The Danish government has announced a huge boost in defence spending for Greenland, hours after US President-elect Donald Trump repeated his desire to purchase the Arctic territory.

Danish Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said the package was a “double digit billion amount” in krone, or at least $1.5bn (£1.2bn).

He described the timing of the announcement as an “irony of fate”. On Monday Trump said ownership and control of the huge island was an “absolute necessity” for the US.

Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, is home to a large US space facility and is strategically important for the US, lying on the shortest route from North America to Europe. It has major mineral reserves.

Poulsen said the package would allow for the purchase of two new inspection ships, two new long-range drones and two extra dog sled teams.

It would also include funding for increased staffing at Arctic Command in the capital Nuuk and an upgrade for one of Greenland’s three main civilian airports to handle F-35 supersonic fighter aircraft.

“We have not invested enough in the Arctic for many years, now we are planning a stronger presence,” he said.

The defence minister did not give an exact figure for the package, but Danish media estimated it would be around 12-15bn krone.

The announcement came a day after Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social: “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”

Greenland’s Prime Minister Mute Egede responded to Trump’s comments, saying “we are not for sale”.

But he added that Greenlanders should continue to be open for cooperation and trade, especially with their neighbours.

Analysts say that the plan has been under discussion for a long time and should not be seen as a direct response to Trump’s comments.

Until now Denmark has been very slow to expand its military capacity in Greenland, they say, but if the country is not able to protect waters around the territory against encroachments by China and Russia then US demands for greater control are likely to grow.

Army Maj Steen Kjaergaard of the Danish Defence Academy suggests it may have been Trump’s intention to pressure Denmark into such a move.

“It is likely to be sparked by the renewed Trump focus on the need for air and maritime control around Greenland and the internal developments in Greenland where some are voicing a will to look towards the US – a new international airport in Nuuk was just inaugurated,” he told the BBC.

“I think Trump is smart… he gets Denmark to prioritise its Arctic military capabilities by raising this voice, without having to take over a very un-American welfare system,” he added, referring to Greenland’s heavy dependence on subsidies from Copenhagen.

Trump’s original suggestion in 2019 that the US acquire Greenland, which is the world’s largest island, led to a similarly sharp rebuke from leaders there.

At the time Danish Prime Minister Mette Fredericksen described the idea as “absurd”, leading Trump to cancel a state trip to the country.

He is not the first US president to suggest buying Greenland. The idea was first mooted during the 1860s under the presidency of Andrew Johnson.

Protests have broken out in Syria over the burning of a Christmas tree, prompting calls for the new Islamist authorities to take steps to protect minorities.

A video posted on social media showed the tree on fire in the main square of Suqaylabiyah, a Christian-majority town in central Syria.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the main Islamist faction which led the uprising that toppled President Bashar al-Assad, said foreign fighters had been detained over the incident.

HTS representatives have promised to protect the rights and freedoms of religious and ethnic minorities in Syria.

Footage on social media appeared to show masked men dousing the Christmas tree with an unidentified liquid the night before Christians in Syria prepared to celebrate Christmas Eve. It was unclear whether they were trying to put the fire out or help it spread.

Videos of the aftermath showed a religious figure from the governing HTS rebel group assuring crowds who had gathered in Suqaylabiyah that the tree would be repaired before the morning.

The man then held up a cross in a show of solidarity, something Islamist conservatives would not normally do.

On Tuesday more protesters took to the streets over the arson attack, including in parts of the capital Damascus.

Some in the Kassa neighbourhood of Damascus chanted against foreign fighters in Syria.

“Syria is free, non Syrians should leave,” they said, in reference to the foreign fighters HTS said were behind the attack.

In the Bab Touma neighbourhood of Damascus, protesters carried a cross and Syrian flags, chanting “we will sacrifice our souls for our cross”.

“If we’re not allowed to live our Christian faith in our country, as we used to, then we don’t belong here anymore,” a demonstrator named Georges told AFP news agency.

• Syria’s minorities seek security
• New leaders must keep promises to respect rights, UN says

Syria is home to many ethnic and religious groups, including Kurds, Armenians, Assyrians, Christians, Druze, Alawite Shia and Arab Sunnis, the last of whom make up a majority of the Muslim population.

Just over two weeks ago, Bashar al-Assad’s presidency fell to rebel forces, ending the Assad family’s more than 50-year-rule.

Since then many displaced Syrians have begun heading back to their homes – on Tuesday, Turkey said more than 25,000 Syrians had returned to the country.

However it remains to be seen how the HTS group will govern Syria.

HTS began as a jihadist group – espousing violence to achieve its goal of establishing a state governed by Islamic law (Sharia) – but in recent years adopted a more pragmatic, less uncompromising approach.

As fighters marched to Damascus earlier this month, its leaders spoke about building a Syria for all Syrians.

On Tuesday the new authorities announced that leader Ahmed al-Sharaa had reached an agreement with “revolutionary factions… to dissolve all factions and merge them under the umbrella of the Ministry of Defence”, according to Sana news agency.

Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir said the ministry would be restructured to include rebel fighters.

Although the statement mentioned “all factions”, it was not clear exactly which groups are included in the merger.

There are multiple armed groups in Syria, including some opposed to HTS and others with ambiguous relationships with it at best.

HTS remains designated as a terrorist organisation by the UN, US, EU and UK, though there are signs that a diplomatic shift may be under way.

On Friday, the US scrapped a $10m (£7.9m) bounty on the head of HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, following meetings between senior diplomats and representatives from the group.

The US is continuing its military presence in Syria. It said on Friday that it carried out an air strike in the northern city of Deir Ezzor – killing two members of the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group.

The presence of foreign fighters, Islamist extremists, or even regime supporters who have interest in causing insecurity and attacking minorities to shake the country’s stability are the big challenge that the new Islamic leadership will face.

Actress Blake Lively was arguably the internet’s public enemy number one for a couple of weeks in the summer. She’s now filed an explosive legal case that she claims lifts the lid on “hostile work environments” that are created to harm reputations in Hollywood – and which are making people question who and what to believe.

Blake Lively had always been a pretty inoffensive kind of actress.

She had been in successful TV shows and films, like Gossip Girl and The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants. She married fellow superstar Ryan Reynolds. She’s friends with Taylor Swift.

Then in August, while promoting her latest movie It Ends With Us, she suddenly became controversial, to the verge of being cancelled.

She was criticised for comments appearing to downplay domestic violence, the film’s theme; while awkward old interviews were resurfaced and repurposed as evidence of bullying behaviour.

Public opinion – at least among those who knew and cared – seemed to have turned against her.

Then the film came out, the furore died down, and social media moved on.

But Lively has now filed a legal case that claims she suffered sexual harassment by It Ends With Us co-star and director Justin Baldoni – and that when she complained, he and his studio Wayfarer retaliated by waging a campaign to “destroy” her reputation.

She was the subject of “a sophisticated, co-ordinated, and well-financed retaliation plan” designed “to silence her”, involving a “weaponised a digital army” and fake stories being fed to “unwitting reporters”, her lawyers have alleged – and that’s why she became the focus of negative publicity.

Throughout the complaint, which spans some 80 pages, Lively’s team repeatedly accuses Badoni and Wayfarer of creating a “hostile work environment that nearly derailed production of the film”.

Her lawyers have published text messages sent between Baldoni’s publicist Jennifer Abel and Melissa Nathan, a crisis communications specialist hired by his studio to help manage the harassment complaint. They appear to give a rare glimpse into conversations that are normally kept well out of the spotlight.

Nathan pitched a strategy to “start threads of theories” on social media, to “create, seed, and promote content that appeared to be authentic”, and engage in “social manipulation”, according to the legal papers.

“You know we can bury anyone,” Nathan wrote to Abel in one damning discussion.

Now, the people hired to do crisis PR for Baldoni are doing crisis PR for themselves.

Abel has said Lively’s lawyers “cherry picked” messages to include in their case without crucial context, and that there was “no ‘smear’ implemented”.

“No negative press was ever facilitated, no social combat plan, although we were prepared for it as it’s our job to be ready for any scenario.

“But we didn’t have to implement anything because the internet was doing the work for us.”

The backlash against Lively occurred naturally and didn’t need their help, Abel said.

Lawyer Bryan Freedman, representing Baldoni and his studio as well as Abel and Nathan, echoed that.

He said Baldoni hired a crisis manager due to “multiple demands and threats” allegedly made by Lively, including “threatening to not [show] up to set, threatening to not promote the film, ultimately leading to its demise during release, if her demands were not met”.

He said the plan drawn up by Nathan’s firm “proved unnecessary as audiences found Lively’s own actions, interviews and marketing during the promotional tour distasteful, and responded organically to that, which the media themselves picked up on”.

Overall, Freedman called Lively’s complaint “shameful” and full of “categorically false accusations”.

In recent days, Lively has received support from a string of former co-stars and others in Hollywood.

The name of one of her supporters stands out.

Amber Heard, former wife of Johnny Depp, told NBC: “Social media is the absolute personification of the classic saying, ‘A lie travels halfway around the world before truth can get its boots on.’

“I saw this firsthand and up close. It’s as horrifying as it is destructive.”

Heard was on the receiving end of social media hostility during two high-profile libel trials involving Depp in the UK and US in 2020 and 2022. Nathan also reportedly worked for Depp.

Freedman responded to Heard by saying the only connection between her and Lively was that “for decades every move they have made has been out there for everyone to see” so the public could “make up their own minds – which they did, organically”.

Tortoise Media head of investigations Alexi Mostrous, who hosted a podcast called Who Trolled Amber? earlier this year examining the abuse she received, said there were parallels.

“In both the Blake Lively case and the Amber Heard case, you see PR companies working with digital media specialists and other ‘contractors’ to promote online stories beneficial to their wealthy clients in ways that are opaque and not well understood,” he told BBC News.

“It’s an unregulated world where all sorts of tactics can take place behind closed doors.”

Variety said Lively’s case “lays bare a show business process that’s meant to operate in the shadows – the hiring of expensive crisis communications experts to sway opinion and uplift clients”.

Her allegations suggest a “sinister shadow campaign” that went “beyond what most publicity firms in Hollywood see as acceptable”, The Wrap’s Sharon Waxman wrote.

According to Rory Lynch, partner and head of reputation management law at Gateley Legal, it is “quite a common tactic” in Hollywood and business disputes to “have PRs on both sides planting negative stories, sometimes false stories, about the opposition”.

“Even back in the golden era of Hollywood, there were rumours that Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were using PR professionals to negatively brief against each other.”

However, the PR people who worked for Baldoni and his studio “dropped the ball a little bit” by discussing tactics in texts, he told BBC News.

“It doesn’t surprise me, especially in the US and Hollywood, that you’ve got quite aggressive crisis PR people.

“But the fact that they put that in writing, I think, was possibly not the wisest thing. Normally they might do something like that over the phone.”

Lively herself is “a sophisticated operator” who will “have her own PR people working away in the background as well”, Lynch added.

The New York Times, which broke the story of Lively’s complaint at the weekend, said she “denied that she or any of her representatives planted or spread negative information about Mr Baldoni or Wayfarer”.

The paper also pointed out that “it is impossible to know how much of the negative publicity” towards Lively was originally seeded by those working on behalf of Baldoni, “and how much they noticed and amplified”.

Many fans who turned against Lively now see the situation in a different light.

“We are so able to be manipulated into hating a woman that all it takes is a co-ordinated PR effort for us to switch sides against a domestic abuse victim, or a long-beloved American sweetheart,” wrote Maddy Mussen in the Standard.

“Now our eyes are open, will we be harder to fool? Or will we still want any excuse to turn on a famous woman who is suddenly, in our eyes and the eyes of the ones manipulating us, no longer worthy?”

The Guardian’s Laura Snapes wrote that she and her friends had now “looked back, horrified, on what we had said about her in recent months”.

She added: “Lively’s complaint has left my head spinning. What can you really trust?”

The birth of Jesus Christ – a seminal biblical event – has been the subject of many paintings by Western artists, who have often applied the ideas of beauty and creativity prevalent there while depicting the event on canvas.

These works are among the most widely available representations of Christian art, shaping how the world views this biblical event and subliminally divesting those outside the West from influencing it.

But over the centuries, artists in India have sought to express their vision of this event by painting Jesus’s birth and other Christian themes in their own style.

Some have done so consciously, others unconsciously, but the end result is a body of work that breathes new life and meaning into the event of Christ’s birth, and Christianity itself.

Here are some paintings from Indian art history that present Jesus’s birth from a uniquely local perspective.

Mughal emperor Muhammad Jalaluddin Akbar is credited with introducing northern India to Christianity by inviting Jesuit missionaries to visit his court.

The missionaries brought with them holy scriptures and European artworks on Christian themes which influenced court painters. Akbar and his successors also commissioned many murals with Christian themes and some court painters began infusing these paintings with elements of Islamic art.

Neha Vermani, a historian of South Asia, talks about a painting made by Mughal court artists which featured emperor Jahangir in the nativity scene, which traditionally feature Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus.

“Mughal rulers saw themselves as being ‘just’ rulers, capable of maintaining harmony and balance in their kingdoms; they were ‘universal rulers’. Allowing different religions to co-exist was integral to how they saw themselves and wanted themselves to be remembered,” Ms Vermani says.

The 18th Century painting below features typical stylistic elements of Mughal art, including highly stylised figures, vibrant colours, naturalism and ornamentation.

Born in 1887 in what is now India’s West Bengal state, Jamini Roy is celebrated for creating a unique visual language by bringing together elements of Bengali folk art and Kalighat paintings – a distinctive art form that originated in the vicinity of a renowned temple in Kolkata city.

Ashish Anand, CEO and managing director of art firm DAG says that art critic WG Archer once observed that Christ represented a Santhal figure (the Santhals are an Indian tribal group) for Jamini Roy.

“The simplicity of Christ’s life and his sacrifice appealed to Roy, making his paintings on Christian themes at least as important as those on Hindu mythology, all of them rendered in the folk style of modernism that he made distinctively his own,” he says.

Born in 1902 in the western state of Goa, Angelo de Fonseca is credited with creating unique Christian iconography that married Eastern and Western influences with his Goan sensibilities.

In his paintings, Mary isn’t depicted as a fair maiden in a blue gown, but looks very much like an Indian woman with brown skin, dressed in a sari and wearing a mangalsutra (a piece of traditional Indian jewellery worn by married Hindu women).

Biblical scenes unfold in local settings and feature motifs and elements that speak to an Indian audience.

Through his art, he tried to counter the narrative of the West being the cradle of beauty and artistic creativity.

“Fonseca wanted to situate Christianity – which has largely been viewed as a western religious tradition – within the Indian subcontinent. It was from this angst that his watercolours painted Christianity anew,” Rinald D’Souza, director of the Xavier Centre of Historical Research, Goa, told the BBC.

At least three people have been killed when armed men in Haiti opened fire at journalists, police and medical staff during a briefing to announce the reopening of the country’s biggest public hospital.

Many others injured were injured in Tuesday’s attack in the General Hospital in the capital Port-au-Prince.

Pictures posted online appear to show several people injured or dead inside the building.

The site had been recaptured by Haiti’s government in July, after being occupied and destroyed by violent gangs that control much of the city.

Journalists were waiting for the arrival of Health Minister Lorthe Blema when the shooting began.

Reports say two journalists and a police officer were shot dead.

“It felt like a terrible movie,” Dieugo André, a photojournalist who witnessed the violence, was quoted as saying by The Haitian Times.

“I have the blood of several injured journalists on my clothes.”

The attack is reported to have been carried out by members of the Viv Ansanm gang.

In a video statement, the head of Haiti’s presidential transitional council, Leslie Voltaire, said: “We express our sympathy to all the victims’ families, in particularly to the Haiti National Police and all the journalists’ associations.

“We guarantee them that this act will not remain without consequences.”

The people of Haiti continue to suffer with unbearable levels of gang violence, despite the installation of a new transition government in April and the deployment of an international force led by Kenyan police officers six months ago.

Haiti has been engulfed in a wave of gang violence since the assassination in 2021 of the then-president, Jovenel Moïse.

An estimated 85% of Port-au-Prince is still under gang control.

The UN says that as many as 5,000 people have been killed in violence in Haiti this year along, and the country is now on the verge of collapse.

Rude gestures are rare on postage stamps, but Ukraine’s best known stamp has one. It shows a soldier raising the middle finger to a Russian warship in reference to a stand-off at Snake Island on day one of the full-scale invasion nearly three years ago.

The Russians demanded surrender but the Ukrainians refused, using unprintable language.

The warship in question, the cruiser Moskva, was sunk by the Ukrainians two days after the stamp was issued, and it sold out within a week of going on sale.

Such is the significance of the stamp that whatever was left was given to government delegations representing Ukraine on the world stage.

Ihor Smilyansky, the head of Ukraine’s postal company Ukrposhta, acknowledges it was a risqué step to take.

“It was my decision. I said – I don’t care whatever everyone else thinks. I just believe it’s the right thing to do,” he told the BBC. “I know it’s breaking all the philatelic [study of stamps] rules and all the rules. But we’re about breaking the rules.”

Ukrposhta often tests its designs on the public, and the results of such online polls tend to be very political too.

That was how Ukraine’s best-selling stamp came into being, showing a Ukrainian tractor towing a captured Russian tank and featuring the popular wartime greeting: “Good evening, we’re from Ukraine.”

Ukrposhta has sold about eight million such stamps.

Stamps featuring Ukraine’s famous mine-sniffing dog Patron earned Ukrposhta about $500,000 (£400,000): 80% of the money was spent on mine-clearing equipment, and the rest on animal shelters.

Another stamp of a mural left by renowned graffiti artist Banksy on a building devastated by shelling outside Kyiv, helped fund 10 bomb shelters. This stamp features another popular but unprintable Ukrainian slogan – this time directed against Vladimir Putin.

Ihor Smilyansky says a dose of humour is added to Ukrposhta’s stamps to maintain Ukrainian morale during the war with Russia.

“Humour has become a fighting force for Ukrainians in this war,” he tells the BBC. “Even in the most difficult circumstances you have to take it with a sense of humour. And that’s what our stamps are sometimes about.”

Oscar Young from UK-based stamp dealers and auctioneers Stanley Gibbons says Ukraine’s approach to stamps by focusing them on the war is highly unusual.

“Generally stamps are artistic and polite, but to go out your way and be quite rude, placing profanity and being very gesturous on stamps – that is quite unique to these particular issues,” he tells the BBC.

He says the frank image used on the warship stamp is what made the stamp so famous and caused such a stir when it was issued.

The distinctive character of Ukrainian stamps has earned them popularity with collectors worldwide.

Laura Bullivant from Gloucester, in the UK, believes that other stamps look bland by comparison.

“I think they’re like the Ukrainian thought process, they’re just strong, and they’re just not bowing down to whatever’s coming into their country,” she says.

“At a time of huge worry and awfulness, they are bringing something to the game that no other country could.”

There are fears of water contamination after a bridge collapsed in northern Brazil at the weekend, sending lorries carrying thousands of litres of pesticides and sulphuric acid into the river below.

Four people are known to have died, and more than 10 are missing after the central span of the bridge linking Tocantins and Maranhão states gave way on Sunday afternoon.

It is not clear if or how much the chemicals have leaked from their containers, but diving operations in the river have been halted while the situation is assessed.

Dramatic video filmed by a local councillor who went to the bridge to draw attention to cracks in it showed the start of the collapse.

Councillor Elias Junior said he never expected the bridge to actually collapse when he was there and was “in shock”.

Eight vehicles plunged into the river, including the three lorries containing chemicals.

People in the cities of Estreito and Aguiarnopolis, on either side of the river, have been told to avoid collecting water from it.

Rescue operations are being carried out from boats. Four bodies have been recovered, including the female driver of one of the trucks and an 11-year-old girl, the fire service said. One man was rescued alive from the water on Sunday.

The Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira bridge – which is more than half a kilometre (1,600ft) long – was built in the 1960s and is the main link between the two states across the Tocantins river.

Interpol has posted a Yellow Notice (missing people alert) for two Irish boys being held in Egypt by their father.

Mandy Kelly from Dundalk has not seen her sons for more than 1,000 days.

Despite a court order in Egypt that awarded her full custody of her sons in July, she is now travelling back to Cairo for another court hearing.

Ms Kelly’s children, Zayn Mohamed, 6, and Kareem, 4, have been in Egypt with her ex-partner since 2022.

The judiciaries in the Republic of Ireland and Egypt have both ruled that Ms Kelly’s children must be returned to her.

Speaking on BBC Radio Ulster’s Good Morning Ulster programme, Ms Kelly said it was every parent’s worst nightmare.

“There is huge frustration that my two sons are not in my care,” she said.

“Obviously as a parent I am very concerned about their welfare. Are they going to school? Is Kareem being properly looked after? There are multiple questions that I still have.”

When Ms Kelly and her then-partner travelled with their children to Egypt in 2022 it was to meet their father’s family.

Ms Kelly said she had believed it was in the boys’ “best interests” that they got to know their paternal relatives.

When the family was due to return to Ireland in March 2022, Ms Kelly’s partner refused, taking the two children away.

Ms Kelly has been working with both Irish and Egyptian authorities ever since, to be reunited with her children.

“It is so tough, this is my fifth trip over and it doesn’t get easier, it hurts me deeply having to leave without my kids but there will be a day when my two children will be with me and we will all leave together,” she said.

Egypt has not signed up to the Hague Convention on child protection, making the case more challenging for Irish authorities.

It has been raised with several Egyptian authorities by the Taoiseach (prime minister), Simon Harris, and Department of Foreign Affairs.

Last week, President Michael D Higgins wrote to Ms Kelly to confirm he had raised the matter with his Egyptian counterpart during his visit last week.

Ms Kelly said: “I just want to be able to hug my two children in the mornings, put their uniform on, take them to school and cook them dinner, just normal things that people take for granted.”

The former CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F) has dementia and late onset Alzheimer’s disease, his legal team has said in a court document filed in New York.

Lawyers for Mike Jeffries have requested a hearing to determine whether he is mentally fit to stand trial on federal sex trafficking charges.

The 80-year-old was arrested alongside his partner in October and charged with running an international sex trafficking and prostitution business. Both men have pleaded not guilty.

A so-called competency hearing has been scheduled for June next year.

Mr Jeffries, who ran US clothing brand A&F for two decades, is accused of running a sex trafficking and prostitution business from at least 2008-15.

US prosecutors allege that he used his wealth, power and status “to traffic men for his own sexual pleasure”, and for the pleasure of his British partner Matthew Smith, 61.

They said the couple, alongside a middleman James Jacobson, 71, used force, fraud and coercion to make vulnerable, aspiring models engage in violent and exploitative sex acts.

All three men have pleaded not guilty to the charges and been released on bond.

The FBI began investigating last year after the BBC revealed claims Mr Jeffries and Mr Smith had sexually exploited men at events they hosted around the world.

The BBC investigation, published in October 2023, found the pair were at the centre of a sophisticated operation involving a middleman scouting young men for sex.

In the same month, Brian Bieber, Mr Jeffries’ lawyer, said his client was examined several times by a neuropsychologist who later concluded diagnostic impressions that he was suffering from two types of dementia and probable late onset Alzheimer’s disease.

In the court filing, Mr Bieber added that during an initial meeting last year the former fashion boss “did not even come close to resembling a master’s degree-educated individual, who was just nine years earlier the chief executive officer of a publicly traded company”.

As a result, Mr Bieber questioned the ability of Mr Jeffries to “rationally assist” with the possible factual and legal defences to the allegations he was facing, according to the document.

The filing comes after Mr Jeffries’ legal team sought a competency hearing, which will now be held over two days on 16 and 17 June 2025.

Federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York declined to comment.

Mr Jeffries stepped down as CEO and chairman of A&F in 2014, and left with a $25m (£19.9m) retirement package.

Alongside the criminal case, A&F, Mr Jeffries and his partner have been defending a civil lawsuit accusing the retailer of having funded a sex trafficking operation.

Earlier this month, Mr Jeffries sued A&F after it refused to pay his criminal defence costs, arguing the brand had agreed to indemnify him for all claims arising out of his position.

Heather Cucolo, a New York Law School professor specialising in mental disability and criminal law, said there are limited statistics on how the justice system treats dementia but that medical experts would have to weigh in before the judge makes a final decision.

“If Mike Jeffries is found competent, the case will move forward,” she said. “But if he’s deemed incompetent, and it’s found there’s no reasonable likelihood that his competency will be restored, then the charges would have to be dropped.”

His partner Matthew Smith and James Jacobson could still face trial but prosecutors would have to rely on independent evidence if Mr Jeffries is also found to be incompetent to testify as a witness, she added.

War-hit Sudan is sliding into a “widening famine crisis” that has been marked by worsening starvation and a surge in acute malnutrition, an independent group of food security experts says.

Famine has spread to five areas, with 24.6 million people – about half the population – in urgent need of food aid, the experts said.

The hunger crisis has been caused by the 20-month civil war that has devastated Sudan.

Various mediation efforts aimed at ending the conflict between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have so far failed.

The army and RSF had jointly staged a coup in 2021, but a power struggle between their commanders plunged the country into a civil war in 2023.

It has led to one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with the UN-backed Famine Review Committee (FRC) warning that a “greater catastrophe” could unfold if the conflict did not end.

The committee is linked to the Integrated Food Phase Classification (IPC) – a global initiative by UN agencies, aid groups and governments to identify famine conditions.

On Monday, Sudan’s military-backed government announced it was suspending its cooperation with the group, accusing it of issuing “unreliable reports that undermine Sudan’s sovereignty and dignity”, Reuters news agency reports.

The IPC had first identified a famine in August at the Zamzam camp in Sudan’s Darfur region, where about half a million people were taking refuge.

In its latest report, the FRC said that famine had now also hit the Abu Shouk and al-Salam camps in Darfur’s besieged city of el-Fasher, as well as two areas in South Kordofan state.

“Famine is the most extreme manifestation of human suffering, representing a catastrophic collapse of the systems and resources essential for survival,” the FRC said.

“It is not merely a lack of food but a profound breakdown of health, livelihoods and social structures, leaving entire communities in a state of desperation,” it added.

The FRC predicted that five further areas in Darfur could face famine by May, and there was a risk of it spreading to 17 other areas.

“In areas of high conflict intensity, the hostilities severely disrupted farming activities, resulting in farmers abandoning their crops, looting and stock destruction,” it added.

Both Darfur and South Kordofan have been hit by some of the worst violence, with scores of civilians killed, raped and abducted by gunmen.

In May, US special envoy for Sudan Tom Perriello said that some estimates suggested up to 150,000 people had been killed in the conflict across the country.

• BBC reveals fighters accused of massacre in Sudan
• BBC hears of horror and hunger in visit to Darfur massacre town
• Sudan – where more children are fleeing war than anywhere else

Franz Ferdinand singer Alex Kapranos has found fatherhood a familiar experience – as it reminds him of his band’s early days.

Kapranos and wife Clara Luciani welcomed their first child last year, and the 52-year-old told BBC Scotland News departing on tours with his band is now “really difficult.”

“Saying goodbye to him is hard,” says the singer, speaking as his band prepare to release their sixth album, The Human Fear, in January.

“I’ve spent my adult life shirking responsibility, and being as irresponsible as possible, so being presented with responsibility is quite refreshing.

“A lot of people said to me that sleep deprivation would destroy me, but it was just like 2004 when the band was kicking off and I never went to bed.

“We’d be playing gigs, going out all night and then be up at 6am to fly somewhere. I slept about two hours a night back then, so this is the same – just without a hangover.”

Kapranos will be forced to say goodbye on a few occasions as 2025 goes on, with a busy year in store for Franz – now revamped and reformatted since those early days, but still adept at writing artful indie pop.

Emerging from Glasgow’s bustling music scene Kapranos, guitarist Nick McCarthy, bassist Bob Hardy and drummer Paul Thomson enjoyed chart success with inescapable singles like Take Me Out, earned a reputation as one of the country’s finest live acts and snagged the Mercury Music Prize in 2004.

That victory came as the band thought “anyone but us would win,” recalls the singer.

“It’s quite a Glasgow attitude. You’re like ‘we’re not the sort of people who win prizes’.”

Success had taken time to arrive.

Kapranos was born in England but moved to to Scotland as a child. As a teenager he became entrenched in the 90s Glasgow music scene, running club nights and playing in the likes of cult indie band the Yummy Fur before forming Franz Ferdinand.

Much has changed since their debut album won the Mercury, with The Human Fear marking the group’s first studio offering since the exit of original drummer Thomson in 2021.

Guitarist McCarthy had left in 2016.

A new line-up has formed around original members Kapranos and Hardy, with guitarist Dino Bardot, keyboardist/guitarist Julian Corrie and drummer Audrey Tait joining up.

Kapranos believes the band’s identity is intact despite the changes.

“Whenever we do a cover it always sounds like us, and I like that. We did Good Luck Babe [by Chappell Roan] on Radio 2, which is an amazing song but when we play it, it just sounds like Franz Ferdinand.

“Bob and I were talking about this before we made this record, that it’s good to be at ease with your identity and your sound.

“Knowing your voice and who you are is important. You could listen to early Birthday Party records and then those dark sombre ballads Nick Cave has been writing now, and it’s still unmistakeably him -it’s the same for PJ Harvey or Leonard Cohen.

“That really informed us making this record. I wanted people to listen to this and know it’s unmistakeably Franz Ferdinand.”

A greatest hits compilation in 2021 and ensuing tour helped the singer make “peace with everything that we’ve done before”.

“I’m not the kinda person who likes to look back,” he adds.

“Once we make a record I never really listen to it again, so for the tour I was being forced to listen to that music again, and I found I felt pretty comfortable with it.”

Celebrating the past meant the band were also eager to try new things for the future.

The Human Fear is filled with ideas fresh to the group, from orchestral flourishes on recent single Audacious to a bouzouki being used on Black Eyelashes and the Celtic style riff pulsing through Cats.

However, while the title might suggest a record bubbling with dread, Kapranos says it’s about the opposite.

“The greatest moments in life are when you overcome fear,” he says, admitting his own childhood terror was the shark in Jaws.

“Watching horror films or riding rollercoasters gives you a buzz and we should maybe approach some wider existential fears with the same attitude.

“I remember growing up in the 80s and thinking one diplomatic slip-up would mean we’d all be nuclear toast. There’s always something to be afraid of, and you can either submit to it or stand up to it.”

Politics is something Franz Ferdinand have visited before. In 2014 they backed Scottish independence and two years later they released Demagogue, aimed at the then incoming American President Donald Trump.

However the second Presidency of Trump is unlikely to spur such a similiar reaction.

“Trump’s not my favourite man and there’s so much in worldwide politics that’s disheartening,” says the singer.

“But it’s also disheartening how everyone is going on about politics all the time. I find it wearying and I’m loathe to do my share of it. It should be obvious Trump is an idiot and self-centred, does it need me to say that?

“Some of my friends on social media just bang on about it all the time. The arts is a powerful tool of protest and we should continue to do that, but there’s a difference between that and low key whinging.”

They won’t remain silent on some issues, though.

In 2024 the group were among Scottish musicians raising concerns over possible arts funding cuts, while a short tour saw them road-test new songs in some of the country’s smaller venues.

UK dates for 2025 include the larger likes of the Barrowland in Glasgow, with a summer show at the city’s SWG3 also booked in, but supporting grassroots music remains a passionate subject for the singer.

“I spent so many years in the basement of the 13th Note in Glasgow, so it’s part of my DNA.

“To be in a dingy wee cellar with a band playing loudly – that’s my happy place.”

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There is a festive chill at Sandringham on Christmas Day morning – especially when you find yourself standing outside St Mary Magdalene Church at 5am, as I often have in my years as a royal correspondent.

Last year I watched as King Charles and Queen Camilla led the royal party to church on Christmas Day, followed by the Prince and Princess of Wales, holding the hands of their children as they spoke to the crowds.

The Princess kept a firm grip on playful Prince Louis as they left church, and they were given Christmas cards and presents by well wishers, along with dozens of flowers.

I could never have predicted that this was the last time we would see her in person for more than six months. I was expecting to head to Italy with the couple on a royal tour, but she wouldn’t join the Royal Family on another official engagement until Trooping the Colour in June.

On 16 January, the Princess of Wales was admitted to hospital for major abdominal surgery. At the end of March, she went public with her cancer diagnosis and chemotherapy.

For her husband, it was the start of a year that he would go on to call “the hardest of his life”.

It throws up memories of Queen Elizabeth’s own “sombre year” of 1992 when there were multiple marriage breakdowns within the family and a major fire. At the time she described it with the now infamous phrase, “annus horribilis”.

In 2024, Prince William faced not only his wife’s ill health, but the King’s cancer diagnosis too, and always there in the background was the apparently unresolved conflict with his brother Prince Harry.

But it was also a year in which certain aspects of Prince William’s approach were cemented – family came first, the school run was prioritised. For the Prince of Wales, this time of turbulence appears to have reinforced what matters to him most.

Along the way, however, it has also become evident what kind of senior royal William wants to be. We’ve seen more of his apprenticeship as a global statesman, especially during the 80th anniversary of D-Day on a stage alongside world leaders – but the William way has also left some questioning certain choices he has made.

On 27 February, the Prince of Wales was due to give a reading at the thanksgiving service for the late King Constantine of Greece at St George’s Chapel in Windsor. The illustrious guest list included European royalty.

Around an hour before the service was due to begin, however, Kensington Palace announced that the Prince would be unable to attend due to a “personal matter”. There were reassuring words from the Prince’s team that there was “nothing to panic about” but it was highly unusual.

Around this time, the Princess was given the news that cancerous cells had been discovered in post-operative tests.

Over the next three weeks, the couple told the children what was happening and had time to deal with their questions privately before going public.

“I think what was remarkable was just how hard it was for the Prince of Wales at the start of the year,” says a friend of the Prince. “His wife had gone in for major surgery and it became worse than expected. Then there was, ‘How do I tell my three children that Mummy is ill?'”

All of this was happening against the backdrop of the King’s own cancer treatment, which he made public on 5 February.

“At a time when he was trying to protect his wife and children, he had that terrible thought that that if his father dies then everything changes,” says the friend.

Several people who know the Prince personally or have worked with him this year told me that the spotlight on what was wrong with his wife took its toll on both William and Catherine.

“He was having to operate against the backdrop of the entire world questioning what was happening to his wife,” one friend told me.

With his father largely out of action for several weeks and the Princess away from public duty, the royal diary was looking stretched. Prince William was adamant that public duty would have to wait until the situation at home was more settled.

It offered a hint of Prince William’s way of doing things. Yes, he understood that his was a life where duty and service are expected. But for him, a man who had experienced immense loss at a young age, his wife and children were most important of all.

There were two other important factors at home that helped the Prince of Wales support his wife and children – his in-laws, the Middletons; and living in Windsor.

When the Princess made her public announcement about her diagnosis, the message was posted on royal social media accounts, and one of the first people to publicly respond was her brother James.

Alongside a childhood holiday photo of himself and his sister, he wrote: “Over the years, we have climbed many mountains together. As a family, we will climb this one with you too.”

Together with his sister Pippa and parents Carole and Michael, the family became key to keeping life as normal as possible for the royal children. People living locally reported seeing Carole Middleton, who lives 30 miles away in Bucklebury, Berkshire, regularly driving in and out of Windsor Castle.

And when the Princess’s surgery prevented her from driving, it was her mother who often drove her daughter to school to collect the three children.

The decision to move from Kensington Palace to Windsor Castle in 2022 also proved timely.

“Windsor has been a sanctuary. It has provided the protection and privacy the family needed this year,” said a friend.

The family live in Adelaide Cottage, a four-bedroom house within the Castle grounds that is secluded enough to give the family freedom that Kensington Palace, which is located in central London, could not.

Snatched photos show the Prince of Wales using an electric scooter to get around the grounds. When on royal duty, he would occasionally reveal a snippet about life at home, such as his continued devotion to Aston Villa FC, or a favoured film or TV series – earlier this year he enjoyed action film The Fall Guy and more recently he and the Princess watched spy thriller series Black Doves on Netflix.

He has also taken his children to football matches at local clubs and both he and the Princess have continued to be part of school life at Lambrook, the private school in Berkshire that their children attend. During her treatment, the Princess was still able to be on the sidelines during sports days.

All of this appears to have pushed other personal issues right down the Prince’s agenda.

The rancour between William and Harry is said to remain. Harry has visited the UK over the past 12 months but is not believed to have met his brother. They are thought to have not spoken to one another in around two years.

There have been new controversies around Prince Andrew in recent months too, including revelations about his links to Chinese businessman Yang Tengbo, who was barred from the UK after concerns about national security risks. Prince Andrew has said that he had ceased contact with Mr Yang.

But the prince did not attend the Royal Family’s traditional pre-Christmas lunch.

Such matters will have been dealt with by the King but, as heir to the throne, William’s voice in family matters is increasingly significant.

Robert Hardman, journalist and author of Charles III: New King. New Court. The Inside Story, says the relationship between Charles and his eldest son “has reached a new level of understanding”.

“We still have a tendency to look at William as the kid, the apprentice, the understudy,” he says. “But he’s now been a front rank royal for 10 years. He’s been around the block more than many current heads of State.”

Unusually, much of what the Prince has said about his year has come directly from him rather than via formal statements or briefings.

During his visit to South Africa in November for the Earthshot Prize, the Prince’s environmental project, he spoke about his passion for the cause but also about the struggles of 2024.

“From a family point of view, it’s been brutal,” he told the group of us who had travelled to Cape Town. For someone who has been guarded in the past, his language was surprisingly frank.

His demeanour was open and positive too, clearly energised by Earthshot and being back in Africa, but he a gave a glimpse into how conflicted he was when he viewed his role as Prince of Wales.

“It’s a tricky one,” he said. “Do I like more responsibility? No. Do I like the freedom that I can build something like Earthshot, then yes.”

What struck me the most after spending almost a week in Cape Town was how he framed his outlook on the modern monarchy, saying he wanted to do the job with a “smaller R in Royal”.

“I’m trying to do it differently,” he admitted, “and I’m trying to do it for my generation.”

What he meant was not doing things in the same way as his father and grandmother.

Charles and William “are different characters”, observes Robert Hardman. “The King is more intellectually curious, and spiritually and theologically engaged. These areas aren’t of deep interest to William.

“The tone of their communication is different. The King remains fairly traditional. William has his own way of doing things.”

Some have questioned the William way. One critic, Graham Smith, chief executive of the anti-monarchy group Republic, argues against the Prince’s decision to focus his efforts on the issue of homelessness.

“[It is] crass and hypocritical of William to get involved in it, given the excessive wealth we gift him,” he argues.

However, Mr Hardman disputes the notion that William’s involvement in projects like this are inappropriate. “I think William is currently a more conventional Prince of Wales than his father was at this age. Prince Charles was a more radical heir to the throne.

“The creation of the Prince’s Trust sounded alarm bells at Buckingham Palace and Downing Street. William isn’t ringing alarm bells.”

Prince William has far fewer patronages than his father. The King currently has 669 – many maintained from his 70 years as heir to the throne. Prince William’s slimline, more focused approach leaves him with around 30.

It is a deliberate strategy: fewer projects but higher impact in the hope of bringing about social change. Those who have worked closely with him this year praise this approach.

“His contribution is unbelievable,” said Hannah Jones, the CEO of the Earthshot Prize. “He has set the vision.”

But that bold action comes with more risk.

Last month, I travelled to Newport in South Wales with the Prince to meet those working on his homelessness project in the city. It was 10 months since his wife’s cancer diagnosis, her chemotherapy was complete and William seemed to me to be less burdened by life.

He was in listening mode, and spoke to dozens of people. In some of the conversations, it struck me how many ventured into the political.

The Prince told the project team to think differently, to be disruptors and challenge the way things had always been done.

“We drive in a very non-political lane,” a royal source told me. “We use our platform to convene and shine the spotlight on a societal issue and that remains unchanged. We are feeling bullish about what we can achieve even in really hard circumstances.”

In the years ahead William will no doubt face further challenges around his role. In this current age of social media, for example, deference and respect for monarchy isn’t the mood in the room.

But it is clear from his public work that he doesn’t view his future as one filled with plaque unveilings and handshaking.

“I have to be seen to be believed,” is a quote attributed to his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II. For her grandson, the approach is more: “I have to be seen to be making a difference.”

Through 2024, he has ticked off meetings with many world leaders from the Emperor of Japan to the President of South Africa rounded off by the US president-elect, cementing his role on the global stage, promoting the UK with a touch of soft diplomacy.

Next November, the COP climate summit is being held in Brazil and the Prince is “looking forward to playing a role there”. An Earthshot Prize in Brazil may be a possibility too.

Ultimately, the development of Prince William as family man-meets-global statesman is ongoing – and he’s looking increasingly comfortable juggling both roles.

With just weeks left in office, US President Joe Biden has commuted the sentences of 37 of 40 federal death row inmates – potentially thwarting President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to expand federal executions during his upcoming administration.

Biden’s move was swiftly condemned by Republicans, with some accusing the president of siding with criminals over law-abiding Americans.

Federal executions were relatively rare before Trump’s first term in office, which finished with a flurry of executions that ended a 130-year-old precedent of pausing executions amid a presidential transition.

He has vowed to resume the practice when he returns to the White House in January, setting the stage for possible legal battles early in the administration.

Here’s what we know.

On Monday, Biden commuted the sentences of 37 out of 40 death row inmates, switching their penalty to life without parole.

Only three inmates were left to face the death penalty, including convicted Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Robert Bowers, who was sentenced to death for killing 11 worshippers and wounding seven during a shooting at a the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018.

The third, Dylann Roof, was sentenced to death in 2017 for a mass shooting that left nine black parishioners dead at the Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.

While the move was widely praised by human rights groups such as Amnesty International, it was quickly condemned by some Republicans, as well as Trump’s transition team and political allies.

In a statement, Trump communications director Steven Cheung said that “these are among the worst killers in the world and this abhorrent decision by Joe Biden is a slap in the face to the victims, their families, and their loved ones.

“President Trump stands for the rule of law, which will return when he is back in the White House,” he added. Trump cannot undo the commutations when he returns to the White House next month.

Texas Republican Chip Roy posted on X that the decision was “unconscionable” and an abuse of power “to carry out a miscarriage of justice”.

Another Republican, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, said that “when given the choice between law-abiding Americans or criminals, Joe Biden and the Democrats choose criminals every time.”

Some family members also expressed anger.

On Facebook, Heather Turner – whose mother was killed in a 2017 bank robbery – called the commutations a “gross abuse of power”.

“At no point did the president consider the victims,” she wrote. “He, and his supporters, have blood on their hands.”

The commutations do not apply to the approximately 2,200 death row inmates convicted by state courts, over which the president holds no authority.

Over the course of his election campaign, Trump vowed to resume federal executions and make more people eligible to receive the death penalty, including those convicted of raping children or drug and human-trafficking cases, as well as migrants who kill US citizens or police officers.

“These are terrible, terrible, horrible people who are responsible for death, carnage and crime all over the country,” Trump said when he announced his presidential candidacy in 2022.

“We’re going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts,” he added.

There are more than 40 federal laws that can, in theory, result in the death penalty, ranging from murders committed during a drug-related shooting to genocide.

Almost all – with the exception of espionage and treason – explicitly involve the death of a victim.

Trump, however, has provided few details on how he plans to accomplish his campaign pledge.

Despite the lack of clarity, Trump’s vows to expand the federal death penalty have elicited strong warnings from human rights advocates.

In an 11 December statement, for example, the American Civil Liberties Union said Trump’s “chilling” plans amount to an expansion of the “killing spree he initiated in the final six months of his first presidency”.

“He’s already shown us that he will act on these promises,” the statement said.

The inmates executed during the waning days of Trump’s first administration included Lisa Montgomery, the first woman executed by the federal government since 1953, and Lezmond Mitchell, the only Native American on federal death row.

US media reported that Trump cannot reverse Biden’s commutations.

Trump’s efforts to expand the death penalty to crimes that do not involve murder are likely to face legal challenges.

In 2008, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that those convicted of raping children cannot be executed, adding that it’s unclear if the death penalty could be applied to crimes in which a victim is not killed.

According to the National Registry of Exonerations, cases with child victims are particularly prone to wrongful convictions, can be “extremely emotional” and pit family members against one another.

Any further expansion of crimes that are eligible for the federal death penalty would require Congress to act and change the law.

In 2024, two bills – both sponsored by Florida Republican and Trump ally Anna Paulina Luna – sought to expand the use of capital offences to include possession of child pornography, as well as the trafficking, exploitation and abuse of children.

Both failed to pass in the House of Representatives.

Trump is also unlikely to be able to quickly re-populate the pool of federal death row inmates, as most death penalty cases take years and are subject to lengthy appeals processes.

While he does not have any direct authority over state executions, some experts have warned that Trump’s pro-death penalty stance may trigger more executions at a state level.

“His rhetoric can and has spurred draconian measures and attitudes by leaders in states on several issues, including in the context of the criminal legal system,” Yasmin Cader, a deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union and director of the Trone Center for Justice and Equality told CNN.

In addition to the federal government and US military, 27 US states still have the death penalty on the books.

A Gallup poll conducted in October found that a slim majority of Americans – 53% – support the death penalty for convicted murderers, up from 50% a year before.

Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine is the birthplace of one of the world’s favourite carols, the Carol of the Bells.

But there are few signs of Christmas in the city this year. Just a dusting of snow on deserted streets and skeletal buildings – and the constant sound of heavy shelling.

Pokrovsk is Russia’s next target. Its troops are now less than two miles (three kilometres) from the city centre.

And it’s not just buildings and homes that are being destroyed. Ukraine accuses Russia of trying to erase its cultural identity too – including its associations with that well-known carol.

Most of Pokrovsk’s population has already fled. The gas supply’s been turned off and many homes are without electricity and water. Those who remain, like 59-year-old Ihor, only break cover to find the bare essentials. He says it’s like living on a powder keg – you never know when or where the next shell will land.

Oksana, 43, says she’s too frightened to leave her home, but goes out during a lull in the shelling to find wood and coal to keep warm.

She tells me she hopes Ukraine’s armed forces can hold on to the city, but she thinks that’s unlikely. Pokrovsk, she says, will probably fall.

The city has already prepared for the worst. The statue of its famous composer, Mykola Leontovych, has already been removed. The music school that bore his name now lies boarded up and empty.

Leontovych may not be well known in the West. But the tune he composed is familiar around the world – with its chime-like vocals. It’s thought that Leontovych wrote the early scores of the composition, based on a Ukrainian folk chant, while he was living and working in Pokrovsk between 1904 and 1908.

In Ukraine it’s known as . To most of the world it became known as the Carol of the Bells, after American composer Peter Wilhousky wrote English lyrics for the song. The tune’s use in the Hollywood film Home Alone helped boost its popularity.

Viktoria Ametova calls it “a masterpiece – the signature song of Pokrovsk”. She too was until recently teaching music in the city, in the school that bore Leontovych’s name.

She’s now moved to the relative safety of Dnipro. It’s where many of Pokrovsk’s former residents are still trying to keep the memories of their former home alive.

Beneath a salvaged portrait of Leontovych, Viktoria watches as 13-year-old Anna Hasych strikes the familiar chords of the carol on a piano.

The Hasych family fled Pokrovsk this summer. But they’re determined not to forget the place they still call home. Anna’s mother, Yulia, says she’s glad to see her daughters practising Shchedryk. “We won’t forget the history of our town,” she says.

For Anna, the tune brings back memories. “When I played it at home it seemed happy. It reminded me of winter and Christmas,” she says. “Now it’s more of a sad song to me because it reminds me of home, and I really want to go back.”

But for one Ukrainian military band,Shchedryk has become a song to inspire resistance. They’re even playing it in the trenches – using weapons as improvised instruments.

They may be musicians, but their commander reminds me that they’re soldiers first. All have spent time on the front line. Colonel Bohdan Zadorozhnyy, the head of the band and its conductor, says the song helps lifts soldiers spirits. “Those beats and rhythms cheer up the guys on the front line and inspire them to fight,” he says.

22-year-old Roman uses a rocket launcher casing, filled with rice, to shake vigorously in time with the music. Shchedryk, he says, is the “pride of our country, it’s freedom, it’s in our souls, I get goosebumps from this song”.

Colonel Zadorozhnyy says Shchedryk shows that Ukraine is a civilised nation, now at war, fighting for its identity.

Pokrovsk may well fall into Russian hands. But its people are doing all they can to preserve their culture and identity.

The director of Pokrovsk’s History Museum, Angelina Rozhkova, has already salvaged and transferred most of its prized possessions to safety – including artefacts from Leontovych’s life in Pokrovsk.

Russia, she says, doesn’t just want to take Ukraine’s territory – “It wants to destroy our culture and everything precious to us”.

Angelina says the people of Pokrovsk understand they may never go back, “but our heart and souls do not accept that”. Hence they’re doing everything they can to preserve the past. The new motto is “keeping and saving, equals winning”.

It’s hard to say you’re winning when your city’s being destroyed. But its people, like Leontovych’s music, are displaying extraordinary resilience.

Leontovych’s life came to an abrupt end in 1921 when he was shot by a Soviet agent. His composition had become a symbol for the fight for Ukraine’s independence. It still is.

Kennesaw, Georgia, has all the small-town fixings one might imagine in the American South.

There’s the smell of baked biscuits wafting from Honeysuckle Biscuits & Bakery and the rumble of a nearby railroad train. It’s the kind of place where newlyweds leave hand-written thank-you cards in coffee shops, praising the “cozy” atmosphere.

But there’s another aspect of Kennesaw that some might find surprising – a city law from the 1980s that legally requires residents to own guns and ammo.

“It’s not like you go around wearing it on your hip like the Wild Wild West,” said Derek Easterling, the town’s three-term mayor and self-described “retired Navy guy”.

“We’re not going to go knock on your door and say, ‘Let me see your weapon.'”

Kennesaw’s gun law plainly states: “In order to provide for and protect the safety, security and general welfare of the city and its inhabitants, every head of household residing in city limits is required to maintain a firearm, together with ammunition.”

Residents with mental or physical disabilities, felony convictions, or conflicting religious beliefs are exempt from the law.

To Mayor Easterling’s knowledge, and that of multiple local officials, there have been no prosecutions or arrests made for violating Article II, Sec 34-21, which came into law in 1982.

And no one that the BBC spoke to could say what the penalty would be for being found in violation.

Still, the mayor insisted: “It’s not a symbolic law. I’m not into things just for show.”

For some, the law is a source of pride, a nod to the city’s embrace of gun culture.

For others, it’s a source of embarrassment, a page in a chapter of history they wish to move beyond.

But the main belief amongst the townsfolk about the gun law is that it keeps Kennesaw safe.

Patrons eating pepperoni slices at the local pizza parlour will propose: “If anything, criminals need to be concerned, because if they break into your home, and you’re there, they don’t know what you got.”

There were no murders in 2023, according to Kennesaw Police Department data, but there were two gun-involved suicides.

Blake Weatherby, a groundskeeper at the Kennesaw First Baptist Church, has different thoughts on why violent crime might be low.

“It’s the attitude behind the guns here in Kennesaw that keep the gun crimes down, not the guns,” Mr Weatherby said.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a gun or a fork or a fist or a high heel shoe. We protect ourselves and our neighbours.”

Pat Ferris, who joined Kennesaw’s city council in 1984, two years after the law was passed, said the law was created to be “more of a political statement than anything”.

After Morton Grove, Illinois, became the first US city to ban gun ownership, Kennesaw became the first city to require it, triggering national news headlines.

A 1982 opinion piece by the New York Times described Kennesaw officials as “jovial” over the law’s passage but noted that “Yankee criminologists” were not.

Penthouse Magazine ran the story on its cover page with the words Gun Town USA: An American Town Where It’s Illegal Not to Own a Gun printed over an image of a bikini-clad blonde woman.

Similar gun laws have been passed in at least five cities, including Gun Barrel City, Texas and Virgin, Utah.

In the 40 years since Kennesaw’s gun law was passed, Mr Ferris said, its existence has mostly faded from consciousness.

“I don’t know how many people even know that the ordinance exists,” he said.

The same year the gun law took effect, Mr Weatherby, the church groundskeeper, was born.

He recalled a childhood where his dad would half-jokingly tell him: “I don’t care if you don’t like guns, it’s the law.”

“I was taught that if you’re a man, you’ve got to own a gun,” he said.

Now 42, he was 12 years old the first time he fired a weapon.

“I almost dropped it because it scared me so bad,” he said.

Mr Weatherby owned over 20 guns at one point but said now he doesn’t own any. He sold them over the years – including the one his dad left him when he died in 2005 – to overcome hard times.

“I needed gas more than guns,” he said.

One place he could’ve gone to sell his firearms is the Deercreek Gun Shop located on Kennesaw’s Main Street.

James Rabun, 36, has been working at the gun store ever since he graduated high school.

It’s the family business, he said, opened by his dad and grandad, both of whom can still be found there today; his dad in the back restoring firearms, his grandad in the front relaxing in a rocking chair.

For obvious reasons, Mr Rabun is a fan of Kennesaw’s gun law. It’s good for business.

“The cool thing about firearms”, he said with earnest enthusiasm, “is that people buy them for self-defence, but a lot of people like them like artwork or like bitcoin – things of scarcity.”

Among the dozens and dozens of weapons hanging on the wall for sale are double barrel black powder shotguns – akin to a musket – and a few “they-don’t-make-these-anymore” Winchester rifles from the 1800s.

In Kennesaw, gun fandom has a broad reach that extends beyond gun shop owners and middle-aged men.

Cris Welsh, a mother of two teenaged daughters, is unabashed about her gun ownership. She hunts, is a member at a gun club, and shoots at the local gun range with her two girls.

“I’m a gun owner”, she admitted, listing off her inventory which includes “a Ruger carry pistol, a Beretta, a Glock, and about half a dozen shotguns”.

However, Ms Welsh is not fond of Kennesaw’s gun law.

“I’m embarrassed when I hear people talk about the gun law,” Ms Welsh said. “It’s just an old Kennesaw thing to hang onto.”

She wished that when outsiders thought of the city, they called to mind the parks and schools and community values – not the gun law “that makes people uncomfortable”.

“There’s so much more to Kennesaw,” she said.

City council member Madelyn Orochena agrees that the law is “something that people would prefer not to advertise”.

“It’s just a weird little factoid about our community,” she said.

“Residents will either roll their eyes in a bit of shame or laugh along about it.”

Mozambique’s main opposition leader, Venâncio Mondlane, has declared that he will install himself as president on 15 January after rejecting his defeat in presidential elections.

His announcement came as his supporters staged violent protests across the country to demand an end to the 49-year-rule of the Frelimo party.

The capital Maputo was like a ghost town on Christmas Eve, with almost all businesses shut and people staying at home to avoid being caught up in the worst unrest in the city since Frelimo rose to power at independence in 1975.

Frelimo’s offices, police stations, banks and factories have been looted, vandalised and set ablaze around the country. Since Monday, at least 21 people have been killed in the unrest, the interior minister said late on Tuesday.

The latest unrest began on Monday after Mozambique’s highest court upheld the victory of Frelimo’s presidential candidate, Daniel Chapo, in elections held in October.

Mondlane had challenged the result, alleging that the poll was rigged.

In a Facebook live broadcast to his supporters on Tuesday, Mondlane said he rejected the ruling of the constitutional court, adding that he would assume the office of president on 15 January – the day that Chapo is due to be sworn in.

President Filipe Nyusi is due to step down at the end of his two terms.

It is unclear how Mondlane intends to take office, as he is currently in self-imposed exile in an unknown country.

He has frequently rallied his supporters via speeches on Facebook live, but has urged them to remain peaceful.

“We are with the people. We do not advocate any form of violence,” Mondlane said in his latest address.

Chapo has not yet commented on his declaration.

October’s election was the first time both of them had run for the presidency, with the electoral commission declaring Chapo the winner with 71% of the vote to Mondlane’s 20%.

The constitutional court revised the result, giving the Frelimo candidate 65% and Mondlane 24%.

Rights groups say that more than 100 people have been killed in unrest since the elections.

They accuse the security forces of being responsible for many of the killings, but police commander Bernadino Rafael had previously told the BBC that his officers had been defending themselves after coming under attack.

Mondlane fled Mozambique after accusing police of threatening behaviour, and two of his aides were shot dead in October.

The 50-year-old evangelical pastor contested the election as an independent after breaking away from the main opposition Renamo party.

His support is strongest among young people, many of whom are unemployed and demanding change.

Frelimo fielded the 47-year-old Chapo as its youngest ever presidential candidate.

He has previously rejected suggestions that he and Frelimo rigged the poll, saying: “We are an organised party that prepares its victories.”

• Children shot dead after joining pot-banging protests in Mozambique
• Why governing parties are having a tough time in elections
• From freedom fighter to Namibia’s first female president

Four rioters have been given short jail terms for violence against football fans visiting Amsterdam for a Europa League match between Ajax and Israeli club Maccabi Tel Aviv.

Sefa Ö, 32, was handed the longest sentence of six months in jail by Amsterdam district court, while another man was given 10 weeks and two others a month’s detention each. A fifth defendant was given a community service order under the Netherlands’ juvenile law.

The judge said a prison sentence for the four was appropriate given the seriousness of the actions and the context in which they took place.

The riots broke out in several areas of the Dutch capital in early November and led to international condemnation.

The five defendants sentenced on Tuesday were the first to be tried for hit-and-run attacks that erupted in the early hours of 8 November, after incidents that took place over two days.

The court said that there was a lot of video evidence showing Maccabi fans facing extreme violence, and also pointed to footage of supporters pulling down Palestinian flags as well as chanting slogans against Arabs. Taxis were also vandalised by the fans.

The court chairman added that there had already been unrest in the Netherlands because of the war in Gaza.

While the court took “the context” of the events into account, it said there had been “no justification for calling for and using physical violence against Israeli supporters”.

• Amsterdam violence exposes tensions in society and spills over to politics
• New arrests made in Amsterdam over violence after football match

Sefa Ö was found to have given a karate-type kick to one victim, causing him to fall against a moving tram, as well as taking part in several other attacks.

The trial saw video footage appeared to show him kicking and hitting victims on Dam Square, Damrak and Zoutsteeg, and prosecutors said he had played a leading role in violence that had nothing to do with football.

Rachid O, 26, who was given 10 weeks in jail, was found to have taken part in a WhatsApp chat group called Buurthuis2, on which he referred to intended victims as “cowardly” Jews who he would never again get the chance to attack.

More than 900 people were in the group and the court said the chat had been used to pass on information to “commit violence against people of Jewish descent and/or supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv”.

Umutcan A, 24, was also found to have kicked one of the victims several times while taking part in an attack with other men and then kicked another fan on the ground. CCTV footage had shown him attacking several Maccabi fans, as well as grabbing one fan by the throat and seizing his football scarf.

He had written in messaging groups about a “Jew hunt” but told the trial he did not harbour hatred towards Jews.

Karanveer S, 26, had already been convicted of assault in 2022 and the court noted that did not deter him from taking part in last month’s attacks.

The youngest of the five, Lucas D, 19, was found to have used violence against a police officer and taken part in a separate Snapchat group calling for violence against Maccabi Tel Aviv fans.

The five all have two weeks in which to appeal.

The court said he had an illegal, high-explosive “cobra” firework in his possession at the time of his arrest. Prosecutors had called for Lucas D to be given a jail term.

Chief prosecutor René de Beukelaer had earlier rejected suggestions that the attacks had amounted to terrorism, because he said it was not the aim of the group to instill fear in the people they were targeting.

However, he did say there were instances of antisemitism exchanged on a messaging group.

“I can well understand that the Jewish community in Amsterdam was left afraid because of this violence, but that’s different from saying that was the goal of the suspects,” he told Amsterdam’s AT5 TV channel earlier this month.

Millions of Americans across the US are bracing for difficult weather conditions during the Christmas holiday, with storms threatening to further disrupt one of the busiest travel periods of the year.

Up and down the east coast, the first storm of the winter blanketed cities from Boston to Baltimore with ice and snow.

Meanwhile, California residents are cleaning up the aftermath of a storm that brought hurricane-forced winds, flooding and high surf on Monday, killing one man.

The weather events further complicate travel plans for Americas who are already facing air travel delays following a ground stop of American Airlines flights due to a technology issue.

On the east coast, winter precipitation is expected to impact travel for many as heavy snow falls in areas such as Boston and New York, while Baltimore and Washington DC braced for precipitation and ice.

On the west coast, Monday’s storm caused a pier to collapse and threw three people into the Pacific Ocean.

Waves from that storm reached 60ft (18m) and forced some evacuations. Flooding and high surf warnings remain in effect on Tuesday.

Weather is not the only thing impacting holiday travel on Tuesday, with technological issues adding further stress as millions of Americans hurry to their destinations.

Early Tuesday, American Airlines flights were halted after the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced a “nationwide groundstop” due to a “vendor technology issue”.

The groundstop was lifted about an hour after it began and flights resumed, but not without creating a ripple of delays.

Delays continued into the day on Tuesday with some departures taking off two hours after they were scheduled.

American Airlines apologized for the inconvenience and said: “It’s all hands on deck as our team is working diligently to get customers where they need to go as quickly as possible”.

While many morning flights were delayed Tuesday, most afternoon flights are scheduled to depart on time.

A women’s solidarity honour that was recently awarded to Justin Baldoni has been rescinded after the actor was accused by his It Ends With Us co-star Blake Lively of sexual harassment and mounting a campaign to “destroy” her reputation.

Baldoni was honoured by Vital Voices, a global non-profit organisation that focuses on empowering women, with the award earlier this month.

The organisation announced Monday evening that it rescinded the award after the legal complaint filed by Lively alleged “abhorrent conduct” by the actor, his studio and a crisis public relations team that it said was “contrary to the values” it held.

Baldoni’s legal team have told the BBC the allegations are “categorically false” and said they hired a crisis manager because Lively had threatened to derail the film unless her demands were met.

In the romantic drama, Lively plays a woman who finds herself in a relationship with a charming but abusive boyfriend, played by Baldoni.

The Voices of Solidarity Award was given to Baldoni on 9 December during an awards ceremony in New York, Vital Voices said in a statement. The award was presented by comedian Hasan Minhaj and celebrates “remarkable men who have shown courage and compassion in advocating on behalf of women and girls”.

He posted about the award on his Instagram page, saying he was “deeply honoured and humbled” and noting the continued work to needed to be done to help future generations of men.

“My hope is that we can teach our boys, while they are still young, that vulnerability is strength, sensitivity is a super power, and empathy makes them powerful,” he said in the post.

In a statement on Monday, Vital Voices explained it had revoked the award and notified Baldoni of the decision.

Also on Monday, Baldoni’s podcast co-host Liz Plank announced she was leaving The Man Enough show following the allegations.

The podcast bills itself as creating “a safe environment” for exploring issues such as how “masculinity” shows up in relationships, as well as “sex, success” and “mental health”.

Author and journalist Plank told their listeners via Instagram: “I’m writing to you today to let you know that I have had my representatives inform [Baldoni’s production company] Wayfarer that I will no longer be co-hosting The Man Enough podcast.”

She thanked fans for “trusting me with your hearts and stories, for holding space for mine, and for making this show what it was”.

Lively, who is best known for her role on the TV show Gossip Girl, recently filed a legal complaint accusing Baldoni and his team of attacking her public image.

She says in the complaint the attacks followed a meeting to address “repeated sexual harassment and other disturbing behaviour” by Baldoni and a producer on the movie.

According to 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.

The list included requests such as no more mention of Baldoni’s “pornography addiction”, no descriptions of genitalia and no addition of intimate scenes that weren’t approved by her when she read the script.

Lively also accused Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios of leading a “multi-tiered plan” to wreck her reputation in the media and online, including hiring a crisis manager who led a “sophisticated, coordinated, and well-financed retaliation plan” against her and used a “digital army” to post social media content that seemed authentic.

Responding to the legal complaint, Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, said in a statement on Saturday that the accusations were “categorically false”.

Freedman accused 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 Lively’s claims were “intentionally salacious with an intent to publicly hurt and rehash a narrative in the media”.

French Prime Minister François Bayrou believes dozens of people died when Cyclone Chido hit the French Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte on 14 December, rather than thousands as some have feared.

Bayrou told BFMTV he thought the “alarmist and sometimes terrifying numbers put forward won’t be borne out in reality”.

The confirmed death toll on Mayotte so far is 35 but, in the immediate aftermath of the cyclone, local prefect François-Xavier Bieuville feared that it would “definitely be several hundred” and could reach thousands.

The prefect told France Info radio on Tuesday that investigations in the field were progressing well that “allow us to think that we will corroborate this figure of 35”.

Defending his initial remarks, Bieuville insisted “I have never been alarmist, I was simply unable to give the number of victims”.

Officials said it had been difficult to determine the scale of fatalities in the wake of the disaster 10 days ago, due to many areas of Mayotte being inaccessible and the fact that victims were buried within 24 hours in accordance with Islamic customs.

There is also uncertainty about the true population of Mayotte, a French Indian Ocean territory.

Officially it has 320,000 residents, but authorities estimate about 100,000 to 200,000 undocumented migrants may also be living there.

“I think [the number of dead] will be in the dozens and not in the thousands,” the prime minister told BFMTV on Monday night.

The archipelago is one of the poorest parts of France, with many of its residents living in shanty towns.

Cyclone Chido was the worst storm to hit the territory in 90 years, bringing winds of up to 260 km/h (160mph) and flattening areas where people lived in shacks with metal roofs.

France held a day of national mourning in the wake of the cyclone on Monday. President Emmanuel Macron visited the territory last week, and was heckled by angry locals demanding more aid in devastated areas.

Some survivors went for a week without water, communication or electricity.

Authorities restored water in the main points of the territory on Tuesday, Bieuville said. “Even if this water is still sometimes a little difficult to deliver, our fellow citizens have water.”

He also said there was no fuel shortage any more and cars could now be filled up.

The prime minister had earlier said that a field hospital would also be operational by Tuesday morning.

Cyclone Chido moved on to continental Africa after hitting Mayotte, killing 120 people in Mozambique and 13 in Malawi.

A Nasa spacecraft is attempting to make history with the closest-ever approach to the Sun.

The Parker Solar Probe is plunging into our star’s outer atmosphere, enduring brutal temperatures and extreme radiation.

It is out of communication for several days during this burning hot fly-by and scientists will be waiting for a signal, expected at 05:00 GMT on 28 December, to see if it has survived.

The hope is the probe could help us to better understand how the Sun works.

Dr Nicola Fox, head of science at Nasa, told BBC News: “For centuries, people have studied the Sun, but you don’t experience the atmosphere of a place until you actually go visit it.

“And so we can’t really experience the atmosphere of our star unless we fly through it.”

Parker Solar Probe launched in 2018, heading to the centre of our solar system.

It has already swept past the Sun 21 times, getting ever nearer, but the Christmas Eve visit is record-breaking.

At its closest approach, the probe is 3.8 million miles (6.2 million km) from our star’s surface.

This might not sound that close, but Nasa’s Nicola Fox puts it into perspective: “We are 93 million miles away from the Sun, so if I put the Sun and the Earth one metre apart, Parker Solar Probe is four centimetres from the Sun – so that’s close.”

The probe will have to endure temperatures of 1,400C and radiation that could frazzle the onboard electronics.

It is protected by a 11.5cm (4.5 inches) thick carbon-composite shield but the spacecraft’s tactic is to get in and out fast.

In fact, it will be moving faster than any human-made object, hurtling at 430,000mph – the equivalent of flying from London to New York in less than 30 seconds.

Parker’s speed comes from the immense gravitational pull it feels as it falls towards the Sun.

So why go to all this effort to “touch” the Sun?

Scientists hope that as the spacecraft passes through our star’s outer atmosphere – its corona – it will solve a long standing mystery.

“The corona is really, really hot, and we have no idea why,” explains Dr Jenifer Millard, an astronomer at Fifth Star Labs in Wales.

“The surface of the Sun is about 6,000C or so, but the corona, this tenuous outer atmosphere that you can see during solar eclipses, reaches millions of degrees – and that is further away from the Sun. So how is that atmosphere getting hotter?”

The mission should also help scientists to better understand solar wind – the constant stream of charged particles bursting out from the corona.

When these particles interact with the Earth’s magnetic field the sky lights up with dazzling auroras.

But this so-called space weather can cause problems too, knocking out power grids, electronics and communication systems.

“Understanding the Sun, its activity, space weather, the solar wind, is so important to our everyday lives on Earth,” says Dr Millard.

Nasa scientists face an anxious wait over Christmas while the spacecraft is out of touch with Earth.

Nicola Fox says that as soon as a signal is beamed back home, the team will text her a green heart to let her know the probe is OK.

She admits she is nervous about the audacious attempt, but she has faith in the probe.

“I will worry about the spacecraft. But we really have designed it to withstand all of these brutal, brutal conditions. It’s a tough, tough little spacecraft.”

If it survives this challenge, the probe will continue its mission around the Sun into the future.

Brazilian authorities have halted the construction of a factory for Chinese electric vehicle (EV) giant BYD, saying workers lived in conditions comparable to “slavery”.

More than 160 workers have been rescued in Brazil’s northeastern state of Bahia, according to a statement from the Public Labour Prosecutor’s Office (MPT).

They were allegedly put in a “degrading” environment and had their passports and salaries withheld by a building company.

BYD said in a statement that it had cut ties with the firm involved and remained committed to a “full compliance with Brazilian legislation”.

The factory was scheduled to be operational by March 2025, and was set to be BYD’s first EV plant outside of Asia.

The workers, hired by Jinjiang Construction Brazil, lived in four facilities in Camaçari city.

At one such facility, workers were made to sleep on beds without mattresses, according to prosecutors.

Each bathroom was also shared among 31 workers, forcing them to get up extremely early in order to be ready for work.

“The conditions found in the lodgings revealed an alarming picture of precariousness and degradation,” the MPT said.

“Slavery-like conditions”, as defined by Brazilian law, include debt bondage and work that violates human dignity.

The MPT added that the situation also constitutes “forced labour”, as many workers had their wages withheld and faced excessive costs for terminating their contracts.

BYD said affected workers had been moved to hotels.

It added that it had conducted a “detailed review” of the working and living conditions for subcontracted employees, and asked on “several occasions” for the construction firm to make improvements.

BYD, short for Build Your Dreams, is one of the world’s largest EV makers.

It sold more electric vehicles than Elon Musk’s Tesla in the last three months of 2023, as the two battled for top spot in the sector.

The company has also been expanding its foothold in Brazil, which is its largest overseas market by a wide margin.

It first opened a factory in São Paulo in 2015, producing chassis for electric buses.

Last year, it announced that it would invest 3 billion reais ($484.2m) in Brazil to build an EV manufacturing plant.

EV sales in China have been boosted by government subsidies. which encourage consumers to trade their petrol-powered cars for EVs or hybrids.

But there is a growing backlash abroad against what some see as the Chinese government’s unfair support for domestic car makers.

Major markets like the US and EU have placed tariffs on EVs from China, with more tariffs expected during the incoming administration of US president-elect Donald Trump.

Mozambique’s main opposition leader, Venâncio Mondlane, has declared that he will install himself as president on 15 January after rejecting his defeat in presidential elections.

His announcement came as his supporters staged violent protests across the country to demand an end to the 49-year-rule of the Frelimo party.

The capital Maputo was like a ghost town on Christmas Eve, with almost all businesses shut and people staying at home to avoid being caught up in the worst unrest in the city since Frelimo rose to power at independence in 1975.

Frelimo’s offices, police stations, banks and factories have been looted, vandalised and set ablaze around the country. Since Monday, at least 21 people have been killed in the unrest, the interior minister said late on Tuesday.

The latest unrest began on Monday after Mozambique’s highest court upheld the victory of Frelimo’s presidential candidate, Daniel Chapo, in elections held in October.

Mondlane had challenged the result, alleging that the poll was rigged.

In a Facebook live broadcast to his supporters on Tuesday, Mondlane said he rejected the ruling of the constitutional court, adding that he would assume the office of president on 15 January – the day that Chapo is due to be sworn in.

President Filipe Nyusi is due to step down at the end of his two terms.

It is unclear how Mondlane intends to take office, as he is currently in self-imposed exile in an unknown country.

He has frequently rallied his supporters via speeches on Facebook live, but has urged them to remain peaceful.

“We are with the people. We do not advocate any form of violence,” Mondlane said in his latest address.

Chapo has not yet commented on his declaration.

October’s election was the first time both of them had run for the presidency, with the electoral commission declaring Chapo the winner with 71% of the vote to Mondlane’s 20%.

The constitutional court revised the result, giving the Frelimo candidate 65% and Mondlane 24%.

Rights groups say that more than 100 people have been killed in unrest since the elections.

They accuse the security forces of being responsible for many of the killings, but police commander Bernadino Rafael had previously told the BBC that his officers had been defending themselves after coming under attack.

Mondlane fled Mozambique after accusing police of threatening behaviour, and two of his aides were shot dead in October.

The 50-year-old evangelical pastor contested the election as an independent after breaking away from the main opposition Renamo party.

His support is strongest among young people, many of whom are unemployed and demanding change.

Frelimo fielded the 47-year-old Chapo as its youngest ever presidential candidate.

He has previously rejected suggestions that he and Frelimo rigged the poll, saying: “We are an organised party that prepares its victories.”

• Children shot dead after joining pot-banging protests in Mozambique
• Why governing parties are having a tough time in elections
• From freedom fighter to Namibia’s first female president

The Danish government has announced a huge boost in defence spending for Greenland, hours after US President-elect Donald Trump repeated his desire to purchase the Arctic territory.

Danish Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said the package was a “double digit billion amount” in krone, or at least $1.5bn (£1.2bn).

He described the timing of the announcement as an “irony of fate”. On Monday Trump said ownership and control of the huge island was an “absolute necessity” for the US.

Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, is home to a large US space facility and is strategically important for the US, lying on the shortest route from North America to Europe. It has major mineral reserves.

Poulsen said the package would allow for the purchase of two new inspection ships, two new long-range drones and two extra dog sled teams.

It would also include funding for increased staffing at Arctic Command in the capital Nuuk and an upgrade for one of Greenland’s three main civilian airports to handle F-35 supersonic fighter aircraft.

“We have not invested enough in the Arctic for many years, now we are planning a stronger presence,” he said.

The defence minister did not give an exact figure for the package, but Danish media estimated it would be around 12-15bn krone.

The announcement came a day after Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social: “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”

Greenland’s Prime Minister Mute Egede responded to Trump’s comments, saying “we are not for sale”.

But he added that Greenlanders should continue to be open for cooperation and trade, especially with their neighbours.

Analysts say that the plan has been under discussion for a long time and should not be seen as a direct response to Trump’s comments.

Until now Denmark has been very slow to expand its military capacity in Greenland, they say, but if the country is not able to protect waters around the territory against encroachments by China and Russia then US demands for greater control are likely to grow.

Army Maj Steen Kjaergaard of the Danish Defence Academy suggests it may have been Trump’s intention to pressure Denmark into such a move.

“It is likely to be sparked by the renewed Trump focus on the need for air and maritime control around Greenland and the internal developments in Greenland where some are voicing a will to look towards the US – a new international airport in Nuuk was just inaugurated,” he told the BBC.

“I think Trump is smart… he gets Denmark to prioritise its Arctic military capabilities by raising this voice, without having to take over a very un-American welfare system,” he added, referring to Greenland’s heavy dependence on subsidies from Copenhagen.

Trump’s original suggestion in 2019 that the US acquire Greenland, which is the world’s largest island, led to a similarly sharp rebuke from leaders there.

At the time Danish Prime Minister Mette Fredericksen described the idea as “absurd”, leading Trump to cancel a state trip to the country.

He is not the first US president to suggest buying Greenland. The idea was first mooted during the 1860s under the presidency of Andrew Johnson.

Actress Blake Lively was arguably the internet’s public enemy number one for a couple of weeks in the summer. She’s now filed an explosive legal case that she claims lifts the lid on “hostile work environments” that are created to harm reputations in Hollywood – and which are making people question who and what to believe.

Blake Lively had always been a pretty inoffensive kind of actress.

She had been in successful TV shows and films, like Gossip Girl and The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants. She married fellow superstar Ryan Reynolds. She’s friends with Taylor Swift.

Then in August, while promoting her latest movie It Ends With Us, she suddenly became controversial, to the verge of being cancelled.

She was criticised for comments appearing to downplay domestic violence, the film’s theme; while awkward old interviews were resurfaced and repurposed as evidence of bullying behaviour.

Public opinion – at least among those who knew and cared – seemed to have turned against her.

Then the film came out, the furore died down, and social media moved on.

But Lively has now filed a legal case that claims she suffered sexual harassment by It Ends With Us co-star and director Justin Baldoni – and that when she complained, he and his studio Wayfarer retaliated by waging a campaign to “destroy” her reputation.

She was the subject of “a sophisticated, co-ordinated, and well-financed retaliation plan” designed “to silence her”, involving a “weaponised a digital army” and fake stories being fed to “unwitting reporters”, her lawyers have alleged – and that’s why she became the focus of negative publicity.

Throughout the complaint, which spans some 80 pages, Lively’s team repeatedly accuses Badoni and Wayfarer of creating a “hostile work environment that nearly derailed production of the film”.

Her lawyers have published text messages sent between Baldoni’s publicist Jennifer Abel and Melissa Nathan, a crisis communications specialist hired by his studio to help manage the harassment complaint. They appear to give a rare glimpse into conversations that are normally kept well out of the spotlight.

Nathan pitched a strategy to “start threads of theories” on social media, to “create, seed, and promote content that appeared to be authentic”, and engage in “social manipulation”, according to the legal papers.

“You know we can bury anyone,” Nathan wrote to Abel in one damning discussion.

Now, the people hired to do crisis PR for Baldoni are doing crisis PR for themselves.

Abel has said Lively’s lawyers “cherry picked” messages to include in their case without crucial context, and that there was “no ‘smear’ implemented”.

“No negative press was ever facilitated, no social combat plan, although we were prepared for it as it’s our job to be ready for any scenario.

“But we didn’t have to implement anything because the internet was doing the work for us.”

The backlash against Lively occurred naturally and didn’t need their help, Abel said.

Lawyer Bryan Freedman, representing Baldoni and his studio as well as Abel and Nathan, echoed that.

He said Baldoni hired a crisis manager due to “multiple demands and threats” allegedly made by Lively, including “threatening to not [show] up to set, threatening to not promote the film, ultimately leading to its demise during release, if her demands were not met”.

He said the plan drawn up by Nathan’s firm “proved unnecessary as audiences found Lively’s own actions, interviews and marketing during the promotional tour distasteful, and responded organically to that, which the media themselves picked up on”.

Overall, Freedman called Lively’s complaint “shameful” and full of “categorically false accusations”.

In recent days, Lively has received support from a string of former co-stars and others in Hollywood.

The name of one of her supporters stands out.

Amber Heard, former wife of Johnny Depp, told NBC: “Social media is the absolute personification of the classic saying, ‘A lie travels halfway around the world before truth can get its boots on.’

“I saw this firsthand and up close. It’s as horrifying as it is destructive.”

Heard was on the receiving end of social media hostility during two high-profile libel trials involving Depp in the UK and US in 2020 and 2022. Nathan also reportedly worked for Depp.

Freedman responded to Heard by saying the only connection between her and Lively was that “for decades every move they have made has been out there for everyone to see” so the public could “make up their own minds – which they did, organically”.

Tortoise Media head of investigations Alexi Mostrous, who hosted a podcast called Who Trolled Amber? earlier this year examining the abuse she received, said there were parallels.

“In both the Blake Lively case and the Amber Heard case, you see PR companies working with digital media specialists and other ‘contractors’ to promote online stories beneficial to their wealthy clients in ways that are opaque and not well understood,” he told BBC News.

“It’s an unregulated world where all sorts of tactics can take place behind closed doors.”

Variety said Lively’s case “lays bare a show business process that’s meant to operate in the shadows – the hiring of expensive crisis communications experts to sway opinion and uplift clients”.

Her allegations suggest a “sinister shadow campaign” that went “beyond what most publicity firms in Hollywood see as acceptable”, The Wrap’s Sharon Waxman wrote.

According to Rory Lynch, partner and head of reputation management law at Gateley Legal, it is “quite a common tactic” in Hollywood and business disputes to “have PRs on both sides planting negative stories, sometimes false stories, about the opposition”.

“Even back in the golden era of Hollywood, there were rumours that Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were using PR professionals to negatively brief against each other.”

However, the PR people who worked for Baldoni and his studio “dropped the ball a little bit” by discussing tactics in texts, he told BBC News.

“It doesn’t surprise me, especially in the US and Hollywood, that you’ve got quite aggressive crisis PR people.

“But the fact that they put that in writing, I think, was possibly not the wisest thing. Normally they might do something like that over the phone.”

Lively herself is “a sophisticated operator” who will “have her own PR people working away in the background as well”, Lynch added.

The New York Times, which broke the story of Lively’s complaint at the weekend, said she “denied that she or any of her representatives planted or spread negative information about Mr Baldoni or Wayfarer”.

The paper also pointed out that “it is impossible to know how much of the negative publicity” towards Lively was originally seeded by those working on behalf of Baldoni, “and how much they noticed and amplified”.

Many fans who turned against Lively now see the situation in a different light.

“We are so able to be manipulated into hating a woman that all it takes is a co-ordinated PR effort for us to switch sides against a domestic abuse victim, or a long-beloved American sweetheart,” wrote Maddy Mussen in the Standard.

“Now our eyes are open, will we be harder to fool? Or will we still want any excuse to turn on a famous woman who is suddenly, in our eyes and the eyes of the ones manipulating us, no longer worthy?”

The Guardian’s Laura Snapes wrote that she and her friends had now “looked back, horrified, on what we had said about her in recent months”.

She added: “Lively’s complaint has left my head spinning. What can you really trust?”

Protests have broken out in Syria over the burning of a Christmas tree, prompting calls for the new Islamist authorities to take steps to protect minorities.

A video posted on social media showed the tree on fire in the main square of Suqaylabiyah, a Christian-majority town in central Syria.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the main Islamist faction which led the uprising that toppled President Bashar al-Assad, said foreign fighters had been detained over the incident.

HTS representatives have promised to protect the rights and freedoms of religious and ethnic minorities in Syria.

Footage on social media appeared to show masked men dousing the Christmas tree with an unidentified liquid the night before Christians in Syria prepared to celebrate Christmas Eve. It was unclear whether they were trying to put the fire out or help it spread.

Videos of the aftermath showed a religious figure from the governing HTS rebel group assuring crowds who had gathered in Suqaylabiyah that the tree would be repaired before the morning.

The man then held up a cross in a show of solidarity, something Islamist conservatives would not normally do.

On Tuesday more protesters took to the streets over the arson attack, including in parts of the capital Damascus.

Some in the Kassa neighbourhood of Damascus chanted against foreign fighters in Syria.

“Syria is free, non Syrians should leave,” they said, in reference to the foreign fighters HTS said were behind the attack.

In the Bab Touma neighbourhood of Damascus, protesters carried a cross and Syrian flags, chanting “we will sacrifice our souls for our cross”.

“If we’re not allowed to live our Christian faith in our country, as we used to, then we don’t belong here anymore,” a demonstrator named Georges told AFP news agency.

• Syria’s minorities seek security
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Syria is home to many ethnic and religious groups, including Kurds, Armenians, Assyrians, Christians, Druze, Alawite Shia and Arab Sunnis, the last of whom make up a majority of the Muslim population.

Just over two weeks ago, Bashar al-Assad’s presidency fell to rebel forces, ending the Assad family’s more than 50-year-rule.

Since then many displaced Syrians have begun heading back to their homes – on Tuesday, Turkey said more than 25,000 Syrians had returned to the country.

However it remains to be seen how the HTS group will govern Syria.

HTS began as a jihadist group – espousing violence to achieve its goal of establishing a state governed by Islamic law (Sharia) – but in recent years adopted a more pragmatic, less uncompromising approach.

As fighters marched to Damascus earlier this month, its leaders spoke about building a Syria for all Syrians.

On Tuesday the new authorities announced that leader Ahmed al-Sharaa had reached an agreement with “revolutionary factions… to dissolve all factions and merge them under the umbrella of the Ministry of Defence”, according to Sana news agency.

Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir said the ministry would be restructured to include rebel fighters.

Although the statement mentioned “all factions”, it was not clear exactly which groups are included in the merger.

There are multiple armed groups in Syria, including some opposed to HTS and others with ambiguous relationships with it at best.

HTS remains designated as a terrorist organisation by the UN, US, EU and UK, though there are signs that a diplomatic shift may be under way.

On Friday, the US scrapped a $10m (£7.9m) bounty on the head of HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, following meetings between senior diplomats and representatives from the group.

The US is continuing its military presence in Syria. It said on Friday that it carried out an air strike in the northern city of Deir Ezzor – killing two members of the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group.

The presence of foreign fighters, Islamist extremists, or even regime supporters who have interest in causing insecurity and attacking minorities to shake the country’s stability are the big challenge that the new Islamic leadership will face.

Interpol has posted a Yellow Notice (missing people alert) for two Irish boys being held in Egypt by their father.

Mandy Kelly from Dundalk has not seen her sons for more than 1,000 days.

Despite a court order in Egypt that awarded her full custody of her sons in July, she is now travelling back to Cairo for another court hearing.

Ms Kelly’s children, Zayn Mohamed, 6, and Kareem, 4, have been in Egypt with her ex-partner since 2022.

The judiciaries in the Republic of Ireland and Egypt have both ruled that Ms Kelly’s children must be returned to her.

Speaking on BBC Radio Ulster’s Good Morning Ulster programme, Ms Kelly said it was every parent’s worst nightmare.

“There is huge frustration that my two sons are not in my care,” she said.

“Obviously as a parent I am very concerned about their welfare. Are they going to school? Is Kareem being properly looked after? There are multiple questions that I still have.”

When Ms Kelly and her then-partner travelled with their children to Egypt in 2022 it was to meet their father’s family.

Ms Kelly said she had believed it was in the boys’ “best interests” that they got to know their paternal relatives.

When the family was due to return to Ireland in March 2022, Ms Kelly’s partner refused, taking the two children away.

Ms Kelly has been working with both Irish and Egyptian authorities ever since, to be reunited with her children.

“It is so tough, this is my fifth trip over and it doesn’t get easier, it hurts me deeply having to leave without my kids but there will be a day when my two children will be with me and we will all leave together,” she said.

Egypt has not signed up to the Hague Convention on child protection, making the case more challenging for Irish authorities.

It has been raised with several Egyptian authorities by the Taoiseach (prime minister), Simon Harris, and Department of Foreign Affairs.

Last week, President Michael D Higgins wrote to Ms Kelly to confirm he had raised the matter with his Egyptian counterpart during his visit last week.

Ms Kelly said: “I just want to be able to hug my two children in the mornings, put their uniform on, take them to school and cook them dinner, just normal things that people take for granted.”

Brazilian authorities have halted the construction of a factory for Chinese electric vehicle (EV) giant BYD, saying workers lived in conditions comparable to “slavery”.

More than 160 workers have been rescued in Brazil’s northeastern state of Bahia, according to a statement from the Public Labour Prosecutor’s Office (MPT).

They were allegedly put in a “degrading” environment and had their passports and salaries withheld by a building company.

BYD said in a statement that it had cut ties with the firm involved and remained committed to a “full compliance with Brazilian legislation”.

The factory was scheduled to be operational by March 2025, and was set to be BYD’s first EV plant outside of Asia.

The workers, hired by Jinjiang Construction Brazil, lived in four facilities in Camaçari city.

At one such facility, workers were made to sleep on beds without mattresses, according to prosecutors.

Each bathroom was also shared among 31 workers, forcing them to get up extremely early in order to be ready for work.

“The conditions found in the lodgings revealed an alarming picture of precariousness and degradation,” the MPT said.

“Slavery-like conditions”, as defined by Brazilian law, include debt bondage and work that violates human dignity.

The MPT added that the situation also constitutes “forced labour”, as many workers had their wages withheld and faced excessive costs for terminating their contracts.

BYD said affected workers had been moved to hotels.

It added that it had conducted a “detailed review” of the working and living conditions for subcontracted employees, and asked on “several occasions” for the construction firm to make improvements.

BYD, short for Build Your Dreams, is one of the world’s largest EV makers.

It sold more electric vehicles than Elon Musk’s Tesla in the last three months of 2023, as the two battled for top spot in the sector.

The company has also been expanding its foothold in Brazil, which is its largest overseas market by a wide margin.

It first opened a factory in São Paulo in 2015, producing chassis for electric buses.

Last year, it announced that it would invest 3 billion reais ($484.2m) in Brazil to build an EV manufacturing plant.

EV sales in China have been boosted by government subsidies. which encourage consumers to trade their petrol-powered cars for EVs or hybrids.

But there is a growing backlash abroad against what some see as the Chinese government’s unfair support for domestic car makers.

Major markets like the US and EU have placed tariffs on EVs from China, with more tariffs expected during the incoming administration of US president-elect Donald Trump.

Rude gestures are rare on postage stamps, but Ukraine’s best known stamp has one. It shows a soldier raising the middle finger to a Russian warship in reference to a stand-off at Snake Island on day one of the full-scale invasion nearly three years ago.

The Russians demanded surrender but the Ukrainians refused, using unprintable language.

The warship in question, the cruiser Moskva, was sunk by the Ukrainians two days after the stamp was issued, and it sold out within a week of going on sale.

Such is the significance of the stamp that whatever was left was given to government delegations representing Ukraine on the world stage.

Ihor Smilyansky, the head of Ukraine’s postal company Ukrposhta, acknowledges it was a risqué step to take.

“It was my decision. I said – I don’t care whatever everyone else thinks. I just believe it’s the right thing to do,” he told the BBC. “I know it’s breaking all the philatelic [study of stamps] rules and all the rules. But we’re about breaking the rules.”

Ukrposhta often tests its designs on the public, and the results of such online polls tend to be very political too.

That was how Ukraine’s best-selling stamp came into being, showing a Ukrainian tractor towing a captured Russian tank and featuring the popular wartime greeting: “Good evening, we’re from Ukraine.”

Ukrposhta has sold about eight million such stamps.

Stamps featuring Ukraine’s famous mine-sniffing dog Patron earned Ukrposhta about $500,000 (£400,000): 80% of the money was spent on mine-clearing equipment, and the rest on animal shelters.

Another stamp of a mural left by renowned graffiti artist Banksy on a building devastated by shelling outside Kyiv, helped fund 10 bomb shelters. This stamp features another popular but unprintable Ukrainian slogan – this time directed against Vladimir Putin.

Ihor Smilyansky says a dose of humour is added to Ukrposhta’s stamps to maintain Ukrainian morale during the war with Russia.

“Humour has become a fighting force for Ukrainians in this war,” he tells the BBC. “Even in the most difficult circumstances you have to take it with a sense of humour. And that’s what our stamps are sometimes about.”

Oscar Young from UK-based stamp dealers and auctioneers Stanley Gibbons says Ukraine’s approach to stamps by focusing them on the war is highly unusual.

“Generally stamps are artistic and polite, but to go out your way and be quite rude, placing profanity and being very gesturous on stamps – that is quite unique to these particular issues,” he tells the BBC.

He says the frank image used on the warship stamp is what made the stamp so famous and caused such a stir when it was issued.

The distinctive character of Ukrainian stamps has earned them popularity with collectors worldwide.

Laura Bullivant from Gloucester, in the UK, believes that other stamps look bland by comparison.

“I think they’re like the Ukrainian thought process, they’re just strong, and they’re just not bowing down to whatever’s coming into their country,” she says.

“At a time of huge worry and awfulness, they are bringing something to the game that no other country could.”

The former CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F) has dementia and late onset Alzheimer’s disease, his legal team has said in a court document filed in New York.

Lawyers for Mike Jeffries have requested a hearing to determine whether he is mentally fit to stand trial on federal sex trafficking charges.

The 80-year-old was arrested alongside his partner in October and charged with running an international sex trafficking and prostitution business. Both men have pleaded not guilty.

A so-called competency hearing has been scheduled for June next year.

Mr Jeffries, who ran US clothing brand A&F for two decades, is accused of running a sex trafficking and prostitution business from at least 2008-15.

US prosecutors allege that he used his wealth, power and status “to traffic men for his own sexual pleasure”, and for the pleasure of his British partner Matthew Smith, 61.

They said the couple, alongside a middleman James Jacobson, 71, used force, fraud and coercion to make vulnerable, aspiring models engage in violent and exploitative sex acts.

All three men have pleaded not guilty to the charges and been released on bond.

The FBI began investigating last year after the BBC revealed claims Mr Jeffries and Mr Smith had sexually exploited men at events they hosted around the world.

The BBC investigation, published in October 2023, found the pair were at the centre of a sophisticated operation involving a middleman scouting young men for sex.

In the same month, Brian Bieber, Mr Jeffries’ lawyer, said his client was examined several times by a neuropsychologist who later concluded diagnostic impressions that he was suffering from two types of dementia and probable late onset Alzheimer’s disease.

In the court filing, Mr Bieber added that during an initial meeting last year the former fashion boss “did not even come close to resembling a master’s degree-educated individual, who was just nine years earlier the chief executive officer of a publicly traded company”.

As a result, Mr Bieber questioned the ability of Mr Jeffries to “rationally assist” with the possible factual and legal defences to the allegations he was facing, according to the document.

The filing comes after Mr Jeffries’ legal team sought a competency hearing, which will now be held over two days on 16 and 17 June 2025.

Federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York declined to comment.

Mr Jeffries stepped down as CEO and chairman of A&F in 2014, and left with a $25m (£19.9m) retirement package.

Alongside the criminal case, A&F, Mr Jeffries and his partner have been defending a civil lawsuit accusing the retailer of having funded a sex trafficking operation.

Earlier this month, Mr Jeffries sued A&F after it refused to pay his criminal defence costs, arguing the brand had agreed to indemnify him for all claims arising out of his position.

Heather Cucolo, a New York Law School professor specialising in mental disability and criminal law, said there are limited statistics on how the justice system treats dementia but that medical experts would have to weigh in before the judge makes a final decision.

“If Mike Jeffries is found competent, the case will move forward,” she said. “But if he’s deemed incompetent, and it’s found there’s no reasonable likelihood that his competency will be restored, then the charges would have to be dropped.”

His partner Matthew Smith and James Jacobson could still face trial but prosecutors would have to rely on independent evidence if Mr Jeffries is also found to be incompetent to testify as a witness, she added.

The birth of Jesus Christ – a seminal biblical event – has been the subject of many paintings by Western artists, who have often applied the ideas of beauty and creativity prevalent there while depicting the event on canvas.

These works are among the most widely available representations of Christian art, shaping how the world views this biblical event and subliminally divesting those outside the West from influencing it.

But over the centuries, artists in India have sought to express their vision of this event by painting Jesus’s birth and other Christian themes in their own style.

Some have done so consciously, others unconsciously, but the end result is a body of work that breathes new life and meaning into the event of Christ’s birth, and Christianity itself.

Here are some paintings from Indian art history that present Jesus’s birth from a uniquely local perspective.

Mughal emperor Muhammad Jalaluddin Akbar is credited with introducing northern India to Christianity by inviting Jesuit missionaries to visit his court.

The missionaries brought with them holy scriptures and European artworks on Christian themes which influenced court painters. Akbar and his successors also commissioned many murals with Christian themes and some court painters began infusing these paintings with elements of Islamic art.

Neha Vermani, a historian of South Asia, talks about a painting made by Mughal court artists which featured emperor Jahangir in the nativity scene, which traditionally feature Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus.

“Mughal rulers saw themselves as being ‘just’ rulers, capable of maintaining harmony and balance in their kingdoms; they were ‘universal rulers’. Allowing different religions to co-exist was integral to how they saw themselves and wanted themselves to be remembered,” Ms Vermani says.

The 18th Century painting below features typical stylistic elements of Mughal art, including highly stylised figures, vibrant colours, naturalism and ornamentation.

Born in 1887 in what is now India’s West Bengal state, Jamini Roy is celebrated for creating a unique visual language by bringing together elements of Bengali folk art and Kalighat paintings – a distinctive art form that originated in the vicinity of a renowned temple in Kolkata city.

Ashish Anand, CEO and managing director of art firm DAG says that art critic WG Archer once observed that Christ represented a Santhal figure (the Santhals are an Indian tribal group) for Jamini Roy.

“The simplicity of Christ’s life and his sacrifice appealed to Roy, making his paintings on Christian themes at least as important as those on Hindu mythology, all of them rendered in the folk style of modernism that he made distinctively his own,” he says.

Born in 1902 in the western state of Goa, Angelo de Fonseca is credited with creating unique Christian iconography that married Eastern and Western influences with his Goan sensibilities.

In his paintings, Mary isn’t depicted as a fair maiden in a blue gown, but looks very much like an Indian woman with brown skin, dressed in a sari and wearing a mangalsutra (a piece of traditional Indian jewellery worn by married Hindu women).

Biblical scenes unfold in local settings and feature motifs and elements that speak to an Indian audience.

Through his art, he tried to counter the narrative of the West being the cradle of beauty and artistic creativity.

“Fonseca wanted to situate Christianity – which has largely been viewed as a western religious tradition – within the Indian subcontinent. It was from this angst that his watercolours painted Christianity anew,” Rinald D’Souza, director of the Xavier Centre of Historical Research, Goa, told the BBC.

President-elect Donald Trump ran on a platform of isolating the US from foreign conflicts like the Ukraine war, increasing tariffs on foreign trade partners, and rebuilding domestic manufacturing.

But in recent days he has suggested a more outwardly aggressive approach for his foreign policy.

At first, he joked about Canada being an additional US state. Since, he has threatened to take back control of the Panama Canal. He also reiterated a desire from his first term to own the autonomous Danish territory of Greenland, which is not for sale.

The US is unlikely to take control of any of these regions. But these statements could indicate that Trump’s “America First” vision includes flexing the superpower’s muscle beyond its borders for US trade and national security interests.

On Sunday, Trump told a conservative conference in Arizona that Panama was charging US ships “ridiculous, highly unfair” fees to use its namesake canal.

After taking charge of building the canal in the early 20th century, the US turned full control over to Panama in the 1970s via a treaty. But this week, Trump said that if the “rip off” did not stop, he would demand the canal be returned to the US – though he did not specify how.

Trump added he did not want the Panama Canal “falling into the wrong hands” and specifically cited China, which has significant interests in the waterway.

“There’s a real US national security interest… in controlling its neutrality,” Will Freeman, a fellow on Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said of Trump’s remarks.

“Trump’s statement is mostly about that.”

China is the second-largest user of the Panama Canal after the US, according to data. It has major economic investments in the country as well.

In 2017, Panama cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan and recognised it as part of China, a major win for Beijing.

The Panama Canal is not only essential for US trade in the Pacific, Mr Freeman said – in the event of any military conflict with China, it would be needed to move US ships and other assets.

He also noted Trump’s frequent comments about trade partners’ unfair treatment of the US, as well as the president-elect’s pledge to sharply increase tariffs on foreign goods, particularly those from China.

Trump’s complaints about shipping fees seemed to reflect his views on trade, Mr Freeman said.

While the statements might be “coercive”, said Mr Freeman, it remained to be seen “whether canal authorities lower fees on US cargo in response to the threat”.

Panama’s President José Raúl Mulino has released a statement saying that the canal and the surrounding area belonged to his country – and would remain so.

Over the weekend, Trump said in a social media post that the US “feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity” for reasons of national security and global freedom.

The US maintains Pituffik Space Base in Greenland. The territory is rich with natural resources, including rare earth minerals and oil, and occupies a strategic location for trade as global powers seek to expand their reach in the Arctic Circle.

Russia, in particular, sees the region as a strategic opportunity.

Trump floated the idea of purchasing Greenland in 2019, during his first term as president, and it never came to fruition.

Greenland’s prime minister, Múte B Egede, responded to Trump’s latest comments this week: “We are not for sale and we will not be for sale.”

Still, Trump continued emphasising his public statements online.

On Truth Social, Trump’s account showed an image of an American flag being planted in the middle of the Panama Canal.

His second-eldest son, Eric Trump, posted an image on X that showed the US adding Greenland, the Panama Canal and Canada to an Amazon online shopping cart.

For Trump, promises to use America’s might to its advantage helped propel his two successful presidential campaigns.

It was a tactic he used during his first presidency, threatening tariffs and the deployment of “armed soldiers” to steer Mexico into beefing up enforcement along its US border.

Heading into his second term, Trump could plan to use a similar playbook once he takes office on 20 January.

While it remains to be seen what will happen, Denmark has expressed a willingness to work with his administration.

It also announced a huge boost in defence spending for Greenland, hours after Trump repeated his desire to purchase the Arctic territory.

A suspect accused of killing a woman by setting her on fire on a subway train has been charged with murder in a New York court.

Sebastian Zapeta allegedly set the unidentified woman’s clothes on fire, and then fanned the flames by waving a shirt around her, which caused the flames to fully engulf her, according to the criminal complaint.

The 33-year-old faces charges of first and second degree murder, as well as arson for the attack on Monday. He will remain in custody until his next court appearance on Friday.

Wearing a white jumpsuit over a black hooded sweatshirt, Mr Zapeta did not speak when he was formally charged in court on Tuesday.

The suspect’s attorney did not speak to reporters after the arraignment.

Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch described Sunday’s incident 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 in Brooklyn when she was approached by a man who used a lighter to ignite her clothing – which became “fully engulfed in a matter of seconds”.

Although officers extinguished the flames, the victim died at the scene.

Officials say they have police body camera footage and surveillance footage from inside the subway as well as witness statements.

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

The victim was “motionless” when she was set on fire, but detectives were still establishing whether or not she was asleep. “We’re not 100% sure,” said the NYPD’s Joseph Gulotta.

There was no interaction between the pair before the attack, Mr Gulotta said, adding that police did not believe they knew each other.

Describing how police were alerted to the incident, Ms Tisch said: “Officers were on patrol on an upper level of that station, smelled and saw smoke and went to investigate”.

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

An immigration official said that Mr Zapeta entered the US illegally in 2018 and was detained and deported. The official said he subsequently unlawfully re-entered the US.

The man got off the train as police officers on patrol in the station rushed to the fire, but he did not flee immediately.

“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 said.

She explained that police were therefore able to obtain “very clear, detailed” pictures of him from the responding officers’ body worn cameras. The images were circulated by the New York Police Department (NYPD).

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

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

He was arrested at Herald Square station – which is located near the Empire State Building in Manhattan. He was found with a lighter in his pocket, Ms Tisch 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.”