Azerbaijan Airlines says the preliminary results of an investigation into the crash of its plane in Kazakhstan on 25 December have blamed “physical and technical external interference”.

Thirty-eight people died when the Embraer jet came down at high speed, bursting into flames 3km (1.9 miles) short of the runway at Aktau airport.

The plane had originally tried to land at Grozny airport in southern Russia, but witnesses have spoken of an explosion before it was diverted across the Caspian Sea to Kazakhstan.

The head of Russia’s civil aviation agency said on Friday that the situation in the Chechen capital was “very complicated” and that a closed-skies protocol had been put in place.

“Ukrainian combat drones were launching terrorist attacks on civilian infrastructure in the cities of Grozny and Vladikavkaz,” said Dmitry Yadrov, head of Rosaviatsia, in a video statement posted on Russia’s Tass news agency.

“Because of this a ‘Carpet plan’ was introduced in the area of Grozny airport, providing for the immediate departure of all aircraft from the specified area,” he said. “In addition, there was dense fog in the area of Grozny airport.”

Azerbaijan Airlines did not detail the physical and technical interference, and the government in Baku has avoided directly accusing Russia, possibly to avoid antagonising President Vladimir Putin.

However, aviation experts and pro-government media in Azerbaijan believe the plane was damaged by shrapnel from Russian air-defence missile explosion.

“These are missile fragments that damaged the hydraulic system. The plane’s controls operate based on hydraulics,” veteran Azerbaijani pilot veteran pilot Tahir Agaguliev told Azerbaijani media.

Flight attendant Zulfuqar Asadov who was among 29 survivors on the crashed plane told local media that the plane was “hit by some kind of external strike”.

“The impact of it caused panic inside. We tried to calm them down, to get them seated. At that moment, there was another strike, and my arm was injured.”

In a social media post, Azerbaijan Airlines said it was suspending flights to seven Russian cities in response to the crash “for security reasons”.

It had already halted flights to Grozny and Makhachkala in neighbouring Dagestan, but has now added the cities of Sochi, Volgograd, Ufa, Samara and Mineralnye Vody.

Israel’s flagship airline, El Al, has meanwhile suspended all flights to Moscow, citing developments in Russian airspace.

Ukrainian presidential spokesman Andriy Yermak has said Russia must be held responsible for the crash.

The Kremlin has refused to comment on reports that the Azerbaijan Airlines plane was hit by Russian air defence.

“An investigation into this aviation incident is underway and until the conclusions are made as a result of the investigation, we do not consider ourselves entitled to give any assessments,” said spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

Vigils have been held in Azerbaijan to honour the pilots, who are credited with saving lives by managing to land part of the plane, despite themselves being killed in the crash.

Kazakh authorities have been treating the injured and working closely with Azerbaijan on the investigation. However, they have refused to give details of their crash investigation.

Reports in Baku suggest both Russia and Kazakhstan proposed having a committee from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) – a regional organisation dominated by Russia – investigate the crash, but Azerbaijan had instead demanded an international inquiry rather than one involving former Soviet countries.

A Nasa spacecraft has made history by surviving the closest-ever approach to the Sun.

Scientists received a signal from the Parker Solar Probe just before midnight EST on Thursday (05:00 GMT on Friday) after it had been out of communication for several days during its burning-hot fly-by.

Nasa said the probe was “safe” and operating normally after it passed just 3.8 million miles (6.1 million km) from the solar surface.

The probe plunged into our star’s outer atmosphere on Christmas Eve, enduring brutal temperatures and extreme radiation in a quest to better our understanding of how the Sun works.

Nasa then waited nervously for a signal, which had been expected at 05:00 GMT on 28 December.

Moving at up to 430,000 mph (692,000 kph), the spacecraft endured temperatures of up to 1,800F (980C), according to the Nasa website.

“This close-up study of the Sun allows Parker Solar Probe to take measurements that help scientists better understand how material in this region gets heated to millions of degrees, trace the origin of the solar wind (a continuous flow of material escaping the Sun), and discover how energetic particles are accelerated to near light speed,” the agency said.

Dr Nicola Fox, head of science at Nasa, previously told BBC News: “For centuries, people have studied the Sun, but you don’t experience the atmosphere of a place until you actually go [and] 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 had already swept past the Sun 21 times, getting ever nearer, but the Christmas Eve visit was record-breaking.

At its closest approach, the probe was 3.8 million miles (6.1 million km) from our star’s surface.

That might not sound that close, but Dr Fox put 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 4cm from the Sun – so that’s close.”

The probe endured temperatures of 1,400C and radiation that could have frazzled the on-board electronics.

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

In fact, it moved 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 came from the immense gravitational pull it felt as it fell towards the Sun.

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

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

“The corona is really, really hot, and we have no idea why,” explained 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 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,” said Dr Millard.

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

Dr Fox had been expecting the team to text her a green heart to let her know the probe was OK as soon as a signal was beamed back home.

She previously admitted she was nervous about the audacious attempt, but had 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.”

Nato has said it will enhance its military presence in the Baltic Sea, and Estonia has sent a patrol ship to protect its Estlink1 undersea power cable, after Russia was accused of sabotaging its main power link in the Gulf of Finland.

A ship named as Eagle S is suspected of damaging the Estlink 2 cable and Finnish coast guard crew have boarded the oil tanker and steered it into Finnish waters.

The EU said the Eagle S was part of “Russia’s shadow fleet” and the failure of the undersea cable was the “latest in a series of suspected attacks on critical infrastructure”.

Estonian Defence Minister Hanno Pevkur said the Raju had set sail early on Friday and he believed Finland would join the operation to protect the remaining cable.

He told Estonian public radio that the Raju’s task was “to ensure that nothing happens there and that our critical connection with Finland remains operational”.

The Kremlin has declined to comment on the damage to the cable, describing it as a “very narrow issue” and not an issue for the Russian presidency.

Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte said on social media that he had spoken to Finland’s president, Alexander Stubb, adding that Nato would boost its presence in the Baltic. A further statement by the alliance said only that “Nato remains vigilant and is working to provide further support”.

Finland and Estonia are both Nato members and Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal told public TV that, if necessary, they would invoke Article 4 of the Nato Treaty, which involves consultation if any member state feels threatened.

“Our wish would be to receive reinforcements from Nato in the form of a fleet to act as a deterrent,” he was quoted as saying by news agency BNS.

Estonia’s power supply has been dramatically reduced after its 170km (105-mile) Estlink 2 cable was shut down.

In its initial assessment on Thursday, Finland’s Fingrid company said repairs to the cable could last until the end of July 2025.

The damage to Estlink 2 is the third incident in little more than a month in the Baltic Sea.

Last month, two data cables were severed: the Arelion cable between the Swedish island of Gotland and Lithuania on 17 November, and then the C-Lion 1 cable was damaged between the Finnish capital, Helsinki, and the German port of Rostock.

A Chinese ship, the Yi Peng 3, was suspected of dragging its anchor over the cables in a separate act of Russian sabotage.

In October 2023, another Chinese ship ruptured an undersea gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia.

The Yi Peng 3 and Eagle S are both suspected of being part of a so-called shadow fleet of oil tankers that Russia is using to avoid Western sanctions imposed since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The EU said it was working on measures including sanctions to target “Russia’s shadow fleet, which threatens security and the environment”.

After several weeks at anchor in the Kattegat strait between Sweden and Denmark, the Chinese tanker was eventually boarded by authorities from Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Finland, but then set sail last week.

By contrast, Finnish authorities said they had boarded the Cook Islands-registered Eagle S in the early hours of Thursday and it was escorted towards the Finnish coast off Porkkala, across the Gulf of Finland from Tallinn.

“Our patrol vessel travelled to the area and could determine visually that the vessel’s anchor was missing,” said Markku Hassinen, deputy head of the Finnish Border Guard, told a news conference.

The Estonian prime minister sought to reassure Estonians on Thursday that they would continue to have secure power supplies.

The two main power companies, Elering and Eesti Energia, had various reserve and back-up power plants, he told reporters.

However, he added that it was impossible to protect every square metre of the seabed at all times.

A man who killed dozens by driving his car into people exercising outside a stadium in southern China has been sentenced to death.

Fan Weiqiu was accused of “endangering public safety”, according to a court statement.

At least 35 people were killed and dozens more injured in the 11 November attack in Zhuhai, thought to be the deadliest on Chinese soil for a decade.

According to the court, the 62-year-old decided to drive his car into the crowds on a running track at high speed because he was “dissatisfied” with how his property had been divided following his divorce.

The court described his motive as “extremely vile” and “the methods” as “particularly cruel”. One witness told Caixin news magazine he had driven “in a loop” leaving victims “hurt in all areas of the running track” – a popular location for people to exercise.

Fan – who was initially reported to be in a coma, having sustained self-inflicted knife wounds – admitted his guilt in front of victims’ families and members of the public, Chinese media reported.

The attack was one of 19 targeting strangers to take place across China this year – including two within a week of the Zhuhai attack.

Not all have involved vehicles. In February, a mass stabbing and firearms attack in Shandong in February left at least 21 people dead. That incident was heavily censored by Chinese authorities.

In total, at least 63 people have been killed and 166 injured in these attacks. This is a sharp increase on previous years – 16 killed and 40 injured in 2023, for instance.

Some have suggested the increase in random attacks could point towards a general increase in frustration and anger as the economy slows and uncertainty over the future grows.

“These are symptoms of a society with a lot of pent-up grievances,” Lynette Ong, professor of Chinese politics at the University of Toronto in Canada, told AFP news agency in November.

South Korea has voted to impeach its acting president Han Duck-soo, two weeks after parliament voted to impeach its President Yoon Suk Yeol.

A total of 192 lawmakers voted for his impeachment, more than the 151 votes needed for it to succeed.

Prime minister Han took over the role after President Yoon was impeached by parliament following his failed attempt to impose martial law on 3 December.

Han was supposed to lead the country out of its political turmoil, but opposition MPs argued that he was refusing demands to complete Yoon’s impeachment process.

Chaos erupted in parliament as the vote was held on Friday.

Lawmakers from Yoon and Han’s ruling People Power Party (PPP) protested after National Assembly speaker Woo Won-shik announced that only 151 votes would be needed to pass the impeachment bill.

This meant that, unlike the 200 votes required for Yoon’s impeachment, no votes from ruling lawmakers would be needed this time for Han to be impeached in parliament.

Ruling party MPs gathered in the middle of the voting chamber chanting, “invalid!” and “abuse of power!” in response, and called for the Speaker to step down. Most of them boycotted the vote.

Han will be suspended from his duties as soon as he is officially notified by parliament.

The opposition first filed an impeachment motion against Han on Thursday after he blocked the appointment of three judges that parliament had chosen to oversee Yoon’s case.

Korea’s Constitutional Court is typically made up of a nine-member bench. At least six judges must uphold Yoon’s impeachment in order for the decision to be upheld.

There are currently only six judges on the bench, meaning a single rejection would save Yoon from being removed.

The opposition had hoped the three additional nominees would help improve the odds of Yoon getting impeached.

This is the first time an acting president has been impeached since South Korea became a democracy.

Finance minister Choi Sang-mok is set to replace Han as acting president.

Like Yoon, Han’s impeachment will need to be confirmed by the constitutional court, which has 180 days to rule on whether the impeachment should be upheld.

“I respect the decision of the National Assembly,” Han said Friday, adding that he “will wait for the Constitutional Court’s decision.”

He also said that he would suspend his duties to “not add to the chaos”.

On 3 December, Yoon took the country by surprise as he declared that he was imposing martial law, citing the need to protect the country from “anti-state” forces.

Hours later he reversed the order after 190 MPs voted it down, with many of them climbing fences and breaking barricades to get into the voting chamber.

Yoon later apologised but said he had sought to protect the country’s democracy.

Since then, Yoon and his allies have been dogged by the political and legal repercussions of the short-lived martial law order.

Top officials from Yoon’s government have been arrested and indicted on allegations of insurrection, while Yoon is facing an impeachment trial. However, the suspended president, who is banned from leaving the country, has been defying summons from investigating authorities.

On Friday, the Korean won plunged to its lowest level against the dollar since the global financial crisis 16 years ago – with both parties blaming each other for the chaos.

Han’s removal will likely intensify the political gridlock and uncertainty the country is currently grappling with.

One of northern Gaza’s last functioning hospitals has been forcibly evacuated by the Israeli military, medics say, after dozens of people were reportedly killed in Israeli strikes targeting the area around the healthcare facility.

Eid Sabbah, head of the nursing department at Kamal Adwan hospital, told the BBC that at about 07:00 on Friday, the military gave the administration 15 minutes to evacuate patients and staff into its courtyard.

Israeli troops subsequently entered the hospital and were removing the remaining patients, he said.

The Israeli military said on Friday afternoon that it was carrying out an operation in the area of the hospital, which it called a “Hamas terrorist stronghold”.

Israeli troops had “facilitated the secure evacuation of civilians, patients and medical personnel” from the hospital before beginning the operation, it added.

The military did not say where the patients would be moved. But earlier in the week, an Israeli official said that they intended to relocate those at Kamal Adwan hospital to the nearby Indonesian hospital, which was itself evacuated by the military on Tuesday.

“It’s dangerous because there are patients in the ICU department in a coma and in need of ventilation machines and moving them will put them in danger,” Dr Sabbah said.

“If the army intends to continue removing these patients, they will need specialised vehicles.”

It comes hours after the director of Kamal Adwan hospital said that approximately 50 people had been killed, including five medical staff, in a series of Israeli air strikes targeting the vicinity of the hospital.

The statement from Dr Hussam Abu Safiya said a building opposite the hospital was targeted by Israeli warplanes, leading to the death of a paediatrician and a lab technician, as well as their families.

He said a third staff member who worked as a maintenance technician was targeted and killed as he rushed to the scene of the first strike.

Two of the hospital’s paramedics were 500m (1,640ft) away from the hospital when they were targeted and killed by another strike, the statement continued, with their bodies remaining in the street with no-one able to reach them.

The Israeli military said on Friday morning that it was “unaware of strikes in the area of Kamal Adwan hospital” and was looking into the reports that staff had been killed.

Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia has been under a tightening Israeli blockade imposed on parts of northern Gaza since October, when the military said it had launched an offensive to stop Hamas from regrouping there.

The UN has said the area is under a “near-total siege” as the Israeli military heavy restricts access of aid deliveries to an area where an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 people remain.

In recent days, the hospital’s administrators have issued desperate pleas appealing to be protected, as they say the facility has become regularly the target of Israeli shelling and explosives.

Oxfam said that attempts by aid agencies to deliver supplies to the area since October had been unsuccessful because of “deliberate delays and systematic obstructions” by the Israeli military.

An Italian journalist has been under arrest in Iran for more than a week, Italy’s foreign ministry has said.

Cecilia Sala works for Il Foglio newspaper and for podcast company Chora Media.

The foreign ministry said it was following Ms Sala’s case with “utmost attention” since she was detained by Tehran police on 19 December.

There was no immediate confirmation of the arrest by Iranian officials.

Chora Media said in a separate statement that Ms Sala was being held in solitary confinement at the Evin prison in Tehran and that no reason had been given for her detention.

Italy’s foreign ministry revealed that Rome’s ambassador in Tehran, Paola Amadei, had visited her to check on her detention conditions, adding that she had been allowed to make two phone calls to her family.

It also said Italy “has been working with Iranian authorities to clarify Cecilia Sala’s legal situation”.

Italy’s Defence Minister Giudo Crosetto said that her arrest was “unacceptable” in a post on social media, adding that Italy was using “high-level political and diplomatic action” to try to secure her release.

According to Chora Media, Ms Sala left Rome for Iran on 12 December with a valid journalist visa and had carried out several interviews, producing three episodes of her “Stories” podcast.

It added that she had been due to fly back to Rome on 20 December, but her phone went “silent” after she exchanged a few messages on 19 December.

The last three episodes of Ms Sala’s Stories podcast, which has nearly 700 episodes and tens of thousands of ratings on Spotify, heard from a female comedian, a former military commander and a young woman who has rejected conservative values.

In the days leading up to her arrest, Ms Sala had been active on social media, posting about her interview subjects and general photos around Tehran.

Sala’s other employer, Il Foglio, has called for her release, saying “journalism is not a crime”.

“Cecilia was in Iran, with a regular visa, to report on a country she knows and loves, a country in which information is suffocated by repression,” the newspaper said in a statement on its website.

Last week, Iran summoned the Swiss ambassador in Tehran and a senior Italian diplomat over the arrest of two Iranian nationals, Reuters reported, citing Iranian media.

Nigeria has denied accusations from Niger’s military leader, Brig Gen Abdourahmane Tchiani, of colluding with France to destabilise the junta-led nation.

In a Christmas Day interview, Gen Tchiani accused France of allying with militant groups in the Lake Chad region to undermine Niger’s security, allegedly with Nigeria’s knowledge.

“Nigerian authorities are not unaware of this underhanded move,” Gen Tchiani was quoted as saying by AFP.

In response, Nigeria’s National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, told BBC Hausa that the allegations were “baseless” and “false”.

Mr Ribadu said Nigeria would never “sabotage Niger or allow any disaster to befall it”.

Nigeria’s Information Minister, Mohammed Idris, said the allegations were unfounded and a “diversionary tactic aimed at covering his administration’s failures”.

• How has Niger changed since the coup?
• Ecowas in crisis: Why West Africa’s united front is in tatters

“These claims exist solely in the realm of imagination. Nigeria has never engaged in any alliance, overt or covert, with France — or any other country — to destabilise Niger Republic,” Idris said.

Idris also denied sabotaging Niger’s pipeline and agriculture, which it was accused of.

Gen Tchiani’s allegations have worsened diplomatic tensions with Nigeria, already strained since the 2023 military coup that ousted ex-president Mohamed Bazoum.

West Africa’s regional bloc, Ecowas, led by Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu, imposed economic sanctions on Niger and threatened military intervention if constitutional order was not restored.

Ecowas came to Nigeria’s defence in a statement on Thursday refuting the claims.

“For years, Nigeria has supported peace and security of several countries not only in the West African subregion but also on the African continent,” the regional bloc said in a statement shared on Thursday.

“Ecowas therefore refutes any suggestion that such a generous and magnanimous country would become a state sponsor of terrorism,” it read.

Two weeks ago, Ecowas approved the withdrawal of three military-led countries, including Niger, after they refused to restore democratic rule.

Since the coup, Niger has urged France and other Western powers to withdraw their military bases and formed a security alliance with junta-led neighbours Mali and Burkina Faso.

• Why does France have military bases in Africa?
• How a uranium mine became a pawn in the row between Niger and France
• Why young Africans are celebrating military takeovers

China has approved the construction of what will be the world’s largest hydropower dam, stoking concerns about displacement of communities in Tibet and environmental impacts downstream in India and Bangladesh.

The dam, which will be located in the lower reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo river, could generate three times more energy than the Three Gorges Dam, currently the world’s largest hydropower plant.

Chinese state media has described the development as “a safe project that prioritises ecological protection”, saying it will boost local prosperity and contribute to Beijing’s climate neutrality goals.

Human rights groups and experts, however, have raised concerns about the development’s knock-on effects.

Among them are fears that the construction of the dam – first announced in late-2020 – could displace local communities, as well as significantly alter the natural landscape and damage local ecosystems, which are among the richest and most diverse on the Tibetan Plateau.

China has built several dams in Tibetan areas – a contentious subject in a region tightly controlled by Beijing ever since it was annexed in the 1950s.

Activists have previously told the BBC that the dams are the latest example of Beijing’s exploitation of Tibetans and their land. Mainly-Buddhist Tibet has seen waves of crackdowns over the years, in which thousands are believed to have been killed.

Earlier this year, the Chinese government rounded up hundreds of Tibetans who had been protesting against another hydropower dam. It ended in arrests and beatings, with some people seriously injured, the BBC learned through sources and verified footage.

They had been opposing plans to build the Gangtuo dam and hydropower plant, which would displace several villages and submerge ancient monasteries with sacred relics. Bejing, however, said it had relocated and compensated locals, and moved the anicent murals to safety.

In the case of the Yarlung Tsangpo dam, Chinese authorities have stressed that the project would not have major environmental impact – but they have not indicated how many people it would displace. The Three Gorges hydropower dam required the resettlement of 1.4 million people.

Reports indicate that the colossal development would require at least four 20km-long tunnels to be drilled through the Namcha Barwa mountain, diverting the flow of the Yarlung Tsangpo, Tibet’s longest river.

Experts and officials have also flagged concerns that the dam would empower China to control or divert the flow of the trans-border river, which flows south into India’s Arunachal Pradesh and Assam states and onwards into Bangladesh.

A 2020 report published by the Lowy Institute, an Australian-based think tank, noted that “control over these rivers [in the Tibetan Plateau] effectively gives China a chokehold on India’s economy”.

Shortly after China announced its plans for the Yarlung Tsangpo dam project in 2020, a senior Indian government official told Reuters that India’s government was exploring the development of a large hydropower dam and reservoir “to mitigate the adverse impact of the Chinese dam projects”.

China’s foreign ministry has previously responded to India’s concerns around the proposed dam, saying in 2020 that China has a “legitimate right” to dam the river and has considered downstream impacts.

China has constructed multiple hydropower stations along the course of the Yarlung Tsangpo over the past decade in a bid to harness the river’s power as a source of renewable energy. Flowing through the deepest canyon on Earth, one section of the river falls 2,000 metres within a short span of just 50 km, offering huge potential for generating hydropower.

The river’s dramatic topography, however, also poses major engineering challenges – and this latest dam is by far China’s largest and most ambitious to date.

The site of the development is located along an earthquake-prone tectonic plate boundary. Chinese researchers have also previously flagged concerns that such extensive excavation and construction in the steep and narrow gorge would increase the frequency of landslides.

“Earthquake-induced landslides and mud-rock flows are often uncontrollable and will also pose a huge threat to the project,” a senior engineer from Sichuan provincial geological bureau said in 2022.

The project could cost as much as a trillion yuan ($127bn; £109.3bn) according to estimates by the Chongyi Water Resources bureau.

At least 69 people, including 25 Malians, have died after a boat bound for Spain from West Africa capsized off Morocco, Mali’s authorities have confirmed.

The “makeshift boat” was carrying about 80 people, but only 11 people survived, said a statement from the Ministry of Malians Abroad. At least nine of the survivors are from Mali.

The boat capsized last week, but the ministry confirmed the incident on Thursday.

A crisis unit has been dispatched to monitor the situation, it said.

Mali has suffered years of jihadist and separatist violence – resulting in military coups in 2020 and 2021.

The junta promised to hold elections to return to civilian rule by March 2024, but this has not happened yet.

The instability in the country, due to widespread jihadist insurgency, has made much of the north and east ungovernable.

Unemployment and the effects of climate change on farming have also forced many to seek greener pastures in Europe.

But the crossing is perilous.

According to a Spanish rights charity, Caminando Fronteras, more than 10,000 people have died attempting to reach Spain by boat from Africa this year, making it one of the world’s most dangerous migrant routes.

The organisation found there was an average of 30 deaths a day.

The migration route, which spans from the Atlantic coasts of Mauritania and Morocco to Spain, is regarded as one of the most dangerous in the world.

Many of those taking this dangerous route come from sub-Saharan Africa, escaping poverty and conflict in their home countries.

Morocco is just eight nautical miles (14km) from Spain’s mainland at its closest point.

• Did coups in Mali and Burkina Faso halt jihadist attacks?
• Why West Africa’s united front is in tatters
• Why young Africans are celebrating military takeovers

An injured North Korean soldier captured by Ukrainian forces has died, Yonhap News Agency has reported, citing a statement from South Korea’s spy agency.

The soldier is believed to be the first North Korean prisoner of war captured since Pyongyang deployed forces to support Russia’s war in Ukraine.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said it had confirmed through an “allied intelligence agency” that the soldier had died from “serious injuries”, Yonhap reported.

North Korea has sent more than 10,000 soldiers to help Russia, according to Kyiv and Seoul – though Moscow and Pyongyang have neither confirmed nor denied their presence.

The spy agency earlier confirmed that Ukrainian forces had captured the soldier after a photo purporting to show the man had been circulating on Telegram.

“This is the first in a string of captures and killings,” Yang Uk, a research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, told the BBC. “For Ukrainians, it’s more beneficial to capture these North Korean troops and try to exchange them with Russians for Ukrainian prisoners of war.”

Recent images emerging from the Russia-Ukraine war confirmed speculations that “North Korean troops will be deployed in large numbers to the assault by Russian command”, Mr Yang said.

He also added, however, that “it will be challenging to prove their North Korean nationality”.

Ukrainian forces say that North Korean soldiers have been issued with fake Russian IDs, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted footage last week which he said showed Russian troops burning the faces of slain North Koreans to conceal their identities.

Ukrainian and South Korean intelligence services have said that many of the troops deployed to Russia are some of Pyongyang’s best, drawn from the 11th Corps, also known as the Storm Corps. The unit is trained in infiltration, infrastructure sabotage and assassinations.

More than 3,000 North Korean troops have died or been wounded while fighting in Russia’s Kursk region, Zelensky said Monday.

He added that the collaboration between Moscow and Pyongyang heightened the “risk of destabilisation” around the Korean peninsula.

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The recent deployment of North Korean troops to Russia is a sign of a growing alliance between the two pariah states.

The development, which comes as North Korea ratchets up tensions with South Korea, has sparked worries in the West. China, a long-standing ally of both sides, is also keeping a cautious eye on the friendship.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has paid tribute to his younger brother Nick, who had cancer, after he died on Boxing Day at the age of 60.

“My brother Nick was a wonderful man,” Starmer said in a statement.

“He met all the challenges life threw at him with courage and good humour. We will miss him very much.”

It is understood Starmer had been planning to go on holiday but will now stay behind.

“I would like to thank all those who treated and took care of Nick,” Starmer added.

“Their skill and compassion is very much appreciated.”

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch expressed her condolences to the Labour leader.

“This is such awful news. Particularly devastating at Christmas time,” she wrote on X.

Nick Starmer had learning disabilities from complications during birth and struggled to hold down a steady job.

In a biography of the prime minister published this year, Keir Starmer opened up about his relationship with his brother and the difficulties he faced during his childhood.

“I’m not sure he even sat exams, so he had nothing to show for coming out of education,” Starmer told author Tom Baldwin. He said his brother was bullied and was often called “thick” or “stupid” at school.

“Nick was dealt a very different set of cards to me and he’s had problems all his life – problems I’ve never had to face,” Starmer said.

In his speech to the Labour Party conference in September, he said their father had often told him that “your brother has achieved just as much as you, Keir”.

It was around 23:00 on a Tuesday night when – out of nowhere – South Korea’s president Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law in the Asian democracy for the first time in nearly 50 years.

Explaining his decision, he mentioned “anti-state forces” and the threat from North Korea. But it soon became clear that it had not been spurred by external threats but by his own desperate political troubles.

The law was voted down just hours later – but it set in motion a string of events that have led to a state of political chaos in South Korea.

• The president’s gamble backfired: What was he thinking?
• Woman who grabbed South Korean soldier’s gun speaks to BBC
• How two hours of martial law chaos unfolded

On 3 December, the country was stunned when Yoon said he was imposing martial law to protect the country from “anti-state” forces that sympathised with North Korea.

South Korean politicians immediately called Yoon’s declaration illegal and unconstitutional. The leader of his own party, the conservative People’s Power Party, also called Yoon’s act “the wrong move”.

Meanwhile, the leader of the country’s largest opposition party, Lee Jae-myung of the liberal Democratic Party (DP) called on his MPs to converge on parliament to vote down the declaration.

He also called on ordinary South Koreans to show up at parliament in protest.

Thousands heeded the call, rushing to gather outside the now heavily guarded parliament. Protesters chanted “no martial law” and “strike down dictatorship”.

And lawmakers were also able to make their way around the barricades – even climbing fences to make it to the voting chamber.

Shortly after 01:00 on Wednesday, South Korea’s parliament, with 190 of its 300 members present, voted down the measure. President Yoon’s declaration of martial law was ruled invalid.

The last time martial law was declared in South Korea was in 1979, when the country’s then long-term military dictator Park Chung-hee was assassinated during a coup.

It has never been invoked since the country became a parliamentary democracy in 1987.

But why did he do it?

Yoon was relegated to a lame duck president and reduced to vetoing bills passed by the opposition, a tactic that he used with “unprecedented frequency”, said Celeste Arrington, director of The George Washington University Institute for Korean Studies.

Then on the week on 3 December, the opposition slashed the budget the government and ruling party had put forward.

Around the same time, the opposition was moving to impeach cabinet members, mainly the head of the government audit agency, for failing to investigate the president’s wife.

With political challenges pushing his back against the wall, Yoon went for the nuclear option – pressing the red button of martial law.

The response came quickly – tens of thousands of protesters called for Yoon to be impeached, with polls saying three-quarters of South Koreans wanted to see him go.

Opposition lawmakers quickly filed a motion for him to be impeached – which went to parliament.

Opposition members make up 192 seats of Korea’s 300 seat parliament – so they needed eight members of the ruling party to vote in favour of impeachment, in order to reach the 200 votes needed to pass the motion.

But members of Yoon’s People Power Party (PPP) boycotted the vote – walking out of parliament in protest.

But the opposition was undeterred. They said they would keep filing motions for Yoon to be impeached until they succeeded.

And just a week after – on 14 December, they did.

Some of Yoon’s own PPP voted with the opposition – giving them the 200 votes needed.

The country’s Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, was named as the acting president – and took over Yoon’s duties.

But now he too has been impeached – the first time an acting president has been impeached in South Korea since it became a democracy.

At the heart of the issue is Yoon’s impeachment.

Korea’s Constitutional Court is typically made up of a nine-member bench. At least six judges must uphold Yoon’s impeachment in order for the decision to be upheld.

There are currently only six judges on the bench, meaning a single rejection would save Yoon from being removed.

The opposition had hoped to get three additional nominees on the bench, something that would help improve the odds of Yoon getting impeached.

But earlier this week, Han blocked the appointment of the three judges – leading the opposition to file an impeachment motion against him, saying that he was refusing demands to complete Yoon’s impeachment process.

And unlike the 200 votes required for Yoon’s impeachment, only 151 votes are needed to pass an impeachment bill against the acting president – meaning the opposition did not need the ruling party’s support to do so.

On Friday, a total of 192 lawmakers voted for Han’s impeachment.

He will be suspended from his duties as soon as he is officially notified by parliament.

It’s hard to say.

Finance minister Choi Sang-mok is set to replace Han as acting president, and has pledged to do all he can to end the country’s political turmoil.

“Minimising governmental turmoil is of utmost importance at this moment,” Choi said in an address shortly after his appointment, adding that “the government will also dedicate all its efforts to overcoming this period of turmoil”.

But it’s unclear if the opposition might move to impeach Choi, if they deem him to be uncooperative.

The markets have also reacted to the news. On Friday, the Korean won plunged to its lowest level against the dollar since the global financial crisis 16 years ago.

What lies ahead for Yoon’s presidency, his party’s rule and what happens next in one of the world’s most important economies however, are still questions that remain unanswered.

Ticking is the predominant sound inside Bala Muhammad’s tiny watch-repair shop, tucked away on a bustling street in the northern Nigerian city of Kaduna.

It is like a time capsule from a different era with numerous clocks hanging on the wall and small tables at the entrance full of his tools and watches in various states of repair.

His shop is on one of Kaduna’s busiest shopping streets – sandwiched between building material suppliers.

Until a few years ago, he had a steady stream of customers dropping by to get their watches fixed or get a new battery fitted.

“There were times I get more than 100 wristwatch-repair jobs in a day,” the 68-year-old, popularly known as Baba Bala, told the BBC.

But he worries that his skills – taught to him and his brother by their father – will die out.

“Some days there are zero customers,” he says, blaming people using their mobile phones to check the time for the decline in his trade.

“Phones and technology have taken away the only job I know and it makes me very sad.”

But for more than 50 years, the boom in watches allowed the family to make a good living.

“I built my house and educated my children all from the proceeds of wristwatch repairing,” he says.

His father would travel all over West Africa for six months at a time – from Senegal to Sierra Leone – fixing timepieces.

At one stage Baba Bala was based in the capital, Abuja, where many of the country’s elite live – and he made a good living tending to the watches of the wealthy.

He reckons his best customers were top officials of the state-owned oil firm Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC).

Some had Rolexes – these can vary wildly in price but an average one costs around $10,000 (£8,000).

He says they are beautiful – and encapsulate his love for all watches from Switzerland. He himself owns a Longines, another prestigious Swiss brand, which he only removes when he sleeps.

“If I step out of my house and I forgot it, I have to go back for it. I will not be without it – that is how important it is to me.”

At his shop, he keeps a beautiful big framed photo of his father, Abdullahi Bala Isah, taken as he looked up from his work bench a few years before his death in 1988.

Isah was a renowned horologist and his contacts in Freetown and Dakar would call him to take a trip when they had enough watches for him to tend to.

He would also make regular visits to Ibadan, a metropolis in the south-west of Nigeria – a literary hub and home to the country’s first university.

Baba Bala says no-one in the family knows where his father learnt his expertise – but it would have been at the time of British colonial rule.

He himself was born four years before Nigeria’s independence in 1960.

“My father was a popular wristwatch repairer and his skill took him to many places. He taught me when I was young and I am proud to have followed his footsteps.”

Baba Bala started taking a close interest in understanding the intricacies of what the wheels and levers inside a watch do when he was 10 – and was delighted to discover that as he got older it became a good source of pocket money.

“When my fellow students were broke in secondary school, I had money to spend at the time because I was already repairing wristwatches.”

He remembers his skill even impressed one of his teachers: “He had issues with some of his wristwatches and had taken them to several places and they couldn’t do them. When he was told about me I was able to fix all three of the watches by next day.”

At one point, watches were seen as important as clothes in Nigeria and many people felt lost without one.

Kaduna used to have a dedicated area where many watch-sellers and repairers set up their businesses.

“The place has been demolished and is now empty,” say Baba Bala mournfully, adding that most of his colleagues are either dead or have given up on the business.

One of those who admitted defeat was Isa Sani.

“Going to my repair shop daily meant sitting down and getting no work – that’s why I decided to stop going in 2019,” the 65-year-old told the BBC.

“I have land and my children help me to farm on it – that is how I am able to get by these days.”

He laments: “I don’t think wristwatches will ever make a comeback.”

The youngsters working at the building supply shops next to Baba Bala agree.

Faisal Abdulkarim and Yusuf Yusha’u, both aged 18, have never owned watches as they have never seen a need for them.

“I can check the time on my phone whenever I want to and it’s always with me,” one said.

Dr Umar Abdulmajid, a communications lecturer at Yusuf Maitama University in Kano, believes things may change.

“Conventional wristwatches are no doubt dying and with it jobs like wristwatch repairs too, but with the smartwatch I think they could make a comeback.

“The fact a smartwatch can do much more than just show you the time means it could continue to attract people.”

He suggests old watch-repairers learn how to grapple with this new technology: “If you don’t move with the times you get left behind.”

But Baba Bala, who returned from Abuja to Kaduna to set up his shop about 20 years ago as he wanted to be nearer his growing family, says this does not interest him.

“This is what I love doing, I consider myself a doctor for sick wristwatches – plus I am not getting any younger.”

His tight-knit family remain loyal to his profession – his wife and all his five children wear watches and often pop in to visit him at the shop, where some of the timepieces on display are forgotten relics from old customers.

“Some brought them many years ago and didn’t return for them,” he says.

But Baba Bala refuses to give up and still opens up daily – his eldest daughter, who runs a successful clothes boutique nearby, helps him with bills when his business is slow.

Without much to keep him busy – or the chatter and gossip of his customers, Baba Bala says he now often listens to his radio for company, enjoying the Hausa language programmes on the BBC World Service.

In the afternoon his youngest son, Al-Ameen, comes to visit after school – the only one of his children to show an interest in learning the art of watch-repairing. But he would not encourage him to take it up as a profession.

He is pleased that the 12-year-old has told him he wants to be a pilot – continuing the family tradition of seeing more of the world.

In a cockpit, he would be faced with many watch-like dials – not unlike his dad’s workshop.

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Israel’s war on multiple fronts has not just worn down its enemy. It’s not just taken the lives of thousands of civilians in Gaza and Lebanon. It’s also continuing to extract a price from its own people.

There’s a growing sense of war weariness in Israel. The recent ceasefire deal with Lebanon will be a relief for many. Not least for Noam Glukhovsky – an IDF reservist, who’s spent much of the past year serving on the front line as a medic.

We spoke to Noam, 33, in Tel Aviv before the ceasefire was announced. “We can’t keep doing this war for much longer. We just don’t have the manpower to keep going on without a clear end date and goal,” he said.

As an IDF reservist Noam would normally expect to do a few weeks of military service a year. But this past year he’s spent 250 days in uniform. The war, he said, had ripped him away from the life he knew. His plans to become a doctor have also been set back by a year.

When we meet Noam was trying to catch up with his studies, but also waiting to see whether he’d be called up again. His mood was defiant.

“I can’t put my life on hold anymore,” he said. Unless there was a dramatic change in the direction of the war, he said he wouldn’t be returning to his unit. He’d had enough.

The IDF already acknowledges that fewer reserves are now reporting for duty. After the attacks by Hamas on 7 October last year, which killed about 1,200 people, more than 300,000 reservists responded. Turnout exceeded 100%. Now it’s down to 85%. Noam estimates that in his unit the response is even lower – with around 60% of those called up now reporting for duty.

Reserves and conscripts are the lifeblood of the IDF. Brigadier General Ariel Heimann – also a reservist and a former chief reserve officer – says Israel is too small a country to have a large, expensive, professional, regular army. Without reservists, he says, the IDF wouldn’t be able to fight or survive.

According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the IDF has 170,000 active duty personnel, including conscripts, and 465,000 reserves.

Brig Gen Heimann admits the IDF’s reliance on reserves will become more challenging the longer the war goes on. He likened the IDF to a spring – if it’s stretched too far it’ll break. At the moment he says it’s coping.

But in a sign of the strain the IDF wants to extend mandatory service for male conscripts from 32 to 36 months.

The fact that the burden of service is not being shared by all, has also fuelled a sense of resentment. One group has been exempt from military service for decades – thousands of Haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, Jews. They believe the lives of their young men should be dedicated to religious studies not military service.

The issue has already divided Israel’s coalition government. But, following the intervention of the attorney general, call up papers are being sent to 7,000 Haredi Jewish men. They’ve responded with angry protests. But Brig Gen Heimann, like the ousted former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, says they have a “moral duty to serve”.

There’s not just a personal sacrifice required, but an economic one too.

The Bank of Israel said in May that the cost of the war for Israel could reach $70bn (£55bn) by the end of next year, an estimate made before the country’s ground invasion of Lebanon. Small businesses are among the hardest hit.

Shelly Lotan’s food tech start-up is among many fighting for survival. Shelly’s already had to move her business from northern Israel to avoid Hezbollah’s rockets. Two of her seven employees have been called up for military service.

On the morning we meet, at her Tel Aviv home, Shelly has just received more bad news. She’s received a text from one of her staff whose military service is being extended.

“I just can’t express how critical it is to have another employee missing for another month,” says Shelly.

“I cannot even hire someone else or solve this gap.”

Shelly’s also had to juggle family life with three young children. Her husband, also a reservist, has had to spend long periods away from home.

A ceasefire in Lebanon may ease some of the pressure. But there’s still fighting in Gaza. Shelly Lotan fears for the future without a clear strategy from Israel’s government to end the conflict.

“I think the war should have ended by now,” she says.

People in India are reflecting on former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s contribution to the country since his death on Thursday evening.

Singh, who held the top post for two consecutive terms between 2004 and 2014, was seen as an architect of India’s economic liberalisation which changed the country’s growth trajectory.

The first prime minister since Jawaharlal Nehru to return to power, Singh was also the first Sikh to assume the top office.

Known as a soft-spoken technocrat, he had earlier headed India’s central bank, served as a finance secretary and minister, and led the opposition in the upper house of parliament.

Here are five milestones from Singh’s life that shaped his career and had a lasting impact on more than a billion Indians.

Singh was appointed finance minister in 1991 by the Congress party-led government under Prime Minister PV Narsimha Rao.

India’s economy at the time was facing a serious financial crisis, with the country’s foreign reserves at a dangerously low level, barely enough to pay for two weeks of imports.

Singh led the initiative to deregulate the economy to avoid its collapse, which he argued was otherwise imminent. Despite stiff opposition from members of his government and party, Singh prevailed.

He took bold measures that included devaluing the currency, reducing import tariffs and privatising state-owned companies.

He was famously quoted as saying in parliament during his first budget speech in 1991 that “no power on Earth can stop an idea whose time has come”.

Later, as prime minister, Singh continued to build on his economic reform measures, lifting millions of Indians out of poverty and contributing to India’s rise as one of the world’s fastest-growing major economies.

The Congress party made a comeback in 2004 elections, handing a surprise defeat to the government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Congress chief Sonia Gandhi was widely expected to head the government, but many members of the outgoing ruling party raised questions over the fact that she was born in Italy. She declined to take up the post and instead proposed Singh’s name, who was seen as a non-controversial, consensus candidate of great personal integrity.

In the next parliamentary election, he helped his party win a bigger mandate, but critics often termed him a “remote-controlled” prime minister managed by the Gandhi family.

Singh often refused to comment on such allegations and kept his focus on the job.

He may have started his first stint as prime minister with some reluctance but he soon stamped his authority on the top job.

Singh’s tenure, particularly between 2004 and 2009, saw the country’s GDP grow at a healthy average pace of around 8%, the second fastest among major economies.

He took bold decisions on reforms and brought more foreign investment into the country. Experts credit him for shielding India from the 2008 global financial crisis.

But his second term, in an alliance with a disparate group of parties, was marked by allegations of corruption against some of his cabinet ministers, though his personal integrity was never questioned.

In response to these allegations, he told journalists in 2014 in his last press conference as prime minister that he hoped history would judge him differently.

“I honestly believe that history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media, or for that matter, the opposition parties in parliament,” he said.

“I think taking into account the circumstances and the compulsions of a coalition polity, I have done as best as I could do under the circumstances.”

As prime minister, Singh took several far-reaching decisions that continue to impact the health of Indian democracy even today.

He introduced new laws that strengthened and guaranteed the right to seek information from the government, allowing citizens an extraordinary power to hold officials accountable.

He also introduced a rural employment scheme which guaranteed livelihood for a minimum of 100 days, a measure economists said had a profound impact on rural incomes and poverty reduction.

He also brought in a law that guaranteed the right to free and compulsory education for children between the ages of 6 and 14, significantly reducing the school dropout rates.

His government also introduced a unique identity project called Aadhar to improve financial inclusion and delivery of welfare benefits to the poor. The current federal government, run by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has continued to keep Aadhar as a cornerstone for many of its policies.

In 1984, prime minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards to avenge a military action she had ordered against separatists hiding in Sikhism’s holiest temple in northern India’s Amritsar.

Her death sparked massive violence that resulted in the death of more than 3,000 Sikhs and a widespread destruction of their property.

Singh formally apologised to the nation in 2005 in parliament, saying the violence were “the negation of the concept of nationhood enshrined in our constitution”.

“I have no hesitation in apologising to the Sikh community. I apologise not only to the Sikh community, but to the whole Indian nation,” he said.

No other prime minister, particularly from the Congress party, had gone this far to apologise in parliament for the riots.

Singh signed a historic deal with the US in 2008 to end India’s nuclear isolation after its 1998 testing of the weapon system.

His government argued that the deal wouldhelp meet India’s growing energy needs and sustain its healthy growth rate.

The deal, seen as a watershed moment in the India-US relations, promised to grant a waiver to India to commence civilian nuclear trade with the US and the rest of the world.

But it faced massive opposition, with critics of the deal alleging that it would compromise India’s sovereignty and independence in foreign policy. In protest, the Left Front withdrew support from the governing alliance.

Singh, however, managed to save both his government and the deal.

A woman dances in the spotlight, the glittering tassels on her dress shivering and swaying in tandem with her moves.

But it’s her arms that catch the light; they wave, spin and whip through the air at breath-taking speed, almost like the blades of a fan.

These are the opening visuals of a recently released web series on Amazon Prime Video called Waack Girls, a drama centred around six women who learn a new dance form to become their city’s first all-female waacking crew.

Not many know about the dance and so the women have to fight hard – against society and their families – to be taken seriously. But waacking ends up being the gift that keeps on giving.

Directed by Sooni Taraporevala, the series has been released at a time when many Indian cities – big and small – are witnessing a renewed interest in waacking.

“I was fascinated by the dance style and the importance it gives to self-expression,” says Taraporevala about why she made the series.

Workshops and underground waacking jams – events where dancers battle it out with their moves – are mushrooming in several cities and international waacking legends are visiting the country to teach the dance.

Recently, Archie Burnett, who was a club dancer in New York in the 1970s and 80s and is a respected figure in the waacking community, visited India for a jam.

Dancers hope that the web series will give waacking more visibility in the country and show people that there’s more to dance than classical forms, hip-hop and Bollywood.

Waacking has a history steeped in the LGBTQ+ liberation movement and the freedom championed by disco music.

The dance style emerged in the gay clubs of Los Angeles in the 1970s, when there was a lot of stigma surrounding homosexuality. Gay men used waacking to express themselves on the dance floor and push back against the hate and discrimination they experienced.

Consequently, the dance style developed swift, sharp and forceful movements – much like how action heroes in comic books beat up their villains, accompanied by sound-effects like “ka-pow” and “bam”.

“Waacking comes from the onomatopoeic word ‘whack’ and is reminiscent of [the effects] found in comic books,” says Tejasvi Patil, a Mumbai-based dancer who has been waacking for more than a decade.

The dance style also drew inspiration from the drama of Hollywood and its glamorous leading ladies. Dramatic poses, quick footwork and striking arm movements are characteristic of waacking but dancers have continued to add new moves to the repertoire of steps, as celebrating individuality and self-expression are at the heart of the form.

And because of its core ethos, waacking continues to be a tool of empowerment and self-expression for India’s LGBTQ+ community.

“In fact, many people explore their sexual identity through the dance style because it allows space for introspection and expression,” says Ayushi Amrute, who has been waacking since 2012 and is a frequent host of Red Bull’s Your House Is Waack – a waacking jam for dancers across the country.

“Another important factor is that the waacking community always strives to be a safe space, so that people feel comfortable expressing themselves,” she adds.

When Amrute was introduced to waacking by her dance teacher, the style was virtually unknown in India. Her teacher encouraged her to watch videos and reach out to dancers abroad to learn more about the style.

“We [the handful of Indian dancers who began waacking over a decade ago] learnt waacking the hard way; by doing our own research, learning about the history of the dance and connecting with dancers in countries where waacking was popular,” says Amrute.

Patil remembers learning waacking the same way. But things are remarkably different today. In the past five years or so, the dance style has picked up in popularity, with more youngsters flocking to classes to learn it.

Patil, who teaches dance, says that she encourages her students to stay true to the ethos of the style – unabashed self-expression.

When it comes to music, India is still finding its soundscape for the style, she adds. Songs by disco queen Donna Summer and American pop legend Diana Ross are still popular, as are tracks from the 1983 film Staying Alive.

Bollywood had its own disco era too, with songs like Koi Yahan Nache Nache and Aap Jaisa Koi becoming chart-toppers in the 1980s, but they don’t often find space in today’s waacking jams.

For Waack Girls, Taraporevala brought in indie artists to create an album of original soundtracks, which Patil says has created a brand new and promising soundscape for waackers in India.

“I think the time is right for people to embrace who they are fully,” says Patil, “and waacking is the perfect platform to showcase what you find.”

Billionaire Elon Musk has hailed Twitter as a bastion for freedom of expression ever since he acquired the social media site two years ago. But over the course of 2024, X, as it is now called, has evolved from what felt like a communal town square into a polarised hub where views and posts seem even more controversial.

​​Certain profiles that have shared misleading takes on politics and the news, some of which have been accused of triggering hate, have recently shot to prominence.

All of this matters because X might not have as many users as some other major social media sites, but it does seem to have a significant impact on political discussions. Not only is it a place where certain high-profile politicians, governments and police forces share statements and views – but now its owner Mr Musk has directly aligned himself with Donald Trump, a relationship that could redefine how the bosses of other social media giants deal with the next US President.

So, what’s behind this new wave of change? Has there been a shift in the demographic of people using X over the last year – or could it be the result of deliberate decisions made by those in charge?

Two months ago, Inevitable West didn’t exist on X. Now the profile, which calls itself a “Defender of Western values and culture”, has amassed 131,600 followers (a number that is rapidly growing). It is racking up around 30 million views each day collectively among all of its posts, according to its creator. Mr Musk has even responded to Inevitable West’s posts on X.

Their recent posts, which often feature news alert-style captions, include a faked video showing Trump telling the British Prime Minister he is going to “invade your country and make Britain Great Again”.

There have also been several posts in support of far-right activist Tommy Robinson, as well as some debunked claims about the farmer’s protests in the UK and a knife attack in Southport, in which three children were killed during a Taylor Swift-themed dance workshop.

​​Inevitable West denies accusations of pushing disinformation and inciting abuse or violence. “The purpose of my X account is to be the voice for the silent majority of the Western world,” its creator told me. They refused to share their identity with me when we corresponded, but claim to be “Gen Z” and “not Russian”.

“Uncensored information and opinions will inevitably lead [to] the US and entire West and Europe moving further right, [which is] proven by Donald Trump getting elected and surges in Europe’s far right,” they argued. “Globally, it would mean corrupt politicians and leaders would get found out.”

They appear to see the rise of their account as the “death” of what they would call the “MSM” or Mainstream Media. That’s perhaps no surprise given that, following the US Election, Mr Musk himself told X users: “You are the Media Now”.

When Mr Musk first acquired Twitter, he emphasised the need to house all political opinions and push back against censorship by social media companies and governments.

Changes – including mass layoffs and alterations to moderation policies on issues like political misinformation – started immediately.

There have also been various alterations to the nature of feeds including the creation of two separate sections: “Following”, which features accounts you follow, and “For You”, which is algorithmically curated, as on TikTok.

Over the course of 2024, however, there have been another wave of alterations that appear to have transformed it further. The block function has been changed, meaning that if you block an account you won’t be protected from that profile viewing what you post. Likes, meanwhile, have been made private.

The site still features crowd-sourced community notes used to factcheck or rebuff what posts say – and users are able to pay for blue ticks, which were previously given free of charge as a sign authenticating that the person was who they said they were.

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Now, though, it is necessary to pay to subscribe to X Premium to receive a checkmark. (There are three tiers of subscription – in the UK, the Premium Tier currently costs around £10 a month).

Premium profiles are entitled to more privileges and prominence – and can make money from the engagement they get from other checkmarked profiles. From October, X changed its rules so that instead of basing revenue for individual accounts around ads, it now takes into account likes, shares and comments from other Premium accounts.

Of course other social media sites allow users to make money from posts and let them share sponsored content – this is not uncommon – but most major sites have rules that allow them to de-monetise or suspend profiles that post misinformation.

X does not have rules to de-monetise accounts over these kinds of posts, although it does allow users to add community notes to misleading or false tweets. And it does not allow “misleading media” like manipulated or synthetic videos that “may result in widespread confusion on public issues, impact public safety or cause serious harm”.

According to Inevitable West, X can now become a job. They told me when they were posting around seven times a day they could accrue a minimum of “$2,500 a month”.

They say they know of another account making “$25,000” each month – that account allegedly has 500,000 followers and posts “roughly 30” times a day.

Change can sometimes come about when a website alters the algorithms (or recommendation systems) in some way, for example in order to boost and benefit certain posts. What’s unclear is whether or not that may be the case here?

Certainly, I’ve observed a difference in the variety of posts recommended on the “For You” feed compared with that a year ago.

This is something I analysed through an “Undercover Voter project”, in which I created and ran social media accounts belonging to more than 20 fictional characters, based in the US and UK, which reflect views from across the political spectrum.

These characters have profiles on the main sites including X, allowing me to interrogate what different accounts were recommended on social media. The accounts are private and do not message real people or have friends.

Regardless of the different political views their accounts express, I observed that in the last six months of this year their feeds have become dominated by divisive posts, and tend to feature more in support of Trump or in opposition to politicians and people across the world who are not seen to be aligned with the US president elect.

However, all of this seems to be the consequence of the environment and the various changes to the wider site, rather than solely a simple tweak to the algorithm.

Andrew Kaung, who was previously an analyst on user safety at TikTok and has also worked at Meta, has spent years observing how these recommendation systems can be updated and changed. “What we’ve seen on X is not just about algorithms changing, it is also informed by the lack of safety mechanisms in the name of free speech,” he says.

Nina Jankowicz is former Executive Director on the Disinformation Governance Board of the United States, which was set up in 2022 to advise the Department of Homeland Security on issues including Russian disinformation and later disbanded after public backlash over concerns including around freedom of expression and transparency. She argues that X’s algorithms now “privilege divisive and misleading rhetoric” and suggests that users who post less controversial content have found a reduction in the views.

“The consequence is that the platform that touts itself as a public square is an extraordinarily artificial environment, a true black mirror of the most worrying parts of human nature.”

I messaged dozens of other large accounts, who describe the growing influence they’re able to have on the site, often unexpectedly.

“I never really intended to become an influencer,” admits one profile called Andi, who says he’s based in New York. “But I figure since I have this platform I should try to use it to advance my own causes.”

He describes how he shared a meme of squirrel – after learning about a squirrel that was euthanised over concerns it could have rabies – which now has 45 million views. Andi compares his reach to that of popular podcaster Joe Rogan, who has 14.5 million followers on X.

“But I am no Joe Rogan, so it’s really special that something I post can get almost as much viewership.”

Andi and other X accounts I’ve corresponded with believe that the changes to X are a good thing, as they now have a reach they could have never anticipated.

​​Earlier this month, an attack at a German market, which killed five people and injured more than 200, was widely debated on X. Much of the discussion centred around the suspect, a German resident originally from Saudi Arabia. German prosecutors have said the investigation is ongoing, but suggested one potential motive for the attack “could have been disgruntlement with the way Saudi Arabian refugees are treated in Germany”.

Inevitable West was among those who commented: “Raid the mosques. Ban the Quran. Carry out mass deportations. Our patience has officially expired.”

​​The account has been accused of inflaming hate with posts about issues including immigration and religion. Other users said this could incite violence. But the profile responded by saying that they were “actually inciting safety”.

When questioned on this, Inevitable West told me that they’d say the same about other religions. Separately, they also said they would never delete their own posts – even when they turn out to be untrue.

Meanwhile, their content is being seen by feeds around the world.

Allegations of bias in moderation methods have long been levelled at Twitter, both before and since Mr Musk acquired the company, alongside questions about whether the site previously limited freedom of expression.

I spoke to Twitter insiders about this for a Panorama investigation which aired in 2023, and they told me that, in their view, the company was going to struggle to protect users from trolling, state-coordinated disinformation and child sexual exploitation, putting this down to, among other things, mass layoffs.

At the time, X did not respond to the points raised. Afterwards, Mr Musk tweeted a BBC article about the Panorama episode with the caption: “Sorry for turning Twitter from nurturing paradise into a place that has… trolls”. He also declared, “trolls are kinda fun”.

Separately, Mr Musk had said he had “no choice” but to reduce the company’s workforce because of financial losses.

Lisa Jennings Young, former head of content design at X who worked there until 2022, says: “I feel like we’re all living through a vast social experiment [on humanity].”

It doesn’t have a specified goal, she says. Instead, in her view, it is “not a controlled social science experiment [but one] we’re all a part of”. No one really knows what the final result could be, she argues.

Some X users tell me that they have recently decided to migrate to other social media platforms, including Bluesky, which started in 2019 as an experimental “de-centralised” social media site created by former Twitter boss Jack Dorsey. It now has more than 20 million users.

It is difficult to determine exactly how many real users have chosen to leave X – or indeed if it has grown.

Elon Musk and X did not respond to the points raised in this article, nor to requests for an interview.

X says that its priority is to protect and defend the user’s voice and it has guidelines about hate, which say that users “may not target others with abuse or harassment or encourage other people to do so”.

An X spokesperson previously told the BBC: “X has in place a range of policies and features to protect the conversation surrounding elections. We will label content that violates our synthetic and manipulated media policy, and remove accounts engaged in platform manipulation or other serious violations of our rules.”

The site also told the European Commission in November: “[X] strives to be the town square of the internet by promoting and protecting freedom of expression.”

Since the 2024 US presidential election, X has cemented its place as the home of political updates about the new Trump administration.

Mr Musk endorsed Trump as a candidate as far back as July. He has now been offered a government position, leading a new advisory team called the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge).

Sam Freeman, a former Meta employee who now works as an expert in Trust and Safety for a company called Cinder, believes that this will have a broader effect on other social media bosses too. He predicts them “needing to have a more personal relationship with the incoming administration”, particularly if they feel increasing pressure over regulation and online safety.

Mark Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook (now Meta) and has since acquired Instagram, recently had dinner with Trump at his home in Mar-a-Lago.

The President-elect had taken aim at Mr Zuckerberg on previously occasions, accusing his website and others of bias. “Facebook, Google and Twitter, not to mention the Corrupt Media, are sooo on the side of the Radical Left Democrats,” Trump once wrote.

Could the dinner indicate a softening of relations? Certainly it suggests that Mr Zuckerberg considers that being at least somewhat in close proximity to Trump could be in his interest.

So, it seems, does TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, who was also reported to have met Trump at Mar-a-Lago as the social media company fights plans by US authorities to ban the app.

The US government claims TikTok’s parent company ByteDance has links to the Chinese state. Both TikTok and ByteDance deny this. The Supreme Court is due to hear legal arguments from TikTok in January.

In the the UK, the Online Safety Act will soon be enforced, under which companies will have to make commitments to the regulator Ofcom about how they will tackle illegal content and posts that are harmful to children. In Australia, politicians have gone a step further and approved plans to ban children under 16 from using social media.

Ultimately though – given how many social media giants are based in the US – it is the approach of the American government and president that could have the greatest impact.

“I see Trump’s feelings towards a platform dictating the way his administration views them,” argues Mr Freeman.

The question that remains is what Trump’s views on this really are – and whether he will demand accountability in a different way from these sites in the future, or not at all.

The ramifications, whichever way it goes, will no doubt be far-reaching.

In the vineyards of Bordeaux, the unspeakable has become the drinkable. Wine without alcohol has arrived.

The heresy of yesterday is now – thanks to science and economic crisis – the opportunity of today.

Wine estates which would have torched their grapes rather than submit to such ignominy, are now openly contemplating the booze-free bottle.

And developers are moving ahead fast, creating wines that are deliberately designed to get the best from the de-alcoholisation process.

“When we started a few years ago, what we were making was frankly rubbish,” says Bordeaux oenologist Frédéric Brochet, who has helped create the Moderato range of no-alcohol wines.

“But we have made great progress. And today we are getting nearer and nearer to our goal. I think it is going to be a revolution in the wine world.”

Bordeaux has just seen the launch of its first ever – wine shop – dedicated solely to no-alcohol wines, reflecting a shift in perceptions which has taken many in the industry by surprise.

“We only opened four weeks ago, and already we are getting wine-growers from the area coming in and asking about the non-alcohol market,” says Alexandre Kettaneh, who owns Les Belles Grappes with his wife Anne.

“They don’t know anything about how to do it, but they can see it is coming and want to be part of it.”

Several things have happened to make the moment opportune.

First of all, the French wine world is in deep difficulty. Domestic consumption continues to fall and the Chinese market is not what it was. US President-elect Donald Trump is threatening new levies. Prized ancient vineyards across France are being grubbed up.

Second, consumption habits are shifting, especially among the young. Supermarkets now give more space to beer than they do to wine. Most 20-somethings have never had the habit of wine – and they are also far more health-conscious than their elders.

The non-alcohol lifestyle is spreading. Currently 10% of the French beer market is alcohol-free. In Spain it is 25%.

And third – the technology has improved by leaps and bounds.

In the past – and still today for cheaper brands – the method has simply been to boil away the alcohol and then add compensatory flavours. The result – especially for reds – is at best mediocre. Such drinks cannot even call themselves wine, but “beverages based on de-alcoholised wine”.

Now though, there are new methods of low-temperature vacuum distillation, and of “capturing” aromas for putting back into the de-alcoholised wine. The result is wines that can legally call themselves wines, and are beginning to hold their own among discerning consumers.

“With reds, you need to be prepared for an experience which will not be the same as a traditional wine with alcohol. We cannot pretend we can replicate, yet, the full mouth-feel,” says Fabien Marchand-Cassagne of Moderato.

“But what you will get is a genuine wine moment. Bouquet, tannins, fruits, balance – it is all there to be enjoyed.”

At the Clos De Bouard estate near Saint-Emilion, fully a third of sales are now of the chateau’s two – soon to be three – non-alcoholic brands. Owner Coralie de Bouard first glimpsed the possibilities when she was asked in 2019 to develop a non-alcoholic wine for the Qatari owners of PSG football club.

“My family wouldn’t talk to me for a year, such was my ‘treason’. And even today I get hate mail from wine-growers saying I am ruining the market,” she says.

“But now my father congratulates me and says I am the locomotive in the wine train. And if we are surviving today in these difficult times, it is because we have shifted towards the no-alcohol market.”

“For the purists it’s been very difficult to accept,” says Bernard Rabouy, a wine-grower for the Bordeaux Families cooperative.

“But we have to evolve. The fact is that the customers aren’t where they used to be. So we have to go and get them or they will go somewhere else.”

Promoters of alcohol-free wine make much of the notion that it allows non-drinkers – who used to feel excluded – to join in the wine-banter. And it is true that the rituals of opening, sniffing, describing and comparing are now open to all.

“What we want to do is try to bring back the France of our youth – when everyone sat around the dinner table and drank wine, and it was a real moment of sharing,” says Anne Kattaneh.

“And these days the only way we are going to be able to do that is if non-alcoholic wines are part of the culture.”

“The idea that the wine world was always as it is now, is rubbish,” says oenologist Brochet.

“Things evolve. Once upon a time the barrel was an innovation. The cork was an innovation; grape varietals were an innovation. And now this is a new one – which could help save the industry and the wonderful landscape and culture that goes with it.

“As [poet] Paul Valery said – what is tradition, but an innovation that succeeded?”

A Palestinian TV channel says five of its journalists have been killed in an Israeli strike in the central Gaza Strip.

They were in a Quds Today van parked outside al-Awda hospital, where the wife of one of the journalists was about to give birth, in the central Nuseirat refugee camp.

The channel posted a video of what it said was the burning vehicle with “press” signage on the back doors.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had targeted “Islamic Jihad operatives posing as journalists” and that steps were taken to avoid harming civilians.

The BBC has not been able to verify claims made by either side, with international media being prevented by Israel from entering and freely working on the ground in Gaza.

Quds Today is affiliated with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), an armed group that took part in the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel. The unprecedented attack triggered the war in Gaza. The TV channel is believed to receive funding from the group.

In a separate development, the director of the Kamal Adwan hospital on the northern edge of Gaza said on Thursday about 50 people, including five of its staff, had been killed in an Israeli strike on a building by the hospital. A paediatrician and two paramedics were among them.

The IDF said it was “unaware of strikes” in the hospital area, adding that it was looking into claims that five doctors had been killed.

“The number of casualties reported in the media does not align with the information held by the IDF,” it said.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said it was “devastated by the reports” of five journalists being killed in the central Gaza Strip.

“Journalists are civilians and must always be protected,” it said.

The Israeli military named the five killed as Ibrahim Jamal Ibrahim Al-Sheikh Ali; Faisal Abdallah Muhammad Abu Qamsan; Mohammed Ayad Khamis al-Ladaa; Ayman Nihad Abd Alrahman Jadi; and Fadi Ihab Muhammad Ramadan Hassouna.

It said “intelligence from multiple sources confirmed” that all were PIJ operatives, and that a list found during an operation in Gaza “explicitly identified four” of them as such.

In a statement, Quds Today said the men “were killed as they carried out their media and humanitarian duty”.

As of 20 December, at least 133 Palestinian journalists have been killed during the course of the war, making it the deadliest conflict for journalists, according to the CPJ.

The press freedom organisation has called for accountability for Palestinian journalists who have been directly targeted by the Israeli military.

At least another five people were also reported killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza City on Wednesday.

The Palestinian Wafa news agency, and the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, also said a further 20 people were injured in the city’s al-Zeitoun neighbourhood.

The Israeli military has not commented on the reported bombing.

Meanwhile, the father of a two-week-old Palestinian girl has told the BBC how his baby daughter froze to death in a tent in Gaza – the third child in a week to die in similar conditions.

Mahmoud Ismail Al-Faseeh said he woke up in the severe cold to find his daughter, Sila, suffering convulsions. She was rushed to hospital but died from hypothermia, the head of paediatrics at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis told the Associated Press news agency.

The family was sheltering in al-Mawasi area on Gaza’s coast, a strip of land designated by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as a humanitarian zone but which has been hit by air strikes.

Ahmed al-Farra, the head of paediatrics, said two other babies – one three days old and the other a month old – had been brought in over the past 48 hours after dying from hypothermia.

Hopes of progress towards a ceasefire in recent days have begun to recede, with Hamas and Israel blaming each other.

Hamas accused the Israeli government of imposing “new conditions” that it said were delaying the agreement.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the group was reneging on understandings that had already been reached about a possible ceasefire.

The latest statements mark a notable change of tone on both sides following optimistic signals.

The Israeli military launched air strikes and a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip in response to last year’s Hamas attack. About 1,200 people were killed in the attack and another 251 taken back to Gaza as hostages.

More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s offensive, Gaza’s health ministry says. Almost two million people – 90% of the population – have been displaced, according to the UN.

Two people taking part in Australia’s annual Sydney to Hobart yacht race have died in separate incidents, according to police.

Both crew members died in separate incidents after being hit by a boom – the large pole attached horizontally to the bottom of a sail.

The event’s organisers said the incidents happened on the Flying Fish Arctos and Bowline.

The first boats are expected to arrive in the city of Hobart, in Tasmania, later on Friday or early on Saturday. Several have already retired due to bad weather.

New South Wales (NSW) police said the first incident was reported to officers just before midnight on Thursday local time (12:50 GMT) by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority in the country’s capital, Canberra.

Just over two hours later, at 02:15 on Friday, NSW police were told that crew aboard the second boat were giving CPR to the second person, which also had not worked.

Flying Fish Arctos had been sailing approximately 30 nautical miles east/south-east of the NSW town of Ulladulla, the organisers said.

Bowline, meanwhile, was approximately 30 nautical miles east/north-east of the town of Batemans Bay, also in NSW.

“Our thoughts are with the crews, family and friends of the deceased,” the organisers said in a statement.

“The Sydney to Hobart is an Australian tradition, and it is heart-breaking that two lives have been lost at what should be a time of joy,” said Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

The race, which began on Thursday, has continued.

It is not the first time there have been fatalities during the race, which was first held in 1945.

Six people, including British Olympic yachtsman Glyn Charles, died in 1998 after raging storms hit competitors.

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) and other UN staff were at Yemen’s international airport in Sanaa on Thursday during Israeli air strikes which are reported to have killed at least six people.

WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said they were about to board a plane when the attacks began.

Houthi-run Saba news agency said three people were killed at the airport and 30 injured. It said another three people were killed and 10 wounded in the western Hodeidah province.

The Iran-backed rebel group described the attacks – which also hit power stations and ports – as “barbaric”. Israel’s military said it carried out “intelligence-based strikes on military targets”.

It is unclear whether the fatalities were civilians or Houthi rebels.

In a statement on X, Dr Tedros said he was in Yemen “to negotiate the release of UN staff detainees and to assess the health and humanitarian situation” in the country. He provided no further details about who the UN detainees were.

Referring to the strikes on Sanaa’s airport, he said: “The air traffic control tower, the departure lounge – just a few meters from where we were – and the runway were damaged.

“We will need to wait for the damage to the airport to be repaired before we can leave,” Dr Tedros added.

UN Secretary General António Guterres called the strikes “especially alarming”.

“I regret the recent escalation between Yemen and Israel, and remain deeply concerned about the risk of further escalation in the region.” he wrote on X.

In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said its “fighter jets conducted intelligence-based strikes on military targets belonging to the Houthi terrorist regime on the western coast and inland Yemen”.

It targeted “military infrastructure” at Sanaa’s airport as well as the Hezyaz and Ras Kanatib power stations, and sites in the Al-Hudaydah, Salif and Ras Kanatib ports on the west coast, the IDF said.

In comments shortly after the strikes, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it would “continue to cut off the terror arm of the Iranian axis of evil until we complete the job”, adding “we are only just starting with [the Houthis]”.

Early on Friday, the IDF reported that one missile fired from Yemen was intercepted before crossing into Israeli territory.

Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, head of the Houthis’ supreme revolutionary committee, called Thursday’s strikes on Yemen “barbaric” and “aggressive”.

He said that “confrontations with American and Israeli arrogance” will continue until the conflict in Gaza stops.

Several people injured by the strikes at the airport in Sanaa told Houthi-run broadcaster Al Masirah that the runway was struck three times before the airport’s control tower was also hit.

One man, who identified himself as Dr Abbas Rajeh, said the police hospital he works in treated 10 patients after the attacks – one had already died, another was in critical condition, and others had minor injuries or broken bones.

Iran described the strikes as a “clear violation of international peace and security”.

Houthi rebels have been attacking Israel since the first months of the Gaza war, which began in October 2023.

A Houthi missile strike injured more than a dozen people in Israel last week.

Israel has carried out intermittent strikes against Houthis in retaliation.

Earlier this week, Israel’s defence minister said the country was preparing to “strike hard” at the Houthis, warning it would “decapitate” the group’s leadership.

The Houthis are an armed political and religious group backed by Iran. The group has ruled large parts of western Yemen, including the capital Sanaa, since ousting the internationally recognised government in 2015.

Winter winds in the US have delivered deadly surf conditions to western states and reports of tornadoes to Texas, as parts of the US faced severe weather over the holidays.

With waves as high as 30ft (9.1m) in some areas of California, the US National Weather Service issued a high surf advisory for the US West Coast through Sunday and cautioned inexperienced surfers and swimmers to stay out of the water.

The weather is blamed for multiple injuries and at least one death after a man was found under debris on the coast. The public was told to be vigilant and to “never turn your back on the ocean”.

Meanwhile, storms across parts of Texas prompted tornado sightings and flight delays on Thursday.

On the West Coast, the NWS warned of possibly “life threatening conditions” for swimmers as storms continued to rock the California coast.

“Stay off jetties, piers, and other waterside infrastructure,” the National Weather Service warned in a release on Thursday.

California has faced days of dangerous surf conditions.

A wharf in Santa Cruz, California, collapsed after it was struck by strong waves earlier this week.

In a separate incident, the Marina Police Department responded to reports that an adult man had been swept out to sea on Monday. Rescue officials were forced to call off an air and sea search due to dangerous conditions.

Farther up the Pacific Coast, the US states of Washington and Oregon are also under heavy surf advisories until Friday afternoon.

Down in Texas, the winter winds brought reports of tornadoes.

Jimmy George, the emergency management coordinator for El Campo, Texas, told the BBC that a tornado touched down near his small town of 12,000 people that sits about an hour outside of Houston.

Mr George saw the tornado at a distance while on a highway, he said, and locals had reported additional sightings of the same weather event.

There were no injuries reported but three barns in the area were damaged, said Russell McDougall, an emergency official in Wharton County, Texas.

Local media reported a second tornado in the area, but the BBC was not able to independently verify this.

The National Weather Service had warned residents in the Houston area and parts of southeast Texas of the potential for thunderstorms and tornadoes. An NWS spokesperson could not immediately verify the El Campo tornado, as such reports can take several days to officially confirm.

More than 100 flights were delayed at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport due to weather, the AP reported.

The storm system was expected to pass by Thursday night.

The US East Coast, meanwhile, continued to enjoy a snow-dusted Christmas.

New York City experienced its first so-called “white Christmas” – when more than an inch of powder is recorded on the ground – since 2009.

While snow caused minor travel woes for some on the roadways, it was not the main trouble for Morris County, New Jersey – a suburban area outside near Manhattan.

Drivers there faced a large sinkhole that opened up next to the I-80 highway in Morris County, which prompted traffic delays.

Azerbaijan Airlines says the preliminary results of an investigation into the crash of its plane in Kazakhstan on 25 December have blamed “physical and technical external interference”.

Thirty-eight people died when the Embraer jet came down at high speed, bursting into flames 3km (1.9 miles) short of the runway at Aktau airport.

The plane had originally tried to land at Grozny airport in southern Russia, but witnesses have spoken of an explosion before it was diverted across the Caspian Sea to Kazakhstan.

The head of Russia’s civil aviation agency said on Friday that the situation in the Chechen capital was “very complicated” and that a closed-skies protocol had been put in place.

“Ukrainian combat drones were launching terrorist attacks on civilian infrastructure in the cities of Grozny and Vladikavkaz,” said Dmitry Yadrov, head of Rosaviatsia, in a video statement posted on Russia’s Tass news agency.

“Because of this a ‘Carpet plan’ was introduced in the area of Grozny airport, providing for the immediate departure of all aircraft from the specified area,” he said. “In addition, there was dense fog in the area of Grozny airport.”

Azerbaijan Airlines did not detail the physical and technical interference, and the government in Baku has avoided directly accusing Russia, possibly to avoid antagonising President Vladimir Putin.

However, aviation experts and pro-government media in Azerbaijan believe the plane was damaged by shrapnel from Russian air-defence missile explosion.

“These are missile fragments that damaged the hydraulic system. The plane’s controls operate based on hydraulics,” veteran Azerbaijani pilot veteran pilot Tahir Agaguliev told Azerbaijani media.

Flight attendant Zulfuqar Asadov who was among 29 survivors on the crashed plane told local media that the plane was “hit by some kind of external strike”.

“The impact of it caused panic inside. We tried to calm them down, to get them seated. At that moment, there was another strike, and my arm was injured.”

In a social media post, Azerbaijan Airlines said it was suspending flights to seven Russian cities in response to the crash “for security reasons”.

It had already halted flights to Grozny and Makhachkala in neighbouring Dagestan, but has now added the cities of Sochi, Volgograd, Ufa, Samara and Mineralnye Vody.

Israel’s flagship airline, El Al, has meanwhile suspended all flights to Moscow, citing developments in Russian airspace.

Ukrainian presidential spokesman Andriy Yermak has said Russia must be held responsible for the crash.

The Kremlin has refused to comment on reports that the Azerbaijan Airlines plane was hit by Russian air defence.

“An investigation into this aviation incident is underway and until the conclusions are made as a result of the investigation, we do not consider ourselves entitled to give any assessments,” said spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

Vigils have been held in Azerbaijan to honour the pilots, who are credited with saving lives by managing to land part of the plane, despite themselves being killed in the crash.

Kazakh authorities have been treating the injured and working closely with Azerbaijan on the investigation. However, they have refused to give details of their crash investigation.

Reports in Baku suggest both Russia and Kazakhstan proposed having a committee from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) – a regional organisation dominated by Russia – investigate the crash, but Azerbaijan had instead demanded an international inquiry rather than one involving former Soviet countries.

Former Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh has died at the age of 92.

Singh was one of India’s longest-serving prime ministers and he was considered the architect of key liberalising economic reforms, as premier from 2004-2014 and before that as finance minister.

He had been admitted to a hospital in the capital Delhi after his health condition deteriorated, reports say.

Among those who paid tribute to Singh on Thursday were Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who wrote on social media that “India mourns the loss of one of its most distinguished leaders”.

Modi said that Singh’s “wisdom and humility were always visible” during their interactions and that he had “made extensive efforts to improve people’s lives” during his time as prime minister.

Priyanka Gandhi, the daughter of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and a Congress party member, said that Singh was “genuinely egalitarian, wise, strong-willed and courageous until the end”.

Her brother Rahul, who leads Congress, said he had “lost a mentor and guide”.

Singh was the first Indian leader since Jawaharlal Nehru to be re-elected after serving a full first term, and the first Sikh to hold the country’s top post. He made a public apology in parliament for the 1984 riots in which some 3,000 Sikhs were killed.

But his second term in office was marred by a string of corruption allegations that dogged his administration. The scandals, many say, were partially responsible for his Congress party’s crushing defeat in the 2014 general election.

Singh was born on 26 September 1932, in a desolate village in the Punjab province of undivided India, which lacked both water and electricity.

After attending Panjab University he took a master’s degree at the University of Cambridge and then a DPhil at Oxford.

While studying at Cambridge, the lack of funds bothered Singh, his daughter, Daman Singh, wrote in a book on her parents.

“His tuition and living expenses came to about £600 a year. The Panjab University scholarship gave him about £160. For the rest he had to depend on his father. Manmohan was careful to live very stingily. Subsidised meals in the dining hall were relatively cheap at two shillings sixpence.”

Daman Singh remembered her father as “completely helpless about the house and could neither boil an egg, nor switch on the television”.

Singh rose to political prominence as India’s finance minister in 1991, taking over as the country was plunging into bankruptcy.

His unexpected appointment capped a long and illustrious career as an academic and civil servant – he served as an economic adviser to the government, and became the governor of India’s central bank.

In his maiden speech as finance minister he famously quoted Victor Hugo, saying that “no power on Earth can stop an idea whose time has come”.

That served as a launchpad for an ambitious and unprecedented economic reform programme: he cut taxes, devalued the rupee, privatised state-run companies and encouraged foreign investment.

The economy revived, industry picked up, inflation was checked and growth rates remained consistently high in the 1990s.

Manmohan Singh was a man acutely aware of his lack of a political base. “It is nice to be a statesman, but in order to be a statesman in a democracy you first have to win elections,” he once said.

When he tried to win election to India’s lower house in 1999, he was defeated. He sat instead in the upper house, chosen by his own Congress party.

The same happened in 2004, when Singh was first appointed prime minister after Congress president Sonia Gandhi turned down the post – apparently to protect the party from damaging attacks over her Italian origins. Critics however alleged that Sonia Gandhi was the real source of power while he was prime minister, and that he was never truly in charge.

The biggest triumph during his first five-year term was to bring India out of nuclear isolation by signing a landmark deal securing access to American nuclear technology.

But the deal came at a price – the government’s Communist allies withdrew support after protesting against it, and Congress had to make up lost numbers by enlisting the support of another party amid charges of vote-buying.

A consensus builder, Singh presided over a coalition of sometimes difficult, assertive and potentially unruly regional coalition allies and supporters.

Although he earned respect for his integrity and intelligence, he also had a reputation for being soft and indecisive. Some critics claimed that the pace of reform slowed and he failed to achieve the same momentum he had while finance minister.

When Singh guided Congress to a second, decisive election victory in 2009, he vowed that the party would “rise to the occasion”.

But the gloss soon began to wear off and his second term was in the news mostly for all the wrong reasons: several scandals involving his cabinet ministers which allegedly cost the country billions of dollars, a parliament stalled by the opposition, and a huge policy paralysis that resulted in a serious economic downturn.

LK Advani, a senior leader in the rival BJP party, called Singh India’s “weakest prime minister”.

Manmohan Singh defended his record, saying his government had worked with “utmost commitment and dedication for the country and the welfare of its people”.

Singh adopted the pragmatic foreign policies pursued by his two predecessors.

He continued the peace process with Pakistan – though this process was hampered by attacks blamed on Pakistani militants, culminating in the Mumbai gun and bomb attack of November 2008.

He tried to end the border dispute with China, brokering a deal to reopen the Nathu La pass into Tibet which had been closed for more than 40 years.

Singh increased financial support for Afghanistan and became the first Indian leader to visit the country for nearly 30 years.

He also angered many opposition politicians by appearing to end relations with India’s old ally, Iran.

A studious former academic and bureaucrat, he was known for being self-effacing and always kept a low profile. His social media account was noted mostly for dull entries and had a limited number of followers.

A man of few words, his calm demeanour nevertheless won him many admirers.

Responding to questions on a coal scandal involving the illegal allocation of licences worth billions of dollars, he defended his silence on the issue by saying it was “better than thousands of answers”.

In 2015 he was summoned to appear in court to answer allegations of criminal conspiracy, breach of trust and corruption related offences. An upset Singh told reporters that he was “open for legal scrutiny” and that the “truth will prevail”.

After his time as premier, Singh remained deeply engaged with the issues of the day as a senior leader of the main opposition Congress party despite his advancing age.

In August 2020, he told the BBC in a rare interview that India needed to take three steps “immediately” to stem the economic damage of the coronavirus pandemic, which had sent the country’s economy into a recession.

The government needed to provide direct cash assistance to people, make capital available for businesses, and fix the financial sector, he said.

History will remember Singh for bringing India out of economic and nuclear isolation, although some historians may suggest he should have retired earlier.

“I honestly believe that history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media, or for that matter, the opposition parties in parliament,” he told an interviewer in 2014.

Singh is survived by his wife and three daughters.

A Nasa spacecraft has made history by surviving the closest-ever approach to the Sun.

Scientists received a signal from the Parker Solar Probe just before midnight EST on Thursday (05:00 GMT on Friday) after it had been out of communication for several days during its burning-hot fly-by.

Nasa said the probe was “safe” and operating normally after it passed just 3.8 million miles (6.1 million km) from the solar surface.

The probe plunged into our star’s outer atmosphere on Christmas Eve, enduring brutal temperatures and extreme radiation in a quest to better our understanding of how the Sun works.

Nasa then waited nervously for a signal, which had been expected at 05:00 GMT on 28 December.

Moving at up to 430,000 mph (692,000 kph), the spacecraft endured temperatures of up to 1,800F (980C), according to the Nasa website.

“This close-up study of the Sun allows Parker Solar Probe to take measurements that help scientists better understand how material in this region gets heated to millions of degrees, trace the origin of the solar wind (a continuous flow of material escaping the Sun), and discover how energetic particles are accelerated to near light speed,” the agency said.

Dr Nicola Fox, head of science at Nasa, previously told BBC News: “For centuries, people have studied the Sun, but you don’t experience the atmosphere of a place until you actually go [and] 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 had already swept past the Sun 21 times, getting ever nearer, but the Christmas Eve visit was record-breaking.

At its closest approach, the probe was 3.8 million miles (6.1 million km) from our star’s surface.

That might not sound that close, but Dr Fox put 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 4cm from the Sun – so that’s close.”

The probe endured temperatures of 1,400C and radiation that could have frazzled the on-board electronics.

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

In fact, it moved 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 came from the immense gravitational pull it felt as it fell towards the Sun.

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

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

“The corona is really, really hot, and we have no idea why,” explained 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 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,” said Dr Millard.

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

Dr Fox had been expecting the team to text her a green heart to let her know the probe was OK as soon as a signal was beamed back home.

She previously admitted she was nervous about the audacious attempt, but had 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.”

South Korea has voted to impeach its acting president Han Duck-soo, two weeks after parliament voted to impeach its President Yoon Suk Yeol.

A total of 192 lawmakers voted for his impeachment, more than the 151 votes needed for it to succeed.

Prime minister Han took over the role after President Yoon was impeached by parliament following his failed attempt to impose martial law on 3 December.

Han was supposed to lead the country out of its political turmoil, but opposition MPs argued that he was refusing demands to complete Yoon’s impeachment process.

Chaos erupted in parliament as the vote was held on Friday.

Lawmakers from Yoon and Han’s ruling People Power Party (PPP) protested after National Assembly speaker Woo Won-shik announced that only 151 votes would be needed to pass the impeachment bill.

This meant that, unlike the 200 votes required for Yoon’s impeachment, no votes from ruling lawmakers would be needed this time for Han to be impeached in parliament.

Ruling party MPs gathered in the middle of the voting chamber chanting, “invalid!” and “abuse of power!” in response, and called for the Speaker to step down. Most of them boycotted the vote.

Han will be suspended from his duties as soon as he is officially notified by parliament.

The opposition first filed an impeachment motion against Han on Thursday after he blocked the appointment of three judges that parliament had chosen to oversee Yoon’s case.

Korea’s Constitutional Court is typically made up of a nine-member bench. At least six judges must uphold Yoon’s impeachment in order for the decision to be upheld.

There are currently only six judges on the bench, meaning a single rejection would save Yoon from being removed.

The opposition had hoped the three additional nominees would help improve the odds of Yoon getting impeached.

This is the first time an acting president has been impeached since South Korea became a democracy.

Finance minister Choi Sang-mok is set to replace Han as acting president.

Like Yoon, Han’s impeachment will need to be confirmed by the constitutional court, which has 180 days to rule on whether the impeachment should be upheld.

“I respect the decision of the National Assembly,” Han said Friday, adding that he “will wait for the Constitutional Court’s decision.”

He also said that he would suspend his duties to “not add to the chaos”.

On 3 December, Yoon took the country by surprise as he declared that he was imposing martial law, citing the need to protect the country from “anti-state” forces.

Hours later he reversed the order after 190 MPs voted it down, with many of them climbing fences and breaking barricades to get into the voting chamber.

Yoon later apologised but said he had sought to protect the country’s democracy.

Since then, Yoon and his allies have been dogged by the political and legal repercussions of the short-lived martial law order.

Top officials from Yoon’s government have been arrested and indicted on allegations of insurrection, while Yoon is facing an impeachment trial. However, the suspended president, who is banned from leaving the country, has been defying summons from investigating authorities.

On Friday, the Korean won plunged to its lowest level against the dollar since the global financial crisis 16 years ago – with both parties blaming each other for the chaos.

Han’s removal will likely intensify the political gridlock and uncertainty the country is currently grappling with.

An injured North Korean soldier captured by Ukrainian forces has died, Yonhap News Agency has reported, citing a statement from South Korea’s spy agency.

The soldier is believed to be the first North Korean prisoner of war captured since Pyongyang deployed forces to support Russia’s war in Ukraine.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said it had confirmed through an “allied intelligence agency” that the soldier had died from “serious injuries”, Yonhap reported.

North Korea has sent more than 10,000 soldiers to help Russia, according to Kyiv and Seoul – though Moscow and Pyongyang have neither confirmed nor denied their presence.

The spy agency earlier confirmed that Ukrainian forces had captured the soldier after a photo purporting to show the man had been circulating on Telegram.

“This is the first in a string of captures and killings,” Yang Uk, a research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, told the BBC. “For Ukrainians, it’s more beneficial to capture these North Korean troops and try to exchange them with Russians for Ukrainian prisoners of war.”

Recent images emerging from the Russia-Ukraine war confirmed speculations that “North Korean troops will be deployed in large numbers to the assault by Russian command”, Mr Yang said.

He also added, however, that “it will be challenging to prove their North Korean nationality”.

Ukrainian forces say that North Korean soldiers have been issued with fake Russian IDs, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted footage last week which he said showed Russian troops burning the faces of slain North Koreans to conceal their identities.

Ukrainian and South Korean intelligence services have said that many of the troops deployed to Russia are some of Pyongyang’s best, drawn from the 11th Corps, also known as the Storm Corps. The unit is trained in infiltration, infrastructure sabotage and assassinations.

More than 3,000 North Korean troops have died or been wounded while fighting in Russia’s Kursk region, Zelensky said Monday.

He added that the collaboration between Moscow and Pyongyang heightened the “risk of destabilisation” around the Korean peninsula.

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The recent deployment of North Korean troops to Russia is a sign of a growing alliance between the two pariah states.

The development, which comes as North Korea ratchets up tensions with South Korea, has sparked worries in the West. China, a long-standing ally of both sides, is also keeping a cautious eye on the friendship.

Israel’s war on multiple fronts has not just worn down its enemy. It’s not just taken the lives of thousands of civilians in Gaza and Lebanon. It’s also continuing to extract a price from its own people.

There’s a growing sense of war weariness in Israel. The recent ceasefire deal with Lebanon will be a relief for many. Not least for Noam Glukhovsky – an IDF reservist, who’s spent much of the past year serving on the front line as a medic.

We spoke to Noam, 33, in Tel Aviv before the ceasefire was announced. “We can’t keep doing this war for much longer. We just don’t have the manpower to keep going on without a clear end date and goal,” he said.

As an IDF reservist Noam would normally expect to do a few weeks of military service a year. But this past year he’s spent 250 days in uniform. The war, he said, had ripped him away from the life he knew. His plans to become a doctor have also been set back by a year.

When we meet Noam was trying to catch up with his studies, but also waiting to see whether he’d be called up again. His mood was defiant.

“I can’t put my life on hold anymore,” he said. Unless there was a dramatic change in the direction of the war, he said he wouldn’t be returning to his unit. He’d had enough.

The IDF already acknowledges that fewer reserves are now reporting for duty. After the attacks by Hamas on 7 October last year, which killed about 1,200 people, more than 300,000 reservists responded. Turnout exceeded 100%. Now it’s down to 85%. Noam estimates that in his unit the response is even lower – with around 60% of those called up now reporting for duty.

Reserves and conscripts are the lifeblood of the IDF. Brigadier General Ariel Heimann – also a reservist and a former chief reserve officer – says Israel is too small a country to have a large, expensive, professional, regular army. Without reservists, he says, the IDF wouldn’t be able to fight or survive.

According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the IDF has 170,000 active duty personnel, including conscripts, and 465,000 reserves.

Brig Gen Heimann admits the IDF’s reliance on reserves will become more challenging the longer the war goes on. He likened the IDF to a spring – if it’s stretched too far it’ll break. At the moment he says it’s coping.

But in a sign of the strain the IDF wants to extend mandatory service for male conscripts from 32 to 36 months.

The fact that the burden of service is not being shared by all, has also fuelled a sense of resentment. One group has been exempt from military service for decades – thousands of Haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, Jews. They believe the lives of their young men should be dedicated to religious studies not military service.

The issue has already divided Israel’s coalition government. But, following the intervention of the attorney general, call up papers are being sent to 7,000 Haredi Jewish men. They’ve responded with angry protests. But Brig Gen Heimann, like the ousted former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, says they have a “moral duty to serve”.

There’s not just a personal sacrifice required, but an economic one too.

The Bank of Israel said in May that the cost of the war for Israel could reach $70bn (£55bn) by the end of next year, an estimate made before the country’s ground invasion of Lebanon. Small businesses are among the hardest hit.

Shelly Lotan’s food tech start-up is among many fighting for survival. Shelly’s already had to move her business from northern Israel to avoid Hezbollah’s rockets. Two of her seven employees have been called up for military service.

On the morning we meet, at her Tel Aviv home, Shelly has just received more bad news. She’s received a text from one of her staff whose military service is being extended.

“I just can’t express how critical it is to have another employee missing for another month,” says Shelly.

“I cannot even hire someone else or solve this gap.”

Shelly’s also had to juggle family life with three young children. Her husband, also a reservist, has had to spend long periods away from home.

A ceasefire in Lebanon may ease some of the pressure. But there’s still fighting in Gaza. Shelly Lotan fears for the future without a clear strategy from Israel’s government to end the conflict.

“I think the war should have ended by now,” she says.

A man who killed dozens by driving his car into people exercising outside a stadium in southern China has been sentenced to death.

Fan Weiqiu was accused of “endangering public safety”, according to a court statement.

At least 35 people were killed and dozens more injured in the 11 November attack in Zhuhai, thought to be the deadliest on Chinese soil for a decade.

According to the court, the 62-year-old decided to drive his car into the crowds on a running track at high speed because he was “dissatisfied” with how his property had been divided following his divorce.

The court described his motive as “extremely vile” and “the methods” as “particularly cruel”. One witness told Caixin news magazine he had driven “in a loop” leaving victims “hurt in all areas of the running track” – a popular location for people to exercise.

Fan – who was initially reported to be in a coma, having sustained self-inflicted knife wounds – admitted his guilt in front of victims’ families and members of the public, Chinese media reported.

The attack was one of 19 targeting strangers to take place across China this year – including two within a week of the Zhuhai attack.

Not all have involved vehicles. In February, a mass stabbing and firearms attack in Shandong in February left at least 21 people dead. That incident was heavily censored by Chinese authorities.

In total, at least 63 people have been killed and 166 injured in these attacks. This is a sharp increase on previous years – 16 killed and 40 injured in 2023, for instance.

Some have suggested the increase in random attacks could point towards a general increase in frustration and anger as the economy slows and uncertainty over the future grows.

“These are symptoms of a society with a lot of pent-up grievances,” Lynette Ong, professor of Chinese politics at the University of Toronto in Canada, told AFP news agency in November.

People in India are reflecting on former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s contribution to the country since his death on Thursday evening.

Singh, who held the top post for two consecutive terms between 2004 and 2014, was seen as an architect of India’s economic liberalisation which changed the country’s growth trajectory.

The first prime minister since Jawaharlal Nehru to return to power, Singh was also the first Sikh to assume the top office.

Known as a soft-spoken technocrat, he had earlier headed India’s central bank, served as a finance secretary and minister, and led the opposition in the upper house of parliament.

Here are five milestones from Singh’s life that shaped his career and had a lasting impact on more than a billion Indians.

Singh was appointed finance minister in 1991 by the Congress party-led government under Prime Minister PV Narsimha Rao.

India’s economy at the time was facing a serious financial crisis, with the country’s foreign reserves at a dangerously low level, barely enough to pay for two weeks of imports.

Singh led the initiative to deregulate the economy to avoid its collapse, which he argued was otherwise imminent. Despite stiff opposition from members of his government and party, Singh prevailed.

He took bold measures that included devaluing the currency, reducing import tariffs and privatising state-owned companies.

He was famously quoted as saying in parliament during his first budget speech in 1991 that “no power on Earth can stop an idea whose time has come”.

Later, as prime minister, Singh continued to build on his economic reform measures, lifting millions of Indians out of poverty and contributing to India’s rise as one of the world’s fastest-growing major economies.

The Congress party made a comeback in 2004 elections, handing a surprise defeat to the government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Congress chief Sonia Gandhi was widely expected to head the government, but many members of the outgoing ruling party raised questions over the fact that she was born in Italy. She declined to take up the post and instead proposed Singh’s name, who was seen as a non-controversial, consensus candidate of great personal integrity.

In the next parliamentary election, he helped his party win a bigger mandate, but critics often termed him a “remote-controlled” prime minister managed by the Gandhi family.

Singh often refused to comment on such allegations and kept his focus on the job.

He may have started his first stint as prime minister with some reluctance but he soon stamped his authority on the top job.

Singh’s tenure, particularly between 2004 and 2009, saw the country’s GDP grow at a healthy average pace of around 8%, the second fastest among major economies.

He took bold decisions on reforms and brought more foreign investment into the country. Experts credit him for shielding India from the 2008 global financial crisis.

But his second term, in an alliance with a disparate group of parties, was marked by allegations of corruption against some of his cabinet ministers, though his personal integrity was never questioned.

In response to these allegations, he told journalists in 2014 in his last press conference as prime minister that he hoped history would judge him differently.

“I honestly believe that history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media, or for that matter, the opposition parties in parliament,” he said.

“I think taking into account the circumstances and the compulsions of a coalition polity, I have done as best as I could do under the circumstances.”

As prime minister, Singh took several far-reaching decisions that continue to impact the health of Indian democracy even today.

He introduced new laws that strengthened and guaranteed the right to seek information from the government, allowing citizens an extraordinary power to hold officials accountable.

He also introduced a rural employment scheme which guaranteed livelihood for a minimum of 100 days, a measure economists said had a profound impact on rural incomes and poverty reduction.

He also brought in a law that guaranteed the right to free and compulsory education for children between the ages of 6 and 14, significantly reducing the school dropout rates.

His government also introduced a unique identity project called Aadhar to improve financial inclusion and delivery of welfare benefits to the poor. The current federal government, run by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has continued to keep Aadhar as a cornerstone for many of its policies.

In 1984, prime minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards to avenge a military action she had ordered against separatists hiding in Sikhism’s holiest temple in northern India’s Amritsar.

Her death sparked massive violence that resulted in the death of more than 3,000 Sikhs and a widespread destruction of their property.

Singh formally apologised to the nation in 2005 in parliament, saying the violence were “the negation of the concept of nationhood enshrined in our constitution”.

“I have no hesitation in apologising to the Sikh community. I apologise not only to the Sikh community, but to the whole Indian nation,” he said.

No other prime minister, particularly from the Congress party, had gone this far to apologise in parliament for the riots.

Singh signed a historic deal with the US in 2008 to end India’s nuclear isolation after its 1998 testing of the weapon system.

His government argued that the deal wouldhelp meet India’s growing energy needs and sustain its healthy growth rate.

The deal, seen as a watershed moment in the India-US relations, promised to grant a waiver to India to commence civilian nuclear trade with the US and the rest of the world.

But it faced massive opposition, with critics of the deal alleging that it would compromise India’s sovereignty and independence in foreign policy. In protest, the Left Front withdrew support from the governing alliance.

Singh, however, managed to save both his government and the deal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One of northern Gaza’s last functioning hospitals has been forcibly evacuated by the Israeli military, medics say, after dozens of people were reportedly killed in Israeli strikes targeting the area around the healthcare facility.

Eid Sabbah, head of the nursing department at Kamal Adwan hospital, told the BBC that at about 07:00 on Friday, the military gave the administration 15 minutes to evacuate patients and staff into its courtyard.

Israeli troops subsequently entered the hospital and were removing the remaining patients, he said.

The Israeli military said on Friday afternoon that it was carrying out an operation in the area of the hospital, which it called a “Hamas terrorist stronghold”.

Israeli troops had “facilitated the secure evacuation of civilians, patients and medical personnel” from the hospital before beginning the operation, it added.

The military did not say where the patients would be moved. But earlier in the week, an Israeli official said that they intended to relocate those at Kamal Adwan hospital to the nearby Indonesian hospital, which was itself evacuated by the military on Tuesday.

“It’s dangerous because there are patients in the ICU department in a coma and in need of ventilation machines and moving them will put them in danger,” Dr Sabbah said.

“If the army intends to continue removing these patients, they will need specialised vehicles.”

It comes hours after the director of Kamal Adwan hospital said that approximately 50 people had been killed, including five medical staff, in a series of Israeli air strikes targeting the vicinity of the hospital.

The statement from Dr Hussam Abu Safiya said a building opposite the hospital was targeted by Israeli warplanes, leading to the death of a paediatrician and a lab technician, as well as their families.

He said a third staff member who worked as a maintenance technician was targeted and killed as he rushed to the scene of the first strike.

Two of the hospital’s paramedics were 500m (1,640ft) away from the hospital when they were targeted and killed by another strike, the statement continued, with their bodies remaining in the street with no-one able to reach them.

The Israeli military said on Friday morning that it was “unaware of strikes in the area of Kamal Adwan hospital” and was looking into the reports that staff had been killed.

Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia has been under a tightening Israeli blockade imposed on parts of northern Gaza since October, when the military said it had launched an offensive to stop Hamas from regrouping there.

The UN has said the area is under a “near-total siege” as the Israeli military heavy restricts access of aid deliveries to an area where an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 people remain.

In recent days, the hospital’s administrators have issued desperate pleas appealing to be protected, as they say the facility has become regularly the target of Israeli shelling and explosives.

Oxfam said that attempts by aid agencies to deliver supplies to the area since October had been unsuccessful because of “deliberate delays and systematic obstructions” by the Israeli military.