back to life again on screen proved poignant for Geoffrey and his siblings.

“I think the way he was just filming was as any father would film his children. It was just a family guy recording, documenting a time,” says Geoffrey.

“I think it was also because [the camera] was a new toy, so he wanted to use it.”

Growing up, being surrounded by stars from the silver screen was normal for Geoffrey.

“I mean [Frank] Sinatra was very close to the family and we used to spend a lot of Thanksgivings and Easters together. Kirk Douglas, Cary Grant, Gregory Peck, they were all very, very dear friends.”

Sir Roger’s daughter Deborah remembers her father couldn’t keep up with Frank Sinatra’s drinking and would secretly pour his whisky into the plant pots.

The family would watch comedy duo Morecambe and Wise on TV on a Friday night, says Geoffrey, and then Eric and Ernie would come over for Sunday lunch.

He also remembers meeting Clint Eastwood and Sean Connery – the first James Bond – as well as stars from Hollywood’s golden age, such as Fred Astaire and Olivia De Havilland.

“I mean, if I think about how lucky we were… to the point where even Roger would say, ‘Goodness, look at that, we’ve got Gene Kelly sitting there. Isn’t that wonderful!'”.

But despite being surrounded by stardom, Sir Roger was very “self-deprecating”, says Geoffrey.

“I always say, the bigger the talent, the smaller the limousine. And he was incredibly humble,” he says.

At the end of a day’s filming, Sir Roger would simply enjoy watching TV with his family in his dressing gown and slippers.

“His treat was baked beans on toast,” says Geoffrey. “He didn’t need caviar.”

Sir Roger came from humble beginnings. He grew up in Stockwell in south London. His father was a police officer and his mother worked in a tearoom. He crafted his aristocratic English accent at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (Rada) and earned money modelling knitting patterns.

His big break came in 1962, playing Simon Templar in the TV series, The Saint.

Geoffrey recalls the phone call his father received when he found out he had been chosen to take over the role of Britain’s most famous secret agent.

The last three digits of Sir Roger’s phone number just happened to be 007.

“He answered the phone with ‘007’, because that’s what you do, and the voice said, ‘That you are Roger,'” says Geoffrey.

Sean Connery was the closest to author Ian Fleming’s depiction of the character in his spy novels, says Geoffrey, as in “I’m going to sleep with you and kill your boss tomorrow”.

“Whereas, Roger didn’t want to fire a gun really,” says Geoffrey, “he just sort of killed them with charm.”

He always had a very sardonic approach, says Geoffrey, and that was his interpretation, he adds.

“Let’s make James Bond Roger Moore,” he says, “[as] opposed to Roger having to play a hired gun who is licensed to kill. And I think he was more like ‘licensed to thrill.'”

This took an enormous amount of talent, says Geoffrey.

Of the Bond films that starred Sir Roger, Geoffrey says his father’s favourite was The Spy Who Loved Me.

Growing up on movie sets was fantastic, recalls Geoffrey, but having James Bond as your father attracted quite a bit of attention on the school run.

When Sir Roger came to pick him up from school one day, he remembers the car was suddenly surrounded by pupils – keen to catch a glimpse of the star.

“I thought, ‘Oh, okay, he’s known, I’m not the only one that sees him on the box,'” he says.

But living in the public eye could be difficult when there was a scandal.

Geoffrey recalls a phone call his father made to him one morning, letting him know the papers had got hold of the story that he was leaving his mother.

“I said, ‘Well, thanks for the heads up! How long have I got?'” says Geoffrey.

The press had already surrounded his mother’s house. It creates “a small scar to see that your pain is exposed,” says Geoffrey. “I think that’s the worst part of being famous.”

After his split from Luisa, Sir Roger went on to marry his fourth wife, Kristina Tholstrup, otherwise known as Kiki. He had also been previously married to actress and professional ice skater Doorn van Steyn and singer Dorothy Squires.

Sir Roger died in 2017 at the age of 89. In his later years, actress Audrey Hepburn had asked him to take on her humanitarian work for the children’s charity Unicef, says Geoffrey.

“It says a lot about his love for humanity, his love for children. And that, I think, is probably his greatest role.”

From Roger Moore with Love will be broadcast on Wednesday 25 December at 21:00 GMT on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer.

On Friday evening, a man ploughed a car into a crowd of shoppers at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg.

The attack killed five people, including a nine-year-old boy, and left more than 200 injured, with many in a critical condition.

A judge has ordered the pre-trial detention of a 50-year-old man arrested on suspicion of carrying out the attack.

Police believe he acted alone.

• Eyewitness account: Witness saw car hit boyfriend in attack

• Investigation ongoing: Police probe market security and warnings about suspect

At 19:02 local time (18:02 GMT), the first call to emergency services was made.

The caller reported that a car had driven into a crowd at a Christmas market in the middle of town.

The caller assumed it was an accident, police said, but it soon became clear this was not the case.

The driver, police said, had used traffic lights to turn off the road and onto a pedestrian crossing, leading him through an entry point to the market which was reserved for emergency vehicles, injuring a number of people on the way.

Unverified footage on social media showed the driver speeding the vehicle through a pedestrian walkway between Christmas stalls.

Eyewitnesses described jumping out of the car’s path, fleeing or hiding.

Police said the driver then returned to the road the way he came in and was forced to stop in traffic. Officers already at the market were able to apprehend and arrest the driver here.

Footage showed armed police confronting and arresting a man who can be seen lying on the ground next to a stationary vehicle – a black BMW with significant damage to its front bumper and windscreen.

The entire incident was over in three minutes, police said.

A nine-year-old boy and four women aged 45, 52, 67 and 75 are confirmed to have died in the attack.

More than 200 people have been injured and at least 41 of those are in a critical condition.

The toll had earlier been reported as two dead and 68 injured, but was revised to the much higher totals on Saturday morning.

The Schöppenstedt fire department paid tribute to the child who died, André Gleissner, in a Facebook post.

The fire department said the nine-year-old was a member of the children’s fire brigade in Warle – about an hour’s drive from Magdeburg.

The suspect has been identified in local media reports as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, the BBC understands.

He is a 50-year-old Saudi-born psychiatrist who lives in Bernburg, around 40km (25 miles) south of Magdeburg.

He has been remanded in custody on suspicion of five counts of murder, multiple attempted murders and dangerous bodily harm, police say.

The motive behind the attack remains unclear but authorities have reported that they believe he carried out the attack alone.

Al-Abdulmohsen arrived in Germany in 2006 and in 2016 was recognised as a refugee.

The suspect ran a website that aimed to help other former Muslims flee persecution in their Gulf homelands, and was interviewed about it by the BBC in 2019.

Germany’s Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told reporters that it was “clear to see” that the suspect holds “Islamophobic” views.

On social media, he is an outspoken critic of Islam, and has promoted conspiracy theories regarding an alleged plot by German authorities to Islamicise Europe.

He also expressed sympathy on social media for Germany’s far-right political party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), re-tweeting posts from the party’s leader and a far-right activist.

Magdeburg police chief Tom-Oliver Langhans said police had previously conducted an evaluation as to whether the suspect might have posed a potential threat, “but that discussion was one year ago”.

Faeser told German newspaper Bild that investigators would examine “in detail” what information authorities had on al-Abdulmohsen in the past and how he had been investigated.

The German Office for Migration and Refugees announced in a post on social media that it had fielded a complaint about the suspect, which it had “taken seriously”, but as the office is not an investigative body, had referred the complainant to other authorities.

One tip-off received by authorities is believed to have come from Saudi Arabian authorities.

A source close to the Saudi government told the BBC it sent four official notifications known as “Notes Verbal” to German authorities, warning them about what they said were “the very extreme views” held by al-Abdulmohsen.

However, a counter-terrorism expert told the BBC the Saudis may have been mounting a disinformation campaign to discredit someone who tried to help young Saudi women seek asylum in Germany.

The head of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), Holger Münch, told public broadcaster ZDF that his office had received a notice from Saudi Arabia in November 2023. He said local police took appropriate investigative measures, but the matter was unspecific.

He added that the suspect “had various contacts with authorities, insulted them and even made threats, but he was not known for violent acts”.

“The reports from Magdeburg raise the worst fears,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on social media platform X.

Magdeburg’s city councillor for public order, Ronni Krug, said the Christmas market will stay closed and that “Christmas in Magdeburg is over”, according to German public broadcaster MDR.

That sentiment was echoed on the market’s website, which in the wake of the attack featured only a black screen with words of mourning, announcing that the market was over.

The Saudi government expressed “solidarity with the German people and the families of the victims”, in a statement on X, and “affirmed its rejection of violence”.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said he was “horrified by the atrocious attack in Magdeburg”, adding that his thoughts were with “the victims, their families and all those affected” in a post on X on Friday night.

When a court declared Iwao Hakamata innocent in September, the world’s longest-serving death row inmate seemed unable to comprehend, much less savour the moment.

“I told him he was acquitted, and he was silent,” Hideko Hakamata, his 91-year-old sister, tells the BBC at her home in Hamamatsu, Japan.

“I couldn’t tell whether he understood or not.”

Hideko had been fighting for her brother’s retrial ever since he was convicted of quadruple murder in 1968.

In September 2024, at the age of 88, he was finally acquitted – ending Japan’s longest running legal saga.

Mr Hakamata’s case is remarkable. But it also shines a light on the systemic brutality underpinning Japan’s justice system, where death row inmates are only notified of their hanging a few hours in advance, and spend years unsure whether each day will be their last.

Human rights experts have long condemned such treatment as cruel and inhuman, saying it exacerbates prisoners’ risk of developing a serious mental illness.

And more than half a lifetime spent in solitary confinement, waiting to be executed for a crime he didn’t commit, took a heavy toll on Mr Hakamata.

Since being granted a retrial and released from prison in 2014, he has lived under Hideko’s close care.

When we arrive at the apartment he is on his daily outing with a volunteer group that supports the two elderly siblings. He is anxious around strangers, Hideko explains, and has been in “his own world” for years.

“Maybe it can’t be helped,” she says. “This is what happens when you are locked up and crammed in a small prison cell for more than 40 years.

“They made him live like an animal.”

A former professional boxer, Iwao Hakamata  was working at a miso processing plant when the bodies of his boss, the man’s wife and their two teenage children were found. All four had been stabbed to death.

Authorities accused Mr Hakamata of murdering the family, setting their house in Shizuoka alight and stealing 200,000 yen (£199; $556) in cash.

“We had no idea what was going on,” Hideko says of the day in 1966 when police came to arrest her brother.

The family home was searched, as well as the homes of their two elder sisters, and Mr Hakamata was taken away.

He initially denied all charges, but later gave what he came to describe as a coerced confession following beatings and interrogations that lasted up to 12 hours a day.

Two years after his arrest, Mr Hakamata was convicted of murder and arson and sentenced to death. It was when he was moved to a cell on death row that Hideko noticed a shift in his demeanour.

One prison visit in particular stands out.

“He told me, ‘there was an execution yesterday – it was a person in the next cell’,” she recalls. “He told me to take care – and from then on, he completely changed mentally and became very quiet.”

Mr Hakamata is not the only one to be damaged by life on Japan’s death row, where inmates wake each morning not knowing if it will be their last.

“Between 08:00 and 08:30 in the morning was the most critical time, because that was generally when prisoners were notified of their execution,” Menda Sakae, who spent 34 years on death row before being exonerated, wrote in a book about his experience.

“You begin to feel the most terrible anxiety, because you don’t know if they are going to stop in front of your cell. It is impossible to express how awful a feeling this was.”

James Welsh, lead author of a 2009 Amnesty International report into conditions on death row, noted that “the daily threat of imminent death is cruel, inhuman and degrading”. The report concluded that inmates were at risk of “significant mental health issues”.

Hideko could only watch as her own brother’s mental health deteriorated as the years went by.

“Once he asked me ‘Do you know who I am?’ I said, ‘Yes, I do. You are Iwao Hakamata’. ‘No,’ he said, ‘you must be here to see a different person’. And he just went back [to his cell].”

Hideko stepped up as his primary spokesperson and advocate. It wasn’t until 2014, however, that there was a breakthrough in his case.

A key piece of evidence against Mr Hakamata were red-stained clothes found in a miso tank at his workplace.

They were recovered a year and two months after the murders and the prosecution said they belonged to him. But for years Mr Hakamata’s defence team argued that the DNA recovered from the clothes did not match his – and alleged that the evidence was planted.

In 2014 they were able to persuade a judge to release him from prison and grant him a retrial.

Prolonged legal proceedings meant it took until last October for the retrial to begin. When it finally did, it was Hideko who appeared in court, pleading for her brother’s life.

Mr Hakamata’s fate hinged on the stains, and specifically how they had aged.

The prosecution had claimed the stains were reddish when the clothes were recovered – but the defence argued that blood would have turned blackish after being immersed in miso for so long.

That was enough to convince presiding judge Koshi Kunii, who declared that “the investigating authority had added blood stains and hid the items in the miso tank well after the incident took place”.

Judge Kunii further found that other evidence had been fabricated, including an investigation record, and declared Mr Hakamata innocent.

Hideko’s first reaction was to cry.

“When the judge said that the defendant is not guilty, I was elated; I was in tears,” she says. “I am not a tearful person, but my tears just flowed without stopping for about an hour.”

The court’s conclusion that evidence against Mr Hakamata was fabricated raises troubling questions.

Japan has a 99% conviction rate, and a system of so-called “hostage justice” which, according to Kanae Doi, Japan director at Human Rights Watch, “denies people arrested their rights to a presumption of innocence, a prompt and fair bail hearing, and access to counsel during questioning”.

“These abusive practices have resulted in lives and families being torn apart, as well as wrongful convictions,” Ms Doi noted in 2023.

David T Johnson, a professor of sociology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, whose research focuses on criminal justice in Japan, has followed the Hakamata case for the last 30 years.

He said one reason it dragged on is that “critical evidence for the defence was not disclosed to them until around 2010”.

The failure was “egregious and inexcusable”, Mr Johnson told the BBC. “Judges kept kicking the case down the road, as they frequently do in response to retrial petitions (because) they are busy, and the law allows them to do so.”

Hideko says the core of the injustice was the forced confession and the coercion her brother suffered.

But Mr Johnson says false accusations don’t happen because of a single mistake. Instead, they are compounded by failings at all levels – from the police right through to the prosecutors, courts and parliament.

“Judges have the last word,” he added. “When a wrongful conviction occurs, it is, in the end, because they said so. All too often, the responsibility of judges for producing and maintaining wrongful convictions gets neglected, elided, and ignored.”

Against that backdrop, Mr Hakamata’s acquittal was a watershed – a rare moment of retrospective justice.

After declaring Mr Hakamata innocent, the judge presiding over his retrial apologised to Hideko for how long it took to achieve justice.

A short while later, Takayoshi Tsuda, chief of Shizuoka police, visited her home and bowed in front of both brother and sister.

“For the past 58 years… we caused you indescribable anxiety and burden,” Mr Tsuda said. “We are truly sorry.”

Hideko gave an unexpected reply to the police chief.

“We believe that everything that happened was our destiny,” she said. “We will not complain about anything now.”

After nearly 60 years of anxiety and heartache, Hideko has styled her home with the express intention of letting some light in. The rooms are bright and inviting, filled with pictures of her and Iwao alongside family friends and supporters.

Hideko laughs as she shares memories of her “cute” little brother as a baby, leafing through black-and-white family photos.

The youngest of six siblings, he seems to always be standing next to her.

“We were always together when we were children,” she explains. “I always knew I had to take care of my little brother.  And so, it continues.”

She walks into Mr Hakamata’s room and introduces their ginger cat, which occupies the chair he normally sits in. Then she points to pictures of him as a young professional boxer.

“He wanted to become a champion,” she says. “Then the incident happened.”

After Mr Hakamata was released in 2014, Hideko wanted to make the apartment as bright as possible, she explains. So she painted the front door pink.

“I believed that if he was in a bright room and had a cheerful life, he would naturally get well.”

It’s the first thing one notices when visiting Hideko’s apartment, this bright pink statement of hope and resilience.

It’s unclear whether it has worked – Mr Hakamata still paces back and forth for hours, just as he did for years in a jail cell the size of three single tatami mats.

But Hideko refuses to linger on the question of what their lives might have looked like if not for such an egregious miscarriage of justice.

When asked who she blames for her brother’s suffering, she replies: “no-one”.

“Complaining about what happened will get us nowhere.”

Her priority now is to keep her brother comfortable. She shaves his face, massages his head, slices apples and apricots for his breakfast each morning.

Hideko, who has spent the majority of her 91 years fighting for her brother’s freedom, says this was their fate.

“I don’t want to think about the past. I don’t know how long I’m going to live,” she says. “I just want Iwao to live a peaceful and quiet life.”

Magdeburg’s Christmas market is a sad sight. This should have been the busiest weekend of the season, but the whole area has been cordoned off and all the stands are shut.

Police are the only people walking around the boarded-up mulled wine and gingerbread stalls.

On the pavement, red candles flicker, tributes laid for the victims.

Lukas, a truck driver, told me he felt compelled to come to pay his respects. “I wasn’t there when it happened,” he told me.

“But I work here in Magdeburg. I’m here every day. I’ve driven by here a thousand times.”

“It’s a tragedy for everyone here in Magdeburg. The perpetrator should be punished.”

“We can only hope that the victims and their families find the strength to deal with it.”

There is sorrow here – but there is anger too.

Many people here see this attack as a terrible lapse in security. That is a claim the authorities reject, although they have admitted the attacker entered the market using a route planned for emergency responders.

Michael, who also came to pay tributes to the victims, said “there should’ve been better security”.

“We should have been prepared better but that was not done properly.”

• Investigation: Police probe market security and warnings about suspect
• Explained: What we know so far about Magdeburg Christmas market attack
• From the scene: Eyewitness heard rumbling and shattering glass

Standing at the security cordon, I heard a group of locals complaining loudly about Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz and regional politicians.

“They are wasting our tax money, they are just looking out for themselves. They are not interested in us. We just hear empty promises,” one man said.

“They are turning what happened here around and want to put the blame on the opposition and use it for their election campaign,” he said.

On Saturday evening, around the same time as the square in front of Magdeburg’s Gothic cathedral was filled with mourners watching a memorial service, a demonstration took place nearby.

Protesters held a banner that read “Remigration now!” – a concept popular among the far-right – and shouted “those who do not love Germany should leave Germany”.

It is not clear yet what impact this attack may have on Germany’s upcoming election.

Germany has been hit by a number of deadly Islamist attacks in the past, but investigators said the evidence they have gathered so far suggests a different picture in this case.

Germany’s Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said the suspect appears to have been “Islamophobic”.

The suspect, Taleb Al-Abdulmohsen, is from Saudi Arabia, and his social media posts suggest he had been critical of Islam.

He also expressed sympathy on social media for Germany’s far-right political party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), re-tweeting posts from the party’s leader and a far-right activist.

When Charli XCX recorded her sixth album, Brat, she thought her prickly, abrasive dance anthems were “not going to appeal to a lot of people”.

In the end, the record topped the charts and became a cultural phenomenon. It was nominated for seven Grammys, referenced in the US presidential election, turned into a paint swatch, and named “word of the year” by Collins Dictionary.

Now the album has been named the best new release of 2024 in a “poll of polls” compiled by BBC News.

In multiple end of year lists, critics called Brat “brilliant from start to finish” and “pop music for the future“, praising the way its “painfully relatable” lyrics captured Charli’s insecurities, anxieties and obsessions.

In the star’s own words, the record is “chaos and emotional turmoil set to a club soundtrack”.

“The louder you play it, the more honest it gets,” said the Los Angeles Times.

The BBC’s poll is a “super-ranking” compiled from 30 year-end lists published by the world’s most influential music magazines – including the NME, Rolling Stone, Spain’s Mondo Sonoro and France’s Les Inrockuptibles.

Records were assigned points based on their position in each list – with the number one album getting 20 points, the number two album receiving 19 points, and so on.

Brat was the runaway winner with a score of 486 points, nearly twice as many as the number two album, Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter.

In total, the critics named 184 records among their favourites, from the The Cure’s long-awaited comeback, Songs Of A Lost World, to the kaleidoscopic rap of Doechii’s Alligator Bites Never Heal.

Here’s the top 25 in full.

Charli was born Emma Aitchison in Essex, UK, and has been chipping away at the coalface of pop for more than a decade.

At the start of her career, she scored hits with shiny pop anthems such as Fancy, I Love It and Boom Clap – but over the years, her music has become more volatile and aggressive.

Underground anthems like Vroom, Vroom and Track 10 turned her into a cult star but, as she confessed on Brat: “.

With that in mind, she entered 2024 with a new sense of purpose.

“Before we’d even done much writing, she had a masterplan of all the stuff she wanted to write about, and all the things she wanted to say,” producer AG Cook tells the BBC. “She had a real vision for the album, right from the start.”

“Even the name Brat was in play for about two years,” adds co-producer Finn Keane.

Released in June, Brat became the soundtrack to the summer; and Charli extended her success with a remix album that rewrote many of the songs and added an array of guest stars, from Billie Eilish and Robyn to The 1975 and Lorde.

The remix project was “really, off-the-cuff and last minute”, says Cook, “but that’s been part of the fun of Brat”.

“Charli is just incredibly quick and open to ideas,” adds Keane. “You can give her kind of any kind of crazy track, and she’ll instantly be able to come up with something super hooky, with a twist that’s very memorable and elaborate.

“She’s just incredibly musical.”

Billboard: “Charli XCX pulled off one of the most exciting and culturally significant album launches in modern memory… And best of all? It was all on Charli’s own terms. Drawing inspiration primarily from club culture and hyperpop, Charli pulled once-niche spaces in music into the mainstream.”

The Forty Five: “In making a club record to ignite the underground, she’s reached the world’s biggest stages. Musically, Charli is at her peak.”

Frequently mis-labelled as a country album, Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter is so much more. A racial reckoning with the black roots of American folk music, its 27 tracks embrace everything from line-dancing to psychedelic rock, with guest appearances from Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson and Post Malone.

The Times: “The pop hoedown single Texas Hold ‘Em remains the best piece, but the acoustic guitar-driven sexy ode Bodyguard is another highlight. Will this finally win Beyoncé her best album Grammy?”

NME: “A masterclass in creativity from an artist who never forgets her roots.”

The fourth album by Dublin’s Fontaines DC saw the quintet take their scratchy, sinister sound and run it through a technicolor filter. The results include everything from stadium-sized sing-alongs (Favourite) to panic-inducing punk anthems (Starburster).

Allmusic: “When all is said and done, they remain fantastic songwriters, able to convey a variety of emotions without relying on the trappings of punk. The corners may have been sanded off, but it has only revealed new and interesting textures underneath.”

Mojo magazine: “Fontaines D.C. are now, in terms of risk-taking potential, the Arctic Monkeys’ closest rivals.”

The title says it all. None of the songs on Billie Eilish’s exquisite third album are content to sit still, moving from hushed intimacy to emotional volatility as the singer navigates the murky waters of her early 20s.

The Telegraph: “Eilish has made something rich, strange, smart, sad and wise enough to stand comparison with Joni Mitchell’s Blue. A heartbreak masterpiece for her generation, and for the ages.”

The Guardian: “An album that keeps wrongfooting the listener, Hit Me Hard and Soft is clearly intended as something to gradually unpick: A bold move in a pop world where audiences are usually depicted as suffering from an attention deficit that requires instant gratification.”

Billed by one publication as the “poet laureate of indie rock“, MJ Lenderman’s breakthrough album is tender, melancholy and wryly funny, populated by a cast of flawed, disappointed and disappointing characters he observed around his hometown of Asheville, North Carolina.

New York Times: “An ace guitarist with a keen ear for jangly tones, he lends even his most pathetic characters a bit of warm-blooded humanity.”

The Line Of Best Fit: “How he gets you to care about nobodies from nowhere and their very strange plights is in part to do with his knack for universal empathy, but more importantly, the fact that he sings everything like he was just robbed at gunpoint by his 8th grade bully who he later watched win the lottery. You feel bad for things you don’t necessarily even understand.”

Sixteen years in the making, The Cure’s 14th studio album didn’t disappoint. Written during a period where frontman Robert Smith lost his mother, father and brother, it is simultaneously dark and fragile.

Speaking to the BBC, Smith said making the record had been “hugely cathartic” in escaping the “doom and gloom” he felt.

Time magazine: “It’s no exaggeration that this is an album haunted by death, so it’s almost ironic that, musically speaking, there hasn’t been this much life in The Cure for decades.”

Pitchfork: “It feels like a record whose time is right, delivering a concentrated dose of The Cure and cutting the fat that dogged their later albums.”

A sprawling, two-hour opus of dreamy pop and psychedelia, this is one of the year’s most mysterious records. You can’t buy the CD or vinyl, and it’s not available on Spotify or Apple Music. At the time of writing, it’s only available as a continuous, ad-free stream on YouTube, or as a download from Bandcamp.

But the seventh album by Cyndi Lee (the drag alter-ego of rock musician Patrick Flegel) is definitely worth your seeking out – like the lost transmissions of a ghostly 1960s pirate radio station.

Uncut: “Cindy Lee has managed to buck just about every trend, convention and expectation of what releasing music in the digital age is supposed to look and like. And, even more crucially, it sounds just as refreshing.”

Stereogum: “Diamond Jubilee is two hours of unrushed wandering through a lo-fi escape, catchy to the point of sticky, tarnishing in its abrasiveness yet sun-baked to perfection.”

On her sixth album as Waxahatchee, singer-songwriter Katie Crutchfield tackles everything from anxiety and self-doubt, to her ongoing struggle with sobriety, with piercing insight and a laid-back country-rock feel.

Pitchfork: “Her mind is alive and humming, and her language leaps out at you with its hunger.”

Consequence of Sound: “Crutchfield is still growing, both personally and artistically, and we’re just glad she’s invited us along for the ride.”

After landing the decisive blow in his rap beef with Drake, Compton rapper Kendrick Lamar took a victory lap on his surprise sixth album, GNX. Razor sharp and rhythmically complex, it’s both a poison pen letter to his detractors, and a love letter to Los Angeles’ hip-hop culture.

LA Times: “Lamar is worked up about liars, about folks doling out backhanded compliments, about other rappers with “old-ass flows” wasting space with empty rhymes. Indeed, what seems to make him angriest is the idea that a person could triumph in hip-hop by taking hip-hop less seriously than he does.”

Complex: “Even cooler is how much space Kendrick gives to underground rappers from the LA scene—figures who are talented but raw, and would likely struggle to gain national recognition without a boost.”

Six albums into her career, former Disney star Sabrina Carpenter landed on a winning formula – one that puts aside the cookie-cutter pop of her teen years, and zeroes in on her sly humour as a USP.

Fleet of foot and packed with memorable one-liners, it produced three number one singles in the UK, including song of the year contender Espresso.

New York Times: “A smart, funny, cheerfully merciless catalogue of bad boyfriend behaviour.”

Esquire: “The range, humour, and sophistication of these 12 songs were a revelation.”

11) Tyler, The Creator – Chromokopia

12) Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Wild God

13) Beth Gibbons – Lives Outgrown

=14) Mk.Gee – Two Star & The Dream People

=14) Jessica Pratt – Here In The Pitch

16) Vampire Weekend – Only God Was Above Us

17) Adrianne Lenker – Bright Future

18) Doechii – Alligator Bites Never Heal

19) Clairo – Charm

=20) Taylor Swift – The Tortured Poets Department

=20) Nala Sinephro – Endlessness

22) English Teacher – This Could Be Texas

23) The Last Dinner Party – Prelude To Ecstasy

24) Magdalena Bay – Imaginal Disk

25) Nilufer Yanya – My Method Actor

Driving into Mezzeh 86, a working-class neighbourhood in the west of Damascus, we are waved through a checkpoint manned by fighters from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

Buildings are rundown and in need of repairs.

This area is dominated by people from Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shia Islam whose members make up one of Syria’s biggest religious minorities.

Alawites controlled power in the predominantly Sunni Muslim country for the 50 years of the Assad family’s rule, holding top positions in the government, military and intelligence services.

Now, many from the community fear reprisals following the overthrow of the Assad regime by rebels led by HTS, a Sunni Islamist group that was once al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria.

Dozens of Alawites who we had contacted by phone had refused to speak to us, with many saying they were scared.

In Mezzeh 86, the presence of HTS fighters at a checkpoint did not appear to be a source of anxiety.

Many Alawites did come up and speak with us – keen to distance themselves from Assad’s regime.

“During the Assad regime, the stereotype about the Alawites is that they got all the work opportunities and that they are wealthy. But, in fact, most Alawites are poor and you’ll only find one among a thousand who is rich,” said Mohammad Shaheen, a 26-year-old pharmacy student.

“Even when HTS went to Alawite villages near the coast, they found all villages were poor. Only the Assad family amassed wealth,” he added, referring to the Alawite heartland in the country’s west.

Hasan Dawood, a shopkeeper, chimed in: “We were slaves for him – drivers, cooks and cleaners.”

There’s also a sense of betrayal.

“Bashar was a traitor. And the way he fled was cowardly. He should have at least addressed people and told us what was happening. He left without a word, which made the situation chaotic,” said Mohammad.

But people from the Alawite community, and indeed from this neighbourhood, did serve in Assad’s brutal security forces. Do they fear reprisals against them, we asked.

“Those who were in the military and did bad things have fled. No-one knows where they are. They are afraid of revenge,” said Thaier Shaheen, a construction worker.

“But people who don’t have blood on their hands, they are not scared, and have stayed back.”

There have been reports of a few reprisal killings in parts of the country, but so far there is no evidence to suggest they were carried out by HTS.

“Until now, we are OK. We are talking to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and they are respectful. But there are people who aren’t from HTS but pretend to be them who are making threats. They want our society to fail and they are the ones we are scared of,” said Mohammad.

After taking control of Damascus, HTS and its allies said those from the deposed regime who had been involved in torture and killings would be held to account, although it is unclear so far what form that justice will take.

HTS also said that the rights and freedoms of religious and ethnic minorities would be protected.

The group has a jihadist past which it has distanced itself from. But it has an Islamist present, and many are asking what that will mean for Syria’s plural society.

“I’m so happy because the Assad regime fell. This is like a dream come true. No-one wants to live under dictatorship. But there is concern. I have to be realistic,” said Youssef Sabbagh, a Christian lawyer.

“HTS are here now, and they are an Islamic militia. That’s what they are. I wish, I pray they will be a modern Islamic militia.”

“I speak not just as a Christian, a lot of Syrians, Muslims and everyone, we don’t want Syria to become another Afghanistan, we don’t want to become a new Libya. We have already suffered a lot.”

Syria’s Christian community is one of the oldest in the world, with the country home to some renowned holy sites.

When the uprising against Assad began in 2011, Christians were initially cautious about taking sides, but eventually members from the community fought on both sides of the conflict.

In the past week, the Archbishop of Homs, Jacques Murad, told the BBC there had already been three meetings with HTS, and they had been able to express their views and concerns honestly.

So far, the signs are re-assuring for many Christians.

Bars and restaurants serving alcohol are open in the Christian quarter of Old Damascus and in other parts of the city. Christmas decorations are also up in many places.

At a restaurant in the Old City, we met lawyer Ouday al-Khayat, who is a Shia Muslim.

“There’s no doubt that there’s anticipation and anxiety. The signs that come from HTS are good, but we must wait and watch,” he said.

“It’s not possible to know the opinions of all Shia but there is a concern about a scenario similar to Libya or Iraq. I believe, though, that Syria is different. Syrian society has been diverse for a very long time.”

We drove around 110km (70 miles) south-east of Damascus, through black volcanic hills, to the city of Suweida, which is home to most of Syria’s Druze population.

The Druze faith is another offshoot of Shia Islam, but has its own unique identity and beliefs.

Many Druze were loyal to the Assad regime, who they believed would protect minorities.

But opposition grew steadily during the war, and there were frequent protests in recent years.

The latest started in Suweida’s central square in August 2023 and continued until the day the regime fell.

Activist Wajiha al-Hajjar believes that the protests were not brutally cracked down on like others in Syria, because Assad wanted to show the world and his foreign allies that he was protecting minorities.

“They did try to suppress our protest but in a different way – not through weapons or shelling, but by depriving us of passports and civil rights, and access to official documents. It became difficult to leave Suweida and a kind of siege was imposed,” she said.

Hundreds still gather at the square every day. When we visited, there was an air of celebration. Songs were blaring on a loudspeaker, and young girls and boys were doing a gymnastics performance, their families clapping and cheering for them.

“We are celebrating the fall of the regime, but this gathering is also a show of strength. In the event that there is an extreme regime with extreme laws, we are prepared to stay in this square and demand our rights and demand equality,” Wajiha said.

Suweida had a quasi-autonomous status under Assad, and the Druze want that to continue.

It is just one example of the diversity and complexity of Syrian society, and the challenges facing the country’s new government.

Secret Santa, stockings and presents under the tree – gift-giving is at the heart of Christmas Day.

But should it be?

This year more people have been exploring underconsumption – the trend where shopping hauls and miracle must-buys are replaced with reusing beloved possessions and purchasing less.

It’s taken off on TikTok, where mentions soared by almost 40,000% in the UK earlier this year.

Experts say it’s resonated with younger people affected by the cost-of-living crisis and concerned about the climate as they look to make sustainable changes.

But can you mix that lifestyle with a time of year many people associate with overspending and indulgence?

Underconsumption means buying fewer unnecessary things and making the products you already own go further.

It might not sound that radical, especially if you’re used to stretching your weekly budget.

“It’s highlighting a behaviour that’s quite normal,” author and creator Andrea Cheong tells BBC Newsbeat.

“But in the realm of TikTok or Instagram it feels so unnatural it’s gone viral.”

On platforms built around ads and glamourised lifestyles the hashtag stands out, and Andrea does believe that underconsumption is different because “it’s a habit, not a trend.”

“The people who are sharing what they’ve done in their daily lives, they’ve been doing this forever,” she says.

“They were probably taught by their parents to do it.”

At Christmas, choosing to buy and consume less can feel like a challenge in the face of big-budget marketing campaigns, the pressure to share gifts and the perfectly placed extravagant home decor shared online.

“Companies are spending millions of pounds on ads that make you want to go out and buy that thing right now,” says Darwin Arnold, a retail worker living in Brighton.

Darwin, who shares sustainability tips online in her spare time, says she doesn’t want presents this Christmas.

She admits the “hardest step” is telling your family members.

“My nan, she’s one of those who loves having all of the gifts under the tree,” she says.

“It’s her way of showing love, it’s her way of making me feel special.”

Darwin says it pays to be straight-up with loved ones and it helps to suggest alternative ideas for gifts, such as experiences, rather than products.

Influencer Charlie Gill, from Manchester, has been sharing sustainability tips on social media for six years now and says her content has taken off since the underconsumption trend began.

She’s turned her focus on to Christmas, suggesting ways that decorations, gift wrap and even Christmas dinners can be stripped back.

“There are so many small steps anybody can do,” she says.

“Considering how much food you’re purchasing, don’t buy things in excess, make sure you’re actually eating your leftovers.”

Charlie makes her own decorations, and this year she’s created a Christmas tree out of a magazine, as well as “stars out of toilet rolls, all that kind of thing”.

Some people aren’t fans of the homemade aesthetic and Charlie admits she got some hate online over a TikTok of her festive decorations last year, but says it doesn’t put her off.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with people celebrating Christmas in a different way,” she says.

“There are different ways of gifting and creating the kind of Christmas you want whilst also underconsuming and not creating excess waste.”

Underconsumption might be a new hashtag, but it’s not a new idea.

“It’s not a new concern but it is an enduring phenomenon that’s been labelled in different ways in different times,” says Prof Caroline Moraes, of the University of Birmingham.

One example is the voluntary simplicity movement in the 19th Century, she says, which advocated for an anti-consumerist lifestyle.

Prof Caroline, a marketing and consumer expert specialising in sustainable consumption, says the renewed interest in 2024 can tell us about modern-day worries.

She says it points to a greater concern over the environment and the cost-of-living crisis but also a greater awareness of brand ethics and where the things we buy come from.

Earlier this year, fast fashion giant Shein said it found two cases of child labour in its supply chain, some luxury perfumes have also been linked to child labour and concerns about the fashion industry’s environmental credentials are widely reported.

“I think all of us are beginning to realise the part we need to play in terms of tackling the sustainability challenges and the climate crisis we’re facing,” says Prof Caroline.

Author Andrea thinks the sudden rise in interest also shows a fatigue with consumer culture.

“I think people like myself are so excited about underconsumption because we share the same mission, which is ‘let’s just slow down’,” she says.

“But really it’s rooted in a lack of control over the cost of living.”

Last week, figures showed prices were rising at the fastest rate since March.

While the cost of turkey and sprouts has driven down the cost of a Christmas dinner this year, what you pay for potatoes, carrots and parsnips has shot up.

“When life feels chaotic and overwhelming, you’re always going to have this human retreat to something slower,” says Andrea.

Trends come and go but the people Newsbeat spoke to hope that underconsumption might spark meaningful changes in our shopping habits all year around.

“We are conditioned to believe we need to be consuming more because this is the time of year to do so,” says Prof Caroline.

“Trying to reduce consumption goes against the norms of consumer culture.

“So I think it’s a really good thing these influencers are out there because they’re questioning excessive modes of consuming, they’re questioning some of these lifestyles that have appeared alongside social media and trying to bring us back to a normal way of consuming.”

Charlie says she’s witnessed conversations in the comments under her videos and believes “many people are really engaging with it”.

“It’s just about everybody trying to live a little bit more sustainably in whatever way that is, because every little thing we do is going to make an impact.”

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

The number of dead from a crowd crush in the south-east town of Okija in Nigeria has risen to 22, police say.

It is the third case this week of people being crushed to death at events where free food was being distributed.

The fatalities in Okija occurred at a charity event on Saturday, when residents rushed to collect Christmas donations, including rice and vegetable oil.

On the same day, a similar tragedy at a Catholic church in the capital city Abuja killed 10 people, while 35 children died during a carnival event on Wednesday in the city of Ibadan.

• How offer of free food led to deadly crush at Nigerian Christmas fair
• Is Nigeria on the right track after a year of Tinubu?

Police have now warned organisers to notify authorities before holding charity events in order to prevent such loss of life.

Toyin Abdul Kadri, who witnessed the crush at the Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Abuja, told AFP news agency the attendees “forced the gates and forced their selves inside”.

The event involved “vulnerable and elderly individuals” and four children were killed, the police said.

In a social media post about the crushes, Amnesty International Nigeria wrote: “President Bola Tinubu’s government must urgently prioritise addressing widespread hunger, higher unemployment and the rapidly falling standard of living.”

Food and transportation costs have more than tripled in Nigeria in the last 18 months.

The global bout of inflation has been exacerbated by some of the policies of the government – designed to strengthen the economy in the long-term – such as ending a fuel subsidy.

In a statement on the deadly crushes, President Bola Tinubu said: “In a season of joy and celebration, we grieve with fellow citizens mourning the painful losses of their loved ones. Our prayers of divine comfort and healing are with them.”

He urged state governments and the police to enforce strict crowd control measures, and has cancelled all his official engagements in honour of the victims.

He also noted the similarities between the incidents, including one earlier this week in the south-west city of Ibadan.

A crush at a school funfair there killed 35 children and seriously injured six others.

Thousands of people had turned up on the promise of free food.

Residents in Bashorun, a suburb of Ibadan, told the BBC the crowd soon exceeded 5,000 with many attempting to force their way through the school gate. Parents are said to have tried to scale the fence surrounding the compound to gain access.

Police spokesperson Olumuyiwa Adejobi said the three “tragic” incidents highlight the “urgent need for a more structured and effective approach to delivering aid to vulnerable communities and members of the public in general”.

• ‘I’ve been sleeping under a bridge in Lagos for 30 years’
• Igbo pride: Why some Nigerians in London set up their own running club
• Who wins when Nigeria’s richest man takes on the ‘oil mafia’?

German authorities are facing questions about security and what they knew about the suspect accused of using an access lane for emergency vehicles to drive into a Christmas market in Magdeburg, killing five people and injuring more than 200.

On a visit on Saturday, politicians were heckled by members of the public, some seemingly outraged by what was criticised as a security lapse.

German authorities have defended the market’s layout and security.

Authorities are also fielding questions after reports they were warned last year about the suspect, with police saying they had evaluated whether the suspect might be a threat a year ago.

The suspect has been ordered into pre-trial detention on counts of murder, attempted murder and dangerous bodily harm.

• Tributes paid to nine-year-old killed in market attack
• Grief and anger in Magdeburg after Christmas market attack
• Explained: What we know so far about Magdeburg Christmas market attack
• From the scene: Eyewitness heard rumbling and shattering glass

Usually at this time of the year, German city centres are full of shoppers and revellers drinking mulled wine, but this year the mood is very different.

The main Christmas market is cordoned off by tape and surrounded by police vans as armed officers patrol the shops and malls nearby.

There is sadness in the air in Magdeburg, as well as bafflement and anger, as people ask how could this have happened.

As politicians walked out of the cordoned-off market during their visit on Saturday, they were met with booing and heckling and shouts of “hau ab”, an extremely aggressive form of “get lost”.

Some people seemed enraged by a perceived lapse in security. Others appeared simply annoyed and irritated in general at Germany’s political leaders.

Security has ramped up at Christmas markets across Germany since a similar attack in Berlin in 2016 when a man drove a lorry into a market crowd, killing 12 people.

Open-plan Christmas markets now have some sort of barrier around them — typically large concrete blocks, which is the case in Magdeburg.

However, the gap in the barriers was large enough to allow emergency vehicles to pass through.

City official Ronni Krug told reporters at a press conference on Saturday that emergency responders needed an evacuation route in case of a “conventional” emergency, and all the relevant agencies approved the plan.

“A safety and security concept must, on the one hand, protect those visiting an event as much as possible, but also needs to ensure, at the same time, if something does happen, they are able to leave the site safely and rapidly”, he said.

“Perhaps it is something that could not have been prevented”, he added.

German media reported that before the attack, there had been warnings into a potential threat from the suspect.

The suspect, a doctor from Saudi Arabia named Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, arrived in Germany in 2006 and in 2016 was recognised as a refugee.

An atheist, he ran a website that aimed to help other former Muslims flee persecution in their Gulf homelands. His social media was full of anti-Islamic sentiment and conspiracy theories.

At Saturday’s press conference, Magdeburg police chief Tom-Oliver Langhans said police had conducted an evaluation as to whether the suspect might be a potential threat, “but that discussion was one year ago”.

He added that investigations into the suspect’s past were ongoing and declined to comment further.

Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser told German newspaper Bild that investigators would examine “in detail” what information authorities had on the suspect in the past and how he had been investigated.

The German Office for Migration and Refugees announced in a post on social media that it had fielded a complaint about the suspect, which it had “taken seriously”, but as the office is not an investigative body, had referred the complainant to other authorities.

One tip-off received by authorities is believed to have come from Saudi Arabia, the suspect’s home country.

A source close to the Saudi government told the BBC it sent four official notifications known as “Notes Verbal” to German authorities, warning them about what they said were “the very extreme views” held by al-Abdulmohsen.

However, a counter-terrorism expert told the BBC the Saudis may have been mounting a disinformation campaign to discredit someone who tried to help young Saudi women seek asylum in Germany.

On Saturday, Langhans said he did not have information when asked about Saudi Arabia issuing warnings.

Later, the head of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), Holger Münch, told public broadcaster ZDF that his office had received a notice from Saudi Arabia in November 2023. He said local police took appropriate investigative measures, but the matter was unspecific.

He added that the suspect “had various contacts with authorities, insulted them and even made threats, but he was not known for violent acts”.

Past investigations would need to be revisited, Münch said.

The social media accounts of the suspect are under a great deal scrutiny as investigators build their case against him.

He was a prolific poster of anti-Islamic sentiment and conspiracy theories on X, and had made threats in the past.

The German ambassador to the UK said X owner Elon Musk had questions to answer about why his platform had not taken action against al-Abdulmohsen.

“We have seen that the man who committed this terrible attack was extremely active, threatening on X. The question is, ‘does X really act against these things?’,” Ambassador Miguel Berger told BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House programme on Sunday.

“We have a Digital Safety Act in the European Union which requires social media to act […]. It has not happened,” he said.

Musk’s own account called for Scholz to resign, and retweeted several accounts broadly criticising the German government for failing to act on threats made on social media by the suspect.

The BBC has contacted X for a response.

Musk’s criticism of German authorities goes beyond the Magdeburg attack. In the morning before the attack, he posted in support of far-right political party Alternative for Germany (AfD).

“Only the AfD can save Germany,” he said.

Leader of the party, Alice Weidel, thanked Musk for his “note” and said “the Alternative for Germany is indeed the one and only alternative for our country; our very last option,” in a post retweeted by Musk.

When asked by the BBC to comment on Musk telling Germans how to vote, Berger said: “I think Elon Musk – before giving unwanted advice to German citizens – he should look at the responsibility of his own platform”.

Cyclone Chido has killed 94 people in Mozambique since it made landfallin the east African country last week, local authorities have said.

The country’s National Institute of Risk and Disaster Management (INGD) said 768 people were injured and more than 622,000 people affected by the natural disaster in some capacity.

Chido hit Mozambique on 15 December with winds of 260 km/h (160mph) and 250mm of rainfall in the first 24 hours.

The same cyclone had first wreaked havoc in the French Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte, before moving on to Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe.

In Mozambique, the storm struck northern provinces that are regularly battered by cyclones. It first reached Cabo Delgado, then travelled further inland to Niassa and Nampula.

The country’s INGD said the cyclone impacted the education and health sector. More than 109,793 students were affected, with school infrastructure severely damaged.

Some 52 sanitary units were damaged, the INGD said, which further risks access to essential health services. This is exacerbated further in areas where access to healthcare facilities were already limited before the cyclone.

Daniel Chapo, leader of Mozambique’s ruling party, told local media the government is mobilising support on “all levels” in response to the cyclone.

Speaking during a visit to Cabo Delgado on Sunday, one of the most badly affected areas, Chapo said the government is working alongside the INGD to ensure those affected in the provinces of Mecúfi, Nampula, Memba and Niassa can rebuild.

In Mayotte, Chido was the worst storm to hit the archipelago in 90 years, leaving tens of thousands of people reeling from the catastrophe.

The interior ministry in its latest update confirmed 35 people had died.

Mayotte’s prefect previously told local media the death toll could rise significantly once the damage was fully assessed, warning it would “definitely be several hundred” and could reach thousands.

More than 1,300 officers were deployed to support the local population.

One week on, many residents still lack basic necessities, while running water is making a gradual return to the territory’s capital. The ministry has advised people to boil water for three minutes before consuming it.

Around 100 tonnes of equipment are being delivered each day, the ministry said, as an air bridge was built between Mayotte, Reunion and mainland France.

In a statement on Friday, interior minister Bruno Retailleau said 80 tonnes of food and 50 tonnes of water had been distributed across Mayotte that day.

Tropical cyclones are characterised by very high wind speeds, heavy rainfall, and storm surges, which are short-term rises to sea-levels. This often causes widespread damage and flooding.

The cyclone, the INGD said, “highlights once again, the vulnerability of social infrastructures to climate change and the need for resilient planning to mitigate future impacts”.

Assessing the exact influence of climate change on individual tropical cyclones can be challenging due to the complexity of these storm systems. But rising temperatures do affect these storms in measurable ways.

The UN’s climate body, the IPCC, previously said there is “high confidence” that humans have contributed to increases in precipitation associated with tropical cyclones, and “medium confidence” that humans have contributed to the higher probability of a tropical cyclone being more intense.

An American fighter jet has been shot down over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, the US military has said.

Both crew from the US Navy F/A-18 Hornet ejected safely, with one suffering minor injuries, according to Central Command.

The incident came after the US carried out a series of air strikes against a missile storage site and command facilities in the Yemeni capital Sanaa operated by Iran-backed Houthi militants.

US Central Command added it also hit multiple Houthi drones and an anti-ship cruise missile over the Red Sea.

In a statement, US Central Command confirmed a “friendly fire” incident over the Red Sea.

“The guided missile cruiser USS Gettysburg, which is part of the USS Harry S Truman Carrier Strike Group, mistakenly fired on and hit the F/A-18, which was flying off the USS Harry S Truman,” the statement said.

It is not clear whether the downed aircraft had been involved in the Yemen operation.

Earlier Central Command said the strikes against targets in Sanaa aimed to “disrupt and degrade Houthi operations, such as attacks against US Navy warships and merchant vessels in the Southern Red Sea, Bab al-Mandeb, and Gulf of Aden”.

The US military also said it struck “multiple Houthi one-way attack uncrewed aerial vehicles, or drones, and an anti-ship cruise missile over the Red Sea” using “US Air Force and US Navy assets, including F/A-18s”.

• Who are the Houthis and why are they attacking Red Sea ships?

The Houthis, an Iran-backed rebel group that controls north-western Yemen, began attacking Israeli and international shipping shortly after the start of the Gaza war in October 2023, saying they were acting in solidarity with Palestinians.

Since November 2023, Houthi missile attacks have sunk two vessels in the Red Sea and damaged others. They have claimed, often falsely, that they are targeting ships only linked to Israel, the US or the UK.

Last December, the US, UK and 12 other nations launched Operation Prosperity Guardian to protect Red Sea shipping lanes against the attacks.

On Saturday, Israel’s military said its attempts to shoot down a projectile launched from Yemen were unsuccessful and the missile struck a park in Tel Aviv.

Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency medical service, said it treated 16 people who were “mildly injured” by glass shards from shattered windows in nearby buildings.

Another 14 people suffered minor injuries on their way to protected areas were also treated, it said.

A Houthi spokesman said the group hit a military target using a hypersonic ballistic missile.

Earlier this week, Israel conducted a series of strikes against what it said were Houthi military targets, hitting ports as well as energy infrastructure in the Yemeni capital Sanaa.

Houthi-run Al Masirah TV reported that nine people were killed in the port of Salif and the Ras Issa oil terminal.

The Houthis have vowed to continue their attacks until the war in Gaza ends. The US says its latest strike is part of a commitment to protect itself and its allies.

A Church of England priest at the centre of a sexual abuse case was twice reappointed to a senior role in his diocese during the Archbishop of York’s time as Bishop of Chelmsford, the BBC can reveal.

A BBC investigation previously revealed how David Tudor remained in post nine years after Stephen Cottrell was first told of concerns about him.

New information shows Tudor’s contract as area dean in Essex was renewed in 2013 and 2018, at which times Mr Cottrell knew he had paid compensation to a woman who says she was abused by him as a child.

The Archbishop of York said he regrets his handling of the case, with a spokesperson saying “he acknowledges this could have been handled differently”.

They added that “all the risks around David Tudor were regularly reviewed” and that was the “main focus”.

The pressure on Mr Cottrell comes at a time of turmoil in the Church of England following a damning report into how it covered up prolific abuse by the barrister John Smyth.

The report led to the resignation of the Church’s most senior figure, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby. Mr Cottrell will take over his role temporarily for a few months in the New Year.

Rachel Ford, who told the investigation she was groomed by Tudor as a child, said the renewal of his contract as area dean was “an insult to all of his victims”.

Ms Ford added that if responsibility for that lay with Mr Cottrell, it strengthened her feeling that he should resign.

The BBC investigation showed Mr Cottrell was briefed in his first week as Bishop of Chelmsford about serious safeguarding issues surrounding Tudor.

These included that Tudor was convicted of indecently assaulting three underage girls and was jailed for six months in 1988, although the conviction was quashed on technical grounds. Mr Cottrell would also have known Tudor served a five-year ban from ministry.

By 2012, Mr Cottrell also knew Tudor had paid a £10,000 settlement to a woman who says she was sexually abused by him from the age of 11. In 2018, the Church of England issued an apology and a six-figure pay-out to another alleged victim.

Yet the priest was suspended only in 2019 when a police investigation was launched after another woman came forward alleging Tudor had abused her in the 1980s.

When first responding to the BBC’s investigation, the Archbishop of York said he was “deeply sorry that we were not able to take action earlier”, insisting he had acted at the first opportunity that was legally available to him.

Mr Cottrell also said he had been faced with a “horrible and intolerable” situation and that it was “awful to live with and to manage”.

When Mr Cottrell became bishop in 2010, Tudor was into the second year of a five-year term as an area dean, a role overseeing 12 parishes in Essex.

His appointment to that post, under a different bishop, happened despite him working under a safeguarding agreement that barred him from being alone with children and entering schools.

The title was renewed twice under Mr Cottrell – in 2013 and 2018 – and he lost the title only when the term of office expired in 2020. It was not taken from him.

A spokesperson for the Archbishop said he “accepts responsibility for David Tudor remaining as area dean”.

“No-one advised him that David Tudor should not continue as an area dean,” said the Archbishop’s office.

Bishop of Newcastle Helen-Ann Hartley posted on X that Mr Cottrell’s expressions of regret did not “square” with his actions.

“I don’t know how you can find a situation ‘horrible and intolerable’ and then square that with what is reported here.

“Answer is, you can’t and be expected to be a credible voice as the leadership of the Church of England.”

The Reverend Lucy Winkett, Rector of St James’s Piccadilly, told the BBC that the Church’s credibility is “in serious trouble”.

“The credibility of the church, yes it’s in… we’re in serious trouble in terms of our credibility, but the job of the leaders in the church like me is to keep reminding ourselves who we’re here for”, she told BBC Radio 4’s The World This Weekend on Sunday.

The programme also spoke to the Bishop of Gloucester, the Right Reverend Rachel Treweek, who said she felt “shock and dismay” upon hearing the latest findings about the Archbishop of York.

Pushed for a direct answer on whether she supports Mr Cottrell’s role in Church, she said: “I want the proper process to take place, in order that we shape ourselves as the right sort of Church going forward, and that for me is the big question”.

Another of Tudor’s victims, who does not want to be identified, said she was “shocked and disappointed” to hear his tenure as area dean was twice renewed during Mr Cottrell’s time as Bishop of Chelmsford.

“These are not the actions of a bishop dealing with a situation that was intolerable to him, in fact, quite the opposite. I call on him to do the honourable thing for the sake of the Church and resign,” she says.

In 2015, under Mr Cottrell, Tudor was also made honorary canon of Chelmsford Cathedral.

The Archbishop’s office insisted it happened because of a change in Church policy during Mr Cottrell’s time as Bishop of Chelmsford, meaning area deans were automatically made honorary canons.

It was “not a promotion and not a personal reward”.

However, a social media post from Tudor’s Canvey Island parish in July 2015 suggests it was seen there as a reward.

Tudor’s “hard work, determination and commitment to this place have been recognised by the diocese and this new position in the Church is very well-deserved,” it said.

The BBC has also seen evidence – in leaked minutes from internal Church meetings in 2018 and 2019 – that Tudor’s titles of area dean and honorary canon were discussed and there had been a suggestion Mr Cottrell could immediately have taken them away.

In October 2018, a meeting at Church House – the London headquarters of the Church of England – heard that Chelmsford diocese took the view that if Tudor “can be a parish priest, he can undertake the other roles”.

A bishop from another diocese said “the Bishop of Chelmsford could remove DT’s [David Tudor’s] canon and area dean titles straight away”.

But in a follow-up discussion in November 2018, Chelmsford diocese advised it would not be appropriate because of “the difficulty of removing those titles without explaining why.”

We asked Mr Cottrell’s office why he had not followed the suggestion to remove Tudor’s titles. We were told “it would not be appropriate to comment on any notes or decisions from a core group process which are confidential”.

The investigation also highlighted the significant role played by former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey in the case.

We revealed Lord Carey had agreed to Tudor’s return to priesthood after being suspended in 1989, and had also agreed to have Tudor’s name removed from the list of clergy that had faced disciplinary action. He had also advocated for the priest.

After the BBC put this information to the former Archbishop of Canterbury, he wrote to give up his “permission to officiate”, ending more than 65 years of ministry in the Church of England. Lord Carey made the announcement on Tuesday.

In October 2024, Tudor admitted sexual misconduct and was sacked by the Church. At no point has he responded to the BBC’s attempts to speak with him.

When Charli XCX recorded her sixth album, Brat, she thought her prickly, abrasive dance anthems were “not going to appeal to a lot of people”.

In the end, the record topped the charts and became a cultural phenomenon. It was nominated for seven Grammys, referenced in the US presidential election, turned into a paint swatch, and named “word of the year” by Collins Dictionary.

Now the album has been named the best new release of 2024 in a “poll of polls” compiled by BBC News.

In multiple end of year lists, critics called Brat “brilliant from start to finish” and “pop music for the future“, praising the way its “painfully relatable” lyrics captured Charli’s insecurities, anxieties and obsessions.

In the star’s own words, the record is “chaos and emotional turmoil set to a club soundtrack”.

“The louder you play it, the more honest it gets,” said the Los Angeles Times.

The BBC’s poll is a “super-ranking” compiled from 30 year-end lists published by the world’s most influential music magazines – including the NME, Rolling Stone, Spain’s Mondo Sonoro and France’s Les Inrockuptibles.

Records were assigned points based on their position in each list – with the number one album getting 20 points, the number two album receiving 19 points, and so on.

Brat was the runaway winner with a score of 486 points, nearly twice as many as the number two album, Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter.

In total, the critics named 184 records among their favourites, from the The Cure’s long-awaited comeback, Songs Of A Lost World, to the kaleidoscopic rap of Doechii’s Alligator Bites Never Heal.

Here’s the top 25 in full.

Charli was born Emma Aitchison in Essex, UK, and has been chipping away at the coalface of pop for more than a decade.

At the start of her career, she scored hits with shiny pop anthems such as Fancy, I Love It and Boom Clap – but over the years, her music has become more volatile and aggressive.

Underground anthems like Vroom, Vroom and Track 10 turned her into a cult star but, as she confessed on Brat: “.

With that in mind, she entered 2024 with a new sense of purpose.

“Before we’d even done much writing, she had a masterplan of all the stuff she wanted to write about, and all the things she wanted to say,” producer AG Cook tells the BBC. “She had a real vision for the album, right from the start.”

“Even the name Brat was in play for about two years,” adds co-producer Finn Keane.

Released in June, Brat became the soundtrack to the summer; and Charli extended her success with a remix album that rewrote many of the songs and added an array of guest stars, from Billie Eilish and Robyn to The 1975 and Lorde.

The remix project was “really, off-the-cuff and last minute”, says Cook, “but that’s been part of the fun of Brat”.

“Charli is just incredibly quick and open to ideas,” adds Keane. “You can give her kind of any kind of crazy track, and she’ll instantly be able to come up with something super hooky, with a twist that’s very memorable and elaborate.

“She’s just incredibly musical.”

Billboard: “Charli XCX pulled off one of the most exciting and culturally significant album launches in modern memory… And best of all? It was all on Charli’s own terms. Drawing inspiration primarily from club culture and hyperpop, Charli pulled once-niche spaces in music into the mainstream.”

The Forty Five: “In making a club record to ignite the underground, she’s reached the world’s biggest stages. Musically, Charli is at her peak.”

Frequently mis-labelled as a country album, Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter is so much more. A racial reckoning with the black roots of American folk music, its 27 tracks embrace everything from line-dancing to psychedelic rock, with guest appearances from Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson and Post Malone.

The Times: “The pop hoedown single Texas Hold ‘Em remains the best piece, but the acoustic guitar-driven sexy ode Bodyguard is another highlight. Will this finally win Beyoncé her best album Grammy?”

NME: “A masterclass in creativity from an artist who never forgets her roots.”

The fourth album by Dublin’s Fontaines DC saw the quintet take their scratchy, sinister sound and run it through a technicolor filter. The results include everything from stadium-sized sing-alongs (Favourite) to panic-inducing punk anthems (Starburster).

Allmusic: “When all is said and done, they remain fantastic songwriters, able to convey a variety of emotions without relying on the trappings of punk. The corners may have been sanded off, but it has only revealed new and interesting textures underneath.”

Mojo magazine: “Fontaines D.C. are now, in terms of risk-taking potential, the Arctic Monkeys’ closest rivals.”

The title says it all. None of the songs on Billie Eilish’s exquisite third album are content to sit still, moving from hushed intimacy to emotional volatility as the singer navigates the murky waters of her early 20s.

The Telegraph: “Eilish has made something rich, strange, smart, sad and wise enough to stand comparison with Joni Mitchell’s Blue. A heartbreak masterpiece for her generation, and for the ages.”

The Guardian: “An album that keeps wrongfooting the listener, Hit Me Hard and Soft is clearly intended as something to gradually unpick: A bold move in a pop world where audiences are usually depicted as suffering from an attention deficit that requires instant gratification.”

Billed by one publication as the “poet laureate of indie rock“, MJ Lenderman’s breakthrough album is tender, melancholy and wryly funny, populated by a cast of flawed, disappointed and disappointing characters he observed around his hometown of Asheville, North Carolina.

New York Times: “An ace guitarist with a keen ear for jangly tones, he lends even his most pathetic characters a bit of warm-blooded humanity.”

The Line Of Best Fit: “How he gets you to care about nobodies from nowhere and their very strange plights is in part to do with his knack for universal empathy, but more importantly, the fact that he sings everything like he was just robbed at gunpoint by his 8th grade bully who he later watched win the lottery. You feel bad for things you don’t necessarily even understand.”

Sixteen years in the making, The Cure’s 14th studio album didn’t disappoint. Written during a period where frontman Robert Smith lost his mother, father and brother, it is simultaneously dark and fragile.

Speaking to the BBC, Smith said making the record had been “hugely cathartic” in escaping the “doom and gloom” he felt.

Time magazine: “It’s no exaggeration that this is an album haunted by death, so it’s almost ironic that, musically speaking, there hasn’t been this much life in The Cure for decades.”

Pitchfork: “It feels like a record whose time is right, delivering a concentrated dose of The Cure and cutting the fat that dogged their later albums.”

A sprawling, two-hour opus of dreamy pop and psychedelia, this is one of the year’s most mysterious records. You can’t buy the CD or vinyl, and it’s not available on Spotify or Apple Music. At the time of writing, it’s only available as a continuous, ad-free stream on YouTube, or as a download from Bandcamp.

But the seventh album by Cyndi Lee (the drag alter-ego of rock musician Patrick Flegel) is definitely worth your seeking out – like the lost transmissions of a ghostly 1960s pirate radio station.

Uncut: “Cindy Lee has managed to buck just about every trend, convention and expectation of what releasing music in the digital age is supposed to look and like. And, even more crucially, it sounds just as refreshing.”

Stereogum: “Diamond Jubilee is two hours of unrushed wandering through a lo-fi escape, catchy to the point of sticky, tarnishing in its abrasiveness yet sun-baked to perfection.”

On her sixth album as Waxahatchee, singer-songwriter Katie Crutchfield tackles everything from anxiety and self-doubt, to her ongoing struggle with sobriety, with piercing insight and a laid-back country-rock feel.

Pitchfork: “Her mind is alive and humming, and her language leaps out at you with its hunger.”

Consequence of Sound: “Crutchfield is still growing, both personally and artistically, and we’re just glad she’s invited us along for the ride.”

After landing the decisive blow in his rap beef with Drake, Compton rapper Kendrick Lamar took a victory lap on his surprise sixth album, GNX. Razor sharp and rhythmically complex, it’s both a poison pen letter to his detractors, and a love letter to Los Angeles’ hip-hop culture.

LA Times: “Lamar is worked up about liars, about folks doling out backhanded compliments, about other rappers with “old-ass flows” wasting space with empty rhymes. Indeed, what seems to make him angriest is the idea that a person could triumph in hip-hop by taking hip-hop less seriously than he does.”

Complex: “Even cooler is how much space Kendrick gives to underground rappers from the LA scene—figures who are talented but raw, and would likely struggle to gain national recognition without a boost.”

Six albums into her career, former Disney star Sabrina Carpenter landed on a winning formula – one that puts aside the cookie-cutter pop of her teen years, and zeroes in on her sly humour as a USP.

Fleet of foot and packed with memorable one-liners, it produced three number one singles in the UK, including song of the year contender Espresso.

New York Times: “A smart, funny, cheerfully merciless catalogue of bad boyfriend behaviour.”

Esquire: “The range, humour, and sophistication of these 12 songs were a revelation.”

11) Tyler, The Creator – Chromokopia

12) Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Wild God

13) Beth Gibbons – Lives Outgrown

=14) Mk.Gee – Two Star & The Dream People

=14) Jessica Pratt – Here In The Pitch

16) Vampire Weekend – Only God Was Above Us

17) Adrianne Lenker – Bright Future

18) Doechii – Alligator Bites Never Heal

19) Clairo – Charm

=20) Taylor Swift – The Tortured Poets Department

=20) Nala Sinephro – Endlessness

22) English Teacher – This Could Be Texas

23) The Last Dinner Party – Prelude To Ecstasy

24) Magdalena Bay – Imaginal Disk

25) Nilufer Yanya – My Method Actor

A man has been arrested in New York in connection with the death of a woman who was set on fire on a subway train in Brooklyn.

Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch described the incident on Sunday as “one of the most depraved crimes one person could possibly commit against another human being”.

She said the woman was on a stationary F train to Brooklyn when she was approached by a man who used a lighter to ignite her clothing.

The victim died at the scene, she said, adding that the suspect had been arrested following a tip-off from a group of high school students as he rode the subway later on Sunday.

Police said the woman, who has not been named, was in a subway carriage at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station in Brooklyn at about 07:30 local time (12:30 GMT) when a man approached her.

There was no interaction before the attack, police said, adding that they did not believe the two people knew each other.

The man got off the train as police officers on patrol in the station rushed to the fire.

“Officers were on patrol on an upper level of that station, smelled and saw smoke and went to investigate,” Ms Tisch said.

“What they saw was a person standing inside the train car fully engulfed in flames.”

Police are still working to identify the victim and the motive for the attack.

“Unbeknownst to the officers who responded, the suspect had stayed on the scene and was seated on a bench on the platform just outside the train car,” Ms Tisch added.

She explained responding officers were able to get a “very clear, detailed” look at the man and images were disseminated by the New York Police Department (NYPD).

Later, three high school-aged New Yorkers called 911 to report they recognised the suspect on another train, Ms Tisch told reporters.

The man was then located after officers boarded the train and walked through the subway carriages.

He was arrested at Herald Square station – which is located in near to the Empire State Building in Manhattan.

The man was found with a lighter in his pocket, the police commissioner said.

“I want to thank the young people who called 911 to help,” Ms Tisch added.

“They saw something, they said something and they did something.”

The man, who was not publicly identified, emigrated from Guatemala to the US in 2018, the NYPD’s Joseph Gulotta said.

Gulotta explained detectives are still trying to establish whether the victim was asleep when she was set on fire.

“She’s definitely there, she’s motionless,” Mr Gulotta added.

“So to say if she’s asleep or not, we’re not 100% sure, but it appears that she’s motionless at that spot.

“There is no interaction between the two. And when the incident happens, there is no interaction between them.”

The Saudi authorities, I am told, are currently working flat out to collate everything they have on the Magdeburg market suspect, Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, and to share it with Germany’s ongoing investigation “in every way possible”.

Inside the imposing sand coloured and fortress-like walls of the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Riyadh there is a perhaps justifiable sense of pique.

The ministry previously warned the German government about al-Abdulmohsen’s extremist views.

It sent four so-called “Notes Verbal”, three of them to Germany’s intelligence agencies and one to the foreign ministry in Berlin. There was, the Saudis say, no response.

Part of the explanation for this may lie in the fact that Taleb al-Abdulmohsen was granted asylum by Germany in 2016, one year after the former Chancellor Angela Merkel threw open her country’s borders to let in more than a million migrants from the Middle East, and 10 years after al-Abdulmohsen had taken up residence in Germany.

Coming from a country where Islam is the only religion permitted to be practised in public, al-Abdulmohsen was a very unusual citizen.

He had turned his back on Islam, making himself a heretic in the eyes of many.

Born in the Saudi date palm oasis town of Hofuf in 1974, little is known about his early life before he decided to leave Saudi Arabia and move to Europe aged 32.

Active on social media, on his Twitter (later X) account he labels himself as both a psychiatrist and founder of a Saudi rights movement, together with the tag @SaudiExMuslims.

He founded a website aimed at helping Saudi women flee their country to Europe.

The Saudis say he was a people trafficker and the Ministry of Interior’s investigators, the Mabaatheth, are said to have an extensive file on him.

There have been reports in recent years of dissident Saudis coming under hostile surveillance from Saudi government agents, in Canada, the US and in Germany.

There is no question that the German authorities, both federal and state, have made some serious errors of omission in the case of al-Abdulmohsen.

Whatever their reasons for not responding, as the Saudis claim, to the repeated warnings about his extremism, he was seemingly a danger to his adopted host country.

There is also, separately, the failure to close off, or at least guard, the emergency access route to Magdeburg Alter Markt that allowed him to allegedly drive his BMW into the crowds.

German authorities have defended the market’s layout and said an investigation into the suspect’s past is ongoing.

But a complicating factor here is that Saudi Arabia, although considered a friend and ally of the West, has a poor human rights record.

Until June 2018 Saudi women were forbidden to drive and even those women who publicly called for that ban to be lifted before then have been persecuted and imprisoned.

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, still only in his 30s, just, is immensely popular in his own country.

While Western leaders largely distanced themselves from him after his alleged involvement in the grisly murder of the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, which the crown prince denies, at home his star is still in the ascendant.

Under his de-facto rule, Saudi public life has transformed for the better, with men and women allowed to associate freely, and cinemas reopening, along with big, spectacular sports and entertainment events, even gigs performed by Western artists like David Guetta and the Black Eyed Peas.

But there is a paradox here.

While Saudi public life has flourished there has been a simultaneous crackdown on anything that even hints at more political or religious freedom.

Harsh prison sentences of 10 years or more have been handed down for simple tweets.

No-one is permitted to even question the way the country is run.

It is against this backdrop that Germany appears to have dropped the ball with Taleb al-Abdulmohsen.

President-elect Donald Trump has demanded Panama reduce fees on the Panama Canal or return it to US control, accusing the central American country of charging “exorbitant prices” to American shipping and naval vessels.

“The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous, highly unfair,” he told a crowd of supporters in Arizona on Sunday.

“This complete rip-off of our country will immediately stop,” he said, referring to when he takes office next month.

His remarks prompted a quick rebuke from Panama’s president, who said “every square metre” of the canal and surrounding area belong to his country.

President José Raúl Mulino added that Panama’s sovereignty and independence were non-negotiable.

Trump made the comments to supporters of Turning Point USA, a conservative activist group that provided significant support to his 2024 election campaign.

It was a rare example of a US leader saying he could push a country to hand over territory – although he did not explain how he would do so – and a sign of how American foreign policy and diplomacy may shift once he enters the White House following his inauguration on 20 January.

Trump’s comments followed a similar post a day earlier in which he said the Panama Canal was a “vital national asset” for the US.

If shipping rates are not lowered, Trump said on Sunday, “we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us, in full, quickly and without question”.

The 51-mile (82km) Panama Canal cuts across the central American nation and is the main link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

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It was built in the early 1900s and the US maintained control over the canal zone until 1977, when treaties gradually ceded the land back to Panama. After a period of joint control, Panama took sole control in 1999.

Up to 14,000 ships cross the canal per year, including container ships carrying cars, natural gas and other goods, and military vessels.

As well as Panama, the president-elect also took aim at Canada and Mexico over what he called unfair trade practices. He accused them of allowing drugs and immigrants into the US, although he called Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum a “wonderful woman”.

Trump made his remarks in front of thousands at Turning Point’s annual conference, one of the country’s largest gatherings of conservative activists.

Turning Point poured huge resources into get-out-the-vote efforts in swing states designed to bolster Trump and other Republicans during the election campaign.

It was his first speech since a deal passed Congress this week to keep the US government open, after several provisions were removed including one that would have increased the country’s debt ceiling.

Trump had supported raising the debt ceiling, which restricts the amount of money the US government can borrow.

But his speech on Sunday avoided that issue entirely, instead recapping his election victory and hitting on themes – including immigration, crime and foreign trade – that were mainstays of his campaign.

He did, however, mention Elon Musk.

“You know, they’re on a new kick,” he said. “All the different hoaxes. The new one is that President Trump has ceded the presidency to Elon Musk.”

“No, no, that’s not happening,” he said. “He’s not gonna be president.”

Several speakers here at the conference were critical of government spending and of politicians in both parties – however the divisions inside the Republican Party which have played out in Congress in recent days were mostly muted.

Hundreds of Tibetans protesting against a Chinese dam were rounded up in a harsh crackdown earlier this year, with some beaten and seriously injured, the BBC has learnt from sources and verified footage.

Such protests are extremely rare in Tibet, which China has tightly controlled since it annexed the region in the 1950s. That they still happened highlights China’s controversial push to build dams in what has long been a sensitive area.

Claims of the arrests and beatings began trickling out shortly after the events in February. In the following days authorities further tightened restrictions, making it difficult for anyone to verify the story, especially journalists who cannot freely travel to Tibet.

But the BBC has spent months tracking down Tibetan sources whose family and friends were detained and beaten. BBC Verify has also examined satellite imagery and verified leaked videos which show mass protests and monks begging the authorities for mercy.

The sources live outside of China and are not associated with activist groups. But they did not wish to be named for safety reasons.

In response to our queries, the Chinese embassy in the UK did not confirm nor deny the protests or the ensuing crackdown.

But it said: “China is a country governed by the rule of law, and strictly safeguards citizens’ rights to lawfully express their concerns and provide opinions or suggestions.”

The protests, followed by the crackdown, took place in a territory home to Tibetans in Sichuan province. For years, Chinese authorities have been planning to build the massive Gangtuo dam and hydropower plant, also known as Kamtok in Tibetan, in the valley straddling the Dege (Derge) and Jiangda (Jomda) counties.

Once built, the dam’s reservoir would submerge an area that is culturally and religiously significant to Tibetans, and home to several villages and ancient monasteries containing sacred relics.

One of them, the 700-year-old Wangdui (Wontoe) Monastery, has particular historical value as its walls feature rare Buddhist murals.

The Gangtuo dam would also displace thousands of Tibetans. The BBC has seen what appears to be a public tender document for the relocation of 4,287 residents to make way for the dam.

The BBC contacted an official listed on the tender document as well as Huadian, the state-owned enterprise reportedly building the dam. Neither have responded.

Plans to build the dam were first approved in 2012, according to a United Nations special rapporteurs letter to the Chinese government. The letter, which is from July 2024, raised concerns about the dam’s “irreversible impact” on thousands of people and the environment.

From the start, residents were not “consulted in a meaningful way” about the dam, according to the letter. For instance, they were given information that was inadequate and not in the Tibetan language.

They were also promised by the government that the project would only go ahead if 80% of them agreed to it, but “there is no evidence this consent was ever given,” the letter goes on to say, adding that residents tried to raise concerns about the dam several times.

Then, in February, officials told them they would be evicted imminently, while giving them little information about resettlement options and compensation, the BBC understands from two Tibetan sources.

This triggered such deep anxiety that villagers and Buddhist monks decided to stage protests, despite knowing the risks of a crackdown.

The largest one saw hundreds gathering outside a government building in Dege. In a video clip obtained and verified by the BBC, protesters can be heard calling on authorities to stop the evictions and let them stay.

Separately, a group of residents approached visiting officials and pleaded with them to cancel plans to build the dam. The BBC has obtained footage which appears to show this incident, and verified it took place in the village of Xiba.

The clip shows red-robed monks and villagers kneeling on a dusty road and showing a thumbs-up, a traditional Tibetan way of begging for mercy.

In the past the Chinese government has been quick to stamp out resistance to authority, especially in Tibetan territory where it is sensitive to anything that could potentially feed separatist sentiment.

It was no different this time. Authorities swiftly launched their crackdown, arresting hundreds of people at protests while also raiding homes across the valley, according to one of our sources.

One unverified but widely shared clip appears to show Chinese policemen shoving a group of monks on a road, in what is thought to be an arrest operation.

Many were detained for weeks and some were beaten badly, according to our Tibetan sources whose family and friends were targeted in the crackdown.

One source shared fresh details of the interrogations. He told the BBC that a childhood friend was detained and interrogated over several days.

“He was asked questions and treated nicely at first. They asked him ‘who asked you to participate, who is behind this’.

“Then, when he couldn’t give them [the] answers they wanted, he was beaten by six or seven different security personnel over several days.”

His friend sustained only minor injuries, and was freed within a few days. But others were not so lucky.

Another source told the BBC that more than 20 of his relatives and friends were detained for participating in the protests, including an elderly person who was more than 70 years old.

“Some of them sustained injuries all over their body, including in their ribs and kidneys, from being kicked and beaten… some of them were sick because of their injuries,” he said.

Similar claims of physical abuse and beatings during the arrests have surfaced in overseas Tibetan media reports.

The UN letter also notes reports of detentions and use of force on hundreds of protesters, stating they were “severely beaten by the Chinese police, resulting in injuries that required hospitalisation”.

After the crackdown, Tibetans in the area encountered even tighter restrictions, the BBC understands. Communication with the outside world was further limited and there was increased surveillance. Those who are still contactable have been unwilling to talk as they fear another crackdown, according to sources.

The first source said while some released protesters were eventually allowed to travel elsewhere in Tibetan territory, others have been slapped with orders restricting their movement.

This has caused problems for those who need to go to hospital for medical treatment and nomadic tribespeople who need to roam across pastures with their herds, he said.

The second source said he last heard from his relatives and friends at the end of February: “When I got through, they said not to call any more as they would get arrested. They were very scared, they would hang up on me.

“We used to talk over WeChat, but now that is not possible. I’m totally blocked from contacting all of them,” he said.

“The last person I spoke to was a younger female cousin. She said, ‘It’s very dangerous, a lot of us have been arrested, there’s a lot of trouble, they have hit a lot of us’… They didn’t know what was going to happen to them next.”

The BBC has been unable to find any mention of the protests and crackdown in Chinese state media. But shortly after the protests, a Chinese Communist Party official visited the area to “explain the necessity” of building the dam and called for “stability maintenance measures”, according to one report.

A few months later, a tender was awarded for the construction of a Dege “public security post”, according to documents posted online.

The BBC has been monitoring the valley via satellite imagery for months. For now, there is no sign of the dam’s construction nor demolition of the villages and monasteries.

The Chinese embassy told us authorities were still conducting geological surveys and specialised studies to build the dam. They added the local government is “actively and thoroughly understanding the demands and aspirations” of residents.

China is no stranger to controversy when it comes to dams.

When the government constructed the world’s biggest dam in the 90s – the Three Gorges on the Yangtze River – it saw protests and criticism over its handling of relocation and compensation for thousands of villagers.

In more recent years, as China has accelerated its pivot from coal to clean energy sources, such moves have become especially sensitive in Tibetan territories.

Beijing has been eyeing the steep valleys and mighty rivers here, in the rural west, to build mega-dams and hydropower stations that can sustain China’s electricity-hungry eastern metropolises. President Xi Jinping has personally pushed for this, a policy called “xidiandongsong”, or “sending western electricity eastwards”.

Like Gangtuo, many of these dams are on the Jinsha (Dri Chu) river, which runs through Tibetan territories. It forms the upper reaches of the Yangtze river and is part of what China calls the world’s largest clean energy corridor.

Gangtuo is in fact the latest in a series of 13 dams planned for this valley, five of which are already in operation or under construction.

The Chinese government and state media have presented these dams as a win-win solution that cuts pollution and generates clean energy, while uplifting rural Tibetans.

In its statement to the BBC, the Chinese embassy said clean energy projects focus on “promoting high-quality economic development” and “enhancing the sense of gain and happiness among people of all ethnic groups”.

But the Chinese government has long been accused of violating Tibetans’ rights. Activists say the dams are the latest example of Beijing’s exploitation of Tibetans and their land.

“What we are seeing is the accelerated destruction of Tibetan religious, cultural and linguistic heritage,” said Tenzin Choekyi, a researcher with rights group Tibet Watch. “This is the ‘high-quality development’ and ‘ecological civilisation’ that the Chinese government is implementing in Tibet.”

One key issue is China’s relocation policy that evicts Tibetans from their homes to make way for development – the same fate awaits the villagers and monks living near the Gangtuo dam. More than 930,000 rural Tibetans are estimated to have been relocated since 2000, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Beijing has always maintained that these relocations happen only with the consent of Tibetans, and that they are given housing, compensation and new job opportunities. State media often portrays it as an improvement in their living conditions.

But rights groups paint a different picture, with reports detailing evidence of coercion, complaints of inadequate compensation, cramped living conditions, and lack of jobs. They also point out that relocation severs the deep, centuries-old connection that rural Tibetans share with their land.

“These people will essentially lose everything they own, their livelihoods and community heritage,” said Maya Wang, interim China director at HRW.

There are also environmental concerns over the flooding of Tibetan valleys renowned for their biodiversity, and the possible dangers of building dams in a region rife with earthquake fault lines.

Some Chinese academics have found the pressure from accumulated water in dam reservoirs could potentially increase the risk of quakes, including in the Jinsha river. This could cause catastrophic flooding and destruction, as seen in 2018, when rain-induced landslides occurred at a village situated between two dam construction sites on Jinsha.

The Chinese embassy told us that the implementation of any clean energy project “will go through scientific planning and rigorous demonstration, and will be subject to relevant supervision”.

In recent years, China has passed laws safeguarding the environment surrounding the Yangtze River and the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau. President Xi has personally stressed the need to protect the Yangtze’s upper reaches.

About 424 million yuan (£45.5m, $60m) has been spent on environmental conservation along Jinsha, according to state media. Reports have also highlighted efforts to quake-proof dam projects.

Multiple Tibetan rights groups, however, argue that any large-scale development in Tibetan territory, including dams such as Gangtuo, should be halted.

They have staged protests overseas and called for an international moratorium, arguing that companies participating in such projects would be “allowing the Chinese government to profit from the occupation and oppression of Tibetans”.

“I really hope that this [dam-building] stops,” one of our sources said. “Our ancestors were here, our temples are here. We have been here for generations. It is very painful to move. What kind of life would we have if we leave?”

Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico has made a surprise visit to Moscow for talks with Vladimir Putin – becoming only the third Western leader to meet the Russian leader since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago.

Fico – a vocal critic of the European Union’s support for Kyiv in the war – said they discussed supplies of Russian gas to Slovakia – which his country relies on.

A deal with Russian gas giant Gazprom to transit energy through Ukraine to Slovakia is due to expire at the end of this year.

“Top EU officials were informed about my journey and its purpose… on Friday,” Fico wrote on Facebook.

Fico said the meeting in Moscow was a reaction to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky telling EU leaders that Ukraine remains opposed to Russian gas being piped through its territory.

The Slovakian PM, who survived being shot earlier this year, also said he had a “long conversation” with Putin and the two “exchanged views on the military situation in Ukraine”.

Both discussed “the possibilities of an early, peaceful end of the war” and mutual relations between Russia and Slovakia, Fico wrote on Facebook.

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Slovakia and Hungary, which both depend on Russian gas, have raised concerns about the prospect of supplies being interrupted.

In October 2023, when Fico became prime minister again, he ended Slovakia’s military aid to Ukraine.

But, he has insisted he wants to be a “good, friendly neighbour” to Ukraine.

Fico’s meeting with Putin came as the leaders of Italy, Sweden, Greece and Finland met on Sunday for a security summit.

Speaking afterwards, Finland’s Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said Russia was a “permanent and dangerous threat” to the EU.

He also stressed the need for increased defence spending and support for Ukraine.

On the night of 9 December, a 34-year-old Indian man killed himself. Next to his body was a placard reading “justice is due”.

Atul Subhash left a detailed 24-page suicide note and an 81-minute video in which he blamed the trouble in his marriage and divorce proceedings.

The letter and the video, which contain distressing details about his life, have gone viral on social media and caused outrage.

The software engineer from the southern city of Bengaluru accused his estranged wife Nikita Singhania, her mother and brother of sustained harassment and torture – accusations they denied. The three were arrested a few days later and a court has remanded them for 14 days.

News of Subhash’s tragic death has also galvanised men’s rights activists and started a wider debate around India’s tough dowry law.

Many argue that with cases of divorce steadily rising, the law is being misused by women to harass their husbands, even forcing them to kill themselves. India’s top court has also weighed in, with one judge describing it as “legal terrorism” that was “intended to be used as a shield and not as an assassin’s weapon”.

Women’s activists, however, point out that dowry still continues to kill thousands of women every year.

Subhash and Singhania married in 2019, but had been living apart for three years and Subhash said he was not allowed to meet their four-year-old son. His wife, he alleged, had filed “false court cases”, accusing him of cruelty, dowry harassment and various other wrongdoings.

In the video, he accused the Singhania family of “extortion” and said they had demanded 30m rupees ($352,675; £279,661) to withdraw the cases, 3m rupees for visitation rights to their son and asked to raise the monthly maintenance from 40,000 rupees to 200,000 rupees.

He then spoke about the dozens of long trips he made over the past few years to attend court hearings and accused a judge of harassment, seeking a bribe from him and mocking him. A notice which appears to have been issued by the judge refers to the allegations as “baseless, immoral and defamatory”.

News of the suicide prompted a firestorm of protests in several cities. Many took to social media to demand justice for Subhash.

• India: ‘I have been rejected by dozens of men over dowry’

They said his suicide should be treated as a case of murder and targetted Singhania, demanding she be arrested and sent to prison for life.

On X (formerly Twitter), thousands tagged the American multinational firm where she worked, demanding that they sack her.

Following the outrage, the police in Bengaluru opened an inquiry against those named in the suicide note. On 14 December, Singhania, her mother and brother were arrested on charges of “abetment to suicide”.

During interrogation, Singhania denied the allegation that she had been harassing Subhash for money, Times of India quoted the police as saying.

In the past, Singhania had also levelled grave charges against her husband. In her 2022 petition for divorce, she had accused him, his parents and brother of harassing her for dowry. She said they had been unhappy with the gifts her parents had given during the wedding and demanded an additional 1m rupees.

Dowries have been outlawed in India since 1961, but the bride’s family is still expected to gift cash, clothes and jewellery to the groom’s family. According to a recent study, 90% of Indian marriages involve them and payments between 1950 and 1999 amounted to a quarter of a trillion dollars.

And according to the National Crime Records Bureau, 35,493 brides were killed in India between 2017 and 2022 – an average of 20 women a day – over dowry. In 2022 alone, more than 6,450 brides were murdered over dowry – that’s an average of 18 women every day.

Singhania claimed that her father died from a heart attack soon after her wedding when Subhash’s parents went to him to demand the money. She also alleged that her husband used to threaten her and “beat me up after drinking alcohol and treated the husband-wife relationship like a beast” by demanding unnatural sex. Subhash had denied all the allegations.

• India top court orders changes in anti-dowry law to stop misuse

Police say they are still investigating the allegations and counter-allegations but Subhash’s suicide has led to growing calls to rewrite – even scrap – India’s stringent anti-dowry law – Section 498A of the India Penal Code.

The law was introduced in 1983 after a spate of dowry deaths in Delhi and elsewhere in the country. There were daily reports of brides being burnt to death by their husbands and in-laws and the murders were often passed off as “kitchen accidents”. Angry protests by female MPs and activists forced parliament to bring in the law.

As lawyer Sukriti Chauhan says, “the law had come after a long and hard fight” and “allows women to seek justice in cases of cruelty in their matrimonial homes”.

But over the years, the law has repeatedly made headlines, with men’s activists saying it is being misused by women to harass their husbands and their relatives.

India’s top court has also warned against the misuse of the law on many occasions. On the day Subhash’s suicide was reported, the Supreme Court once again flagged – in an unrelated case – “the growing tendency to misuse the provision as a tool for unleashing personal vendetta against the husband and his family”.

Amit Deshpande, founder of Mumbai-based men’s rights organisation Vaastav Foundation, says the law is being used “mostly to extort men” and that “there are thousands of others who are suffering like Subhash”.

Their helpline number, he says, receives about 86,000 calls every year and most cases are about matrimonial disputes that include false dowry cases and attempts at extortion.

“A cottage industry has been built around the law. In each case, 18-20 people are named as accused and they all have to hire lawyers and go to court to seek bail. There have been cases where a two-month-old baby or an ill nonagenarian was named in dowry harassment complaints.

“I know these are extreme examples but the whole system enables this in some manner. Police, judiciary and politicians are turning a blind eye to our concerns,” he says.

Mr Deshpande says according to the government crime data for more than 50 years, a large majority of male suicides were by married men – and family discord was the reason for one in four suicides among them.

Patriarchy, he says, also works against men. “Women have recourse to laws and they get sympathy, but people laugh at men who are harassed or beaten by their wives. If Subhash was a woman he could have had recourse to certain laws. So, let’s make laws gender neutral and extend the same justice to men so lives can be saved.”

There should also be stringent punishment for those who misuse the law, otherwise this will not be a deterrent, he adds.

Ms Chauhan agrees that women who misuse the law should be punished, but argues that any law can be misused. The Bengaluru case is in court and if it is proven that it’s a false case, then she should be punished, she says.

“But I do not support it becoming gender neutral. The demand for that is regressive as it disregards the need for special measures that acknowledge that women are disproportionately impacted by violence.”

Those going after Section 498A, she says, are “driven by patriarchy and because it’s a law for women, attempts are made to strike it down”.

“It came after years of societal patriarchal injustice. And this patriarchy remains the reality of our generation and will continue for generations to come.”

Despite the law, she says, demand for dowry is rampant and thousands of brides continue to be killed over it.

The need of the hour, she adds, is to “make the law stronger”.

“If three out of 10 cases that are filed are false, then it is for the courts to impose penalty on them. But women are still suffering very much in this country so do not ask to repeal the law.”

Tributes have been paid to a nine-year-old boy who was killed in an attack on a German Christmas market.

André Gleissner died after a car drove into a crowd of shoppers at the market in Magdeburg on Friday evening, a local fire department said.

A social media post, reportedly attributed to André’s mother, called him “my little teddy bear” and said he would “always live in our hearts”.

Four women, aged 45, 52, 67 and 75, also died in the attack. Authorities are holding a suspect in pre-trial detention on counts of murder, attempted murder and dangerous bodily harm.

Another tribute came from a fire department in nearby Schöppenstedt.

In a statement it said André was a member of the children’s fire brigade in Warle, which is about an hour’s drive from Magdeburg.

The children’s fire brigade is a youth organisation open to kids aged six to 12 with an interest in firefighting.

“Our thoughts are with André’s relatives, who we also want to support during this difficult time,” the statement said.

The Lower Saxony youth fire brigade also paid tribute to the nine-year-old.

“Our condolences go out to his family, his friends and everyone who was close to him,” it said in a statement.

“We stand by their side in these difficult times and express our deepest sympathy,” it added.

An online fundraiser reportedly set up to raise money for André’s family has received more than €60,000 (£49,900) in donations so far.

The attack on Friday left at least 200 people injured, with some left in a critical condition.

The four women who were also killed have not yet been identified.

The car ploughed into the crowded market via an emergency vehicle access lane about 19:00 local time (18:00 GMT) on Friday, police said.

Eyewitnesses described jumping out of the car’s path, fleeing or hiding. Unverified social media footage showed the vehicle speeding through a pedestrian walkway between stalls.

Police said the driver then returned to the road and was forced to stop in traffic, where he was arrested.

Around 100 police, medics and firefighters attended the scene, according to city officials.

A 50-year-old man has been remanded in custody on suspicion of five counts of murder, multiple attempted murders and dangerous bodily harm, police said.

The suspect has been identified in local media as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a Saudi-born psychiatrist who arrived in Germany in 2006.

The motive behind the attack remains unclear but authorities say they believe the driver acted alone.

German authorities are facing questions about security after reports they were warned last year that the suspect could pose a threat.

The Saudi foreign ministry said it warned the German government about al-Abdulmohsen’s extremist views, but received no response.

The rhetoric on social media following the murder of healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York earlier this month has been “extraordinarily alarming”, US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says.

“It speaks of what is really bubbling here in this country, and unfortunately we see that manifested in violence, the domestic violent extremism that exists,” he told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday.

Some on social media have celebrated Luigi Mangione, the man accused of shooting dead Mr Thompson, and shared anger at America’s private health insurers.

Mayorkas said he was “alarmed by the heroism that is being attributed to an alleged murderer of a father of two children on the streets in New York”.

Mr Thompson, the 50-year-old CEO of the largest US health insurer UnitedHealthcare, was gunned down outside a Manhattan hotel early on 4 December triggering a massive manhunt for the killer.

Mr Mangione, 26, was arrested days later in Pennsylvania and flown to New York where he is facing both federal and state charges, including first-degree murder in furtherance of terrorism.

Investigators accuse him of carrying out a targeted killing, pointing to evidence that suggests a long-held animosity towards the US healthcare industry. On social media, support for Mr Mangione has often been accompanied by grievances and complaints with the health insurance sector.

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“We have been concerned about the rhetoric on social media for some time,” Mayorkas said on Sunday. “We’ve seen narratives of hate. We’ve seen narratives of anti-government sentiment. We’ve seen personal grievances in the language of violence.”

Mayorkas, whose homeland security department is in part responsible for protecting Americans from domestic terrorism, said his department sees a “wide range of narratives” that “drive some individuals to violence.”

“It’s something that we’re very concerned about,” he said. “That is a heightened threat environment.”

But the 65-year-old, whose time at the helm of the department will end next month, stressed that Mr Thompson’s killing was “the actions of an individual [and] not reflective of the American public”.

Mr Mangione will remain behind bars in New York as his lawyers said last week that they would not present an application for bail. He is in federal custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center Brooklyn, the same facility where Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs is being held.

He will likely be assigned a roommate and have daily visits from medical and psychological services, law enforcement sources told the BBC’s US partner CBS.

While New York does not have the death penalty, he faces four federal charges, including murder and stalking, which could make him eligible for the punishment. He also faces multiple state charges.

He is expected to be arraigned on those state charges in New York on Monday. Mr Mangione faces 11 counts, including murder in the first degree and murder as a crime of terrorism.

The Pelicot rape trial, which ended in France on Thursday, held a terrible fascination for almost every woman I know. As it unfolded in an Avignon court, I found myself following every awful detail, then discussing it with my female friends, my daughters, colleagues, even women in my local book club, as we tried to process what happened.

For nearly a decade, Gisèle Pelicot’s husband had been secretly drugging her and inviting men he’d met on the internet to have sex with his “Sleeping Beauty” wife in the marital bedroom while he videoed them.

These strangers, ranging from 22 to 70 years in age, with jobs that included fireman, nurse, journalist, prison warden and soldier, complied with Dominique Pelicot‘s instructions. Such was their desire for a submissive female body to penetrate, they blithely had sex with a retired grandmother whose heavily sedated body resembled a rag doll.

There were 50 men in court, all living within a 50km (30 mile) radius of Mazan, a small town in southern France where the Pelicots lived. They were, apparently, just like “any other man”.

One woman in her 30s told me “When I first read about it, I didn’t want to be around men for at least a week, even my fiancé. It just horrified me.”

Another in her late 60s, so close to Gisèle Pelicot’s age, couldn’t stop thinking about what men’s minds could be harbouring, even her husband and sons. “Is this just the tip of the iceberg?”

As Dr Stella Duffy, 61, an author and therapist, wrote on Instagram on the day the verdict was delivered: “I hope and try to believe #notallmen, but I imagine the wives and girlfriends and best mates and daughters and mothers of Gisèle Pelicot’s village thought that too. And now they know different. Every woman I talk to says this case has changed how she views men. I hope it’s changed how men view men too.”

Now that justice has been done, we can look beyond this monstrous case and ask: where did these men’s callous and violent behaviour come from? Could they not see that sex without consent is rape?

But there is a broader question too. What does the fact that so many men in a relatively small area shared this fantasy of extreme domination over a woman say about the nature of male desire?

It is hard to imagine the scale of the orchestrated rapes and sexual assaults of Ms Pelicot without the internet.

The platform on which Dominique Pelicot advertised for men to rape his wife was an unmoderated French website, which made it easier to bring together people who shared sexual interests, with no holds barred, than it would have been in the days before the internet. (It has now been closed down.)

One of Ms Pelicot’s lawyers likened the site to a “murder weapon”, telling the court that without it the case “would never have reached such proportions”.

But the internet has played a role in gradually changing attitudes to sex in consensual and non-abusive settings too, normalising what many might have once seen as extreme.

In the shift from old school skin mags and blue movies bought in a murky Soho sex shop to modern-day websites like PornHub, which had 11.4 billion mobile visits globally in the month of January 2024 alone, the boundaries of porn have expanded hugely. Adding in more and more extreme or niche activity ramps up the expectation, so “vanilla” sex may become mundane.

According to a survey of UK online users in January 2024, almost one in 10 respondents aged between 25 and 49 years reported watching porn most days, the great majority of them male.

Twenty-four-year-old university graduate Daisy told me that most people she knows watch porn, including her. She prefers to use a feminist site whose search filters include “passionate” and “sensual”, as well as “rough”. But some of her male friends say they no longer watch porn “as they couldn’t have a nice time having sex because of watching too much porn when they were just kids“.

A 2023 study for the children’s commissioner for England, Dame Rachel de Souza, found that a quarter of 16 to 21-year-olds first saw pornography on the internet while still at primary school.

At the time Ms de Souza said: “The adult content which parents may have accessed in their youth could be considered ‘quaint’ in comparison to today’s world of online pornography.”

Children who regularly viewed porn on mobiles before puberty inevitably grow up with different sexual expectations than those aroused by Playboy in the 20th century.

While no direct causal link has been established, there is substantial evidence of an association between the use of pornography and harmful sexual attitudes and behaviours towards women.

According to government research before the Covid-19 pandemic: “There is evidence that use of pornography is associated with greater likelihood of desiring or engaging in sexual acts witnessed in porn, and a greater likelihood of believing women want to engage in these specific acts.”

Some of those acts may involve aggressive, dominating behaviour such as face slapping, choking, gagging and spitting. Daisy told me: “Choking has become normalised, routine, expected, like neck-kissing. With the last person I was seeing, I told him from the start that I wasn’t into choking and he was fine with that.”

But she believes that not all women will speak out. “And in my experience most men don’t want a woman to be dominant in the bedroom. That’s where they want to have the power.”

Forty years older than Daisy, Suzanne Noble has written about her own sexual adventures and now has a website and podcast called Sex Advice for Seniors. She believes that the availability of porn that depicts rape fantasies normalises an act that is rooted in violence and depicts rape as an activity women crave.

“There’s simply not enough education about the difference between re-enacting a fantasy that involves a pseudo-rape, with a completely non-consensual version of the same,” she argues.

Just as the internet brought porn out of backstreets and into bedrooms, it has also facilitated easier access to events in real life. Previously people into, say, S&M (sadomasochism), might have connected through small ads in the back of “contact” magazines, using Post Office boxes rather than mail to their own homes. It was a very slow and arduous way of setting up a sexual encounter. Now it’s far easier to connect with those groups online then plan to meet in person.

In the UK, it has become mainstream to find love and relationships through dating apps, and so too is it easier to connect with people who wish to try out particular sexual kinks, with a plethora of social apps such as Feeld, which is designed for people to explore “desire outside of existing blueprints”. Its online glossary includes a list of 31 desires, including polyamory, bondage and submission.

Albertina Fisher is an online psychosexual therapist who, in the course of her job, talks to her clients about their sexual fantasies. “There is nothing wrong with having a sexual fantasy — the difference is if fantasy becomes behaviour without consent,” she says.

Male and female fantasies are different she tells me, “but they very often include submission and domination. The key thing about sexual preferences such as BDSM (bondage, discipline or domination, sadism, and masochism) is that it is safe, sane and consensual. What two people want to do together is absolutely fine.” This, she stresses, is the case when both consent.

All of this is, of course, entirely separate to the Pelicot case. “That is sexual violence,” she says. “And it’s extremely distressing that this can happen within what appeared to be a loving relationship. Acting out a fantasy without consent is an extreme form of narcissism.

“With the partner incapacitated, all their needs are denied. So you have a fantasy of a woman who you don’t have to worry about pleasing.”

A key and problematic aspect of the whole question of fantasy is desire. In the post-Freudian age it has become a truism that desires should not be repressed. And much of the liberation theory of the 1960s emphasised self-actualisation through the realisation of sexual desire.

But male desire has become an increasingly contested concept, not least because of the questions of power and domination often entangled within it.

The men who stood trial in the Pelicot case struggled to see themselves as perpetrators. Some argued that they assumed Ms Pelicot had consented, or that they were taking part in a libertine sex game. As many of them saw it, they were simply pursuing their desires.

There is a dark borderline where a very basic form of heterosexual male desire – (or the primal urge to have sex with a woman, or women, in the most uncomplicated manner) – can grow into a shared endeavour, creating an esprit de corps of boundary-pushing that may pay little heed or care to the female experience.

This perhaps explains why an OnlyFans performer, Lily Phillips, recently drew a huge queue of participants in her quest to have sex with 100 men in one day.

The tendency to objectify women may in some cases also develop into a desire to annihilate the whole question of female desire, let alone agency.

Obviously male desire takes many forms, most of an entirely healthy nature, but it has traditionally been constrained by cultural limits. Now those limits have shifted radically in the UK and elsewhere in the West, and the underlying conviction that the realisation of desire is an act of self-liberation amounts to a potent and sometimes troubling combination.

Andre de Trichateau, a therapist based in South Kensington, London, brought up the appeal of masculinist influencers such as Andrew Tate, a self-proclaimed “misogynist”, who has 10.4 million followers on X.

Mr de Trichateau says that he has encountered men feeling demeaned and displaced by the rise of feminism. “Some men don’t know who to be,” he says. “Men are socialised to be dominant but also expected to be in touch with their emotions, able to show vulnerability.

“This confusion can lead to anger, directed to the feminist movement, and [in turn this can lead them to] people such as Tate.”

With a 60% male client base, Mr de Trichateau observes that “men can be socialised to view power and dominance as part of their identity”.

“This is not to justify anything like the Pelicot case,” he continues, “but objectively I can see that such behaviour is an escape from powerlessness and inadequacy. It’s tantalising and forbidden.

“The case is disturbing because it shows the extremities that people will go to.”

He also pointed out that online groups such as the one Mr Pelicot used can be very powerful. “In a group you are accepted. Ideas are validated. One person says its OK then everyone will go along with it.”

Many of the conversations during and since the Pelicot trial have focused on how to make the distinction between consensual and non-consensual sex and whether it should be better defined in law – but the problem is that what consent amounts to is a complex question.

As 24-year-old Daisy sees it, some women of her age tend to go along with men’s sexual preferences regardless of their own feelings. “They think something is hot if the man they are with thinks it’s hot.”

So, if heterosexual men, in particular, really are increasingly taking their sexual cues from pornography, then that prompts further questions about the changing shape of male desire. And if young women can feel that the price of intimacy is to go along with those desires, however extreme, then arguably consent is not a black and white matter.

Ultimately, there may be widespread relief that the Pelicot case is over and that justice was served, but it leaves behind even more questions – questions that, in the spirit of an amazingly strong French woman, are perhaps best discussed out in the open.

Blake Lively has filed a legal complaint against It Ends With Us co-star Justin Baldoni, alleging sexual harassment and a campaign to “destroy” her reputation.

According to the legal filing, she accuses Mr Baldoni and his team of attacking her public image following a meeting in which she brought along her actor husband, Ryan Reynolds, to address “repeated sexual harassment and other disturbing behavior” by Mr Baldoni and a producer on the movie.

Mr Baldoni’s legal team told the BBC the allegations are “categorically false” and said they hired a crisis manager because Ms Lively had threatened to derail the film unless her demands were met.

In the romantic drama, Ms Lively plays a woman who finds herself in a relationship with a charming but abusive boyfriend, played by Mr Baldoni.

The meeting between Ms Lively and Mr Baldoni, together with others involved in the movie’s production, took place on 4 January this year, and it aimed to address “the hostile work environment” on set, says the legal filing.

Ms Lively’s husband, Deadpool star Mr Reynolds, who did not appear in It Ends With Us, joined her at the showdown, according to the legal complaint, which is one step before a lawsuit.

Mr Baldoni, 40, attended the meeting in his capacity as co-chairman and co-founder of the company that produced the film, Wayfarer Studios. He was also the film’s director.

In the legal complaint, Ms Lively’s lawyers allege that both Mr Baldoni and the Wayfarer chief executive officer, Jamey Heath, engaged in “inappropriate and unwelcome behavior towards Ms Lively and others on the set of It Ends With Us”.

In the filing to the California Civil Rights Department, a list of 30 demands relating to the pair’s alleged misconduct was made at the meeting to ensure they could continue to produce the film.

Among them, Ms Lively, 37, requested that there be no more mention of Mr Baldoni and Mr Heath’s previous “pornography addiction” to Ms Lively or to other crew members, no more descriptions of their own genitalia to Ms Lively, and “no more adding of sex scenes, oral sex, or on camera climaxing by BL [Blake Lively] outside the scope of the script BL approved when signing onto the project”, says the complaint.

Ms Lively also demanded that Mr Baldoni stop saying he could speak to her dead father.

Ms Lively’s legal team further accuse Mr Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios of leading a “multi-tiered plan” to wreck her reputation.

She alleges this was “the intended result of a carefully crafted, coordinated, and resourced retaliatory scheme to silence her, and others from speaking out about the hostile environment that Mr Baldoni and Mr Heath created”.

Responding to the legal complaint, Mr Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, said on Saturday: “It is shameful that Ms Lively and her representatives would make such serious and categorically false accusations against Mr Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios and its representatives.”

Mr Freedman accused Ms Lively of making numerous demands and threats, including “threatening to not show up to set, threatening to not promote the film”, which would end up “ultimately leading to its demise during release, if her demands were not met”.

He alleged that Ms Lively’s claims were “intentionally salacious with an intent to publicly hurt and rehash a narrative in the media”.

In a statement via her attorneys to the BBC, Ms Lively said: “I hope that my legal action helps pull back the curtain on these sinister retaliatory tactics to harm people who speak up about misconduct and helps protect others who may be targeted.”

She also denied that she or any of her representatives had planted or spread negative information about Mr Baldoni or Wayfarer.

The film was a box-office hit, although some critics said it romanticised domestic violence.

Soon after the release date in August, another co-star, Brandon Sklenar, hinted in an Instagram post at rumours of a rift between Ms Lively and Mr Baldoni.

Speculation of a falling out only grew when they did not appear together on the red carpet.

It Ends With Us tells the story of Boston florist Lily Bloom, played by Ms Lively, as she navigates a love triangle between her charming but abusive boyfriend, Ryle Kincaid, played by Mr Baldoni, and her compassionate first love, Atlas Corrigan, played by Mr Sklenar.

It is based on a best-selling novel by Colleen Hoover. The 45-year-old author has previously said her inspiration was domestic abuse her mother endured.

In an interview with the BBC at the film’s premiere in August, Ms Lively said she had felt the “responsibility of servicing the people that care so much about the source material”.

“I really feel like we delivered a story that’s emotional and it’s fun, but also funny, painful, scary, tragic and it’s inspiring and that’s what life is, it’s every single colour,” said the actress.

Ms Lively, who is also credited as a producer, told the BBC she felt the film had been made “with lots of empathy”.

“Lily is a survivor and a victim and while they are huge labels, these are not her identity,” said Ms Lively. “She defines herself and I think it’s deeply empowering that no one else can define you.”