The prospect of a shy politician is somewhat hard to imagine. Unless that politician is Manmohan Singh.

Since the death of the former Indian prime minister on Thursday, much has been said about the “kind and soft-spoken politician” who changed the course of Indian history and impacted the lives of millions.

His state funeral is being held on Saturday and India’s government has announced an official mourning period of seven days.

Despite an illustrious career – he was governor of India’s central bank and federal finance minister before becoming a two-term prime minister – Singh never came across as a big-stage politician, lacking the public swagger of many of his peers.

Though he gave interviews and held news conferences, especially in his first term as prime minister, he chose to stay quiet even when his government was mired in scandals or when his cabinet ministers faced corruption allegations.

His gentlemanly ways were both deplored and adored in equal measure.

His admirers said he was careful not to pick unnecessary battles or make lofty promises and that he focused on results – perhaps best exemplified by the pro-market reforms he ushered in as finance minister which opened India’s economy to the world.

“I don’t think anyone in India believes that Manmohan Singh can do something wrong or corrupt,” his former colleague in the Congress party, Kapil Sibal, once said,. “He was extremely cautious, and he always wanted to be on the right side of the law.”

His opponents, on the other hand, mocked him, saying he exhibited a kind of fuzziness unsuitable for a politician, let alone the premier of a country of more than one billion people. His voice – husky and breathless, almost like a tired whisper – often became the butt of jokes.

But the same voice was also endearing to many who found him relatable in a world of politics where high-pitched and high-octane speeches were the norm.

Singh’s image as a media-shy, unassuming, introverted politician never left him, even when his contemporaries, including his own party members, went through dramatic cycles of reinvention.

Yet, it was the dignity with which he manoeuvred each situation – even the difficult ones – that made him so memorable.

Born to a poor family in what is now Pakistan, Singh was India’s first Sikh prime minister. His personal story – of a Cambridge and Oxford-educated economist who overcame insurmountable odds to rise up the ranks – coupled with his image of an honest and thoughtful leader, had already made him a hero to India’s middle classes.

But in 2005, he surprised everyone when he made a public apology in parliament for the 1984 riots in which around 3,000 Sikhs were killed.

The riots, in which several Congress party members were accused, broke out after the assassination of then-prime minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. One of them later said they shot the Congress politician to avenge a military action she had ordered against separatists hiding in Sikhism’s holiest temple in northern India’s Amritsar.

It was a bold move – no other prime minister, including from the Congress party, had gone so far as to offer an apology. But it provided a healing touch to the Sikh community and politicians across party lines respected him for the courageous act.

A few years later, in 2008, Singh’s understated style of leadership received more praise after he signed a landmark deal with the US that ended India’s decades-long nuclear isolation, allowing India access to nuclear technology and fuel for the first time since it held tests in 1974.

The deal was massively criticised by opposition leaders and Singh’s own allies, who feared it would compromise India’s foreign policy. Singh, however, managed to salvage both his government and the deal.

The period 2008-2009 also witnessed global financial turmoil but Singh’s policies were credited for shielding India from it.

In 2009, he led his party to a resounding victory and returned as the PM for a second term, cementing his image of a benevolent leader, or rather, the exciting idea that leaders be benevolent.

For many, he had become virtue personified, the “reluctant prime minister” who stayed clear of the spotlight and refused to make any dramatic gestures, but was also not afraid of taking bold decisions for the sake of his country’s future.

Then, things began to unravel.

A string of corruption allegations – first around the hosting of the Commonwealth Games, then the illegal allocation of coal fields – plagued the Congress party and Singh’s government. Some of these corruption allegations were later found to be untrue or exaggerated. Some cases from the period are still pending in courts.

But Singh had already begun to feel some pressure. During his tenure, he made several attempts at reconciliation with India’s arch rival neighbour Pakistan, hoping for a thaw in the decades-old frosty relations.

The approach was sharply questioned in 2008 when a terror attack led by a Pakistan-based terror group killed 171 people in Mumbai city.

The 60-hour siege, one of the bloodiest in the country’s history, opened a chasm of allegations, as the opposition blamed the government’s “soft stance” on terrorism for the tragedy.

In the coming years, other decisions Singh made badly backfired.

In 2011, an anti-corruption movement led by social activist Anna Hazare shook up Singh’s government. The frail 72-year-old became an icon for the middle classes, as he demanded stringent anti-corruption laws in the country.

As a middle-class hero himself, Singh was expected to deal with Hazare’s demands more perceptively. Instead, the prime minister tried to quash the movement, allowing the police to arrest Hazare and disband his demonstration.

The move stoked a wave of public and media hostility against him. Those who once admired his understated style wondered if they had misjudged the politician and began to see his quiet ways through a less generous lens.

The feeling was heightened the next year when Singh refused to comment on the horrific gang rape and murder of a young woman in Delhi for more than a week.

To make things worse, India’s economic growth was slowing. Corruption grew and jobs shrank, sparking waves of public anger. And Singh’s unassuming personality, which once made his every move seem like a revelation, was labelled as showing complacency, diffidence and even arrogance by some.

Yet, Singh never tried to defend or explain himself and faced the criticism quietly.

That was until 2014. At a rare news conference, he announced that he would not seek a third term in office.

But he also tried to set the record straight. “I honestly believe that history will judge me more kindly than the contemporary media, or for that matter, the opposition parties in parliament did, ” he said, after listing some of the biggest accomplishments of his tenure.

He was right.

As it turned out, neither the Congress, nor Singh, could entirely recover from the damage as they lost the general elections to the BJP. But despite the many hurdles, Singh’s image as a kind and discerning leader stayed with him.

Throughout his prime ministerial stint and despite a second term plagued by controversies, he maintained an aura of personal dignity and integrity.

His policies were seen to centre around the middle class and the poor – he approved manifold increase in salaries of central employees, kept inflation in check and introduced landmark schemes on educations and jobs.

It may not have been enough to elevate him from the quandaries of politics or shield him from some of the failures of his career.

But there was more to his shyness; he was a leader of steely resolve.

“The Chinese people are so miserable,” read a social media post in the wake of yet another mass killing in the country earlier this year. The same user also warned: “There will only be more and more copycat attacks.”

“This tragedy reflects the darkness within society,” wrote another.

Such bleak assessments, following a spate of deadly incidents in China during 2024, have led to questions about what is driving people to murder strangers en masse to “take revenge on society”.

Attacks like this are still rare given China’s huge population, and are not new, says David Schak, associate professor at Griffith University in Australia. But they seem to come in waves, often as copycat attempts at garnering attention.

This year has been especially distressing.

From 2019 to 2023, police recorded three to five cases each year, where perpetrators attacked pedestrians or strangers.

In 2024, that number jumped to 19.

In 2019, three people were killed and 28 injured in such incidents; in 2023, 16 dead and 40 injured and in 2024, 63 people killed and 166 injured. November was especially bloody.

On the 11th of that month, a 62-year-old man ploughed a car into people exercising outside a stadium in the city of Zhuhai, killing at least 35. Police said that the driver had been unhappy with his divorce settlement. He was sentenced to death this week.

Days later, in Changde city, a man drove into a crowd of children and parents outside a primary school, injuring 30 of them. The authorities said he was angry over financial losses and family problems.

That same week, a 21-year-old who couldn’t graduate after failing his exams, went on a stabbing rampage on his campus in Wuxi city, killing eight and injuring 17.

In September, a 37-year-old man raced through a Shanghai shopping centre, stabbing people as he went. In June, four American instructors were attacked at a park by a 55-year-old man wielding a knife. And there were two separate attacks on Japanese citizens, including one in which a 10-year-old boy was stabbed to death outside his school.

The perpetrators have largely targeted “random people” to show their “displeasure with society”, Prof Schak says.

In a country with vast surveillance capabilities, where women rarely hesitate to walk alone at night, these killings have sparked understandable unease.

So what has prompted so many mass attacks in China this year?

A major source of pressure in China right now is the sluggish economy. It is no secret that the country has been struggling with high youth unemployment, massive debt and a real estate crisis which has consumed the life savings of many families, sometimes with nothing to show for it.

On the outskirts of most major cities there are entire housing estates where construction has stopped because indebted developers cannot afford to complete them. In 2022, the BBC interviewed people camping in the concrete shells of their own unfinished apartments, without running water, electricity and windows because they had nowhere else to stay.

“Optimism certainly does seem to have faded,” says George Magnus, a research associate at Oxford University’s China Centre. “Let’s use the word trapped, just for the moment. I think China has become trapped in a sort of cycle of repression. Social repression and economic repression, on the one hand, and a kind of faltering economic development model on the other.”

Studies appear to point to a significant change in attitudes, with a measurable increase in pessimism among Chinese people about their personal prospects. A significant US-China joint analysis, which for years had recorded them saying that inequality in society could often be attributed to a lack of effort or ability, found in its most recent survey that people were now blaming an “unfair economic system”.

“The question is who do people really blame?” Mr Magnus asks. “And the next step from that is that the system is unfair to me, and I can’t break through. I can’t change my circumstances.”

In countries with a healthy media, if you felt you had been fired from your job unfairly or that your home had been demolished by corrupt builders backed by local officials, you might turn to journalists for your story to be heard. But that is rarely an option in China, where the press is controlled by the Communist Party and unlikely to run stories which reflect badly on any level of the government.

Then there are the courts – also run by and for the party – which are slow and inefficient. Much was made on social media here of the Zhuhai attacker’s alleged motive: that he did not achieve what he believed was a fair divorce settlement in court.

Experts say other outlets for venting frustrations have also narrowed or been shut down altogether.

Chinese people often air their grievances online, says Lynette Ong, a political science professor at the University of Toronto, who has carried out significant research on how the Chinese state responds to push back from its people.

“[They] will go on to the internet and scold the government… just to vent their anger. Or they may organise a small protest which the police would often allow if it’s small-scale,” she explains. “But this sort of dissent, small dissent, has been closed off in the last couple of years.”

There are plenty of examples of this: Increased internet censorship, which blocks words or expressions that are deemed controversial or critical; crackdowns on cheeky Halloween costumes that make fun of officialdom; or when plain-clothed men, who appeared to have been mobilised by local officials, beat up protesters in Henan province outside banks which had frozen their accounts.

As for dealing with people’s mental and emotional responses to these stresses, this too has been found wanting. Specialists say that China’s counselling services are vastly inadequate, leaving no outlet for those who feel isolated, alone and depressed in modern Chinese society.

“Counselling can help build up emotional resilience,” says Professor Silvia Kwok from Hong Kong’s City University, adding that China needs to increase its mental health services, especially for at-risk groups who have experienced trauma or those with mental illness.

“People need to find different strategies or constructive ways to deal with their emotions… making them less likely to react violently in moments of intense emotional stress.”

Taken together, these factors suggest the lid is tightening on Chinese society, creating a pressure cooker-like situation.

“There are not a lot of people going around mass killing. But still the tensions do seem to be building, and it doesn’t look like there is any way it is going to ease up in the near future,” Mr Magnus says.

What should worry the Communist Party is the commentary from the general public blaming those in power for this.

Take this remark for example: “If the government truly acts fairly and justly, there would not be so much anger and grievance in Chinese society… the government’s efforts have focused on creating a superficial sense of harmony. While it may appear that they care about disadvantaged people, their actions have instead caused the greatest injustices.”

While violent attacks have been rising in many countries, according to Professor Ong, the difference in China is that officials have had little experience dealing with them.

“I think the authorities are very alarmed because they’ve not seen it before, and their instinct is to crack down.”

When China’s leader Xi Jinping spoke about the Zhuhai attack, he seemed to acknowledge pressure was building in society. He urged officials across the country to “learn hard lessons from the incident, address risks at their roots, resolve conflicts and disputes early and take proactive measures to prevent extreme crime”.

But, so far, the lessons learnt seem to have led to a push for quicker police response times using greater surveillance, rather than considering any changes to the way China is run.

“China is moving into a new phase, a new phase that we have not seen since the late 70s,” Prof Ong says, referring to the time when the country began opening to the world again, unleashing enormous change.

“We need to brace for unexpected events, such as a lot of random attacks and pockets of protest and social instability emerging.”

It was early December when Douna Haj Ahmed, a Syrian refugee, discovered the disturbing details of her husband’s detention in the notorious Al-Khatib prison – known as “Hell on Earth“.

She was watching bewildered prisoners fleeing the country’s brutal security apparatus, on the news at home in London, after rebel forces had ousted Bashar al-Assad as president.

Through tears, Abdullah Al Nofal, her husband of eight years sat next to her, turned and said: “This is where I was arrested, this is the place.”

Douna, whose brothers were also arrested during Syria’s 13-year civil war, says she had an idea of what her husband experienced during his detention – but this was the first time he was sharing the full details of what he endured.

“Abdullah does not like to share things emotionally, he likes to look like a strong guy all the time,” Douna, 33, tells the BBC.

“It was a turning point. I saw him weak. I saw him crying. I saw him saying: ‘This is where I was. I could be one of them. I could be one of them right now, or I could be dead’.

“I feel that when he saw this, he felt that this [was] closure,” she adds. “Now we want people to hear what Syrians went through.”

Abdullah, 36, was working in Damascus as a store keeper with the International Committee of the Red Cross in July 2013 when he and his colleagues were randomly stopped at a checkpoint on the outskirts of the Syrian capital.

He says he participated in anti-regime protests in 2011 in the southern city of Deraa, where the uprising against Assad began, but soon distanced himself when rebels began to use violence and weapons in response to a brutal crackdown by the regime’s forces.

Abdullah was singled out at the checkpoint and put on a green bus, handcuffed and blindfolded, and taken to a military area. He says he was then put in solitary confinement for three days and beaten.

“It was so dark for three days, I remember,” he says.

“I don’t [hear] any sound. It was so dark. You hear nothing. You feel so lonely.”

Abdullah was then transported to Al-Khatib, a detention centre in Damascus, and taken to a cell with about 130 people.

Al-Khatib was one of several detention facilities operated by Syrian intelligence services.

Almost 60,000 people were tortured and killed in the prisons run by the Assad regime during the civil war, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group.

Two years ago, a historic trial in Germany found a Syrian colonel who worked in Al-Khatib guilty of crimes against humanity. Anwar Raslan, 58, was linked to the torture of over 4,000 people in the prison.

In court, witnesses described how detainees were raped and hung from the ceiling for hours, as well as the use of electric shocks before being doused in water. Assad’s authoritarian government previously denied accusations of torturing.

During his detention in 2013, Abdullah describes how he would regularly hear the screams of people being tortured.

He recalls how diseases were rife and that about 20 people died while he was detained there.

“When I started to look around everywhere, there were people standing almost naked,” he tells the BBC. “They were full of blood, like they [have] been tortured.

“If you are not tortured yourself, every minute they will take someone to the investigation.

“They will get back to the room full of blood… every time you touch someone they will scream because you touched their wound.”

After 12 days, Abdullah was taken to be interrogated, where he says he was repeatedly beaten with a metal weapon and accused of transporting weapons.

He explains how he could not deny the accusations put forward to him as it would lead to prolonged punishment.

“As long as you say, ‘I didn’t do it’, they will keep torturing you and they will take you to another stage in torturing,” he says.

“Every minute it’s like you’re dying.”

Abdullah says he told officers a false story to avoid further interrogation, and was “lucky” to be released from detention after a month.

A year later, he left Syria and was later granted scholarships in Geneva and the US. He is now settled in London with his wife.

Only now does Abdullah feel able to share the full horror of his experiences with his wife, as the risk and fear he faced is slowly disappearing.

“We finally finish[ed] with the regime, we can say, we are really free right now,” he says.

“You can use our name. You can use our face. We can tell the full story.”

Douna, a human rights activist, sobbed as she heard her husband’s experiences for the first time.

“I was hearing him and I was crying. Every time I feel that this regime [has reached] the maximum of the horrors, of the horrible stories,” she says.

“It surprises me that, no, this is not the maximum. There could be more.”

She adds: “We are privileged that we are able to tell our stories. Lots of people, they died without being heard.”

More than 1,300 pea-sized, critically endangered snails that were bred in a zoo have been set free to wander (very slowly) on a remote Atlantic island.

The release brings two species of Desertas Island land snails back to the wild. Prior to this they were believed to be extinct – neither species had been spotted for a century.

When a team of conservationists found a small population surviving on the rocky cliffs of Deserta Grande island, close to Madeira, they mounted a rescue effort.

The snails were brought to zoos in the UK and France, including Chester Zoo, where a home was created for them in a converted shipping container.

The tiny molluscs are native to the windswept, mountainous island of Deserta Grande, just south-east of Madeira. Habitat there has been destroyed by rats, mice and goats that were brought to the island by humans.

It was thought that all these invasive predators had eaten the tiny snails to extinction. Then a series of conservation expeditions – between 2012 and 2017 – proved otherwise.

Conservationists discovered just 200 surviving individuals on the island.

Those snails were believed to be the last of their kind, so they were collected and brought into captivity.

At Chester Zoo, the conservation science team made a new home for 60 of the precious snails. The right food, vegetation and conditions were recreated in miniature habitat tanks.

1,329 snail offspring, bred at the zoo, have now been marked with identification dots – using non-toxic pens and nail varnish – and transported back to the wild for release.

“[It’s a] colour code,” said Dinarte Teixeira, a conservation biologist at Madeira’s Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests. “This will allow us to spot them and track where they disperse to, how much they grow, how many survive and how well they adapt to their new environment.”

A wild refuge has been restored for the snails on Bugio, a smaller neighbouring island in the Ilhas Desertas (Desert Islands) archipelago.

Bugio is a nature reserve and invasive species have been eradicated there.

Gerardo Garcia from Chester Zoo said that the reintroduction was “a major step in a species recovery plan”.

“If it goes as well as we hope, more snails will follow them next spring. It’s a huge team effort which shows that it is possible to turn things around for highly threatened species.”

“These snails are such an important part of the natural habitat [on the islands they come from],” explained Heather Prince from Chester Zoo. As well as being food for other native species, she explained, snails break down organic matter and bring nutrients to the soil.

“They help plants grow. All of that is dependent on the little guys – the insects and the snails that so often get overlooked.”

White House spokesman John Kirby has said the US has seen “early indications” that Russia may have been responsible for the downing of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane that crashed on 25 December, killing 38 people.

Mr Kirby did not elaborate further, but told reporters the US had offered assistance to the investigation into the crash.

The plane is thought to have come under fire from Russian air defence systems as it tried to land in Chechnya before being diverted across the Caspian Sea to Kazakhstan, where it crashed.

The Kremlin has refused to comment, but the head of Russia’s civil aviation agency said the situation in Chechnya was “very complicated” due to Ukrainian drone strikes on the region.

• What we know about the Azerbaijan Airlines crash

Mr Kirby said the indications the US had seen went beyond widely circulated photos of the damaged plane, the Washington Post reported.

Aviation experts and others in Azerbaijan believe the plane’s GPS systems were affected by electronic jamming and it was then damaged by shrapnel from Russian air-defence missile blasts.

Azerbaijan has not accused Russia, but the country’s transport minister said the plane was subject to “external interference” and damaged inside and out as it tried to land.

“All [the survivors] without exception stated they heard three blast sounds when the aircraft was above Grozny,” said Rashad Nabiyev.

Mr Nabiyev said investigators would now examine “what kind of weapon, or rather what kind of rocket was used.”

However, pro-government MP Rasim Musabekov was clear: “The plane was shot down over Russian territory, in the skies above Grozny. Denying this is impossible.”

He told AFP news agency the plane had been damaged and the pilot had asked to make an emergency landing in Grozny. Instead of being directed to nearby airports, he said it was “sent far away” across the Caspian Sea without GPS.

Flight attendant Zulfuqar Asadov described the moments when the plane was hit by “some kind of external strike” over Chechnya.

“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.”

The pilots of the Embraer 190 plane are credited with saving 29 of those on board by managing to land part of the plane, despite themselves being killed in the crash.

The Kremlin has refused to comment on the increasing number of 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.

Kazakh authorities have been treating the injured and working closely with Azerbaijan on the investigation.

Reports in Baku suggest both Russia and Kazakhstan have proposed having a committee from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) – a regional organisation dominated by Russia – investigate the crash, but Azerbaijan has instead demanded an international inquiry.

On 25 December, 38 people died when an Azerbaijan Airlines flight, which had been due to land in Russia, crash-landed in Kazakhstan.

The circumstances around the crash remain unclear, but limited evidence so far suggests it may have been damaged by missiles fired by a Russian air-defence system as it tried to land in Chechnya.

Here’s what we know about Flight J2-8243.

In the early morning on Christmas Day, Flight J2-8243 took off from the airport of Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. It was due to land in Grozny, the capital of the Russian region of Chechnya.

On board were 67 passengers, most of whom were Azerbaijani nationals, as well as those from Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

The plane was an Embraer 190, operated by Azerbaijan Airlines.

As the flight approached Grozny, it entered thick fog, surviving passengers say.

They describe the pilot attempting to land the plane twice during these conditions.

It was on the third attempt, survivors say, that they felt a series of explosions hit the plane.

“The third time, something exploded… some of the aircraft’s skin had blown out,” one told Russian TV.

A flight attendant on the plane, Zulfuqar Asadov, told local media the impact of the strike “caused panic inside”.

“We tried to calm [the passengers] down, to get them seated. At that moment, there was another strike, and my arm was injured,” he said.

A video filmed in flight by a passenger showed oxygen masks hanging from the ceiling.

Azerbaijan’s transport minister Rashad Nabiyev said: “All [the survivors] without exception stated they heard three blast sounds when the aircraft was above Grozny.”

He said the plane was subjected to “external interference” and damaged inside and out as it tried to land.

In recent weeks, Ukraine has been targeting Chechnya and other parts of the Russian Caucasus with drone strikes.

After the crash, authorities in Moscow said such attacks had triggered a protocol to close the airspace above Grozny.

According to local officials, a drone was shot down by air defence above a shopping mall in Vladikavkaz, in nearby North Ossetia, that morning.

It is unclear whether the closed-airspace protocol – known as a “carpet plan” – was enacted before or while Flight J2-8243 was in Russian air space.

After the incident over Grozny, the plane diverted some 450km (280 miles) east to Aktau airport in Kazakhstan.

It remains unclear why it was diverted over the Caspian Sea – a far longer journey than several other options.

Russian aviation authorities have claimed the pilots of the plane were “offered other airports”, but chose Aktau.

Data released by the flight-tracking website Flight Radar shows the plane zig-zagging up and down as it approached Aktau, before turning and crash-landing just kilometres from the airport.

Video from near the scene shows the plane descending rapidly through the air before crashing into the ground and skidding for several hundred metres in a ball of flame.

38 people were killed and 29 survived, some with serious injuries. Remarkably, some survivors were seen walking and crawling from the plane’s wreckage.

The pilots of the plane are credited with saving lives by managing to land part of the plane, despite themselves being killed in the crash.

It is believed most of those who survived were seated in its rear.

Initial reports from Russian media suggested the aircraft collided with a flock of birds.

However, aviation experts and others in Azerbaijan believe the plane’s GPS systems were affected by electronic jamming and it was then damaged by shrapnel from Russian air-defence missile blasts.

On Friday White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters that the US had “early indications” Russia was responsible, but declined to comment further.

So far, Azerbaijan’s government has avoided directly accusing Russia – but Azerbaijani government sources told Reuters news agency that the investigation has already identified the weapon that fired on the flight as the Russian Pantsir-S anti-aircraft system.

The Kremlin has so far refused to comment on reports the plane was hit by Russian weaponry.

“An investigation… is under way 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.

The plane’s flight recorders, which contains data to help determine the cause of a crash, had been found.

Reports in Baku suggest both Russia and Kazakhstan have proposed having a committee from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) – a regional organisation dominated by Russia – investigate the crash, but Azerbaijan has instead demanded an international inquiry.

Azerbaijan Airlines and several other airlines have suspended flights to some Russian cities in response to the crash.

A Houthi political official says the group will continue attacking Israel in solidarity with the Palestinians despite the escalating Israeli air strikes in Yemen.

Mohammed al-Bukhaiti told the BBC that the Houthis would “escalate our military targeting of Israel” until it stopped what he described as “the genocide in Gaza”.

On Thursday, Israeli warplanes struck the international airport in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, and ports and power stations on the Red Sea coast, killing at least four people.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that its response to more than a year of missile and drone attacks by the Iran-backed group was “just getting started”.

Overnight, the Houthis launched another ballistic missile at Israel, which the Israeli military said was intercepted before it reached Israeli territory.

The UN’s secretary general said he was “gravely concerned” by the intensified escalation.

He also called the strikes on the airport and ports were “especially alarming” and warned that they posed “grave risks to humanitarian operations” in the war-torn country.

The Houthis, who control north-western Yemen, began attacking Israel and international shipping shortly after the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza in October 2023.

Israel has carried out four rounds of air strikes against the Houthis since July in retaliation for the 400 missiles and drones that the Israeli military says have been launched at the country from Yemen, most of which have been shot down.

The US and UK have also carried out air strikes in Yemen in response to the group’s attacks on dozens of merchant vessels in the southern Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a member of the Houthis’ political bureau, told the BBC’s Newshour programme on Friday that Yemenis were now “moving to a direct confrontation” with the US, UK and Israel after fighting what he called their “tools” during Yemen’s decade-long civil war. He appeared to be referring to the Saudi-led coalition that intervened in support of the Yemeni government when the Houthis seized control of Sanaa in 2015.

“We are committed to continuing our military operation in support of Gaza and we will not stop until the genocide crimes and the siege on Gaza stop. We are going to escalate our military targeting of Israel,” he said. Israel has vehemently denied that its forces are committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

Bukhaiti said the Houthis did not need the support of Iran, which has seen its allies Hamas and Hezbollah devastated by wars with Israel over the past 14 months.

“We have enough capabilities – militarily, economically, and even in popular support – to go through this battle, even if we are on our own,” he insisted.

He also said the Houthis expected an escalation by the US after President-elect Donald Trump takes office next month, but he warned that it would “backfire”.

Israel’s prime minister said on Thursday evening that his country had “attacked targets of the Houthi terrorist organisation” as part of what he called a “war of redemption”.

“We are determined to cut off this terrorist arm of Iran’s axis of evil. We will persist until we get the job done,” Benjamin Netanyahu said.

Defence Minister Israel Katz meanwhile warned that Israel would “hunt down all the Houthi leaders”, as it had done with the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah.

UN spokeswoman Stéphanie Tremblay said Secretary General António Guterres remained “deeply concerned about the risk of further escalation in the region and reiterates his call for all parties concerned to cease all military actions and exercise utmost restraint”.

The Israeli military said its air strikes targeted Houthi “military infrastructure” at Sanaa International Airport and the Hezyaz and Ras Kanatib power stations, as well as infrastructure at the Red Sea ports of Hudaydah, Salif and Ras Kanatib used to smuggle in Iranian weapons.

The Houthis’ military spokesman said only civilian facilities were hit and that the strikes resulted in fatalities and material damage.

The Houthi-controlled Saba news agency reported that three people were killed at Sanaa airport and that another three were killed in Hudaydah province.

However, the deputy transport minister of the government in Houthi-controlled Yemen, Yahya al-Sayani, put the death toll as four during a news conference on Friday.

He said Sanaa airport’s control tower, departure lounge and navigational equipment were hit and damaged, and accused Israel of violating international law and aviation regulations.

Flights at the airport resumed at 10:00 (07:00 GMT) on Friday, he added.

The strikes on the airport happened just as the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, was about to board a UN Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS) plane there.

A crew member of the UN plane was seriously injured and was flown to Jordan on Friday after undergoing surgery at a local hospital, according to Dr Tedros.

“Deepest gratitude to the UNHAS team for their service and swift evacuation from Yemen,” he wrote on X. “Attacks on civilians and humanitarians must stop, everywhere.”

The WHO chief had been leading a high-level delegation to Yemen to assess the humanitarian situation in a country that has the world’s highest levels of cholera and 80% of the population needs some form of aid. He had also been asked to try to negotiate the release of 16 UN personnel being detained by the Houthis.

It is normal practice for the UN to share full details of humanitarian flights with all relevant parties. However, the Israeli military told the Associated Press that it had not been aware that the UN delegation was at the airport.

WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris said its delegation was “in contact with all relevant parties to ascertain the facts” surrounding the incident.

How well do you remember the stories and people in the news this year?

Test your memory of 2024 in our four-part Christmas quiz – 52 questions for 52 weeks of the year.

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Fancy some more? Have a go at something from the archives.

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.

US President-elect Donald Trump has asked the US Supreme Court to delay an upcoming TikTok ban while he works on a “political resolution”.

HIs lawyer filed a legal brief on Friday with the court that says Trump “opposes banning TikTok” and “seeks the ability to resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office”.

On 10 January, the court will hear arguments on a US law that requires TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the social media company to an American firm or face a ban come 19 January – a day before Trump takes office.

US officials and lawmakers have accused TikTok and ByteDance of being linked to the Chinese government – which the firms deny.

Those allegations of an app that has 170 million users in the US led Congress to pass a bill in April, which President Joe BIden signed into law, that included the divest or ban requirement.

TikTok and ByteDance have filed multiple legal challenges against the law, arguing that it threatens American free speech protections, with little success. Now, with no potential buyer materialising, the companies’ final chance to derail the ban is via the American high court.

While the Supreme Court has previously declined to act on a request for an emergency injunction against the law, it agreed to allow TikTok, ByteDance and the US government to plead their cases on 10 January – just days before the ban is due to take effect.

In a court filing on Friday, Trump said that the case represents “an unprecedented, novel, and difficult tension between free-speech rights on one side, and foreign policy and national security concerns on the other”.

While the filing said that Trump “takes no position on the underlying merits of this dispute”, it added that pushing back the 19 January deadline would grant Trump “the opportunity to pursue a political resolution” to the matter without having to resort to the court.

The US justice department has argued that alleged Chinese links to TikTok present a national security threat – and multiple state governments have raised concerns about the popular social media app.

Nearly two dozen state attorney generals led by Montana’s Austin Knudsen have urged the Supreme Court to uphold the law compelling ByteDance and TikTok to divest or be banned.

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

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

“I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok, because I won youth by 34 points,” he claimed at a press conference earlier in December, although a majority of young voters backed his opponent, Kamala Harris.

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

Salome Zourabichvili’s family fled Georgia in 1921 after Soviet forces snuffed out the country’s three-year experiment with independence from Russia.

A century later, Georgia’s pro-Western president is refusing to leave office, arguing she is the last legitimate institution in her country,

On Sunday, her six-year term as president is due to end. According to a new system for selecting the head of state, on that day she will be replaced by former Manchester City footballer Mikheil Kavelashvili, chosen with the support of the governing Georgian Dream party.

Zourabichvili, 72, has denounced his election under an electoral college system in which he was the only candidate as a travesty.

When she became president in 2018 she was endorsed by Georgian Dream, but she has since condemned their contested election victory in late October as a “Russian special operation” and backed nightly pro-EU protests outside parliament.

The government says if she refuses to leave office she will be committing a crime.

If she is forced out, she says the ruling party’s takeover of the state will be complete and Georgia will have surrendered its sovereignty to a party that she accuses of serving Moscow.

Salome Zourabichvili was born in France in 1952 into a prominent family of Georgian émigrés. Her grandfather, a minister in the government of briefly independent Georgia, fled to France in 1921.

Georgia, then under Soviet rule, loomed large in her childhood. It was a “mythical place, which only existed in books,” she said in a 2004 interview.

Though raised in a culturally Georgian environment, speaking the language at home and attending Georgian Orthodox church services, she easily integrated into French culture. She attended France’s elite schools, including Sciences Po, traditionally a feeder for the country’s top public servants.

She excelled, serving as a French diplomat for nearly 30 years. But throughout, her true passion remained in extricating her parents’ mysterious country of origin from Russia’s influence and bringing it closer to the West.

“She sees it as her life’s mission to bring Georgia into Europe. Everything else for her has always been secondary,” said Alexandre Crevaux-Asatiani, a former Zourabichvili aide.

In 2003, she was appointed French ambassador to Georgia. A year later, she was granted Georgian citizenship and made foreign minister under President Mikheil Saakashvili. Dismissed in 2005, she took an increasingly prominent role in her adopted country’s politics, founding a new party.

Saakashvili’s rule ended in 2012 and Georgian Dream have been in power ever since. The party’s founder, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, is widely seen by Georgians as the most powerful man in their country. By a quirk of fate, he is also French, having taken citizenship in 2010.

Backed for the presidency by Ivanishvili’s party, Zourabichvili was initially unpopular among the country’s pro-Western youth. A popular TV show mocked her halting Georgian, spoken with a strong French accent.

She was seen as aligned with the ruling party, unpopular with many young people, and she blamed a short war with Russia in 2008 on Georgia allowing itself to be provoked.

But as her presidential term progressed, Georgian Dream took an increasingly authoritarian and anti-Western turn, cracking down on civil society and NGOs. It refused to join Western sanctions on Russia after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and called the West the “global war party”, making a mockery of its stated aim of joining the EU and Nato.

Zourabichvili openly defied the government, believing she had the support of the majority of Georgia’s population.

She pledged to veto a bill on “foreign influence” that mirrored Russian legislation passed under President Vladimir Putin, but the government passed it anyway, defying weeks of protests.

“The choice for Georgia is between independence or slavery, Europe or Russia,” she said in April.

She has often addressed the protesters who have turned out every night for a month outside parliament, casting them as the conscience of the nation against a Russia-friendly government.

Last month she asked riot police, accused by the opposition of brutalising protesters: “Are you serving Russia or Georgia?”

Many protesters, initially distrustful of the president for coming to power with Georgian Dream’s backing, came to respect her outspoken opposition.

“No-one expected her to be this good. She reflects our values,” said Irakli, a 34-year-old who has been regularly demonstrating. “She motivates us to fight.”

Ahead of October’s contested elections, the government tried to impeach her for meeting EU leaders without government authorisation. Ultimately the effort failed but it was an indication of the showdown to come.

Zourabichvili called the elections, which returned Georgian Dream to power, “totally falsified”. She backed opposition parties’ calls for a re-run, drawing the ire of senior party leaders.

She now faces perhaps her biggest challenge so far, as Georgian Dream prepares to install her replacement, Mikheil Kavelashvili, as president.

But Zourabichvili has insisted she will not go, setting up a likely constitutional crisis. Georgian Dream Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has threatened her with arrest.

“Let’s see where she ends up, behind bars or outside,” he told reporters this week.

The government is likely to force her to leave one way or another, said Petre Tsiskarishvili of the opposition United National Movement.

Conscious of not wanting to make her a political martyr and elevate her profile further, it may avoid a high-profile arrest, he added, perhaps merely locking her out of her official residence at the Orbeliani Palace.

Doubts towards her will persist. Some in the opposition blame her for providing a pro-European face to Georgian Dream’s authoritarian turn for far too long, refraining from criticising Ivanishvili until only a few months ago.

But in a country where pro-European forces have often been fractured, Zourabichvili’s supporters say she is likely to emerge from her term in office as a key opponent to the government.

“Even if she is arrested, she will still be considered the legitimate president of Georgia. There is no question about it,” said Mr Crevaux-Asatiani, the president’s former aide.

• Listen to Theo read this story

This has been a miserable year for Boeing. Not only has it struggled to cope with a safety and quality control crisis, it has lost billions of dollars following a strike by workers that paralysed production at two of its biggest factories.

Even its space programme has been in trouble. Two astronauts were left stranded on the International Space Station in June after their Boeing Starliner capsule developed a potential fault, which would have made returning to Earth in it too dangerous.

On top of all this, the company faces a crisis of confidence from within its own ranks, says Bjorn Fehrm, an aeronautical and economic analyst at industry consultants Leeham Company.

“People in Boeing don’t believe in words from top management any more,” he says.

Sam Mohawk is a 51-year-old quality assurance investigator at Boeing’s factory in Renton near Seattle, a huge plant where the 737 Max is built. It is the company’s best-selling aircraft, but one with a chequered safety record.

Earlier this year Mr Mohawk came forward as a whistleblower, claiming that chaos on the factory floor in the years since the Covid-19 pandemic had led to thousands of faulty or “non-conforming” parts going missing, and potentially being fitted aboard aircraft that have since been sent to customers.

“The whole system was just in shambles,” he says of that period. “It [had] kind of just broken down.”

His allegations came to light in June when they were referred to during a congressional hearing in Washington DC into safety failures at the aerospace giant.

During the session, Boeing’s top bosses were accused by Republican Senator Josh Hawley of “strip-mining” the company for profit and cutting corners on safety in order to boost earnings.

David Calhoun, who was Boeing’s chief executive at the time, said he “didn’t recognise” Mr Hawley’s depiction of the company. “That is not the way we operate,” Mr Calhoun said back then. “I am proud of every action we have taken.”

Since then, Boeing has appointed a new chief executive, Kelly Ortberg, who has pledged to “restore trust” in the business, overhaul its corporate culture and prioritise the safety of passengers. The company is also in the process of implementing a comprehensive safety and quality plan, which was launched earlier in the year.

But according to Mr Mohawk, who still works at Boeing, the drive to build planes as quickly as possible in order to maximise revenues remains. The accountants, he insists, are “100%” running the operation.

“Nothing has changed,” says Mr Mohawk. “Our executives talk to the press and say, ‘quality and safety is our number one priority’. But it’s just the same.”

Boeing rejects Mr Mohawk’s claims. It insists they have been thoroughly investigated and that none of them were found to be valid.

In a statement, it said: “Boeing data systems do track parts, including non-conforming parts. The investigations into Mr Mohawk’s claims found no evidence that defective parts were installed on Boeing planes, and none of the issues raised affected safety.”

Another Boeing employee called Nathan (not his real name), who works in the company’s Everett factory in Washington state, where the 777 is built, describes low staff morale and corners being cut on the production line. Employees “don’t always follow the rules because they feel the pressure from their manager, and so they are not taking steps to ensure their own safety”, he claims.

But Mike Dunlop, an aerospace industry veteran and author of a book about turning around failing businesses, argues that Boeing has in fact already begun the process of transforming itself by going back to basics.

He believes many of Boeing’s problems result from the arrogance of the company’s management in the past, as it sought to cut costs in an effort to make more money. Recently, he says, there have been some improvements.

“I’ve seen the biggest changes in the company since the 1960s. What Kelly Ortberg is doing is focusing back on their core principles, which is to build airplanes as effectively and safely as possible, and be a reliable supplier to the airlines.”

Arguably, the market needs Boeing to be healthy. It remains a huge company, employing more than 150,000 people directly, and countless more in supply chains around the world. It is a significant contributor to the US economy.

But some insiders argue that it now has a credibility problem and needs to restore confidence.

Boeing’s challenging year began on 5 January with a routine evening flight from Portland International Airport in Oregon to Ontario, California. The plane, a brand-new Boeing 737 Max operated by Alaska Airlines, had taken off minutes earlier and was climbing when something went badly wrong.

“Er, yeah, we’d like to go down,” a female voice said over the radio as the crisis erupted at 16,000ft. “Alaska 1282 declaring an emergency… we’re descending to 10,000… we’re depressurised.”

Moments earlier on the flight deck, First Officer Emily Wiprud had been exchanging routine messages with air traffic control, then there was a loud bang, a sudden rush of wind and her radio headset was torn off. Air pressure in the aircraft plummeted, as did the temperature.

Ms Wiprud and the captain hurriedly put on oxygen masks, then worked together with calm urgency to bring the damaged aircraft to the ground.

What had happened was deeply disturbing. A panel fitted over an unused emergency exit had not been bolted into place properly and had come away as the plane was climbing, according to the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigated the incident.

The passengers were still strapped in and no one was seriously hurt. But as investigators pointed out, it could have been much worse.

What made the incident stand out was the fact that the 737 Max was Boeing’s newest aircraft and its bestselling model in history.

Since its entry into service, more than 1,600 have been sent to airlines and a further 4,800 are on order. But even before this, its safety record was tarnished.

In late 2018, an aircraft went down in the sea off the coast of Indonesia. Four months later another plane crashed minutes after take-off from Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. A total of 346 people were killed.

Both accidents were ultimately blamed on a poorly designed piece of flight control software. This had been fitted to address handling quirks on the new plane, and prevent pilots, who were used to earlier versions of the 737, from needing expensive retraining.

In practice, it became active at the wrong time, and forced both aircraft into catastrophic dives, according to investigators.

Some critics blame these accidents on a focus on the bottom line at the expense of safety. In a statement, The Foundation for Aviation Safety, which is chaired by ex-Boeing whistleblower Ed Pierson, said: “Attention to share price and profit margins alone has proven to be a flawed strategy.”

In the aftermath of those crashes, the 737 Max was grounded for 20 months as regulators examined every aspect of its design.

The company faced criticism over its corporate culture. A congressional report released in September 2020 found that Boeing’s rush to build new aircraft as quickly as possible while cutting costs had “jeopardised the safety of the flying public” – although its findings were described as “partisan” by one leading Republican.

The incident in Portland, however, was the result of the failure by Boeing engineers to bolt the door panel back on properly, after it had been removed to repair manufacturing flaws. Yet it placed the company in the spotlight again.

In particular, it drew attention to a series of continuing quality problems that had been occurring behind the scenes at the aircraft-maker and at its main supplier Spirit AeroSystems, which makes a number of large aircraft components including the main body.

These included manufacturing defects affecting parts of fuselages, tail and rudder assemblies, as well as sealants applied as protection against the effect of lightning strikes in central fuel tanks.

But the incident also placed a renewed focus on claims made by whistleblowers from within both companies, who had suggested that the pressure from Boeing to produce aircraft quickly, and ramp up production, had compromised safety on both the 737 and 787 programmes.

The sudden deaths of two other whistleblowers – John Barnett, who had worked in Boeing’s 787 factory in South Carolina, and Josh Dean, who had been employed by Spirit – generated further headlines in 2024. It resulted in pushing the wider story about Boeing once again into the news.

US politicians made their feelings clear. Richard Blumenthal, head of the Senate subcommittee on investigations said: “Boeing has put profits and speed of production ahead of quality and safety, and ultimately, that failing is at the core of its current difficulties.”

After the Portland incident, Boeing was ordered by the US Department of Transportation to produce a comprehensive action plan “to address its systemic quality control and production issues”.

The aerospace giant responded by publishing a detailed strategy aimed at improving its production systems, gaining more control over its supply chain, and encouraging employees to speak up on safety and quality control issues.

It also promised to strengthen its training programmes and overhaul critical processes on the production line.

On 1 July, Boeing reached an agreement to take control of Spirit as part of its efforts to resolve quality problems.

There were also changes at the top of the company when Mr Calhoun, who had become chief executive a year after the incidents in Indonesia and Ethiopia, stepped down and was replaced in August by Mr Ortberg, a veteran engineer who had spent decades in the industry.

But weeks after his appointment, Boeing faced further crisis when more than 30,000 unionised workers – most of them in the company’s Washington State heartlands – went on strike over a new four-year contract, and how much Boeing would increase pay and other benefits for its workers.

The walkout, which began in September and lasted for seven weeks, held up production of the 737 Max, the 777 and the 767 freighter.

In the past, the company had become accustomed to negotiating from a position of strength, only this time it was in a weak position, and according to Bjorn Fehrm, employees were out for revenge.

“It was obvious to them that the old management had basically screwed them. That was the sentiment. They were absolutely disgusted with how they had been treated in the old contract,” he explains.

The result was a bitter dispute, at a time when the company was trying to instil a new working culture, and Mr Ortberg had promised to “reset” relations with its employees.

Boeing had to dig deep to come up with a deal that satisfied their demands, which included a 38% pay rise over four years. According to consultants Anderson Economic Group, the strike cost the company more than $5.5 billion.

All of this came at a time when the aerospace giant was already struggling financially. In the first nine months of 2024 it racked up losses of nearly $8bn (£6.3bn). As a result, it set out plans to cut 17,000 jobs, or a tenth of its workforce.

Boeing’s problems have taken a heavy toll on its business. Where once it went toe to toe with its European rival Airbus, it has now delivered fewer aircraft in each of the past five years.

In the first nine months of 2024 it distributed 291 planes to its customers, while Airbus provided 497, according to Forecast International.

For its customers, this has been frustrating. Ryanair, one of the biggest buyers of the 737 Max, has cut its growth forecasts for next year. In the US, Southwest Airlines has had to make job cuts.

Yet Airbus is not in a position to take full advantage of this. Its own order books are full to bursting, with a backlog of nearly 8,700 planes. Like its rival, it has experienced problems with suppliers, leading to delays.

Meanwhile, airlines want new planes. Estimates from both Boeing and Airbus suggest more than 40,000 new aircraft will be needed over the next two decades.

The current generation of aircraft are much more efficient and cheaper to run than their predecessors. So delays in renewing their fleets will cost airlines money – potentially leading to higher ticket prices for their passengers – as well as hampering efforts to improve their environmental performance.

According to Mr Fehrm, all this creates an opening for a third player to take a stake in the market. “Over the next five to 10 years there will be a gap between what the market is asking for and what Airbus and Boeing can deliver by thousands of aircraft.

“So it’s open for a third player. Brazilian manufacturer Embraer is a candidate. Or it’s going to be a chance for Comac, the Chinese supplier, to come into different markets and say, ‘Actually, we can do a decent job here.'”

In early December Mike Whitaker, administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), visited the factory in Renton near Seattle that Mr Mohawk has raised concerns about. At the time, Mr Whitaker said: “What’s truly needed is a fundamental cultural shift that’s oriented around safety, quality improvement and effective employee engagement and training.

“As expected, Boeing has made progress executing its comprehensive plan in these areas, and we will continue to closely monitor the results as they begin to ramp up production following the strike.”

But for many experts, the problems at Boeing go back decades – and are unlikely to be solved overnight.

“The hardest thing to change in large companies is the mindset of people,” says Mr Fehrm. “It takes time, and it needs to be manifested in actions, doing things differently.

“There are changes coming, but people won’t look at what the top management under Kelly Ortberg say. They will look for actions.”

Some observers believe Mr Ortberg has an opportunity now to improve the company’s fortunes. Mr Dunlop thinks a change in mindset will be fundamental to Boeing’s future.

“The fastest way to turn around a company is to have a complete change in attitude on how you treat your employees, how you treat your customers, and most importantly in how you treat your suppliers.”

A complete reversal of its previous approach could produce a “borderline miraculous” revival, he believes.

But others are less confident. Captain Dennis Tajer, the lead spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association (the pilots’ union for American Airlines), believes real change at Boeing has to come, not from the boardroom, but from further down the company’s ranks.

“The solution is below senior management,” he argues.

“It’s at the middle management level, where you find the gatekeepers and the people who support doing things properly, not just keeping the schedule going.”

The stakes, he insists, could not be higher.

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.

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• 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.

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.

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.

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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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.”

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.”

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.

Separately, the White House said North Korean forces were experiencing mass casualties, and alleged that 1,000 of their troops had been killed or wounded over the past week in the Kursk region of Russia.

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.

White House spokesperson John Kirby suggested that Russian and North Korean military leaders were treating the troops as “expendable”.

They were being ordered to carry out “hopeless assaults against Ukrainian defences” and were being used in “massed dismounted assaults”, he said.

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

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.

A convoy carrying food aid has arrived in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, for the first time since civil war erupted in April 2023.

The country is currently experiencing the “world’s worst hunger crisis”, according to the United Nations, as a result of fighting between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

When trucks loaded with aid rolled into south Khartoum on Thursday, there were “tears of laughter and joy”, humanitarian worker Duaa Tariq told the BBC.

Aid agencies have long complained that security threats and roadblocks – set up by the warring sides – have hampered vital deliveries.

• A simple guide to what is happening in Sudan
• Famine hits Sudan as peace talks fall short yet again

In order for Thursday’s breakthrough to take place, UN agencies and Sudanese community groups negotiated with the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

“There were tears, tears of laughter and joy and tears of a lot of effort and exhaustion from arranging this… it was quite a moment,” Ms Tariq, who works with Sudanese humanitarian group Emergency Response Rooms, told the BBC’s Newsday programme.

The convoy consisted of 28 trucks. Unicef – which sent five of the vehicles – said it was able to deliver “life-saving” food and health supplies to Al Bashayer Hospital and other health facilities in Khartoum.

“Here in Khartoum, [we are in] desperate need of this aid. We’ve been waiting for it and we’ve been trying so many ways and methods to go around this, but the only way to help reduce the famine effect in Khartoum right now, is to receive this aid,” Ms Tariq said.

Just days earlier, an independent group of food security experts warned that Sudan is sliding into a “widening famine crisis”.

About half the population – 24.6 million people – is in urgent need of food aid, said the Integrated Food Phase Classification (IPC).

The army and RSF had jointly staged a coup in 2021, but a power struggle between their commanders plunged the country into a civil war 20 months ago.

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

More than 11 million people have been forced from their homes.

Various mediation efforts aimed at ending the conflict between the army and the RSF have so far failed.

• Who was behind one of the deadliest attacks in Sudan?
• Inside a hospital on the front line of Sudan’s hunger crisis
• WATCH: BBC reporter’s emotional return to ransacked family home

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.

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.”

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

Tom Baldwin, the author of a biography of the prime minister, told BBC Radio 5 Live that Starmer had gone to visit Nick in hospital in Leeds dozens of times.

“He didn’t want that in the papers, didn’t want people to think he was using that for political advantage,” he said.

“He went to see Nick dozens of times without cameras, without microphones, because Nick was very important to him.”

In Mr Baldwin’s biography, 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 Mr 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.”

In Starmer’s 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”.

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.

The Pope has urged “hope and kindness” in a message recorded for Thought for the Day for BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Pope Francis will also emphasise the importance of humility in the recording which will be broadcast on 28 December.

“A world full of hope and kindness is a more beautiful world. A society that looks to the future with confidence and treats people with respect and empathy is more humane,” he will say.

He will also quote British writer GK Chesterton, who the pontiff says invites us to “take the elements of life with gratitude and not for granted”.

The message – recorded in Italian and translated into English – marks the Catholic Church’s Jubilee year, which began on 24 December.

A jubilee is a Church tradition which takes place only once every 25 years in which Catholics re-establish their relationship with God. This jubilee is dedicated to the theme of hope and will involve special celebrations, including tens of millions of pilgrims travelling to Rome.

On Thursday, Pope Francis visited a prison in Rome where he opened a “Holy Door”, part of a prison chapel, which is one of a number of doors only opened during Jubilee years.

Pope Francis has appeared on Thought for the Day once before, in 2021, ahead of the COP26 climate summit.

He used that message to appeal for the world to take “an urgent change of direction” to preserve the planet for future generations.

His predecessor Pope Benedict XVI was the first to appear on Thought for the Day, broadcasting a pre-recorded message on Christmas Eve in 2010.

Famed American sports commentator Greg Gumbel has died from cancer at the age of 78, his family announced on Friday.

Gumbel, who for decades worked for CBS Sports, was considered a fixture in US sports, particularly American football and basketball.

In 2001, he became the first black sports commentator to give play-by-play announcements of the Super Bowl.

In a statement, his family said that “he leaves behind a legacy of love, inspiration and dedication to 50 extraordinary years in the sports broadcasting industry; and his iconic voice will never be forgotten”.

The statement added that Gumbel “passed away peacefully surrounded by much love after a courageous battle with cancer”.

“Greg approached his illness like one would expect he would, with stoicism, grace and positivity.”

Originally from New Orleans, Gumbel grew up in Chicago and first joined CBS in 1989 after having spent years working at New York Knicks basketball and Yankees baseball games for the Madison Square Garden Network.

His start, however, came in the early 1970s, when an executive at a local NBC affiliate in Chicago asked him to broadcast a high school basketball game every weekend.

“He said, ‘I have this idea and I want you to take it and run with it’,” Gumbel recalled in a 2021 interview. “We introduced our audience to a lot of guys who went on to become famous.”

Jim Nantz, a veteran of CBS Sports and another prominent sports anchor, referred to Gumbel as “broadcasting royalty.”

“He was as selfless a broadcaster as anyone in the industry has ever known,” he said. “Our careers interesected for nearly 35 years, and he was a consumate teammate and friend.”

He really was one of the greats,” another long-time colleague Lesley Visser told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner. “He just had a light touch, he had a wit about him and everyone loved working with him.”

“Greg had an innate dignity that he brought to the table,” she added.

At CBS Sports, Gumbel had two stints as the host of the popular “NFL Today” pre-game, halftime and post-game show, including three Super Bowls in 1992, 2013 and 2016.

Gumbel also spent four years at NBC Sports, where he hosted the “NFL on NBC” show and several other Super Bowl pre-game shows.

He briefly stepped away from NFL coverage in 2003, before returning in 2005 and continued in that role until 2022.

The longtime sportscaster also served as the primetime anchor for CBS Sports during the 1994 Olympic Winter Games, as well as co-anchor during weekday broadcasts of the 1992 Winter Games.

Additionally, he was a play-by-play announcer for Major League Baseball and became a fixture of college football broadcasts.

In March of this year, he missed his first National Collegiate Athletic Association – or NCAA – basketball tournament since 1997 due to unspecified health issues.

He had signed an extension with CBS in 2023 that allowed him to return to covering college basketball while stepping away from his work covering the NFL.

Gumbel is survived by his wife Marcy, daughter Michelle and younger brother Bryant, who is also a prominent broadcaster and a former host of the “Today” show.

Supporters of President-elect Donald Trump clashed online over a visa programme intended to bring skilled workers to the US – showing possible cracks in the upcoming administration.

Vivek Ramaswamy, tapped by Trump to slash government spending, claimed American culture is to blame for US firms deciding to hire skilled foreign workers, which is typically done via the H-1B temporary worker visas.

“Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence,” Ramawamy wrote in a long X post that argued that foreign workers improve the the US economy.

The post attracted backlash from Trump supporters who are strongly opposed to immigration of any sort, causing Ramaswamy to clarify his position.

Taking aim at American culture, Ramaswamy originally wrote: “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian [the top student in a class], will not produce the best engineers.”

After being pilloried online by anti-immigration Trump supporters, Ramaswamy returned to X to post that he believed “the H-1B system is badly broken & should be replaced”.

The disagreement led to a row online over the holidays, as mainstream Republicans and far-right influencers joined in criticising Ramaswamy and other wealthy figures in Trump’s inner circle.

“If we are going to have a throwdown, let’s have it now,” prominent Trump supporter Steve Bannon said on his War Room podcast on Friday. He went on to call the Republican claims of support of the H-1B programme a “total scam”.

But Ramaswamy’s perceived view of skilled worker visas was backed by Elon Musk, a tech billionaire selected to co-direct Trump’s proposed “Department of Government Efficiency”.

Musk defended the H-1B visa programme as attracting the “top ~0.1%” of engineering talent”.

“Thinking of America as a pro sports team that has been winning for a long time and wants to keep winning is the right mental construct,” he tweeted.

But critics online posted screenshots of job postings at his companies filled by people with H1-B visas, showing salaries of $200,000 and much less, and argued these hires did not constitute an elite talent pool but rather a way to hold down the wages of US-born workers.

Nikki Haley, Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations and a former Republican presidential candidate, became a prominent voice against the tech billionaires who defended the immigration programme.

“There is nothing wrong with American workers or American culture,” she wrote in response on X. “All you have to do is look at the border and see how many want what we have. We should be investing and prioritizing in Americans, not foreign workers.”

Haley, who like Ramaswamy was born to Indian immigrants, was joined in opposing the visa programme by far-right accounts online.

Laura Loomer, an anti-Islam activist who regularly spreads conspiracy theories but is also known for her unwavering support of Trump, led the online charge with posts viewed millions of times.

Earlier in the week, Loomer criticised Trump’s choice of Sriram Krishnan, an India-born entrepreneur, as the White House senior advisor on artificial intelligence. Loomer wrote that Krishnan was a “career leftist” who is “in direct opposition to Trump’s America First agenda”.

Cheered on by far-right X accounts, she also called Indian immigrants “invaders” and directed racist tropes at Krishnan.

Loomer then accused Musk, who owns X, of “censorship” for allegedly restricting replies to her posts on the network and removing her from a paid premium programme.

Echoing criticisms of Trump about the influence of X boss, she wrote: “‘President Musk’ is starting to look real… Free speech is an illusion.”

• Laura Loomer: Who is conspiracy theorist travelling with Trump?

The number of H-1B visas issued is capped at 65,000 per year plus an additional 20,000 for people with a master’s from US institutions.

Recent research by Boundless, an immigration consultancy, indicates that around 73% of the H-1B visas are issued to Indian nationals, with 12% issued to Chinese citizens.

Trump promised that mass deportations of undocumented immigrants will start immediately after he takes office. He has been a critic of the H-1B progamme and tightened eligibility for that visaa during his first term.

His vice-president, JD Vance, also campaigned against the programme, but has close ties to the tech world. In his previous career as a venture capitalist, Vance funded startups that hired workers with H-1B visas.

In recent days the president-elect also denied that he’s unduly under the influence of Musk and the other billionaires who backed his campaign.

On Sunday, Trump told a conservative conference in Arizona that he was not under Musk’s thumb.

“You know, they’re on a new kick,” he told the crowd at AmericaFest, organised by Turning Point USA. “All the different hoaxes. The new one is that President Trump has ceded the presidency to Elon Musk.”

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

“The Chinese people are so miserable,” read a social media post in the wake of yet another mass killing in the country earlier this year. The same user also warned: “There will only be more and more copycat attacks.”

“This tragedy reflects the darkness within society,” wrote another.

Such bleak assessments, following a spate of deadly incidents in China during 2024, have led to questions about what is driving people to murder strangers en masse to “take revenge on society”.

Attacks like this are still rare given China’s huge population, and are not new, says David Schak, associate professor at Griffith University in Australia. But they seem to come in waves, often as copycat attempts at garnering attention.

This year has been especially distressing.

From 2019 to 2023, police recorded three to five cases each year, where perpetrators attacked pedestrians or strangers.

In 2024, that number jumped to 19.

In 2019, three people were killed and 28 injured in such incidents; in 2023, 16 dead and 40 injured and in 2024, 63 people killed and 166 injured. November was especially bloody.

On the 11th of that month, a 62-year-old man ploughed a car into people exercising outside a stadium in the city of Zhuhai, killing at least 35. Police said that the driver had been unhappy with his divorce settlement. He was sentenced to death this week.

Days later, in Changde city, a man drove into a crowd of children and parents outside a primary school, injuring 30 of them. The authorities said he was angry over financial losses and family problems.

That same week, a 21-year-old who couldn’t graduate after failing his exams, went on a stabbing rampage on his campus in Wuxi city, killing eight and injuring 17.

In September, a 37-year-old man raced through a Shanghai shopping centre, stabbing people as he went. In June, four American instructors were attacked at a park by a 55-year-old man wielding a knife. And there were two separate attacks on Japanese citizens, including one in which a 10-year-old boy was stabbed to death outside his school.

The perpetrators have largely targeted “random people” to show their “displeasure with society”, Prof Schak says.

In a country with vast surveillance capabilities, where women rarely hesitate to walk alone at night, these killings have sparked understandable unease.

So what has prompted so many mass attacks in China this year?

A major source of pressure in China right now is the sluggish economy. It is no secret that the country has been struggling with high youth unemployment, massive debt and a real estate crisis which has consumed the life savings of many families, sometimes with nothing to show for it.

On the outskirts of most major cities there are entire housing estates where construction has stopped because indebted developers cannot afford to complete them. In 2022, the BBC interviewed people camping in the concrete shells of their own unfinished apartments, without running water, electricity and windows because they had nowhere else to stay.

“Optimism certainly does seem to have faded,” says George Magnus, a research associate at Oxford University’s China Centre. “Let’s use the word trapped, just for the moment. I think China has become trapped in a sort of cycle of repression. Social repression and economic repression, on the one hand, and a kind of faltering economic development model on the other.”

Studies appear to point to a significant change in attitudes, with a measurable increase in pessimism among Chinese people about their personal prospects. A significant US-China joint analysis, which for years had recorded them saying that inequality in society could often be attributed to a lack of effort or ability, found in its most recent survey that people were now blaming an “unfair economic system”.

“The question is who do people really blame?” Mr Magnus asks. “And the next step from that is that the system is unfair to me, and I can’t break through. I can’t change my circumstances.”

In countries with a healthy media, if you felt you had been fired from your job unfairly or that your home had been demolished by corrupt builders backed by local officials, you might turn to journalists for your story to be heard. But that is rarely an option in China, where the press is controlled by the Communist Party and unlikely to run stories which reflect badly on any level of the government.

Then there are the courts – also run by and for the party – which are slow and inefficient. Much was made on social media here of the Zhuhai attacker’s alleged motive: that he did not achieve what he believed was a fair divorce settlement in court.

Experts say other outlets for venting frustrations have also narrowed or been shut down altogether.

Chinese people often air their grievances online, says Lynette Ong, a political science professor at the University of Toronto, who has carried out significant research on how the Chinese state responds to push back from its people.

“[They] will go on to the internet and scold the government… just to vent their anger. Or they may organise a small protest which the police would often allow if it’s small-scale,” she explains. “But this sort of dissent, small dissent, has been closed off in the last couple of years.”

There are plenty of examples of this: Increased internet censorship, which blocks words or expressions that are deemed controversial or critical; crackdowns on cheeky Halloween costumes that make fun of officialdom; or when plain-clothed men, who appeared to have been mobilised by local officials, beat up protesters in Henan province outside banks which had frozen their accounts.

As for dealing with people’s mental and emotional responses to these stresses, this too has been found wanting. Specialists say that China’s counselling services are vastly inadequate, leaving no outlet for those who feel isolated, alone and depressed in modern Chinese society.

“Counselling can help build up emotional resilience,” says Professor Silvia Kwok from Hong Kong’s City University, adding that China needs to increase its mental health services, especially for at-risk groups who have experienced trauma or those with mental illness.

“People need to find different strategies or constructive ways to deal with their emotions… making them less likely to react violently in moments of intense emotional stress.”

Taken together, these factors suggest the lid is tightening on Chinese society, creating a pressure cooker-like situation.

“There are not a lot of people going around mass killing. But still the tensions do seem to be building, and it doesn’t look like there is any way it is going to ease up in the near future,” Mr Magnus says.

What should worry the Communist Party is the commentary from the general public blaming those in power for this.

Take this remark for example: “If the government truly acts fairly and justly, there would not be so much anger and grievance in Chinese society… the government’s efforts have focused on creating a superficial sense of harmony. While it may appear that they care about disadvantaged people, their actions have instead caused the greatest injustices.”

While violent attacks have been rising in many countries, according to Professor Ong, the difference in China is that officials have had little experience dealing with them.

“I think the authorities are very alarmed because they’ve not seen it before, and their instinct is to crack down.”

When China’s leader Xi Jinping spoke about the Zhuhai attack, he seemed to acknowledge pressure was building in society. He urged officials across the country to “learn hard lessons from the incident, address risks at their roots, resolve conflicts and disputes early and take proactive measures to prevent extreme crime”.

But, so far, the lessons learnt seem to have led to a push for quicker police response times using greater surveillance, rather than considering any changes to the way China is run.

“China is moving into a new phase, a new phase that we have not seen since the late 70s,” Prof Ong says, referring to the time when the country began opening to the world again, unleashing enormous change.

“We need to brace for unexpected events, such as a lot of random attacks and pockets of protest and social instability emerging.”

White House spokesman John Kirby has said the US has seen “early indications” that Russia may have been responsible for the downing of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane that crashed on 25 December, killing 38 people.

Mr Kirby did not elaborate further, but told reporters the US had offered assistance to the investigation into the crash.

The plane is thought to have come under fire from Russian air defence systems as it tried to land in Chechnya before being diverted across the Caspian Sea to Kazakhstan, where it crashed.

The Kremlin has refused to comment, but the head of Russia’s civil aviation agency said the situation in Chechnya was “very complicated” due to Ukrainian drone strikes on the region.

• What we know about the Azerbaijan Airlines crash

Mr Kirby said the indications the US had seen went beyond widely circulated photos of the damaged plane, the Washington Post reported.

Aviation experts and others in Azerbaijan believe the plane’s GPS systems were affected by electronic jamming and it was then damaged by shrapnel from Russian air-defence missile blasts.

Azerbaijan has not accused Russia, but the country’s transport minister said the plane was subject to “external interference” and damaged inside and out as it tried to land.

“All [the survivors] without exception stated they heard three blast sounds when the aircraft was above Grozny,” said Rashad Nabiyev.

Mr Nabiyev said investigators would now examine “what kind of weapon, or rather what kind of rocket was used.”

However, pro-government MP Rasim Musabekov was clear: “The plane was shot down over Russian territory, in the skies above Grozny. Denying this is impossible.”

He told AFP news agency the plane had been damaged and the pilot had asked to make an emergency landing in Grozny. Instead of being directed to nearby airports, he said it was “sent far away” across the Caspian Sea without GPS.

Flight attendant Zulfuqar Asadov described the moments when the plane was hit by “some kind of external strike” over Chechnya.

“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.”

The pilots of the Embraer 190 plane are credited with saving 29 of those on board by managing to land part of the plane, despite themselves being killed in the crash.

The Kremlin has refused to comment on the increasing number of 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.

Kazakh authorities have been treating the injured and working closely with Azerbaijan on the investigation.

Reports in Baku suggest both Russia and Kazakhstan have proposed having a committee from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) – a regional organisation dominated by Russia – investigate the crash, but Azerbaijan has instead demanded an international inquiry.

It was early December when Douna Haj Ahmed, a Syrian refugee, discovered the disturbing details of her husband’s detention in the notorious Al-Khatib prison – known as “Hell on Earth“.

She was watching bewildered prisoners fleeing the country’s brutal security apparatus, on the news at home in London, after rebel forces had ousted Bashar al-Assad as president.

Through tears, Abdullah Al Nofal, her husband of eight years sat next to her, turned and said: “This is where I was arrested, this is the place.”

Douna, whose brothers were also arrested during Syria’s 13-year civil war, says she had an idea of what her husband experienced during his detention – but this was the first time he was sharing the full details of what he endured.

“Abdullah does not like to share things emotionally, he likes to look like a strong guy all the time,” Douna, 33, tells the BBC.

“It was a turning point. I saw him weak. I saw him crying. I saw him saying: ‘This is where I was. I could be one of them. I could be one of them right now, or I could be dead’.

“I feel that when he saw this, he felt that this [was] closure,” she adds. “Now we want people to hear what Syrians went through.”

Abdullah, 36, was working in Damascus as a store keeper with the International Committee of the Red Cross in July 2013 when he and his colleagues were randomly stopped at a checkpoint on the outskirts of the Syrian capital.

He says he participated in anti-regime protests in 2011 in the southern city of Deraa, where the uprising against Assad began, but soon distanced himself when rebels began to use violence and weapons in response to a brutal crackdown by the regime’s forces.

Abdullah was singled out at the checkpoint and put on a green bus, handcuffed and blindfolded, and taken to a military area. He says he was then put in solitary confinement for three days and beaten.

“It was so dark for three days, I remember,” he says.

“I don’t [hear] any sound. It was so dark. You hear nothing. You feel so lonely.”

Abdullah was then transported to Al-Khatib, a detention centre in Damascus, and taken to a cell with about 130 people.

Al-Khatib was one of several detention facilities operated by Syrian intelligence services.

Almost 60,000 people were tortured and killed in the prisons run by the Assad regime during the civil war, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group.

Two years ago, a historic trial in Germany found a Syrian colonel who worked in Al-Khatib guilty of crimes against humanity. Anwar Raslan, 58, was linked to the torture of over 4,000 people in the prison.

In court, witnesses described how detainees were raped and hung from the ceiling for hours, as well as the use of electric shocks before being doused in water. Assad’s authoritarian government previously denied accusations of torturing.

During his detention in 2013, Abdullah describes how he would regularly hear the screams of people being tortured.

He recalls how diseases were rife and that about 20 people died while he was detained there.

“When I started to look around everywhere, there were people standing almost naked,” he tells the BBC. “They were full of blood, like they [have] been tortured.

“If you are not tortured yourself, every minute they will take someone to the investigation.

“They will get back to the room full of blood… every time you touch someone they will scream because you touched their wound.”

After 12 days, Abdullah was taken to be interrogated, where he says he was repeatedly beaten with a metal weapon and accused of transporting weapons.

He explains how he could not deny the accusations put forward to him as it would lead to prolonged punishment.

“As long as you say, ‘I didn’t do it’, they will keep torturing you and they will take you to another stage in torturing,” he says.

“Every minute it’s like you’re dying.”

Abdullah says he told officers a false story to avoid further interrogation, and was “lucky” to be released from detention after a month.

A year later, he left Syria and was later granted scholarships in Geneva and the US. He is now settled in London with his wife.

Only now does Abdullah feel able to share the full horror of his experiences with his wife, as the risk and fear he faced is slowly disappearing.

“We finally finish[ed] with the regime, we can say, we are really free right now,” he says.

“You can use our name. You can use our face. We can tell the full story.”

Douna, a human rights activist, sobbed as she heard her husband’s experiences for the first time.

“I was hearing him and I was crying. Every time I feel that this regime [has reached] the maximum of the horrors, of the horrible stories,” she says.

“It surprises me that, no, this is not the maximum. There could be more.”

She adds: “We are privileged that we are able to tell our stories. Lots of people, they died without being heard.”

Newly released bodycam footage appears to show New York corrections officers fatally beating a handcuffed inmate who died the following morning.

The inmate, 43-year-old Robert Brooks, was pronounced dead on 10 December, the day after the incident took place at the Marcy Correctional Facility in upstate New York.

Following an internal review, New York Governor Kathy Hochul ordered the firing of the 13 officers and a prison nurse who were involved in the assault.

The office of New York Attorney General Letitia James has opened an investigation into Brooks’ death, and the union that represents state prison workers called the video “incomprehensible”.

The footage – which was released by James on Friday – shows officers repeatedly striking Brooks in the face and groin while he sits handcuffed on an examination table.

The videos also appear to show a prison officer placing something in Brooks’ mouth before striking him, as well as a separate officer hitting him in the stomach with a shoe.

At one point, an officer lifts him by the neck before forcefully putting him on the examination table.

Brooks died the day after the assault. Preliminary examinations determined the cause of death was “asphyxia due to compression of the neck.”

It is unclear what initially prompted staff to take him to the prison’s medical facility in the first place. The videos do not include audio.

In a filmed statement, James said that she does not “take lightly the release of this video, especially in the middle of the holiday season”.

“I release the videos because I have a responsibility and duty to provide the Brooks family, their loved ones, and all New Yorkers with transparency and accountability,” she said.

Brooks was serving a 12-year sentence for first-degree assault, according to the Associated Press. He had been transferred to Marcy from the nearby Mohawk Correctional Facility on the same day as the incident.

Elizabeth Mazur, a lawyer representing the Brooks family, said in a statement that the videos show “the horrific and extreme nature of the deadly attack”.

“He deserved to live, and everyone else living in Marcy Correctional Facility deserves to know they do not have to live in fear of violence at the hands of prison staff,” Ms Mazur said of Brooks.

After the video’s release, Hochul – New York’s governor – said that she was “outraged and horrified” by the incident and felt compelled to hold those involved responsible.

“The state of New York has zero tolerance for individuals who break the law, and I am committed to holding everyone involved fully accountable,” she added.

The New York union that represents prison workers said in a statement to local media outlets that what “we witnessed is incomprehensible to say the least and is certainly not reflective of the great work that the vast majority of our membership conducts every day”.

The New York chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, alleged that the beating is “not an isolated incident”, however.

“Rather, it highlights a culture of violence and a lack of accountability for wrongdoing by corrections officers that puts the lives of incarcerated New Yorkers at risk,” executive director Donna Lieberman said in a statement.

In a report issued last year, the Correctional Association of New York – an independent watchdog – found “pervasive allegations of racial discrimination” and “mistreatment by staff”, including black inmates being turned away from mess halls for having their hair in cornrows or braids.

• Listen to Theo read this story

This has been a miserable year for Boeing. Not only has it struggled to cope with a safety and quality control crisis, it has lost billions of dollars following a strike by workers that paralysed production at two of its biggest factories.

Even its space programme has been in trouble. Two astronauts were left stranded on the International Space Station in June after their Boeing Starliner capsule developed a potential fault, which would have made returning to Earth in it too dangerous.

On top of all this, the company faces a crisis of confidence from within its own ranks, says Bjorn Fehrm, an aeronautical and economic analyst at industry consultants Leeham Company.

“People in Boeing don’t believe in words from top management any more,” he says.

Sam Mohawk is a 51-year-old quality assurance investigator at Boeing’s factory in Renton near Seattle, a huge plant where the 737 Max is built. It is the company’s best-selling aircraft, but one with a chequered safety record.

Earlier this year Mr Mohawk came forward as a whistleblower, claiming that chaos on the factory floor in the years since the Covid-19 pandemic had led to thousands of faulty or “non-conforming” parts going missing, and potentially being fitted aboard aircraft that have since been sent to customers.

“The whole system was just in shambles,” he says of that period. “It [had] kind of just broken down.”

His allegations came to light in June when they were referred to during a congressional hearing in Washington DC into safety failures at the aerospace giant.

During the session, Boeing’s top bosses were accused by Republican Senator Josh Hawley of “strip-mining” the company for profit and cutting corners on safety in order to boost earnings.

David Calhoun, who was Boeing’s chief executive at the time, said he “didn’t recognise” Mr Hawley’s depiction of the company. “That is not the way we operate,” Mr Calhoun said back then. “I am proud of every action we have taken.”

Since then, Boeing has appointed a new chief executive, Kelly Ortberg, who has pledged to “restore trust” in the business, overhaul its corporate culture and prioritise the safety of passengers. The company is also in the process of implementing a comprehensive safety and quality plan, which was launched earlier in the year.

But according to Mr Mohawk, who still works at Boeing, the drive to build planes as quickly as possible in order to maximise revenues remains. The accountants, he insists, are “100%” running the operation.

“Nothing has changed,” says Mr Mohawk. “Our executives talk to the press and say, ‘quality and safety is our number one priority’. But it’s just the same.”

Boeing rejects Mr Mohawk’s claims. It insists they have been thoroughly investigated and that none of them were found to be valid.

In a statement, it said: “Boeing data systems do track parts, including non-conforming parts. The investigations into Mr Mohawk’s claims found no evidence that defective parts were installed on Boeing planes, and none of the issues raised affected safety.”

Another Boeing employee called Nathan (not his real name), who works in the company’s Everett factory in Washington state, where the 777 is built, describes low staff morale and corners being cut on the production line. Employees “don’t always follow the rules because they feel the pressure from their manager, and so they are not taking steps to ensure their own safety”, he claims.

But Mike Dunlop, an aerospace industry veteran and author of a book about turning around failing businesses, argues that Boeing has in fact already begun the process of transforming itself by going back to basics.

He believes many of Boeing’s problems result from the arrogance of the company’s management in the past, as it sought to cut costs in an effort to make more money. Recently, he says, there have been some improvements.

“I’ve seen the biggest changes in the company since the 1960s. What Kelly Ortberg is doing is focusing back on their core principles, which is to build airplanes as effectively and safely as possible, and be a reliable supplier to the airlines.”

Arguably, the market needs Boeing to be healthy. It remains a huge company, employing more than 150,000 people directly, and countless more in supply chains around the world. It is a significant contributor to the US economy.

But some insiders argue that it now has a credibility problem and needs to restore confidence.

Boeing’s challenging year began on 5 January with a routine evening flight from Portland International Airport in Oregon to Ontario, California. The plane, a brand-new Boeing 737 Max operated by Alaska Airlines, had taken off minutes earlier and was climbing when something went badly wrong.

“Er, yeah, we’d like to go down,” a female voice said over the radio as the crisis erupted at 16,000ft. “Alaska 1282 declaring an emergency… we’re descending to 10,000… we’re depressurised.”

Moments earlier on the flight deck, First Officer Emily Wiprud had been exchanging routine messages with air traffic control, then there was a loud bang, a sudden rush of wind and her radio headset was torn off. Air pressure in the aircraft plummeted, as did the temperature.

Ms Wiprud and the captain hurriedly put on oxygen masks, then worked together with calm urgency to bring the damaged aircraft to the ground.

What had happened was deeply disturbing. A panel fitted over an unused emergency exit had not been bolted into place properly and had come away as the plane was climbing, according to the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigated the incident.

The passengers were still strapped in and no one was seriously hurt. But as investigators pointed out, it could have been much worse.

What made the incident stand out was the fact that the 737 Max was Boeing’s newest aircraft and its bestselling model in history.

Since its entry into service, more than 1,600 have been sent to airlines and a further 4,800 are on order. But even before this, its safety record was tarnished.

In late 2018, an aircraft went down in the sea off the coast of Indonesia. Four months later another plane crashed minutes after take-off from Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. A total of 346 people were killed.

Both accidents were ultimately blamed on a poorly designed piece of flight control software. This had been fitted to address handling quirks on the new plane, and prevent pilots, who were used to earlier versions of the 737, from needing expensive retraining.

In practice, it became active at the wrong time, and forced both aircraft into catastrophic dives, according to investigators.

Some critics blame these accidents on a focus on the bottom line at the expense of safety. In a statement, The Foundation for Aviation Safety, which is chaired by ex-Boeing whistleblower Ed Pierson, said: “Attention to share price and profit margins alone has proven to be a flawed strategy.”

In the aftermath of those crashes, the 737 Max was grounded for 20 months as regulators examined every aspect of its design.

The company faced criticism over its corporate culture. A congressional report released in September 2020 found that Boeing’s rush to build new aircraft as quickly as possible while cutting costs had “jeopardised the safety of the flying public” – although its findings were described as “partisan” by one leading Republican.

The incident in Portland, however, was the result of the failure by Boeing engineers to bolt the door panel back on properly, after it had been removed to repair manufacturing flaws. Yet it placed the company in the spotlight again.

In particular, it drew attention to a series of continuing quality problems that had been occurring behind the scenes at the aircraft-maker and at its main supplier Spirit AeroSystems, which makes a number of large aircraft components including the main body.

These included manufacturing defects affecting parts of fuselages, tail and rudder assemblies, as well as sealants applied as protection against the effect of lightning strikes in central fuel tanks.

But the incident also placed a renewed focus on claims made by whistleblowers from within both companies, who had suggested that the pressure from Boeing to produce aircraft quickly, and ramp up production, had compromised safety on both the 737 and 787 programmes.

The sudden deaths of two other whistleblowers – John Barnett, who had worked in Boeing’s 787 factory in South Carolina, and Josh Dean, who had been employed by Spirit – generated further headlines in 2024. It resulted in pushing the wider story about Boeing once again into the news.

US politicians made their feelings clear. Richard Blumenthal, head of the Senate subcommittee on investigations said: “Boeing has put profits and speed of production ahead of quality and safety, and ultimately, that failing is at the core of its current difficulties.”

After the Portland incident, Boeing was ordered by the US Department of Transportation to produce a comprehensive action plan “to address its systemic quality control and production issues”.

The aerospace giant responded by publishing a detailed strategy aimed at improving its production systems, gaining more control over its supply chain, and encouraging employees to speak up on safety and quality control issues.

It also promised to strengthen its training programmes and overhaul critical processes on the production line.

On 1 July, Boeing reached an agreement to take control of Spirit as part of its efforts to resolve quality problems.

There were also changes at the top of the company when Mr Calhoun, who had become chief executive a year after the incidents in Indonesia and Ethiopia, stepped down and was replaced in August by Mr Ortberg, a veteran engineer who had spent decades in the industry.

But weeks after his appointment, Boeing faced further crisis when more than 30,000 unionised workers – most of them in the company’s Washington State heartlands – went on strike over a new four-year contract, and how much Boeing would increase pay and other benefits for its workers.

The walkout, which began in September and lasted for seven weeks, held up production of the 737 Max, the 777 and the 767 freighter.

In the past, the company had become accustomed to negotiating from a position of strength, only this time it was in a weak position, and according to Bjorn Fehrm, employees were out for revenge.

“It was obvious to them that the old management had basically screwed them. That was the sentiment. They were absolutely disgusted with how they had been treated in the old contract,” he explains.

The result was a bitter dispute, at a time when the company was trying to instil a new working culture, and Mr Ortberg had promised to “reset” relations with its employees.

Boeing had to dig deep to come up with a deal that satisfied their demands, which included a 38% pay rise over four years. According to consultants Anderson Economic Group, the strike cost the company more than $5.5 billion.

All of this came at a time when the aerospace giant was already struggling financially. In the first nine months of 2024 it racked up losses of nearly $8bn (£6.3bn). As a result, it set out plans to cut 17,000 jobs, or a tenth of its workforce.

Boeing’s problems have taken a heavy toll on its business. Where once it went toe to toe with its European rival Airbus, it has now delivered fewer aircraft in each of the past five years.

In the first nine months of 2024 it distributed 291 planes to its customers, while Airbus provided 497, according to Forecast International.

For its customers, this has been frustrating. Ryanair, one of the biggest buyers of the 737 Max, has cut its growth forecasts for next year. In the US, Southwest Airlines has had to make job cuts.

Yet Airbus is not in a position to take full advantage of this. Its own order books are full to bursting, with a backlog of nearly 8,700 planes. Like its rival, it has experienced problems with suppliers, leading to delays.

Meanwhile, airlines want new planes. Estimates from both Boeing and Airbus suggest more than 40,000 new aircraft will be needed over the next two decades.

The current generation of aircraft are much more efficient and cheaper to run than their predecessors. So delays in renewing their fleets will cost airlines money – potentially leading to higher ticket prices for their passengers – as well as hampering efforts to improve their environmental performance.

According to Mr Fehrm, all this creates an opening for a third player to take a stake in the market. “Over the next five to 10 years there will be a gap between what the market is asking for and what Airbus and Boeing can deliver by thousands of aircraft.

“So it’s open for a third player. Brazilian manufacturer Embraer is a candidate. Or it’s going to be a chance for Comac, the Chinese supplier, to come into different markets and say, ‘Actually, we can do a decent job here.'”

In early December Mike Whitaker, administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), visited the factory in Renton near Seattle that Mr Mohawk has raised concerns about. At the time, Mr Whitaker said: “What’s truly needed is a fundamental cultural shift that’s oriented around safety, quality improvement and effective employee engagement and training.

“As expected, Boeing has made progress executing its comprehensive plan in these areas, and we will continue to closely monitor the results as they begin to ramp up production following the strike.”

But for many experts, the problems at Boeing go back decades – and are unlikely to be solved overnight.

“The hardest thing to change in large companies is the mindset of people,” says Mr Fehrm. “It takes time, and it needs to be manifested in actions, doing things differently.

“There are changes coming, but people won’t look at what the top management under Kelly Ortberg say. They will look for actions.”

Some observers believe Mr Ortberg has an opportunity now to improve the company’s fortunes. Mr Dunlop thinks a change in mindset will be fundamental to Boeing’s future.

“The fastest way to turn around a company is to have a complete change in attitude on how you treat your employees, how you treat your customers, and most importantly in how you treat your suppliers.”

A complete reversal of its previous approach could produce a “borderline miraculous” revival, he believes.

But others are less confident. Captain Dennis Tajer, the lead spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association (the pilots’ union for American Airlines), believes real change at Boeing has to come, not from the boardroom, but from further down the company’s ranks.

“The solution is below senior management,” he argues.

“It’s at the middle management level, where you find the gatekeepers and the people who support doing things properly, not just keeping the schedule going.”

The stakes, he insists, could not be higher.

Passengers at some of the country’s busiest airports, including Gatwick and Manchester, are facing widespread disruption due to fog.

The UK’s main air traffic control provider, Nats, said the flow of flights had been reduced for safety reasons.

“Due to widespread fog, temporary air traffic restrictions are in place at several airports across the UK today,” Nats said.

Dozens of flights from Heathrow were also delayed or cancelled but a spokeswoman for the airport, contacted by the BBC, did not clarify whether the disruption was due to the weather.

“Restrictions of this sort are only ever applied to maintain safety,” Nats said, adding staff were working “closely with the airports and airlines to minimise disruption”.

Passengers should check the status of their flight with their airline and airport, Nats added.

Data from flight tracking website Flightradar24 showed dozens of outbound flights were cancelled from airports across the UK, while hundreds more were delayed.

Manchester, Glasgow and Cardiff were among the airports where flights were delayed or cancelled.

Inbound flights were also affected, Flightradar24 data showed.

Irem, 36, had her flight from Germany to the UK delayed by nearly seven hours due to fog at Manchester Airport.

“We’ve started boarding [at Cologne Airport] but are crammed into a space where we’re waiting for the bus. We’ve been standing for about an hour, it’s just been a bit of a nightmare,” she told the BBC.

“I am from Cologne so we spent few days here over Christmas with my family. We are about to have a delayed Christmas and New Year with my husband’s family in North Wales.

“That will be delayed slightly, but I suppose we’re lucky we’re still going to see them tomorrow.”

National Highways, which runs the UK’s motorways and busiest A-roads, said the misty weather was not having a significant impact on its network.

It reminded motorists to use dipped headlights, wipers and demisters while driving in foggy conditions.

The persistent low cloud, mist and fog has been trapped in place by a slow-moving area of high pressure.

Over the weekend that high will drift away, allowing the breeze to strengthen. This will turn over the stagnant air and begin to lift the fog.

Saturday will start with widespread low cloud, mist and fog – especially in England and Wales. Some of that is expected to gradually clear during the day, particularly by the afternoon, and a few spells of sunshine are possible.

By Sunday conditions look significantly clearer with sunny spells across much of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. At the same time heavy rain will set in across the north and west of Scotland but stronger winds mean that fog will not be a significant concern.

A Houthi political official says the group will continue attacking Israel in solidarity with the Palestinians despite the escalating Israeli air strikes in Yemen.

Mohammed al-Bukhaiti told the BBC that the Houthis would “escalate our military targeting of Israel” until it stopped what he described as “the genocide in Gaza”.

On Thursday, Israeli warplanes struck the international airport in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, and ports and power stations on the Red Sea coast, killing at least four people.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that its response to more than a year of missile and drone attacks by the Iran-backed group was “just getting started”.

Overnight, the Houthis launched another ballistic missile at Israel, which the Israeli military said was intercepted before it reached Israeli territory.

The UN’s secretary general said he was “gravely concerned” by the intensified escalation.

He also called the strikes on the airport and ports were “especially alarming” and warned that they posed “grave risks to humanitarian operations” in the war-torn country.

The Houthis, who control north-western Yemen, began attacking Israel and international shipping shortly after the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza in October 2023.

Israel has carried out four rounds of air strikes against the Houthis since July in retaliation for the 400 missiles and drones that the Israeli military says have been launched at the country from Yemen, most of which have been shot down.

The US and UK have also carried out air strikes in Yemen in response to the group’s attacks on dozens of merchant vessels in the southern Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a member of the Houthis’ political bureau, told the BBC’s Newshour programme on Friday that Yemenis were now “moving to a direct confrontation” with the US, UK and Israel after fighting what he called their “tools” during Yemen’s decade-long civil war. He appeared to be referring to the Saudi-led coalition that intervened in support of the Yemeni government when the Houthis seized control of Sanaa in 2015.

“We are committed to continuing our military operation in support of Gaza and we will not stop until the genocide crimes and the siege on Gaza stop. We are going to escalate our military targeting of Israel,” he said. Israel has vehemently denied that its forces are committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

Bukhaiti said the Houthis did not need the support of Iran, which has seen its allies Hamas and Hezbollah devastated by wars with Israel over the past 14 months.

“We have enough capabilities – militarily, economically, and even in popular support – to go through this battle, even if we are on our own,” he insisted.

He also said the Houthis expected an escalation by the US after President-elect Donald Trump takes office next month, but he warned that it would “backfire”.

Israel’s prime minister said on Thursday evening that his country had “attacked targets of the Houthi terrorist organisation” as part of what he called a “war of redemption”.

“We are determined to cut off this terrorist arm of Iran’s axis of evil. We will persist until we get the job done,” Benjamin Netanyahu said.

Defence Minister Israel Katz meanwhile warned that Israel would “hunt down all the Houthi leaders”, as it had done with the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah.

UN spokeswoman Stéphanie Tremblay said Secretary General António Guterres remained “deeply concerned about the risk of further escalation in the region and reiterates his call for all parties concerned to cease all military actions and exercise utmost restraint”.

The Israeli military said its air strikes targeted Houthi “military infrastructure” at Sanaa International Airport and the Hezyaz and Ras Kanatib power stations, as well as infrastructure at the Red Sea ports of Hudaydah, Salif and Ras Kanatib used to smuggle in Iranian weapons.

The Houthis’ military spokesman said only civilian facilities were hit and that the strikes resulted in fatalities and material damage.

The Houthi-controlled Saba news agency reported that three people were killed at Sanaa airport and that another three were killed in Hudaydah province.

However, the deputy transport minister of the government in Houthi-controlled Yemen, Yahya al-Sayani, put the death toll as four during a news conference on Friday.

He said Sanaa airport’s control tower, departure lounge and navigational equipment were hit and damaged, and accused Israel of violating international law and aviation regulations.

Flights at the airport resumed at 10:00 (07:00 GMT) on Friday, he added.

The strikes on the airport happened just as the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, was about to board a UN Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS) plane there.

A crew member of the UN plane was seriously injured and was flown to Jordan on Friday after undergoing surgery at a local hospital, according to Dr Tedros.

“Deepest gratitude to the UNHAS team for their service and swift evacuation from Yemen,” he wrote on X. “Attacks on civilians and humanitarians must stop, everywhere.”

The WHO chief had been leading a high-level delegation to Yemen to assess the humanitarian situation in a country that has the world’s highest levels of cholera and 80% of the population needs some form of aid. He had also been asked to try to negotiate the release of 16 UN personnel being detained by the Houthis.

It is normal practice for the UN to share full details of humanitarian flights with all relevant parties. However, the Israeli military told the Associated Press that it had not been aware that the UN delegation was at the airport.

WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris said its delegation was “in contact with all relevant parties to ascertain the facts” surrounding the incident.

More than 1,300 pea-sized, critically endangered snails that were bred in a zoo have been set free to wander (very slowly) on a remote Atlantic island.

The release brings two species of Desertas Island land snails back to the wild. Prior to this they were believed to be extinct – neither species had been spotted for a century.

When a team of conservationists found a small population surviving on the rocky cliffs of Deserta Grande island, close to Madeira, they mounted a rescue effort.

The snails were brought to zoos in the UK and France, including Chester Zoo, where a home was created for them in a converted shipping container.

The tiny molluscs are native to the windswept, mountainous island of Deserta Grande, just south-east of Madeira. Habitat there has been destroyed by rats, mice and goats that were brought to the island by humans.

It was thought that all these invasive predators had eaten the tiny snails to extinction. Then a series of conservation expeditions – between 2012 and 2017 – proved otherwise.

Conservationists discovered just 200 surviving individuals on the island.

Those snails were believed to be the last of their kind, so they were collected and brought into captivity.

At Chester Zoo, the conservation science team made a new home for 60 of the precious snails. The right food, vegetation and conditions were recreated in miniature habitat tanks.

1,329 snail offspring, bred at the zoo, have now been marked with identification dots – using non-toxic pens and nail varnish – and transported back to the wild for release.

“[It’s a] colour code,” said Dinarte Teixeira, a conservation biologist at Madeira’s Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests. “This will allow us to spot them and track where they disperse to, how much they grow, how many survive and how well they adapt to their new environment.”

A wild refuge has been restored for the snails on Bugio, a smaller neighbouring island in the Ilhas Desertas (Desert Islands) archipelago.

Bugio is a nature reserve and invasive species have been eradicated there.

Gerardo Garcia from Chester Zoo said that the reintroduction was “a major step in a species recovery plan”.

“If it goes as well as we hope, more snails will follow them next spring. It’s a huge team effort which shows that it is possible to turn things around for highly threatened species.”

“These snails are such an important part of the natural habitat [on the islands they come from],” explained Heather Prince from Chester Zoo. As well as being food for other native species, she explained, snails break down organic matter and bring nutrients to the soil.

“They help plants grow. All of that is dependent on the little guys – the insects and the snails that so often get overlooked.”

The prospect of a shy politician is somewhat hard to imagine. Unless that politician is Manmohan Singh.

Since the death of the former Indian prime minister on Thursday, much has been said about the “kind and soft-spoken politician” who changed the course of Indian history and impacted the lives of millions.

His state funeral is being held on Saturday and India’s government has announced an official mourning period of seven days.

Despite an illustrious career – he was governor of India’s central bank and federal finance minister before becoming a two-term prime minister – Singh never came across as a big-stage politician, lacking the public swagger of many of his peers.

Though he gave interviews and held news conferences, especially in his first term as prime minister, he chose to stay quiet even when his government was mired in scandals or when his cabinet ministers faced corruption allegations.

His gentlemanly ways were both deplored and adored in equal measure.

His admirers said he was careful not to pick unnecessary battles or make lofty promises and that he focused on results – perhaps best exemplified by the pro-market reforms he ushered in as finance minister which opened India’s economy to the world.

“I don’t think anyone in India believes that Manmohan Singh can do something wrong or corrupt,” his former colleague in the Congress party, Kapil Sibal, once said,. “He was extremely cautious, and he always wanted to be on the right side of the law.”

His opponents, on the other hand, mocked him, saying he exhibited a kind of fuzziness unsuitable for a politician, let alone the premier of a country of more than one billion people. His voice – husky and breathless, almost like a tired whisper – often became the butt of jokes.

But the same voice was also endearing to many who found him relatable in a world of politics where high-pitched and high-octane speeches were the norm.

Singh’s image as a media-shy, unassuming, introverted politician never left him, even when his contemporaries, including his own party members, went through dramatic cycles of reinvention.

Yet, it was the dignity with which he manoeuvred each situation – even the difficult ones – that made him so memorable.

Born to a poor family in what is now Pakistan, Singh was India’s first Sikh prime minister. His personal story – of a Cambridge and Oxford-educated economist who overcame insurmountable odds to rise up the ranks – coupled with his image of an honest and thoughtful leader, had already made him a hero to India’s middle classes.

But in 2005, he surprised everyone when he made a public apology in parliament for the 1984 riots in which around 3,000 Sikhs were killed.

The riots, in which several Congress party members were accused, broke out after the assassination of then-prime minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. One of them later said they shot the Congress politician to avenge a military action she had ordered against separatists hiding in Sikhism’s holiest temple in northern India’s Amritsar.

It was a bold move – no other prime minister, including from the Congress party, had gone so far as to offer an apology. But it provided a healing touch to the Sikh community and politicians across party lines respected him for the courageous act.

A few years later, in 2008, Singh’s understated style of leadership received more praise after he signed a landmark deal with the US that ended India’s decades-long nuclear isolation, allowing India access to nuclear technology and fuel for the first time since it held tests in 1974.

The deal was massively criticised by opposition leaders and Singh’s own allies, who feared it would compromise India’s foreign policy. Singh, however, managed to salvage both his government and the deal.

The period 2008-2009 also witnessed global financial turmoil but Singh’s policies were credited for shielding India from it.

In 2009, he led his party to a resounding victory and returned as the PM for a second term, cementing his image of a benevolent leader, or rather, the exciting idea that leaders be benevolent.

For many, he had become virtue personified, the “reluctant prime minister” who stayed clear of the spotlight and refused to make any dramatic gestures, but was also not afraid of taking bold decisions for the sake of his country’s future.

Then, things began to unravel.

A string of corruption allegations – first around the hosting of the Commonwealth Games, then the illegal allocation of coal fields – plagued the Congress party and Singh’s government. Some of these corruption allegations were later found to be untrue or exaggerated. Some cases from the period are still pending in courts.

But Singh had already begun to feel some pressure. During his tenure, he made several attempts at reconciliation with India’s arch rival neighbour Pakistan, hoping for a thaw in the decades-old frosty relations.

The approach was sharply questioned in 2008 when a terror attack led by a Pakistan-based terror group killed 171 people in Mumbai city.

The 60-hour siege, one of the bloodiest in the country’s history, opened a chasm of allegations, as the opposition blamed the government’s “soft stance” on terrorism for the tragedy.

In the coming years, other decisions Singh made badly backfired.

In 2011, an anti-corruption movement led by social activist Anna Hazare shook up Singh’s government. The frail 72-year-old became an icon for the middle classes, as he demanded stringent anti-corruption laws in the country.

As a middle-class hero himself, Singh was expected to deal with Hazare’s demands more perceptively. Instead, the prime minister tried to quash the movement, allowing the police to arrest Hazare and disband his demonstration.

The move stoked a wave of public and media hostility against him. Those who once admired his understated style wondered if they had misjudged the politician and began to see his quiet ways through a less generous lens.

The feeling was heightened the next year when Singh refused to comment on the horrific gang rape and murder of a young woman in Delhi for more than a week.

To make things worse, India’s economic growth was slowing. Corruption grew and jobs shrank, sparking waves of public anger. And Singh’s unassuming personality, which once made his every move seem like a revelation, was labelled as showing complacency, diffidence and even arrogance by some.

Yet, Singh never tried to defend or explain himself and faced the criticism quietly.

That was until 2014. At a rare news conference, he announced that he would not seek a third term in office.

But he also tried to set the record straight. “I honestly believe that history will judge me more kindly than the contemporary media, or for that matter, the opposition parties in parliament did, ” he said, after listing some of the biggest accomplishments of his tenure.

He was right.

As it turned out, neither the Congress, nor Singh, could entirely recover from the damage as they lost the general elections to the BJP. But despite the many hurdles, Singh’s image as a kind and discerning leader stayed with him.

Throughout his prime ministerial stint and despite a second term plagued by controversies, he maintained an aura of personal dignity and integrity.

His policies were seen to centre around the middle class and the poor – he approved manifold increase in salaries of central employees, kept inflation in check and introduced landmark schemes on educations and jobs.

It may not have been enough to elevate him from the quandaries of politics or shield him from some of the failures of his career.

But there was more to his shyness; he was a leader of steely resolve.