Thousands of Georgian protesters have formed a human chain in the capital, Tbilisi, ahead of a political showdown as the new president prepares to be sworn in.

The inauguration of a new president – former Manchester City footballer Mikheil Kavelashvili, who is seen as an ally of the ruling Georgian Dream party – is due on Sunday.

But the current head of state, Salome Zourabichvili, is refusing to step down, describing his election as illegitimate.

Georgian Dream, which has been in power for 12 years, won parliamentary elections in October, but the victory was mired by allegations of fraud and there have since been protests.

The four main opposition groups have rejected Kavelashvili and boycotted parliament.

It is as yet unclear how the stand-off will be resolved.

Protesters, waving Georgian and EU flags, formed a human chain that spanned kilometres on Saturday.

“I am out in the street together with my whole family trying somehow to tear out this small country out of the claws of the Russian empire,” one protester told the Associated Press.

Georgian Dream has become increasingly authoritarian in recent years, passing Russian-style laws targeting media and non-government groups who receive foreign funding, and the LGBT community.

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.

An overwhelming majority of Georgians back the country’s path to the EU and it is part of the constitution.

But in November, the country’s ruling party said the government would not seek EU accession talks until 2028.

The announcement sparked days of protests, and riot police used tear gas and water cannon against protesters, who fought back by throwing fireworks and stones.

The US this week imposed sanctions on Georgia’s former prime minister and billionaire founder of Georgian Dream, Bidzina Ivanishvili.

Georgia is a parliamentary democracy with the president the head of state, and the prime minister the head of parliament.

The current president, Zourabichvili, has denounced Kavelashvili’s election – which was under an electoral college system in which he was the only candidate – as a travesty.

When Zourabichvili 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.

Zourabichvili has vowed not to step down on Sunday.

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

Israeli forces have detained and interrogated medical staff after forcibly evacuating the last major hospital in northern Gaza, the Hamas-run health ministry says.

The director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, was among those taken for questioning by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which accused him of “being a Hamas terrorist operative”, without providing evidence.

On Friday an estimated 50 people, including medical staff were killed in Israeli air strikes targeting the vicinity of the hospital, the health ministry said.

The IDF said it had carried out an operation there, alleging the hospital was a “Hamas terrorist stronghold”.

Fifteen critical patients, 50 caregivers and 20 health workers were transferred the nearby Indonesian Hospital, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.

The WHO said it was “appalled by yesterday’s raid” on the hospital, which it said now meant the area’s last major health facility was out of service.

Eid Sabbah, head of the nursing department at Kamal Adwan, told the BBC the military had ordered the evacuation around 07:00 on Friday, giving the hospital about 15 minutes to move patients and staff into the courtyard.

Israeli troops then entered the hospital and removed the remaining patients, he said.

The IDF said it had “facilitated the secure evacuation of civilians, patients and medical personnel” before beginning the operation.

The city of Beit Lahia, where the hospital is located, has been under a tightening Israeli blockade imposed on parts of northern Gaza since October.

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

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

But the IDF and Israeli Security Agency (ISA) alleged that intelligence had shown “terrorists” were using the Kamal Adwan Hospital as a command centre for its military operations in Jabalia.

In a statement on Saturday, the IDF said it apprehended 240 combatants.

It said IDF officers were attacked during the operation and weapons were found and confiscated in the area of the hospital.

It added Dr Abu Safiya was among medical staff taken for questioning and is “suspected of being a Hamas terrorist operative, as well as Hamas engineering and anti-tank missile operatives.”

Hamas has called on the United Nations to intervene to protect the remaining medical facilities in Gaza.

“We also demand that UN observers be sent to these facilities in order to determine the truth of what is happening,” it said in statement on Saturday.

Gaza’s deputy minister of health, Dr Yousef Abu-Al Rish, told the BBC that around 100 medical staff were being questioned by the IDF and alleged that some were exposed to psychological torture.

The IDF did not comment on the latter allegation when approached by the BBC.

Concerns remain about the state of the Indonesian Hospital, which doctors have warned is not equipped for patients.

“You can’t call it a hospital, it’s more of a shelter,” Dr Abu-Al Rish said on Friday.

The WHO added that an urgent mission was being planned to the Indonesian Hospital to move patients to southern Gaza for medical care.

How well do you remember the stories and people in the news from the year just ending?

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

Part four covers October to December.

Catch up with the previous parts.

Part one: January to March

Part two: April to June

Part three: July to September

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

Evan Barringer was 14 years old when he stumbled onto Full House, a South Korea romcom where two strangers are forced to share a house.

Sitting in his house in Memphis, he hit play assuming it was an Asian remake of a beloved American sitcom from the 1980s. It wasn’t until the third episode that he realised they had nothing in common save the name. But he was hooked.

That accidental choice changed his life. Twelve years on, he is an English teacher in South Korea – and he says he loves it here: “I have got to try all the foods I’ve seen in K-dramas, and I’ve gotten to see several of the K-pop artists in concerts whose lyrics I used to study Korean.”

When Evan discovered Full House in 2012, South Korean entertainment was a blip in the world’s eye. Psy’s Gangnam Style was the best-known Korean pop export at the time.

Today, there are more than an estimated 220 million fans of Korean entertainment around the world – that’s four times the population of South Korea. Squid Game, Netflix’s most popular show ever, has just returned for a much-anticipated second season.

How did we get here?

The so-called Korean Wave swept the world, experts say, when the success of streaming met American-inspired production value. And Korean entertainment – from pop music and mushy dramas to acclaimed hits built around universal themes – was ready for it.

BTS and Blackpink are now familiar names on the global pop circuit. People are swooning over sappy K-dramas from Dubai to India to Singapore. Overseas sales of all this Korean content – including video games – is now worth billions.

Last month, after 53-year-old poet and novelist Han Kang won the Nobel Prize for her literature, online boards were full of memes noting South Korea’s “Culture Victory” — a reference to the popular video game series Civilisation.

And there were jokes about how the country had achieved the dream of founding father Kim Koo, who famously wrote that he wished for Korea to be a nation of culture rather than might.

As it turns out, this moment had been in the making for years.

After South Korea’s military dictatorship ended in 1987, censorship was loosened and numerous TV channels launched. Soon, there was a generation of creators who had grown up idolising Hollywood and hip-hop, says Hye Seung Chung, associate professor of Korean Film Studies at the University of Buffalo.

Around the same time, South Korea rapidly grew rich, benefitting from an export boom in cars and electronics. And money from conglomerates, or chaebols as they are known, flowed into film and TV production, giving it a Hollywood-like sheen.

They came to own much of the industry, from production to cinemas. So they were willing to splurge on making movies without worrying much about losses, Prof Chung says.

K-pop, meanwhile, had become a domestic rage in the mid-90s, propelling the success of groups such as HOT and Shinhwa.

This inspired agencies to replicate the gruelling Japanese artist management system.

Scout young talent, often in their teens, and sign them onto years-long contracts through which they become “perfect” idols, with squeaky clean images and hyper-managed public personas. As the system took hold, it transformed K-pop, creating more and more idols.

By the 2000s, Korean TV shows and K-pop were a hit in East and South East Asia. But it was streaming that took them to the world, and into the lives of anyone with a smartphone.

That’s when the recommendation engine took over – it has been key in initiating Korean culture fans, taking them from one show to the next, spanning different genres and even platforms.

Evan says he binged the 16 hour-long episodes of Full House. He loved the way it took its time to build the romance, from bickering banter to attraction, unlike the American shows he knew.

“I was fascinated by each cultural difference I saw – I noticed that they don’t wear shoes in the house,” he recalls. So he took up Netflix’s suggestions for more Korean romcoms. Soon, he found himself humming to the soundtracks of the shows, and was drawn to K-pop.

He has now begun watching variety shows, a reality TV genre where comedians go through a series of challenges together.

As they work their way through the recommendations, fans are immersed in a world that feels foreign yet familiar – one that eventually includes kimchi jiggae, a spicy kimchi stew, and kalguksu, a seafood and kelp noodle broth.

When Mary Gedda first visited South Korea, she went looking for a bowl of kimchi jjigae, as she had seen the stars do on screen numerous times.

“I was crying [as I ate it]. It was so spicy,” she says. “I thought, why did I order this? They eat it so easily in every show.”

Mary, an aspiring French actor, now lives in Seoul. Originally a K-pop fan, she then discovered K-dramas and learned Korean. She has starred in a few cameo roles as well. “I got lucky and I absolutely love it,” she says.

For Mary, food was a big part of the appeal because she saw such a variety of it on K-dramas. Seeing how characters build relationships over food was familiar to her, she says, because she grew up in the French countryside in Burgundy.

But there is also the promise of romance, which drew Marie Namur to South Korea from her native Belgium. She began watching K-dramas on a whim, after visiting South Korea, but she says she kept going because she was “pretty much attracted to all those beautiful Korean men”.

“[They] are impossible love stories between a super-rich guy and a girl who is usually poor, and, you know, the guy is there to save her and it really sells you a dream.”

But it is Korean women who are writing most of these shows – so it is their imagination, or fantasy, that is capturing the interest (and hearts) of other women across the world.

In Seoul, Marie said she was “treated like a lady”, which hadn’t happened “in a very long time”, but her “dating experience is not exactly as I expected it to be”.

“I do not want to be a housewife. I want to keep working. I want to be free. I want to go clubbing with my girlfriends if I want to, even though I’m married or in a relationship, and a lot of guys here do not want that.”

International fans are often looking for an alternative world because of disappointment with their own society, Prof Chung says.

The prim romances, with handsome, caring and chivalrous heroes, are drawing a female audience turning away from what they see as hypersexual American entertainment. And when social inequality became a stronger theme in Korean films and shows – such as Parasite and Squid Game – it attracted global viewers disillusioned with capitalism and a yawning wealth divide in their countries.

The pursuit of a global audience has brought challenges as well. The increasing use of English lyrics in K-pop has led to some criticism.

And there is now a bigger spotlight on the industry’s less glamorous side. The immense pressure stars face to be perfect, for instance, and the demands of a hyper-competitive industry. Creators behind blockbuster shows have alleged exploitation and complained about not being fairly compensated.

Still, it’s great to see the world pay attention to Korea, Prof Chung says. She grew up in a repressive South Korea, when critics of the government were regularly threatened or even killed. She escaped into American movies.

When Parasite played in the cinema of the small American town where she lives, she saw on the faces of other moviegoers the same awe she felt as a child watching Hollywood films: “It feels so great that our love is returned.”

In 2024, as Bollywood struggled to find its footing, smaller films by Indian women that told nuanced stories made headlines in the country and across the world.

In May, Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light made history by winning the Grand Prix at the Cannes film festival.

In the months since then, All We Imagine As Light has become a juggernaut of indie cinema, sweeping through film festivals and the awards circuit. It has been judged the Best International film by prestigious associations including the New York Film Critics Circle and the Toronto Film Critics Association. It has also picked up two Golden Globe nominations, including for Ms Kapadia as best director.

It is also on several best films of the year list, including that of the BBC and the New York Times.

And it has company.

Director Shuchi Talati’s coming-of-age drama Girls Will Be Girls won two awards at the Sundance Film Festival. Kiran Rao’s Laapataa Ladies (Lost Ladies) spent at least two months on the top 10 list of Netflix in India and was picked as the country’s official Oscar entry (a controversial decision). Laapataa Ladies didn’t make it to the Academy’s shortlist. What did make it was British-Indian director Sandhya Suri’s Hindi film Santosh, which had been picked as the UK’s submission to the Oscars.

Is this sudden wave of success for Indian films an aberration or a long-awaited shift in global consciousness?

“It’s a culmination of both,” says film critic Shubhra Gupta, pointing out that these films were not “made overnight”.

For instance, Shuchi Talati, the director of Girls Will Be Girls, and its co-producer Richa Chadha were in college together when they first came up with the idea for the film. “They have been working on it for years,” Gupta says.

“It’s pure serendipity that 2024 became the year these films were released, igniting conversations together.”

This fortunate alignment has been a cinematic dream. The global impact of these films is rooted in their quality and exploration of universal themes like loneliness, relationships, identity, gender and resilience. With strong female voices and unconventional feminist narratives, these stories venture into territories unexplored by mainstream Indian cinema.

In All We Imagine As Light, a film made in the Hindi, Marathi and Malayalam languages, three migrant women in Mumbai navigate empathy, resilience and human connection. The narrative delves into themes of loneliness and the socio-political landscape, notably the scrutiny of interfaith Hindu-Muslim relationships as seen with the character Anu (Divya Prabha) and her bond with Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon).

Kapadia told the BBC that while the women in her films are financially independent, they still face limitations in their personal lives, particularly when it comes to matters of love.

“For me, love in India is very political… women seem to hold a lot of the so-called honour of the family and the protection of the caste lineage. So if she marries somebody who is of a different religion or of a different caste, that becomes an issue. For me, it is really a method to control women and infantilise them,” she says.

Talati’s Girls Will Be Girls explores female adolescence, rebellion and intergenerational conflict through the story of a 16-year-old girl studying at a strict boarding school in the Himalayas and her fractured relationship with her mother, Anila, who struggles with her own vulnerabilities and unresolved emotions.

“It is the kind of coming-of-age film that we don’t do in India at all,” Gupta says. “It looks at women from a very empathetic, very warm gaze.”

“The age where people experience emotions with and without their bodies, their minds, that exploration but without infantilising the experience – it was never part of Indian mainstream cinema,” she adds.

Kiran Rao’s Laapataa Ladies did not perform well at the box-office but got warm reviews from viewers and critics. At a BAFTA screening in London this month, Ms Rao described the current moment as “really special for women from India”, expressing hope for a continued wave of such stories.

Her film is a satirical comedy about two newlywed brides getting accidentally swapped on a train because of their veils. It offers a sharp commentary on patriarchy, identity and gender roles, a shift from decades of male-centred mainstream Indian films.

“A lot of us who are very patriarchal in our thinking are often that way because that’s how we have been brought up,” Bollywood star Aamir Khan, a co-producer of the film, said after the screening. “But we need to be understanding, at least try and help each other even to come out of this kind of thinking.”

The biggest surprise this year came from the UK, which selected the Hindi-language film Santosh, directed by British-Indian filmmaker Sandhya Suri, as its Oscar entry. Shot entirely in India over a 44-day schedule, it featured a largely female crew. Starring Indian actors Shahana Goswami and Sunita Rajbhar, Santosh was co-produced by people and companies across the UK, India, Germany and France.

The film is intrinsically an Indian story about violence against women, set as a taut thriller.

Goswami says the success of Santosh and All We Imagine as Light points to the merging of borders and expansion of film industries, creating space for cross-pollination and exchange.

“We often think these Indian films require [specific] cultural context, but they don’t. Any film driven by emotion will resonate universally, regardless of its origins,” she told the BBC.

Three of the films – All We Imagine as Light, Girls Will Be Girls and Santosh – share one more common trait: they are cross-country co-productions.

Goswami agrees that this could this be a formula for the future.

“With a French producer, for example, a film gains the opportunity to be seen by a French audience who may follow that producer or the broader film industry. This is how it becomes more globally accessible and relevant,” she says.

Even in Bollywood, some women-led films have had huge success this year. Stree 2, a horror-comedy about a mysterious woman battling a monster who abducts free-thinking women, was the year’s second-biggest hit, playing in cinemas for months.

On streaming platforms, Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s opulent Netflix series Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar, an exploration of the misogyny and exploitation in the lives of courtesans in pre-independent India, was among Google’s top-searched TV shows of the year.

Their success seems to signal a growing appetite for such stories, their broad appeal demonstrating that mainstream cinema can address important themes without sacrificing entertainment value.

Despite systemic challenges, 2024 has highlighted the global power of female voices from India and the demand for diverse stories. The momentum could be crucial for the Indian film industry in getting wider distribution for its independent films and pave the way for a more diverse and equitable film landscape.

A total solar eclipse seen by millions, a lost jungle city discovered by accident and hope for the almost extinct northern white rhino – science has given us a lot to get excited about this year.

One of the biggest news stories was about making space travel cheaper and easier, with Elon Musk’s Starship making a giant step towards humanity having a reusable rocket.

Of course it’s not all been positive. In bad news for the planet, for example, it is now virtually certain that 2024 will be the world’s warmest year on record.

But there has been a lot to celebrate. Here are seven of our favourite uplifting science stories of the year.

In October, Elon Musk’s Starship rocket completed a world first after part of it was captured on its return to the launch pad.

The SpaceX vehicle’s lower booster rocket flew back to its launch tower, instead of falling into the sea. It was caught in a giant pair of mechanical arms, or “chopsticks” as part of its fifth test flight.

It brought SpaceX’s ambition of developing a fully reusable and rapidly deployable rocket to go to the Moon and maybe even Mars a big step closer.

“A day for the history books,” engineers at SpaceX declared as the booster landed safely.

You can read more about the ‘chopsticks’ moment here.

They can walk, hover and the males can even sing love songs to woo mates – all this with a brain that’s tinier than a pinhead.

But it wasn’t until October that scientists studying the brain of a fruit fly mapped the position, shape and connections of every single one of its 130,000 cells and 50 million connections.

It was the most detailed analysis of the brain of an adult animal ever produced, and one leading brain specialist described the breakthrough as a “huge leap” in our understanding of our own brains.

One of the research leaders said it would shed new light into “the mechanism of thought”. Read more about the story here.

Imagine you’ve Googled something, you get to page 16 of the results and: “Hold on, is that a lost Mayan city?”

Well that’s what happened to Luke Auld-Thomas, a PhD student at Tulane University in the US, who came across a laser survey done by a Mexican organisation for environmental monitoring.

When he processed the data with methods used by archaeologists, he saw what others had missed – a huge ancient city which may have been home to 30-50,000 people at its peak from 750 to 850 AD.

In the city, which had disappeared under jungle canopy in Mexico, archaeologists found pyramids, sports fields and amphitheatres.

The complex – which researchers named Valeriana – was revealed using Lidar, a type of laser survey that maps structures buried under vegetation.

There are only two northern white rhinos left in the world, but we reported on a fertility breakthrough that offered hope for saving the species.

Scientists achieved the world’s first IVF rhino pregnancy, successfully transferring a lab-created rhino embryo into a surrogate mother.

The procedure was carried out with southern white rhinos, a closely related sub-species of northern whites which still number in the thousands, and took 13 attempts to accomplish.

The mother eventually died of an infection, but a post-mortem revealed that the 6.5cm male foetus was developing well and had a 95% chance of being born alive, showing that a viable pregnancy through rhino IVF is possible.

There are 30 precious northern white rhino embryos in existence, and the next step is to try IVF using these.

With human activity driving what conservation charity the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) calls a “catastrophic” loss of species, it can sometimes feel like we don’t hear an awful lot of good news about nature.

But a ten-year study showed conservation actions are effective at reducing global biodiversity loss.

Scientists from dozens of research institutes reviewed 665 trials of conservation measures in different countries and oceans, and found they had had a positive effect in two out of every three cases.

The measures ranged from hatching Chinook salmon to the eradication of invasive algae, and the study’s authors said their findings offered a “ray of light” for those working to protect threatened animals and plants.

Read more about the story here.

Tens of millions of people across Mexico, the US and Canada had their heads turned, literally by a total solar eclipse.

This is where the Moon moves between the Earth and the Sun, extinguishing its light.

A total solar eclipse occurs somewhere on Earth roughly every 18 months, but they are often in quite unpopulated areas, whereas this one had major cities including Dallas in its path.

The path of totality – the area where people could see the Moon totally block the Sun – was also much wider this year than it was during the spectacular total solar eclipse of 2017.

For more on the story read here.

Millions once visited Sycamore Gap, the famous sycamore tree nestled in a gap in Hadrian’s Wall.

So when it was cut down in 2023, naturally a national outpouring of shock and dismay followed.

But in March, new life sprung from the tree’s rescued seeds and twigs, giving hope that the iconic tree has a future.

BBC News saw the new shoots on a rare visit to the secret National Trust centre protecting the seedlings.

Young twigs and seeds thrown to the ground when the tree toppled were salvaged by the National Trust, which cares for the site with the Northumberland National Park Authority.

The saplings are now being given to charities, groups and individuals as “trees of hope”.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has apologised to the president of neighbouring Azerbaijan over the downing of a commercial airliner in Russian airspace, in which 38 people were killed – but stopped short of saying Russia was responsible.

In his first comments on the Christmas Day crash, Putin said the “tragic incident” had occurred when Russian air defence systems were repelling Ukrainian drones.

Ukraine’s President Volodymr Zelensky said Russia must “stop spreading disinformation” about the strike.

The plane is believed to have come under fire from Russian air defence as it tried to land in the Russian region of Chechnya – forcing it to divert across the Caspian Sea.

• What we know about the Azerbaijan Airlines crash

The Azerbaijan Airlines jet then crash-landed near Aktau in Kazakhstan, killing 38 of the 67 on board.

Most of the passengers on the flight were from Azerbaijan, with others from Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

It is believed most of those who survived were seated in the plane’s rear.

Flight J2-8243 had been en route from the Azerbaijan capital of Baku to the Chechen capital of Grozny on 25 December when it came under fire and was forced to divert.

The Kremlin released a statement on Saturday noting Putin had spoken to Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev by phone.

“(President) Vladimir Putin apologised that the tragic incident occurred in Russian airspace and once again expressed his deep and sincere condolences to the families of the victims and wished a speedy recovery to the injured,” it said.

In the rare publicised apology, Putin also acknowledged the plane had repeatedly tried to land at Grozny airport in Chechnya.

At the time, the cities of Grozny, Mozdok and Vladikavkaz were “being attacked by Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles, and Russian air defence systems repelled these attacks”, he said.

The Kremlin read-out made no direct admission that the plane had been struck by Russian missiles.

In a statement released a shortly after the Kremlin’s, Ukrainian President Zelensky said the damage to the aircraft’s fuselage was “very reminiscent of an air defence missile strike”, adding that Russia “must provide clear explanations”.

“The key priority now is a thorough investigation that will answer all questions about what really happened.”

Prior to Saturday, the Kremlin had refused to say whether it was involved in the crash with authorities saying they were awaiting investigation results.

But Russian aviation authorities had earlier in the week said the situation in the region was “very complicated” due to Ukrainian drone strikes.

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.

Survivors had previously reported hearing loud bangs before the plane crashed, suggesting it had been targeted.

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

US defence officials on Friday had also said they believed Russia was responsible for the downing.

Moscow noted that Russian investigators had launched a criminal investigation. Azerbaijan had already announced it would launch an investigation.

The Kremlin said that Azeri, Kazakh and Russian agencies were “working closely at the site of the disaster in Aktau region”.

Even before Putin’s message on Saturday was released, several airlines from Azerbaijan had already begun suspending flights to most Russian cities.

The suspension will remain in place until the investigation into the crash is complete, one airline said.

The director general of the World Health Organization (WHO) has said he and his colleagues “escaped death narrowly” while being caught up in an Israeli air strike on an airport in Yemen.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus recounted feeling “completely exposed” during the attack, which killed at least six, in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

He and other UN staff had been leaving Sanaa, in western Yemen, on Thursday following a trip to negotiate the release of UN detainees and assess the humanitarian situation in the country when the airport was hit.

Israel’s military said it carried out “intelligence-based strikes on military targets” belonging to Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

“It was very chaotic, you know, people were in disarray and running everywhere,” Dr Tedros said on Saturday.

He added there was “no shelter, so we were completely exposed. It’s a matter of luck, otherwise if the missile deviated just slightly it could have been on our heads”.

“So my colleague actually said, after all that, we escaped death narrowly,” he said.

The WHO chief – who has led the organisation since 2017 and made regular public appearances during the Covid pandemic – said his presence at the airport was public knowledge prior to the strike.

But he added: “It doesn’t matter whether I’m there or not. Any civilian life is life – my life is not better than another human being.”

Dr Tedros said the airport is a civilian facility and therefore should not have been attacked by Israel.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the airport had been used by Houthi rebels “to smuggle Iranian weapons into the region” which it used to attack Israel, as well as to welcome “senior Iranian officials”.

“This is a further example of the Houthis’ exploitation of civilian infrastructure for military purposes,” it added.

The Houthi-run Saba news agency said three people were killed at the airport and a further 30 injured.

It said another three people were killed and 10 wounded in other strikes, which targeted power stations and a port in the region.

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

The Iran-backed group described the attacks as “barbaric” and “aggressive”. It vowed to continue launching strikes on Israel until the conflict in the Gaza Strip ceased.

Houthi rebels have been attacking Israel since the first months of the war, which began in October 2023 when Palestinian militants launched a surprise attack on Israel, killing around 1,200.

Israel has retaliated against Houthi attacks with intermittent strikes.

On Saturday, the Houthis said they had launched a strike on the Nevatim airbase in central Israel. The IDF said a missile from Yemen was intercepted by the air force before crossing into Israeli airspace.

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

President-elect Donald Trump appeared to side with technology bosses Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy in a row over a visa programme that brings skilled workers to the US.

Trump told the New York Post on Saturday that he “always liked” H-1B visas and hired guest workers under the scheme – even though he’s previously been critical of the programme.

He was wading into a debate that has pitted his advisors from the tech world against Republicans who want a harder line on all forms of immigration.

The argument broke out after Ramaswamy, tapped by Trump along with Musk to slash government spending, blamed American culture for US firms deciding to hire skilled workers from other countries.

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

“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,” he wrote.

The post attracted backlash from anti-immigrant Trump supporters, and Ramaswamy later clarified that he believed “the H-1B system is badly broken & should be replaced”.

After the argument raged online for days, Trump told the Post: “I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favour of the visas. That’s why we have them.”

“I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program,” he said.

Trump moved to restrict access to the H-1B programme during his first term.

Both the president-elect and his running mate JD Vance have been critical of the visas in the past, although Vance has close ties to the tech world and in his previous career as a venture capitalist funded start-ups that hired workers with H-1B visas.

Ramaswamy’s assertions led to a full-blown row online over the holidays, as mainstream Republicans and far-right influencers joined in criticising him 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”.

Ramaswamy’s perceived view of skilled worker visas was backed by Elon Musk, the X, Tesla and SpaceX boss 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 wrote.

Critics online posted screenshots of job postings at Musk’s 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.

Musk then shot back at “contemptible fools”, saying he was referring to “those in the Republican Party who are hateful, unrepentant racists”.

“They will absolutely be the downfall of the Republican Party if they are not removed,” he wrote.

He later swore at one of his critics and said he would “go to war” to defend the visa programme.

Nikki Haley, Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations and a former Republican presidential candidate, became a prominent voice arguing against Ramaswamy and Musk.

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

On Friday and Saturday, a number of other conservative and far-right accounts also complained that the reach of their messages had been throttled on X.

• 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.

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.”

A Hawaii national park has issued a new warning to tourists after a toddler was grabbed “in the nick of time” from falling off the rim of an erupting volcano.

The little boy wandered off from his family and “in a split second, ran straight toward the 400ft cliff edge” of the Kilauea volcano, the park said.

“His mother, screaming, managed to grab him”, the park added in its statement, when the toddler was “just a foot or so away from a fatal fall”.

Park ranger Jessica Ferracane, who observed the incident, told the BBC she hopes sharing details of the incident will help “prevent future tragedies”.

Kilauea, on Hawaii’s Big Island, is one of the world’s most active volcanoes.

It routinely erupts, and the latest eruption began on 23 December with lava pictured gushing to the surface.

The eruption is continuing at a low level within a closed area of the national park, the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said in its latest update on Saturday.

The park said the incident happened on Christmas Day in a closed area of the park where families had gathered to watch the lava.

It was in an area overlooking the caldera – the large crater of the volcano – and the boy would not have survived the fall, Ms Ferracane said.

Park rangers said they want to remind visitors to stay on trail and out of closed areas, and to keep their children close.

“Those who ignore the warnings, walk past closure signs, lose track of loved ones, and sneak into closed areas to get a closer look do so at great risk.”

Ms Ferracane added: “Hopefully sharing the news will prevent future tragedies and near-misses.”

Arsenic has been found in the blood of one of three women who died after eating a Christmas cake in a suspected poisoning in Brazil, a police chief has told local media.

The highly toxic substance was also identified in the blood test results of a 10-year-old boy and the woman who made the cake – both of whom are still in hospital.

Five members of the same family fell ill after eating the cake at a gathering in Torres, in the southern Rio Grande do Sul state, on Monday afternoon.

Police have sent the cake for testing, and said several out-of-date food items were also found during a search at the woman’s house. They added that it is not yet clear whether the suspected poisoning was intentional.

Test results from the cake are expected to be available by next week, according to local media.

On Friday, police requested for the body of a man – the late husband of the woman who made the cake – to be exhumed. He died in September from food poisoning, but police said his death was deemed natural at the time.

She is not considered a suspect in either of these cases at this time, and investigations are ongoing.

Six out of seven people at the Christmas celebration ate the cake on Monday afternoon, including the woman who baked it.

Police told Brazilian broadcasters that she is the only one believed to have eaten two slices of her homemade cake, and her tests returned the highest levels of arsenic.

Speaking to local media, police chief Marcos Vinicius Veloso said some of the family members complained that the cake had a “peppery” taste.

The family then began to experience symptoms such as vomiting and diarrhoea, and five of them sought medical help at the Nossa Senhora dos Navegantes Hospital at around 01:00 local time (04:00 GMT) on Tuesday.

Hours later, two sisters died from cardiac arrest, the hospital said. They have been named in local media as Maida Berenice Flores da Silva, 58, and Tatiana Denize Silva dos Santos, 43.

The third victim, whose blood test presented traces of arsenic, died later on Tuesday evening from “shock after food poisoning”, the hospital said.

She has been named locally as 65-year-old Neuza Denize Silva dos Anjos.

Arsenic is a metallic element that occurs naturally.

Its inorganic form is highly toxic and classified as a category one carcinogen by the EU – meaning it’s known to cause cancer in humans.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), people are exposed to elevated levels of inorganic arsenic through drinking contaminated water or using it in food preparation, as well as irrigation of crops, industrial processes and smoking tobacco.

Because arsenic exists in soil, small amounts can get into food, though in general these levels are so low that they are not considered a cause for concern.

It is also used, albeit in limited cases, in pesticides and pharmaceuticals.

Nearly half the world’s population – 3.6 billion people – had major elections in 2024, but it was also a year that saw the slowest rate of growth in female representation for 20 years.

Twenty-seven new parliaments now have fewer women than they did before the elections – countries such as the US, Portugal, Pakistan, India, Indonesia and South Africa. And, for the first time in its history, fewer women were also elected to the European Parliament.

The BBC has crunched numbers from 46 countries where election results have been confirmed and found that in nearly two-thirds of them the number of women elected fell.

The data is from the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) – a global organisation of national parliaments that collects and analyses election data.

There were gains for women in the UK, Mongolia, Jordan and the Dominican Republic, while Mexico and Namibia both elected their first female presidents.

However, losses in other places mean that the growth this year has been negligible (0.03%) – after having doubled worldwide between 1995 and 2020.

Mariana Duarte Mutzenberg, who tracks gender statistics for the IPU, says progress has been “too fragile” in certain democracies. For example, the Pacific Island nation Tuvalu lost its only female member of parliament, and now has no women in government at all.

The Pacific Islands have the lowest proportion of female members of parliament in the world at 8%.

Globally, women make up 27% of parliaments worldwide, and only 13 countries are close to 50%. Latin America and parts of Africa are currently leading when it comes to female representation.

Some countries, says Ms Duarte Mutzenberg, are still making gains, largely thanks to gender quotas – Mongolia jumped from 10% to 25% female representation this year, after introducing a mandatory 30% candidate quota for women.

On average, countries without quotas have elected 21% women, compared with 29% with quotas.

For example, quotas – and political will – helped Mexico achieve gender parity in 2018, after former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador decided the parliament should be 50% women.

Political will could also be a game-changer when it comes to ministerial positions, says Julie Ballington from UN Women – which collects data on women heading government ministries.

Cabinets have the power to impact society, yet still have the lowest female representation of all the political measures UN Women looks at, she says, with women usually restricted to certain ministerial roles such as overseeing human rights, equality, and social affairs – rather than finance or defence.

This is “a missed opportunity”, she says.

With so many different countries, contexts and political intricacies at play it is hard to define why the dial hardly shifted this year.

But there are some universal barriers to women’s participation in politics.

Firstly, research has shown there is an ambition gender gap.

“Women are less likely to wake up and think they would be good in senior leadership,” professor of politics Rosie Campbell told an audience at King’s College, London. “They often need to be nudged: ‘Have you thought about being an MP?'”

And a slow-down could mean fewer mentors for future female politicians, says Dr Rachel George, an expert on gender and politics at Stanford University in the US. So young women would be “less likely to think that they can, or should, run”.

Once they do decide to run for office, women tend to be at a disadvantage financially.

A wealth of research has found it is harder for women to access funding for a political campaign or to have the financial freedom to take time off work.

In most societies, women still have more caring responsibilities than men – which can negatively affect how they are viewed by voters, says Dr George.

This is not helped by the fact that few parliaments offer maternity leave, says Carlien Scheele from the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE). “It puts women off if those policies are not in place,” she says.

And then, there is the way electoral systems are designed.

Countries using proportional representation (PR) or mixed electoral systems elect a higher share of women than first-past-the-post systems and are also more likely to have electoral quotas for women, according to the IPU.

But those factors are not new. So what is changing?

There has been an increase in attacks on women in public life, online and in person, according to studies in many different countries.

In Mexico, which already experiences violent elections, gender-based violence was particularly high this year, says IPU’s Mariana Duarte Mutzenberg, with women politicians also particularly targeted by disinformation aimed at “trying to ruin their reputation in one way or another”.

This all has a wider “chilling effect” and stops younger women from wanting to run, says Dr George.

A backlash to female economic empowerment and feminism is also a factor.

In South Korea – despite a small increase in the share of women elected – a feeling among many young men of reverse discrimination played out in this year’s election.

“Some parties continued to fuel or tap into an anti-gender sentiment among male voters who perceive women’s rights advocates as anti-men,” says Ms Duarte Mutzenberg.

However, she says, this may have led to even more women coming out to vote.

So why does it all matter?

Basic fairness aside, equal parliaments could improve national economies, says EIGE’s Carlien Scheele, citing research showing gender diverse groups make better decisions, and gender-mixed boards lead to higher profits.

Studies have also shown the benefits of including women in peace negotiations, suggesting that processes which are based on substantive contributions from women are more likely to achieve sustainable outcomes.

“When women are in the room, peace deals are more likely to happen and more likely to last,” says Dr George.

Julie Ballington from UN Women says she would encourage people to think about women in politics differently.

“It’s not the under-representation of women. It’s the over-representation of men.”

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.

Climate change has brought record-breaking heat this year, and with it extreme weather, from hurricanes to month-long droughts.

This year is expected to be the hottest on record, and new research shows that people around the world experienced an additional 41 days of dangerous heat due to climate change.

Researchers from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group at Imperial College and Climate Central said the study shows “we are living in a dangerous new era”.

From Brazil to Indonesia we take a look back at the climate events that affected the lives of billions in 2024.

This was a year of heat – temperature records were broken on land and in the sea multiple times.

• Marine life suffers in super-heated oceans

In April dozens of countries, from Lebanon in the west to Cambodia in the east, suffered a prolonged heatwave, bringing the risk of dehydration and heat stroke.

But Julie Arrighi, director of programmes at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, said that the impacts are not felt equally.

“Young people and those over 65 particularly those with pre-existing health conditions [are at risk] – they are physiologically less able to cope with extreme heat,” she said.

She said people in conflict settings also suffered disproportionately because of their housing situations, including living in temporary shelters, which can magnify heat, or a disrupted water system.

Research has shown that populations over time can adjust to higher temperatures, but even taking this into account scientists at WWA and Climate Central estimate in 2024 the world’s populations experienced 41 additional days of dangerous heat – compared to a world without climate change.

Dr Friederike Otto, lead of WWA and Senior Lecturer in Climate Science at Imperial College London, said: “The impacts of fossil fuel warming have never been clearer or more devastating than in 2024.

“We are living in a dangerous new era – extreme weather caused unrelenting suffering.”

A regional heatwave around the Amazon region was made worse by a natural climate phenomenon called El Niño, but the researchers at the WWA and Climate Central said that climate change remained the driving force.

Coupled with higher temperatures, rainfall was also reduced across part of South America. Officials in Colombia reported that levels in the Amazon river were reduced by 90% severely affecting power supply, crop yield and leading to wildfires.

Nearly half a million children are thought to have been affected as schools in Brazil and Colombia were closed due to a lack of drinking water, according to Unicef.

The Amazon river is also an important lifeline for the rainforest of the same name – which provides support to thousands of species and supports the world’s efforts to tackle climate change.

“We fear [climate change ] might push the forest irreversibly to a drier state, leading to a reduction of moisture flow and carbon sink, as well as loss of biodiversity,” said Dr Regina Rodrigues, professor of Physical Oceanography and Climate at Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil.

“All these critical processes are essential not only locally and regionally but also globally in order to maintain life as we know it,” she said.

While some suffer from a lack of rain, others got too much of it.

The Philippines experienced a record-breaking six typhoons in just 30 days across October and November – this came after six months of storms. The country is one of the most vulnerable to these tropical storms because of its location close to warm ocean waters.

Landslides and floods triggered by the storms this season killed more than 1,200 people across Southeast Asia.

• How is climate change affecting hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones?

There is currently no evidence that climate change is increasing the number of typhoons, hurricanes or cyclones (the same phenomenon but named differently across the world), although research suggests it may be increasing their intensity.

But an assessment of the season by WWA scientists concluded the record ocean temperatures that occurred in 2024 were “conducive” to the formation of such storms, and those temperatures have been enhanced by climate change.

Dr Zach Zobel, associate scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Centre, who was not involved in the study, supported the WWA approach but added: “[This season] didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know was coming in a 1.3-1.5C [warmer] world.

“Scientists have been warning about these extreme events becoming more frequent for years if not decades,” he said.

Even the richest nations were not able to fully protect themselves from extreme weather this year. The US experienced two back-to-back hurricanes – first Hurricane Helene and then Hurricane Milton – which left more than 260 dead and $115bn (£92bn) worth of damage, according to research from Christian Aid.

Scientists had predicted an “extraordinary” season because of the elevated ocean temperatures in the Atlantic, which fuel hurricanes.

But while Hurricane Beryl was the Atlantic’s earliest category five hurricane on record on 2 July, there was a lull in the middle of the season before Hurricane Helene hit.

Dr Otto told the BBC that typically large storms can take heat out of the ocean preventing new hurricanes forming for some time, but qualitative evidence suggests “because the whole upper ocean was extremely hot this effect didn’t happen.”

She added the WWA is looking to undertake further analysis on this in the future.

Flooding in Sudan and Nigeria in August and September showed that extreme weather can be exacerbated by poorly maintained infrastructure.

Heavy rains starting in July brought extensive flooding which led to several dam collapses killing dozens of people and forcing thousands from their homes.

The report from WWA and Climate Central estimates these heavy rainfall episodes have become common events due to human-caused warming, and are expected to occur on average every three to 10 years.

Julie Arrighi from the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, said: “Our studies continue to show the need to enhance preparedness for extreme weather to reduce loss of life and damages.

“We are not well prepared for life at 1.3-1.5°C of warming.”

Early in 2025, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has been invited to an informal summit of EU leaders. It’s the first such invitation for the UK since the bitter days of the Brexit negotiations.

The focus of the February meeting is future security and defence co-operation. The backdrop: the volatile state of the world from Europe’s perspective.

Wars rage in the Middle East and in Europe – with Russia aided in its assault on Ukraine by Iran, North Korea and China.

Adding to the uncertainty haunting this continent, Donald Trump is poised to re-enter the White House.

He threatens Western cohesion with his pledge to slap punitive tariffs on imports – a big worry to the EU and the UK – and to potentially walk away from Nato, the transatlantic defence alliance Europeans have relied on for security, since its founding after World War Two.

These threats to security and to trade revenues have helped remind the EU and the UK of the common values they share in unpredictable times.

The EU felt weakened by Brexit in 2016. It meant losing a big economy and its only significant military power apart from France.

As for post-Brexit UK, now free from the rules of EU membership, it’s also now a far smaller power on the world stage.

And, closer to home, the Labour government has realised Europe is key to delivering on a number of priority pledges to the UK public.

“The economy, defence, migration… there’s a European element to all of this, making EU relations important for the whole government agenda. Things which will make a success of this government are tied up with Europe,” says Mark Leonard, the director of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Labour has repeatedly promised an “ambitious reset” of EU-UK relations.

There has been lots of shuttle diplomacy and symbolism since it won the general election in the summer.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy attended a meeting of EU Foreign Ministers, Chancellor Rachel Reeves gave a speech at a summit of EU finance ministers, and the prime minister popped over to Brussels for a sit-down with EU Commission Chief Ursula von der Leyen.

But what does this “reset” really mean? What can we expect in 2025?

Might the UK government allow some freedom of movement in exchange for economic benefits on EU trade?

An EU-UK summit is planned for spring, and a number of political figures and high-level diplomats from EU member states and the UK spoke to me on condition of anonymity ahead of bilateral negotiations getting started.

I kept hearing of the “enormous amount of goodwill” in the EU towards the new Labour government with its oft-repeated “reset” enthusiasm.

At the same time though, there is a clear note of Brussels scepticism the Labour government would do well to take heed of, if it wants to see tangible results.

“The headspace is there. The appetite is there in Europe for closer UK relations,” one EU figure told me.

“What’s less clear is what London is really interested in – and what trade-offs it’s willing to make to get there. That’s key and that appears not to have been bottomed out in London yet.”

The defence and security arrangement I have mentioned is the proverbial “low-hanging fruit” as far as an EU-UK reset is concerned.

It’s relatively easy to formalise what is already happening: co-operation over Russia sanctions for example, as well as discussions – already taking place inside Nato – over military and defence capabilities and how to best protect Europe against cyber-attacks and attacks on key installations like energy infrastructure in the North Sea.

It’s seen as a win-win agreement.

And there is no proposal to make a defence pact legally binding.

The Labour government does not have to worry here about being seen – by the political opposition or those in the UK who voted Leave – as attempting to “roll back Brexit”. And it is sensitive about this potential accusation.

But Labour has also made promises on trade and the economy: to “make Brexit work” and to “tear down” the trade barriers hard Brexit imposed. The Office for Budget Responsibility reckons Brexit will cost the UK economy 4% of GDP in the long term.

Labour wants to avoid that, but that’s not as straightforward as it might sound.

EU figures say they’re confused by the UK government proclaiming an “ambitious” reset while insisting on maintaining restrictive post-Brexit red lines.

A recent working paper setting out EU interests noted there were “limited economic gains on offer” because of the UK ruling out rejoining the EU’s customs union or single market or accepting the free movement of people.

Some in the EU suspect the UK government believes it can get a quid pro quo on trade for defence. That they say, is never going to happen.

“The UK is mistaken if it thinks it can use an agreement on defence as a backdoor to getting sweet deals with us on trade,” an EU diplomat told me.

“For us, it’s like being in a weird tug of war. With the devil on one EU shoulder and an angel on the other. In terms of values, there is more that unites us than divides us with the UK.

“The EU wants to take action to get the UK closer, but on the other hand, we can’t do away with technical minutiae that are the foundation of the EU. We can’t make special deals, even if that limits the relationship with the UK.”

In order to see significant improvement in economic relations, both sides will have to make compromises.

In Brussels, there is no appetite to rip up the TCA – the already-existing trade agreement between the EU and UK. But you do detect an EU openness to starting negotiations on different economic sectors simultaneously.

“We can walk and chew gum at the same time,” insisted one EU diplomat.

There’s also an acknowledgement on the UK side that sectoral agreements might well have to involve aligning with EU rules in those sectors.

The key to any compromise that Labour might make with the EU going forward will be: Can they sell the result back home as a win for the British public?

The EU will push hard for long term fishing rights in UK waters.

It also wants a Youth Mobility Scheme, allowing 18-30 year olds to work and/or study in the UK or the EU for up to three years, paying local fees at university if they choose the study option.

The UK government insists there will be no return to freedom of movement with the EU.

Migration is a hot button issue. But it’s notable that Labour has not explicitly ruled out the youth scheme. They’ve only said they’ve “no plans” to go for it.

On youth mobility, the assumption is that more EU youngsters would take advantage of a mobility scheme than UK citizens because of language barriers.

But the UK government might use openness to the EU-requested mobility scheme and/or a fishing agreement as leverage to negotiate something important for UK interests, such as the mutual recognition of professional qualifications, which eases cross-Channel business, or the mobility of UK artists and entertainers to travel in the EU.

Both of these were listed in the Labour election manifesto as priorities if the party got into government.

Labour also wants to move on a veterinary agreement with the EU, to reduce barriers in the trade of food and agricultural products. That would require UK alignment with EU animal and plant health rules.

The EU and UK are both interested in better co-operation and coordination on energy and climate.

Sir Keir also labelled this a priority.

Linking carbon emissions trading schemes, as the EU does with a number of other countries, would mean the UK avoiding EU carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) implications – a cost feared by UK businesses.

And removing post-Brexit blockages on the electricity market would deliver €44bn (£36bn) in savings to EU and UK consumers by 2040 and reduce investment costs in North Sea wind by 16%, according to Baringa business consultancy.

The North Sea basin comprises the UK plus EU member states Belgium, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands and Single Market member Norway. It’s one of the most promising regions in the world for offshore wind.

On illegal migration, the EU says it’s open to co-operating more closely with the UK. It wants the UK to crack down more on people working illegally in the country.

France complains that the ease with which it says irregular migrants can disappear and make a living is a major a pull-factor to the UK for economic migrants.

The EU has ruled out the UK being able to send migrants, arriving illegally on its shores aboard small boats, back to the EU countries they set off from.

Whatever the developments in EU-UK relations in 2025 and beyond, they are likely to happen slowly because of political concerns and because negotiations have a habit of getting bogged down in detail.

In direct contrast, a recent poll by YouGov and Datapraxis for the European Council of Foreign Relations suggests voters in the EU and UK are far more gung-ho than leaders in Brussels and London about jumping over previous political taboos to strengthen ties.

The poll found that around half of those asked in the UK believe greater engagement with the EU is the best way to boost the UK economy (50%), strengthen its security (53%) and effectively manage migration (58%).

When asked who the UK government should prioritise relations with, 50% choose Europe and only 17% the US.

A huge 68% of respondents in Britain see a benefit in reintroducing cross-Channel freedom of movement in exchange for access to the European single market.

The desire for co-operation, and willingness to forgo previous red lines, is also reciprocated in Europe.

A majority of voters in Poland (54%) and Germany (53%) – and a prevailing opinion in Spain (43%), Italy (42%) and France (41%) – believe the EU should grant the UK special access to certain parts of the European single market to secure a closer security-based relationship.

Geopolitical threats and uncertainties appear to be shifting public opinion dramatically. Will the political class in the UK and EU choose to keep up?

“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.”

Actress Olivia Hussey, who shot to international prominence as a teenager for her role in the acclaimed 1968 film version of Romeo and Juliet, has died aged 73.

The Argentine-born actress, who grew up in London, died on Friday surrounded by her loved ones, a statement posted on her Instagram said.

Hussey won the best new actress Golden Globe for her part as Juliet, but decades later she sued Paramount Pictures for sexual abuse as she was aged just 15 when she filmed the movie’s nude scene.

Her other most notable screen role was as Mary, mother of Jesus, in 1977 TV miniseries Jesus of Nazareth.

“As we grieve this immense loss, we also celebrate Olivia’s enduring impact on our lives and the industry,” the statement said.

Hussey was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1951, before moving to London aged seven and studying at the Italia Conti Academy drama school.

She was 15 when Romeo and Juliet director Franco Zeffirelli discovered her onstage, playing opposite Vanessa Redgrave in the play The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

Zeffirelli was looking for someone who was young enough to be a convincing Juliet in what he intended to be the definitive cinematic version of the Shakespeare play.

He cast Hussey alongside British 16-year-old Leonard Whiting as Romeo in the film.

The film was nominated for an Oscar for best picture and director. Hussey missed out on an Oscar nomination herself in a strong year in which Barbra Streisand won the main award for Funny Girl.

But at that year’s Golden Globes, Hussey won the award for best new star.

Decades later, she and Whiting sued Paramount Pictures alleging Zeffirelli – who died in 2019 – had encouraged them to film nude scenes despite previous assurances they would not have to.

The pair sought damages of more than $500m (£417m), based on suffering they said they had experienced and the revenue brought in by the film since its release.

But last year a judge dismissed the case, finding the scene was not “sufficiently sexually suggestive”.

In 1977, Hussey had reunited with Zeffirelli for Jesus of Nazareth to play the Virgin Mary, before appearing in Death on the Nile a year later based on Agatha Christie’s novel.

Her roles in early slasher film Black Christmas (1974) and TV film Psycho IV: The Beginning earned her recognition as a scream queen. In the latter, she played Norman Bates’s mother in a prequel storyline.

In later years she also took on work as a voice actress, appearing frequently in video games.

But she did have one final reunion with her former Romeo – as she and Whiting appeared together in the 2015 British film Social Suicide, which was loosely based on Romeo and Juliet and set in the social media era.

World chess number one Magnus Carlsen has quit a major tournament after being told he could not carry on playing while wearing jeans.

The chess great had been defending his titles at the Fide World Rapid and Blitz Chess Championships in New York when officials made the request.

The grandmaster said he had offered to change his trousers for the next day, but was fined and told he needed to change immediately.

The chess federation (Fide) said its dress code regulations were designed to “ensure fairness and professionalism for all participants”.

Carlsen is a high-profile figure in chess who has attracted some controversy in recent years.

Last year, he settled a long-running legal dispute after accusing a rival of cheating in a tournament.

On Friday he pulled out of the championships for the short form versions of the game due to the dress altercation. Carlsen had been both the reigning Blitz and Rapid Chess champions.

He added he wouldn’t be appealing the decision, saying: “Honestly, I am too old at this point to care too much.”

He said he had been wearing jeans for a lunch meeting, and “didn’t even think about” swapping them for a different pair of trousers when heading to the tournament.

He turned up wearing a shirt, blazer, dark jeans and dress shoes and played a few rounds before being asked to change.

When his offer to change for the next day was refused, Carlsen said it then “became a bit of a matter of principle for me.”

In a statement, Fide confirmed the 34-year-old was fined $200 (£159), and said its rules were applied “impartially”. They cited a case where another player was fined on the same day before changing his shoes.

Carlsen is a five-time World Chess Champion, and retains the top ranking in the sport.

The Norwegian has long been considered a maverick in the chess world since becoming a grandmaster – the top title in chess – at the age of 13.

In a now-settled dispute with opponent Hans Niemann, Carlsen quit a tournament in 2022 after Niemann beat him, before going on to accuse his American rival of cheating.

Niemann had denied the allegations, and even said he would “strip fully naked” to prove his innocence.

The pair went on to settle a $100m (£79m) lawsuit in August last year.

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.”

India has mourned one of its longest-serving prime ministers, Manmohan Singh, with a state funeral in Delhi.

Singh led the country from 2004 to 2014 and was considered the architect of India’s economic liberalisation. He died on Thursday aged 92.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was present at the ceremony on Saturday. He has called Singh one of the country’s “most distinguished leaders”.

Mourners turned out across the capital to pay their respects as Singh’s coffin, flanked by an honour guard, was taken through the city to the cremation grounds.

His eldest daughter lit his funeral pyre at the crematorium in front of Modi, President Droupadi Murmu, Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar and senior members of Singh’s Congress Party.

Foreign dignitaries such as the King of Bhutan Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck and Mauritius Foreign Minister Dhananjay Ramful were also in attendance.

Singh received full state honours in a ceremony that included a 21-gun salute.

Following his death on Thursday night, the government declared seven days of national mourning.

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

Opposition congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who was also present at the funeral, said he had lost “a mentor and a guide”.

Among foreign tributes, US President Joe Biden said his country’s “unprecedented level of cooperation” with India would not have been possible without Singh’s “strategic vision and political courage.”

“He was a true statesman. A dedicated public servant. And above all, he was a kind and humble person”, Biden said in a statement.

Singh changed India’s economic growth trajectory during his time as prime minister and as the country’s finance minister in 1991.

He is remembered for saying in his first budget speech: “No power on Earth can stop an idea whose time has come”.

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

The first Sikh to hold India’s top post, Singh formally apologised in 2005 for the 1984 riots in which around 3,000 Sikhs were killed.

He was also the first Indian leader after Jawaharlal Nehru, who led the country from 1947 until his death in 1964, to be re-elected after serving a full first term.

Singh’s second term in office, however, was marred by a string of corruption allegations.

The scandals, many say, were partially responsible for his Congress party’s crushing defeat in the 2014 general election.

Actress and model Dayle Haddon has died and another person has been hospitalised due to a carbon monoxide leak at a home in Pennsylvania, authorities have said.

Haddon modelled for brands including Estée Lauder and L’Oreal, and appeared on the front of magazines including Sports Illustrated and Vogue Paris in the 1970s.

Police said they received a call at 06:31 local time (01:31 GMT) on Friday reporting that a 76-year-old man had passed out on the first floor of a self-contained detached building at a home in Bucks County.

A 76-year-old woman, later identified as Haddon, was found dead in a second-floor bedroom.

The man – who police described as being in a critical condition at a hospital in New Jersey – was identified as Walter J. Blucas, whose son is married to Haddon’s daughter.

Records show the home is owned by Haddon’s daughter, former journalist Ryan Haddon, and her husband, actor Marc Blucas, according to the BBC’s US partner, CBS News.

A preliminary investigation found that a faulty exhaust pipe on the building’s heating system caused the leak, police said.

They added that the high levels of carbon monoxide in the property had affected emergency responders, with two medics hospitalised with carbon monoxide exposure and a police officer treated at the scene.

Dayle Haddon was born and raised in Quebec, Canada, and began her career as a ballerina.

She moved to the US to pursue a modelling career, and later worked in cinema, featuring in films including The World’s Greatest Athlete, released in 1973, and North Dallas Forty, released in 1979.

Paying tribute to her mother, Ryan Haddon wrote on Instagram that Dayle had “a pure heart” and “a life well lived”.

“She was a woman in her power, yet soft and attentive to all. Deeply creative and curious, gifted with beauty inside and out. Always kind and thoughtful,” she said.

“She was a high-hearted spiritual being that put value on her soul’s evolution, so I know her journey here in this dimension must have been complete.”

Prosecutors allege that South Korea’s suspended president told the military to use guns while attempting to remove lawmakers from parliament as they were voting down his martial law decree.

On 3 December, Yoon Suk Yeol authorised soldiers to “break down the doors and drag them [politicians] out, even if it means firing the guns”, according to an indictment as part of impeachment proceedings against him.

The orders are said to have been given to a general charged with blockading the National Assembly during Yoon’s short-lived declaration of martial law – which was voted down by MPs after 190 were able to enter the building.

Yoon’s cabinet later rescinded his decree, and MPs have since voted to impeach him.

• What just happened in South Korea?

South Korea’s impeachment process means Yoon has been suspended from his duties while a constitutional court decides whether to confirm his impeachment. If it does, he will be permanently removed from office.

His decision to declare military rule – which he claimed at the time was to counter “anti-state forces” in parliament – has been seen by some as an attempt to break a political stalemate since the opposition won a landslide in April.

After his late-night speech announcing the decree, opposition MPs and protesters converged on the National Assembly, but were met by police and military personnel barricading the building.

When MPs were able to force entry, prosecutors say Yoon told the chief of the capital defence command, Lee Jin-woo, that military forces could shoot if necessary to enter the National Assembly.

“Tell (your troops) to go to the voting chamber, four for each (lawmaker) and carry them out,” Yoon is alleged to have told Gen Lee.

“What are you doing? Break down the doors and drag them out.”

After MPs voted to lift martial law, Yoon told General Lee to “keep going” as he could declare martial law multiple times, the indictment says.

Prosecutors say the indictment draws evidence from former defence minister Kim Yong-hyun, who was also indicted on Friday for allegedly telling Gen Lee to follow Yoon’s orders multiple times on 3 December.

He also allegedly ordered commanders to seize the National Elections Commission building and arrest its employees, using cable ties, eye masks, ropes, baseball bats and hammers which had been prepared by the military.

Kim will stay in detention while awaiting his trial, the investigators said in a press release.

• Why South Korea has been gripped by political instability

The martial law decree has plunged South Korea into a weeks-long political turmoil.

Opposition 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”.

The former defence minister Kim Yong-hyun was also indicted on Friday, according to the Special Investigation HQ, installed at the country’s prosecution service.

The same day, the National Assembly also voted to impeach its acting president, Han Duck-soo.

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

He has agreed to step aside, which means the country’s finance minister, Choi Sang-mok, will become acting president.

Thousands of protesters have held rival rallies in South Korea, with some demanding Yoon’s arrest.

Attending a protest in Seoul on Saturday, Kwon Jung-hee told the BBC Han’s impeachment felt like “one small mountain” had been climbed.

“But there are still too many mountains to climb, so I can’t just stay at home – I’ve come out with the mindset of protecting the country,” she said.

The political uncertainty has also caused the economy to suffer.

The currency has plunged to its lowest level against the dollar since the global financial crisis 16 years ago.

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 is due to 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 had accused ByteDance of being linked to the Chinese government – which the firm denies.

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. With no potential buyer materialising so far, the companies’ final chance to derail the ban has been 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.

Trump had met with TikTok’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida last week.

In his court filing on Friday, Trump said 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 attorneys general 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.

A plane carrying 181 passengers has crashed at an airport in South Korea, killing at least 62 people, the country’s fire service has said.

The aircraft came off the runway and crashed into a wall at Muan International Airport in the south west of the country, the Yonhap news agency reported.

The Jeju Air plane, which was carrying 175 passengers and six crew members, was returning from Bangkok in Thailand and crashed as it was landing.

Two people have been found alive so far and rescue operations were still under way, a fire official told the Reuters news agency.

Emergency services were attempting to rescue people in the tail section of the aircraft, an airport official said.

The passengers on board the flight included 173 South Koreans and two Thais, Yonhap reported.

The cause of the crash is still not known, but local media reported it may have been caused by birds getting caught in the plane’s systems.

According to the National Fire Agency, the 62 people killed included 37 women and 25 men.

Unverified footage uploaded to social media of the crash – which happened shortly after 09:00 local time (00:00 GMT) – shows the aircraft skidding off the runway and crashing into a wall, before part of it bursts into flames.

Other footage shows a large plume of black smoke rising into the sky.

One flight attendant and one passenger have been rescued so far, South Korea’s fire agency said in a statement, adding that 80 firefighters and more than 30 fire trucks had been deployed to the crash site.

Muan is about 178 miles (288 km) south of the capital, Seoul.

South Korea’s aviation industry is considered to have a solid track record for safety.

This crash is the first fatal accident in the history of Jeju Air, one of South Korea’s largest low-cost airlines, which was set up in 2005.

A Hawaii national park has issued a new warning to tourists after a toddler was grabbed “in the nick of time” from falling off the rim of an erupting volcano.

The little boy wandered off from his family and “in a split second, ran straight toward the 400ft cliff edge” of the Kilauea volcano, the park said.

“His mother, screaming, managed to grab him”, the park added in its statement, when the toddler was “just a foot or so away from a fatal fall”.

Park ranger Jessica Ferracane, who observed the incident, told the BBC she hopes sharing details of the incident will help “prevent future tragedies”.

Kilauea, on Hawaii’s Big Island, is one of the world’s most active volcanoes.

It routinely erupts, and the latest eruption began on 23 December with lava pictured gushing to the surface.

The eruption is continuing at a low level within a closed area of the national park, the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said in its latest update on Saturday.

The park said the incident happened on Christmas Day in a closed area of the park where families had gathered to watch the lava.

It was in an area overlooking the caldera – the large crater of the volcano – and the boy would not have survived the fall, Ms Ferracane said.

Park rangers said they want to remind visitors to stay on trail and out of closed areas, and to keep their children close.

“Those who ignore the warnings, walk past closure signs, lose track of loved ones, and sneak into closed areas to get a closer look do so at great risk.”

Ms Ferracane added: “Hopefully sharing the news will prevent future tragedies and near-misses.”

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has apologised to the president of neighbouring Azerbaijan over the downing of a commercial airliner in Russian airspace, in which 38 people were killed – but stopped short of saying Russia was responsible.

In his first comments on the Christmas Day crash, Putin said the “tragic incident” had occurred when Russian air defence systems were repelling Ukrainian drones.

Ukraine’s President Volodymr Zelensky said Russia must “stop spreading disinformation” about the strike.

The plane is believed to have come under fire from Russian air defence as it tried to land in the Russian region of Chechnya – forcing it to divert across the Caspian Sea.

• What we know about the Azerbaijan Airlines crash

The Azerbaijan Airlines jet then crash-landed near Aktau in Kazakhstan, killing 38 of the 67 on board.

Most of the passengers on the flight were from Azerbaijan, with others from Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

It is believed most of those who survived were seated in the plane’s rear.

Flight J2-8243 had been en route from the Azerbaijan capital of Baku to the Chechen capital of Grozny on 25 December when it came under fire and was forced to divert.

The Kremlin released a statement on Saturday noting Putin had spoken to Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev by phone.

“(President) Vladimir Putin apologised that the tragic incident occurred in Russian airspace and once again expressed his deep and sincere condolences to the families of the victims and wished a speedy recovery to the injured,” it said.

In the rare publicised apology, Putin also acknowledged the plane had repeatedly tried to land at Grozny airport in Chechnya.

At the time, the cities of Grozny, Mozdok and Vladikavkaz were “being attacked by Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles, and Russian air defence systems repelled these attacks”, he said.

The Kremlin read-out made no direct admission that the plane had been struck by Russian missiles.

In a statement released a shortly after the Kremlin’s, Ukrainian President Zelensky said the damage to the aircraft’s fuselage was “very reminiscent of an air defence missile strike”, adding that Russia “must provide clear explanations”.

“The key priority now is a thorough investigation that will answer all questions about what really happened.”

Prior to Saturday, the Kremlin had refused to say whether it was involved in the crash with authorities saying they were awaiting investigation results.

But Russian aviation authorities had earlier in the week said the situation in the region was “very complicated” due to Ukrainian drone strikes.

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.

Survivors had previously reported hearing loud bangs before the plane crashed, suggesting it had been targeted.

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

US defence officials on Friday had also said they believed Russia was responsible for the downing.

Moscow noted that Russian investigators had launched a criminal investigation. Azerbaijan had already announced it would launch an investigation.

The Kremlin said that Azeri, Kazakh and Russian agencies were “working closely at the site of the disaster in Aktau region”.

Even before Putin’s message on Saturday was released, several airlines from Azerbaijan had already begun suspending flights to most Russian cities.

The suspension will remain in place until the investigation into the crash is complete, one airline said.

A total solar eclipse seen by millions, a lost jungle city discovered by accident and hope for the almost extinct northern white rhino – science has given us a lot to get excited about this year.

One of the biggest news stories was about making space travel cheaper and easier, with Elon Musk’s Starship making a giant step towards humanity having a reusable rocket.

Of course it’s not all been positive. In bad news for the planet, for example, it is now virtually certain that 2024 will be the world’s warmest year on record.

But there has been a lot to celebrate. Here are seven of our favourite uplifting science stories of the year.

In October, Elon Musk’s Starship rocket completed a world first after part of it was captured on its return to the launch pad.

The SpaceX vehicle’s lower booster rocket flew back to its launch tower, instead of falling into the sea. It was caught in a giant pair of mechanical arms, or “chopsticks” as part of its fifth test flight.

It brought SpaceX’s ambition of developing a fully reusable and rapidly deployable rocket to go to the Moon and maybe even Mars a big step closer.

“A day for the history books,” engineers at SpaceX declared as the booster landed safely.

You can read more about the ‘chopsticks’ moment here.

They can walk, hover and the males can even sing love songs to woo mates – all this with a brain that’s tinier than a pinhead.

But it wasn’t until October that scientists studying the brain of a fruit fly mapped the position, shape and connections of every single one of its 130,000 cells and 50 million connections.

It was the most detailed analysis of the brain of an adult animal ever produced, and one leading brain specialist described the breakthrough as a “huge leap” in our understanding of our own brains.

One of the research leaders said it would shed new light into “the mechanism of thought”. Read more about the story here.

Imagine you’ve Googled something, you get to page 16 of the results and: “Hold on, is that a lost Mayan city?”

Well that’s what happened to Luke Auld-Thomas, a PhD student at Tulane University in the US, who came across a laser survey done by a Mexican organisation for environmental monitoring.

When he processed the data with methods used by archaeologists, he saw what others had missed – a huge ancient city which may have been home to 30-50,000 people at its peak from 750 to 850 AD.

In the city, which had disappeared under jungle canopy in Mexico, archaeologists found pyramids, sports fields and amphitheatres.

The complex – which researchers named Valeriana – was revealed using Lidar, a type of laser survey that maps structures buried under vegetation.

There are only two northern white rhinos left in the world, but we reported on a fertility breakthrough that offered hope for saving the species.

Scientists achieved the world’s first IVF rhino pregnancy, successfully transferring a lab-created rhino embryo into a surrogate mother.

The procedure was carried out with southern white rhinos, a closely related sub-species of northern whites which still number in the thousands, and took 13 attempts to accomplish.

The mother eventually died of an infection, but a post-mortem revealed that the 6.5cm male foetus was developing well and had a 95% chance of being born alive, showing that a viable pregnancy through rhino IVF is possible.

There are 30 precious northern white rhino embryos in existence, and the next step is to try IVF using these.

With human activity driving what conservation charity the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) calls a “catastrophic” loss of species, it can sometimes feel like we don’t hear an awful lot of good news about nature.

But a ten-year study showed conservation actions are effective at reducing global biodiversity loss.

Scientists from dozens of research institutes reviewed 665 trials of conservation measures in different countries and oceans, and found they had had a positive effect in two out of every three cases.

The measures ranged from hatching Chinook salmon to the eradication of invasive algae, and the study’s authors said their findings offered a “ray of light” for those working to protect threatened animals and plants.

Read more about the story here.

Tens of millions of people across Mexico, the US and Canada had their heads turned, literally by a total solar eclipse.

This is where the Moon moves between the Earth and the Sun, extinguishing its light.

A total solar eclipse occurs somewhere on Earth roughly every 18 months, but they are often in quite unpopulated areas, whereas this one had major cities including Dallas in its path.

The path of totality – the area where people could see the Moon totally block the Sun – was also much wider this year than it was during the spectacular total solar eclipse of 2017.

For more on the story read here.

Millions once visited Sycamore Gap, the famous sycamore tree nestled in a gap in Hadrian’s Wall.

So when it was cut down in 2023, naturally a national outpouring of shock and dismay followed.

But in March, new life sprung from the tree’s rescued seeds and twigs, giving hope that the iconic tree has a future.

BBC News saw the new shoots on a rare visit to the secret National Trust centre protecting the seedlings.

Young twigs and seeds thrown to the ground when the tree toppled were salvaged by the National Trust, which cares for the site with the Northumberland National Park Authority.

The saplings are now being given to charities, groups and individuals as “trees of hope”.

Thousands of Georgian protesters have formed a human chain in the capital, Tbilisi, ahead of a political showdown as the new president prepares to be sworn in.

The inauguration of a new president – former Manchester City footballer Mikheil Kavelashvili, who is seen as an ally of the ruling Georgian Dream party – is due on Sunday.

But the current head of state, Salome Zourabichvili, is refusing to step down, describing his election as illegitimate.

Georgian Dream, which has been in power for 12 years, won parliamentary elections in October, but the victory was mired by allegations of fraud and there have since been protests.

The four main opposition groups have rejected Kavelashvili and boycotted parliament.

It is as yet unclear how the stand-off will be resolved.

Protesters, waving Georgian and EU flags, formed a human chain that spanned kilometres on Saturday.

“I am out in the street together with my whole family trying somehow to tear out this small country out of the claws of the Russian empire,” one protester told the Associated Press.

Georgian Dream has become increasingly authoritarian in recent years, passing Russian-style laws targeting media and non-government groups who receive foreign funding, and the LGBT community.

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.

An overwhelming majority of Georgians back the country’s path to the EU and it is part of the constitution.

But in November, the country’s ruling party said the government would not seek EU accession talks until 2028.

The announcement sparked days of protests, and riot police used tear gas and water cannon against protesters, who fought back by throwing fireworks and stones.

The US this week imposed sanctions on Georgia’s former prime minister and billionaire founder of Georgian Dream, Bidzina Ivanishvili.

Georgia is a parliamentary democracy with the president the head of state, and the prime minister the head of parliament.

The current president, Zourabichvili, has denounced Kavelashvili’s election – which was under an electoral college system in which he was the only candidate – as a travesty.

When Zourabichvili 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.

Zourabichvili has vowed not to step down on Sunday.

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

World chess number one Magnus Carlsen has quit a major tournament after being told he could not carry on playing while wearing jeans.

The chess great had been defending his titles at the Fide World Rapid and Blitz Chess Championships in New York when officials made the request.

The grandmaster said he had offered to change his trousers for the next day, but was fined and told he needed to change immediately.

The chess federation (Fide) said its dress code regulations were designed to “ensure fairness and professionalism for all participants”.

Carlsen is a high-profile figure in chess who has attracted some controversy in recent years.

Last year, he settled a long-running legal dispute after accusing a rival of cheating in a tournament.

On Friday he pulled out of the championships for the short form versions of the game due to the dress altercation. Carlsen had been both the reigning Blitz and Rapid Chess champions.

He added he wouldn’t be appealing the decision, saying: “Honestly, I am too old at this point to care too much.”

He said he had been wearing jeans for a lunch meeting, and “didn’t even think about” swapping them for a different pair of trousers when heading to the tournament.

He turned up wearing a shirt, blazer, dark jeans and dress shoes and played a few rounds before being asked to change.

When his offer to change for the next day was refused, Carlsen said it then “became a bit of a matter of principle for me.”

In a statement, Fide confirmed the 34-year-old was fined $200 (£159), and said its rules were applied “impartially”. They cited a case where another player was fined on the same day before changing his shoes.

Carlsen is a five-time World Chess Champion, and retains the top ranking in the sport.

The Norwegian has long been considered a maverick in the chess world since becoming a grandmaster – the top title in chess – at the age of 13.

In a now-settled dispute with opponent Hans Niemann, Carlsen quit a tournament in 2022 after Niemann beat him, before going on to accuse his American rival of cheating.

Niemann had denied the allegations, and even said he would “strip fully naked” to prove his innocence.

The pair went on to settle a $100m (£79m) lawsuit in August last year.

President-elect Donald Trump appeared to side with technology bosses Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy in a row over a visa programme that brings skilled workers to the US.

Trump told the New York Post on Saturday that he “always liked” H-1B visas and hired guest workers under the scheme – even though he’s previously been critical of the programme.

He was wading into a debate that has pitted his advisors from the tech world against Republicans who want a harder line on all forms of immigration.

The argument broke out after Ramaswamy, tapped by Trump along with Musk to slash government spending, blamed American culture for US firms deciding to hire skilled workers from other countries.

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

“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,” he wrote.

The post attracted backlash from anti-immigrant Trump supporters, and Ramaswamy later clarified that he believed “the H-1B system is badly broken & should be replaced”.

After the argument raged online for days, Trump told the Post: “I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favour of the visas. That’s why we have them.”

“I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program,” he said.

Trump moved to restrict access to the H-1B programme during his first term.

Both the president-elect and his running mate JD Vance have been critical of the visas in the past, although Vance has close ties to the tech world and in his previous career as a venture capitalist funded start-ups that hired workers with H-1B visas.

Ramaswamy’s assertions led to a full-blown row online over the holidays, as mainstream Republicans and far-right influencers joined in criticising him 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”.

Ramaswamy’s perceived view of skilled worker visas was backed by Elon Musk, the X, Tesla and SpaceX boss 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 wrote.

Critics online posted screenshots of job postings at Musk’s 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.

Musk then shot back at “contemptible fools”, saying he was referring to “those in the Republican Party who are hateful, unrepentant racists”.

“They will absolutely be the downfall of the Republican Party if they are not removed,” he wrote.

He later swore at one of his critics and said he would “go to war” to defend the visa programme.

Nikki Haley, Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations and a former Republican presidential candidate, became a prominent voice arguing against Ramaswamy and Musk.

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

On Friday and Saturday, a number of other conservative and far-right accounts also complained that the reach of their messages had been throttled on X.

• 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.

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.”

Evan Barringer was 14 years old when he stumbled onto Full House, a South Korea romcom where two strangers are forced to share a house.

Sitting in his house in Memphis, he hit play assuming it was an Asian remake of a beloved American sitcom from the 1980s. It wasn’t until the third episode that he realised they had nothing in common save the name. But he was hooked.

That accidental choice changed his life. Twelve years on, he is an English teacher in South Korea – and he says he loves it here: “I have got to try all the foods I’ve seen in K-dramas, and I’ve gotten to see several of the K-pop artists in concerts whose lyrics I used to study Korean.”

When Evan discovered Full House in 2012, South Korean entertainment was a blip in the world’s eye. Psy’s Gangnam Style was the best-known Korean pop export at the time.

Today, there are more than an estimated 220 million fans of Korean entertainment around the world – that’s four times the population of South Korea. Squid Game, Netflix’s most popular show ever, has just returned for a much-anticipated second season.

How did we get here?

The so-called Korean Wave swept the world, experts say, when the success of streaming met American-inspired production value. And Korean entertainment – from pop music and mushy dramas to acclaimed hits built around universal themes – was ready for it.

BTS and Blackpink are now familiar names on the global pop circuit. People are swooning over sappy K-dramas from Dubai to India to Singapore. Overseas sales of all this Korean content – including video games – is now worth billions.

Last month, after 53-year-old poet and novelist Han Kang won the Nobel Prize for her literature, online boards were full of memes noting South Korea’s “Culture Victory” — a reference to the popular video game series Civilisation.

And there were jokes about how the country had achieved the dream of founding father Kim Koo, who famously wrote that he wished for Korea to be a nation of culture rather than might.

As it turns out, this moment had been in the making for years.

After South Korea’s military dictatorship ended in 1987, censorship was loosened and numerous TV channels launched. Soon, there was a generation of creators who had grown up idolising Hollywood and hip-hop, says Hye Seung Chung, associate professor of Korean Film Studies at the University of Buffalo.

Around the same time, South Korea rapidly grew rich, benefitting from an export boom in cars and electronics. And money from conglomerates, or chaebols as they are known, flowed into film and TV production, giving it a Hollywood-like sheen.

They came to own much of the industry, from production to cinemas. So they were willing to splurge on making movies without worrying much about losses, Prof Chung says.

K-pop, meanwhile, had become a domestic rage in the mid-90s, propelling the success of groups such as HOT and Shinhwa.

This inspired agencies to replicate the gruelling Japanese artist management system.

Scout young talent, often in their teens, and sign them onto years-long contracts through which they become “perfect” idols, with squeaky clean images and hyper-managed public personas. As the system took hold, it transformed K-pop, creating more and more idols.

By the 2000s, Korean TV shows and K-pop were a hit in East and South East Asia. But it was streaming that took them to the world, and into the lives of anyone with a smartphone.

That’s when the recommendation engine took over – it has been key in initiating Korean culture fans, taking them from one show to the next, spanning different genres and even platforms.

Evan says he binged the 16 hour-long episodes of Full House. He loved the way it took its time to build the romance, from bickering banter to attraction, unlike the American shows he knew.

“I was fascinated by each cultural difference I saw – I noticed that they don’t wear shoes in the house,” he recalls. So he took up Netflix’s suggestions for more Korean romcoms. Soon, he found himself humming to the soundtracks of the shows, and was drawn to K-pop.

He has now begun watching variety shows, a reality TV genre where comedians go through a series of challenges together.

As they work their way through the recommendations, fans are immersed in a world that feels foreign yet familiar – one that eventually includes kimchi jiggae, a spicy kimchi stew, and kalguksu, a seafood and kelp noodle broth.

When Mary Gedda first visited South Korea, she went looking for a bowl of kimchi jjigae, as she had seen the stars do on screen numerous times.

“I was crying [as I ate it]. It was so spicy,” she says. “I thought, why did I order this? They eat it so easily in every show.”

Mary, an aspiring French actor, now lives in Seoul. Originally a K-pop fan, she then discovered K-dramas and learned Korean. She has starred in a few cameo roles as well. “I got lucky and I absolutely love it,” she says.

For Mary, food was a big part of the appeal because she saw such a variety of it on K-dramas. Seeing how characters build relationships over food was familiar to her, she says, because she grew up in the French countryside in Burgundy.

But there is also the promise of romance, which drew Marie Namur to South Korea from her native Belgium. She began watching K-dramas on a whim, after visiting South Korea, but she says she kept going because she was “pretty much attracted to all those beautiful Korean men”.

“[They] are impossible love stories between a super-rich guy and a girl who is usually poor, and, you know, the guy is there to save her and it really sells you a dream.”

But it is Korean women who are writing most of these shows – so it is their imagination, or fantasy, that is capturing the interest (and hearts) of other women across the world.

In Seoul, Marie said she was “treated like a lady”, which hadn’t happened “in a very long time”, but her “dating experience is not exactly as I expected it to be”.

“I do not want to be a housewife. I want to keep working. I want to be free. I want to go clubbing with my girlfriends if I want to, even though I’m married or in a relationship, and a lot of guys here do not want that.”

International fans are often looking for an alternative world because of disappointment with their own society, Prof Chung says.

The prim romances, with handsome, caring and chivalrous heroes, are drawing a female audience turning away from what they see as hypersexual American entertainment. And when social inequality became a stronger theme in Korean films and shows – such as Parasite and Squid Game – it attracted global viewers disillusioned with capitalism and a yawning wealth divide in their countries.

The pursuit of a global audience has brought challenges as well. The increasing use of English lyrics in K-pop has led to some criticism.

And there is now a bigger spotlight on the industry’s less glamorous side. The immense pressure stars face to be perfect, for instance, and the demands of a hyper-competitive industry. Creators behind blockbuster shows have alleged exploitation and complained about not being fairly compensated.

Still, it’s great to see the world pay attention to Korea, Prof Chung says. She grew up in a repressive South Korea, when critics of the government were regularly threatened or even killed. She escaped into American movies.

When Parasite played in the cinema of the small American town where she lives, she saw on the faces of other moviegoers the same awe she felt as a child watching Hollywood films: “It feels so great that our love is returned.”

It’s almost 45 years since a big cat native to the Americas was captured in the Scottish Highlands.

The female puma – later nicknamed Felicity – was caught by a farmer frustrated by a series of savage attacks on livestock.

He set a trap using a cage baited with a sheep’s head.

But was the puma really to blame for the killings or an unwitting participant in an elaborate hoax, and why did big cat sightings continue after she was caught?

Lying sprawled in a glass display cabinet in Inverness Museum and Art Gallery is the preserved body of Felicity.

Back in 1980, when very much alive, she was prime suspect for sheep attacks in and around Cannich, a community on the fringes of Glen Affric’s vast area of hills, lochs and woodland.

Journalist Iain MacDonald was a reporter for the BBC at the time.

“It all began a couple of years before with stories of big cats – people were seeing them, and sheep and other animals were being found apparently torn apart, their bones smashed,” he recalls.

Iain says some people were sceptical of the reports while others convinced there was something out there.

He says: “It was a little like the Loch Ness Monster.

“You might or might not believe in it.”

Iain says local police were interested “to a degree”.

Then word came that a farmer, Ted Noble, had trapped a big cat.

Mr Noble had lost livestock to attacks himself and reported seeing a large cat stalking his Shetland ponies.

The media descended on Ted’s farm.

“It was a circus,” says Iain.

“There was this poor beast in a cage snarling and hissing at everybody and a crowd of journalists, photographers and cameramen all milling around.

“It was a bit bizarre.”

Not everyone believed Felicity was behind the attacks.

There were a few red flags.

Experts described her as elderly, tame and overweight. She also had arthritis.

Some suggested she was a pet either abandoned – or even used to hoax Mr Noble.

Felicity was taken into the care of the Highland Wildlife Park near Aviemore.

Iain interviewed the park’s owner, Eddie Orbell.

“Eddie said ‘this beast hasn’t been in the wild half an hour. It’s been fed and well looked after’,” says Iain.

“He cast considerable doubt she could have been haunting the Highlands for years.”

Iain heard stories from the park of Felicity behaving like a household moggy.

“It allowed people to scratch it behind its ears and there’s a story one of the keepers would walk around the park with Felicity draped around his shoulders,” he says.

Felicity lived out the rest of her days at the park. She died in 1985.

After the Felicity’s capture reported sighting of big cats continued almost unabated.

“We still regularly get fresh sightings,” says Paul Macdonald of Scottish Big Cat Research.

The project has a network of 80 volunteers and has gathered more than 1,600 big cat sightings going back to 1947.

In recent times these encounters included:

• October 2018 – Reports of a large black cat in east Ayrshire. A police helicopter carried out a search, but Scottish SPCA said pictures taken by the public showed a large domestic cat
• August 2010 – Police warn of reports of big cats in Easter Ross and Sutherland. A “very large, muscular black cat with a square head” spotted near Tain
• July 2010 – Police say a black cat the “size of a German shepherd dog” seen in woods at Inshriach, Kincraig
• December 2008 – A woman reports she was attacked by a large cat while putting out her bins in Alness, Easter Ross
• October 2005 – Fife Constabulary put on show a cast of a large paw print in an effort to identify a cat-like creature dubbed the Beast of Balbirinie

Paul, a Scottish Borders-based sword-maker who grew up in Lochaber, helped to set up the group in 2019.

He has been fascinated by Scotland’s mysterious cats since his own sighting in the late 1980s.

Paul says he and a friend were travelling by train near Glenfinnan when they spotted what he describes as a melanistic leopard, also known as a black panther.

He says: “It was about 4 to 5ft long in body, had a long tail and muscular rolling shoulders as it slowly slinked away.”

Paul believes many of the big cats were pets dumped after the introduction of 1976’s Dangerous Wild Animals Act.

“People used to have them in their flats,” he says.

The law requires people to buy a licence and keep the animals in appropriate sized enclosures.

Paul says: “I think there were multiple release events by owners whose other option was to have the cats destroyed.

“An illicit trade in exotic animals since then have added to those releases.”

Scotland’s nature agency NatureScot advises on non-native mammals in the wild and has information on its website about how to report unusual species.

A spokesperson said: “While we receive one or two sightings of big cats a year, none of the reports submitted over the past 34 years have provided sufficient evidence to conclude that big cats were present.

“The last verified sighting of a big cat in the wild in Scotland was in 1980.”

In 2024, as Bollywood struggled to find its footing, smaller films by Indian women that told nuanced stories made headlines in the country and across the world.

In May, Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light made history by winning the Grand Prix at the Cannes film festival.

In the months since then, All We Imagine As Light has become a juggernaut of indie cinema, sweeping through film festivals and the awards circuit. It has been judged the Best International film by prestigious associations including the New York Film Critics Circle and the Toronto Film Critics Association. It has also picked up two Golden Globe nominations, including for Ms Kapadia as best director.

It is also on several best films of the year list, including that of the BBC and the New York Times.

And it has company.

Director Shuchi Talati’s coming-of-age drama Girls Will Be Girls won two awards at the Sundance Film Festival. Kiran Rao’s Laapataa Ladies (Lost Ladies) spent at least two months on the top 10 list of Netflix in India and was picked as the country’s official Oscar entry (a controversial decision). Laapataa Ladies didn’t make it to the Academy’s shortlist. What did make it was British-Indian director Sandhya Suri’s Hindi film Santosh, which had been picked as the UK’s submission to the Oscars.

Is this sudden wave of success for Indian films an aberration or a long-awaited shift in global consciousness?

“It’s a culmination of both,” says film critic Shubhra Gupta, pointing out that these films were not “made overnight”.

For instance, Shuchi Talati, the director of Girls Will Be Girls, and its co-producer Richa Chadha were in college together when they first came up with the idea for the film. “They have been working on it for years,” Gupta says.

“It’s pure serendipity that 2024 became the year these films were released, igniting conversations together.”

This fortunate alignment has been a cinematic dream. The global impact of these films is rooted in their quality and exploration of universal themes like loneliness, relationships, identity, gender and resilience. With strong female voices and unconventional feminist narratives, these stories venture into territories unexplored by mainstream Indian cinema.

In All We Imagine As Light, a film made in the Hindi, Marathi and Malayalam languages, three migrant women in Mumbai navigate empathy, resilience and human connection. The narrative delves into themes of loneliness and the socio-political landscape, notably the scrutiny of interfaith Hindu-Muslim relationships as seen with the character Anu (Divya Prabha) and her bond with Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon).

Kapadia told the BBC that while the women in her films are financially independent, they still face limitations in their personal lives, particularly when it comes to matters of love.

“For me, love in India is very political… women seem to hold a lot of the so-called honour of the family and the protection of the caste lineage. So if she marries somebody who is of a different religion or of a different caste, that becomes an issue. For me, it is really a method to control women and infantilise them,” she says.

Talati’s Girls Will Be Girls explores female adolescence, rebellion and intergenerational conflict through the story of a 16-year-old girl studying at a strict boarding school in the Himalayas and her fractured relationship with her mother, Anila, who struggles with her own vulnerabilities and unresolved emotions.

“It is the kind of coming-of-age film that we don’t do in India at all,” Gupta says. “It looks at women from a very empathetic, very warm gaze.”

“The age where people experience emotions with and without their bodies, their minds, that exploration but without infantilising the experience – it was never part of Indian mainstream cinema,” she adds.

Kiran Rao’s Laapataa Ladies did not perform well at the box-office but got warm reviews from viewers and critics. At a BAFTA screening in London this month, Ms Rao described the current moment as “really special for women from India”, expressing hope for a continued wave of such stories.

Her film is a satirical comedy about two newlywed brides getting accidentally swapped on a train because of their veils. It offers a sharp commentary on patriarchy, identity and gender roles, a shift from decades of male-centred mainstream Indian films.

“A lot of us who are very patriarchal in our thinking are often that way because that’s how we have been brought up,” Bollywood star Aamir Khan, a co-producer of the film, said after the screening. “But we need to be understanding, at least try and help each other even to come out of this kind of thinking.”

The biggest surprise this year came from the UK, which selected the Hindi-language film Santosh, directed by British-Indian filmmaker Sandhya Suri, as its Oscar entry. Shot entirely in India over a 44-day schedule, it featured a largely female crew. Starring Indian actors Shahana Goswami and Sunita Rajbhar, Santosh was co-produced by people and companies across the UK, India, Germany and France.

The film is intrinsically an Indian story about violence against women, set as a taut thriller.

Goswami says the success of Santosh and All We Imagine as Light points to the merging of borders and expansion of film industries, creating space for cross-pollination and exchange.

“We often think these Indian films require [specific] cultural context, but they don’t. Any film driven by emotion will resonate universally, regardless of its origins,” she told the BBC.

Three of the films – All We Imagine as Light, Girls Will Be Girls and Santosh – share one more common trait: they are cross-country co-productions.

Goswami agrees that this could this be a formula for the future.

“With a French producer, for example, a film gains the opportunity to be seen by a French audience who may follow that producer or the broader film industry. This is how it becomes more globally accessible and relevant,” she says.

Even in Bollywood, some women-led films have had huge success this year. Stree 2, a horror-comedy about a mysterious woman battling a monster who abducts free-thinking women, was the year’s second-biggest hit, playing in cinemas for months.

On streaming platforms, Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s opulent Netflix series Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar, an exploration of the misogyny and exploitation in the lives of courtesans in pre-independent India, was among Google’s top-searched TV shows of the year.

Their success seems to signal a growing appetite for such stories, their broad appeal demonstrating that mainstream cinema can address important themes without sacrificing entertainment value.

Despite systemic challenges, 2024 has highlighted the global power of female voices from India and the demand for diverse stories. The momentum could be crucial for the Indian film industry in getting wider distribution for its independent films and pave the way for a more diverse and equitable film landscape.