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. The next step would be repeating the success with some of these embryos.

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”.

On the night of 6 December, Mohammed el-Nadaf, a soldier in the Syrian army, was at his position in Homs.

As rebels led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) pushed into the city, days after they had seized control of Aleppo and Hama in a lightning offensive, Mohammed decided he didn’t want to fight.

“We had no orders, no information. I took off my uniform, left my weapons, and started to make my way to my village in Tartous,” he said.

At around the same time, Mohammed Ramadan was at a position on the outskirts of the capital, Damascus.

“There was no one to give orders to us. Many of our commanders fled before us. So I thought, why should I die and fight for someone who didn’t even give me enough of a salary to be able to feed my family?

“For our daily rations as soldiers we got just one egg and one potato.”

The next morning, he also left his position and went home.

The testimony of the soldiers provides an insight into the rapid collapse of ousted President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

• The abandoned homes of Assad’s ruthless enforcers
• Jeremy Bowen: Can Syria’s new ruler keep his promises?

For many of his demoralised and poorly paid forces on the ground, the speed at which their defence disintegrated in the face of the rebel offensive did not come as a surprise.

Many soldiers told us they were paid less than $35 (£28) a month and had to do other jobs to get by in a country where that would only cover a fraction of basic living costs.

Mohammed Ramadan was clutching the Kalashnikov rifle he’d been previously assigned when we met him and several others in Damascus more than two weeks after the regime fell, at a “reconciliation centre” run by HTS.

At the centre, former military, police and intelligence officers, as well as anyone who was part of pro-Assad militia groups, can register for a temporary civilian identity card and deposit their weapons.

HTS has announced a general amnesty for those who worked for the former regime.

Waleed Abdrabuh, a member of the group looking after the reconciliation centres in Damascus, said: “The goal is to have the weapons issued by the former regime to be returned to the state. And for the members of the forces to get a civilian ID so that they can be re-integrated into society.”

Under Assad, conscription into the army was mandatory for adult males. Conscripts had to hand in their civilian IDs and were given military IDs instead.

Without a civilian ID it would be hard to get a job or move around freely in the country, which partly explains why tens of thousands have showed up at centres in various cities.

At the centre in Damascus, formerly an office of Assad’s Baath Party, hundreds of men were thronging to the gate, hankering to be let in.

Many of them were keen to distance themselves from the crimes of the regime.

“I didn’t participate in any of their bad deeds. I consider them despicable acts. I did everything to avoid being a part of massacres and crimes against Syrians,” Mohammed al-Nadaf said.

“I even tried to leave the military twice because I knew I was on the wrong side. But it was not possible to escape. The military had all my civilian documents.”

Somar al-Hamwi, who served in the military for 24 years, said: “Most people don’t know anything, OK? For me, I don’t know what happened in Saydnaya or any of the prisons.”

The BBC cannot independently verify their claims.

• ‘I felt like a breathing corpse’: Stories from people freed from Saydnaya

Anger at the regime and Assad’s decision to flee to Russia on 7 December as the rebels approached Damascus was also palpable.

“He [Bashar al-Assad] took a lot of money and ran away. He left all these people, all of us military to our own destiny,” said Somar.

There were many worried faces among the crowds at the reconciliation centre, but the environment appeared relatively amicable despite the 13-year civil war that left more than half a million people dead.

“Everyone told me it is safe, and to go and make a settlement at the centre. The safety assurance made by HTS has made a big difference,” said Mohammed al-Nadaf.

But from different parts of Syria, reports of suspected revenge attacks involving killing, kidnapping and arson are increasingly coming in. There are no reliable statistics confirming how many attacks have taken place but dozens have been reported on social media.

In the past week, three judges who arbitrated property-related matters in the previously regime-controlled town of Masyaf in north-western Syria – Mounzer Hassan, Mohammed Mahmoud and Youssef Ghanoum – were killed. Sources from the hospital where their bodies were examined have told the BBC they were struck in the head by a sharp object.

We went to Alamerea village to visit the home of Mounzer Hassan. It was bare, cold, and looked like it needed repairs.

Mounzer’s wife, Nadine Abdullah, told us she believed her husband was targeted because he was an Alawite – the minority sect from which the Assad family originates, and to which many of the former regime’s political and military elite belonged.

“Since they were civil, not criminal court judges, I think they were killed simply because they were Alawites. All Alawites did not benefit from Bashar al-Assad. Those who worked for the regime were forced to follow orders, otherwise brutal measures would be imposed on them,” Nadine said.

Mounzer’s brother Nazir said: “This is a crime against an innocent person. It’s unacceptable. Those being killed had no connection to the politics of the regime. They were just working to support their poor families.”

Mounzer was the father of four young children, and was the only wage earner in his family, also looking after his ailing father and brother.

His family said they were speaking out because they want such deaths prevented in future.

“Everyone says HTS did not commit the crime. But as the governing authority now, they must find out who did it. They have to ensure protection for all of us,” Nadine said.

HTS’s interim government has condemned the killing of the judges and said it will find the perpetrators. It has also denied being involved in any reprisal killings.

Protests were held in Masyaf following the killing of the judges, and many Alawites have told the BBC they are now worried for their safety.

While HTS has announced an amnesty for Assad’s forces, they have also said those involved in torture and killing will be held to account. That will be a difficult balance to strike.

A few weeks since the fall of the regime, it is a delicate moment for Syria.

More than 170 people have died after a plane crashed as it was landing in South Korea on Sunday morning.

The Jeju Air plane came off the runway before colliding with a wall at Muan International Airport in the south west of the country.

The plane, which was returning from Bangkok, in Thailand, was carrying 181 people – 179 of whom have died, while two crew members were rescued from the wreckage.

Authorities are investigating the cause of the crash, which fire officials have indicated may have occurred due to a bird strike and bad weather. However experts have warned the crash could have been caused by a number of factors.

The flight, 7C2216, was a Boeing 737-800 operated by Jeju Air, Korea’s most popular budget airline.

The plane arrived in Muan at about 09:00 local time (00:00 GMT).

A South Korean transport official said that the plane had been attempting to land but was forced to hold off after air traffic control gave a bird strike warning – an alert about the risk of a collision with birds.

About two minutes later, the pilot called in a Mayday and air traffic command gave permission for the plane to land from the opposite direction, the official said.

One passenger on the flight messaged a relative, saying that a bird “was stuck in the wing” and that the plane could not land, local media reported.

One video appears to show the plane touching down without using its wheels or any other landing gear. It skidded down the runway and crashed into a wall before erupting into flames.

A witness told the South Korean news agency Yonhap that they heard a “loud bang” followed by a “series of explosions”.

Videos from the scene show the plane ablaze with smoke billowing into the sky. Fire crews have since extinguished the fire.

Lee Jeong-hyun, the chief of the Muan fire department, told a televised briefing that the tail section of the plane was identifiable but “one cannot recognise the shape of the rest of the plane”.

He said that the bird strike and bad weather may have caused the crash – but that the exact cause is still being investigated. The flight and voice recorders from the plane have been recovered.

The head of Jeju Air’s management said that the crash was not due to “any maintenance issues”, the Yonhap news agency reported.

The South Korean transport department said that the head pilot on the flight had held the role since 2019 and had more than 6,800 hours of flight experience.

A bird strike is a collision between a plane in flight and a bird. They are very common – in the UK, there were more than 1,400 bird strikes reported in 2022, only about 100 of which affected the plane, according to data from the Civil Aviation Authority.

The best known bird strike occurred in 2009, when an Airbus plane ditched into New York’s Hudson River after colliding with a flock of geese. All 155 passengers and crew survived.

Professor Doug Drury, who teaches aviation at CQUniversity Australia, wrote in an article for The Conversation this summer that Boeing planes have turbofan engines, which can be severely damaged in a bird strike.

He said that pilots are trained to be especially vigilant during the early morning or at sunset, when birds are most active.

The plane was carrying 175 passengers and six crew. Two of the passengers were Thai and the rest are believed to have been South Korean, authorities have said. Many are thought to have been returning from a Christmas holiday in Thailand.

The official death toll stands at 179 – making it the deadliest plane crash in South Korean history.

All the passengers and four members of crew died.

Authorities have so far identified at least 88 bodies.

Five of the people who died were children under the age of 10. The youngest passenger was a three-year-old boy and the oldest was 78, authorities said, citing the passenger manifest.

South Korea’s National Fire Agency said two members of flight crew – a man and a woman – survived the crash. They were found in the tail side of the aircraft after the crash and taken to hospital, it said.

More than 1,500 emergency personnel have been deployed as part of recovery efforts, including 490 fire employees and 455 police officers. They have been searching the area around the runway for parts of the plane and those who were onboard.

Acting President Choi Sang-mok has declared a special disaster zone in Muan, which makes central government funding available to the local government and victims.

All flights to and from Muan International Airport have been cancelled.

Families of the victims of the crash have been travelling to the airport in the hope of finding out what happened to their relatives. Video footage from Reuters shows officials reading names of the victims out loud.

Airport authorities and the Red Cross have set up more than a dozen tents in the airport for bereaved families to grieve in private.

Sounds of crying echoed through the terminal. Some are frustrated at how long it is taking to identify the bodies.

Jeju Air has apologised to families. Its chief executive said in a news conference that the airline had no history of accidents. It is believed that Sunday’s crash has been the only fatal accident since the airline was launched in 2005.

Plane manufacturer Boeing has offered condolences to those affected.

Choi, South Korea’s acting president, said: “I express my deepest condolences to the many victims in the incident. I will do all I can for the injured to quickly recover.”

The government has declared a period of national mourning for the country for the next seven days, during which flags at government offices will be lowered.

Thousands of Georgians protested in the capital Tbilisi as a new president allied with the ruling Georgian Dream party was inaugurated.

Mikheil Kavelashvili, a former pro-footballer, has been sworn in during a critical political period for the country after the government suspended its application to join the European Union.

Georgian Dream won parliamentary elections in October, but the victory was mired in allegations of fraud which have since sparked several street protests.

Outgoing president Salome Zourabichvili refused to step down on Sunday, saying she was the “only legitimate president”.

Addressing crowds gathered outside, Zourabichvili said she would leave the presidential palace but branded her successor illegitimate.

“This building was a symbol only as long as a legitimate president was sitting here,” she said.

A few minutes’ walk away, Kavelashvili was sworn in at a closed-doors ceremony in parliament, where he was accompanied by his family. Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze also attended the inauguration.

Speaking after taking the oath, Kavelashvili went on to praise Georgian “traditions, values, national identity, the sanctity of the family, and faith”.

“Our history clearly shows that, after countless struggles to defend our homeland and traditions, peace has always been one of the main goals and values for the Georgian people,” he said.

Georgia’s four main opposition groups have rejected Kavelashvili and boycotted parliament.

Kavelashvili is a former MP with the Georgian Dream party and was the only candidate for the job. Zourabichvili has previously denounced his election as a travesty.

• Zourabichvili: Georgia’s pro-West president refusing to step down

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.

On Saturday, protesters waving Georgian and EU flags gathered again ahead of the inauguration, forming a human chain that spanned kilometres.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

I will never forget New Year’s Eve 1999.

I was working as a producer in the BBC’s Moscow bureau. Suddenly there was breaking news: Russia’s President Boris Yeltsin had stepped down.

His decision to resign took everyone by surprise, including the British press corps in Moscow. When the news broke there was no correspondent in the office. That meant I had to step in to write and broadcast my first BBC dispatch.

“Boris Yeltsin always said he would see out his full term in office,” I wrote. “Today he told Russians he’d changed his mind.”

It was the start of my career as a reporter.

And the start of Vladimir Putin’s as Russia’s leader.

Following Yeltsin’s resignation, in accordance with the Russian constitution, Prime Minister Putin became acting president. Three months later he won the election.

On leaving the Kremlin, Yeltsin’s parting instruction to Putin was: “Take care of Russia!”

I’ve found myself recalling these words of Yeltsin more and more, the closer Russia’s war on Ukraine gets to the three-year mark.

That’s because President Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has had devastating consequences.

Primarily for Ukraine, which has seen massive destruction and casualties in its cities. Almost 20% of its territory has been occupied and 10 million of its citizens have been displaced.

But for Russia, too:

• Since Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch his so-called “special military operation” Russia has sustained heavy losses on the battlefield
• Russian towns and cities come under regular drone attack
• Ukrainian soldiers have occupied a part of Russia’s Kursk region
• International sanctions are heaping pressure on Russia’s economy
• What’s more, the country’s demographic situation is dire
• Domestic repression has picked up apace

I’ve been reporting on Putin since he came to power a quarter of a century ago.

On 31 December 1999, who would have thought that Russia’s new leader would still be in power two and a half decades later? Or that Russia today would be waging war on Ukraine and facing off with the West?

I often wonder whether the course of history would have been drastically different if Yeltsin had picked someone else to succeed him. The question, of course, is academic. History is full of ifs and buts and maybes.

One thing I can say with certainty: over twenty-five years I’ve seen different Putins.

And I’m not the only one.

“The Putin I met with, did good business with, established a Nato-Russia Council with, is very, very different from this almost megalomaniac at the present moment,” former Nato chief Lord Robertson told me in 2023.

“The man who stood beside me in May 2002, right beside me, and said Ukraine is a sovereign and independent nation state which will make its own decisions about security, is now the man who says that [Ukraine] is not a nation state.

“I think that Vladimir Putin has a very thin skin and a huge ambition for his country. The Soviet Union was recognised as the second superpower in the world. Russia can’t make any claims in that direction. And I think that ate away at his ego.”

That is one possible explanation for the change we’ve seen in Putin: his burning ambition to “Make Russia Great Again” (and to make up for what many perceive as Moscow’s defeat in the Cold War) put Russia on an inevitable collision course with its neighbours – and with the West.

The Kremlin has a different explanation.

From the speeches he gives, the comments he makes, Putin appears driven by resentment, by an all-encompassing feeling that for years Russia has been lied to and disrespected, its security concerns dismissed by the West.

But does Putin himself believe that he has fulfilled Yeltsin’s request to “take care of Russia?”

I recently had a chance to find out.

More than four hours into his lengthy end-of-year press conference, Putin invited me to ask a question.

“Boris Yeltsin told you to take care of Russia,” I reminded the president. “But what of the significant losses in your so-called ‘special military operation’, the Ukrainian troops in Kursk region, the sanctions, the high inflation. Do you think you’ve taken care of your country?”

“Yes,” President Putin replied. “And I haven’t just taken care of it. We’ve pulled back from the edge of the abyss.”

He portrayed Yeltsin’s Russia as a country that had been losing its sovereignty. He accused the West of having “patronisingly patted” Yeltsin on the shoulder while “using Russia for its own purposes”. But he, Putin, was “doing everything”, he said, “to ensure Russia was an independent sovereign state”.

Presenting himself as the defender of Russian sovereignty: is this a view he’s come up with retrospectively to try to justify the war in Ukraine? Or does Putin really believe this take on modern Russian history?

I’m still not sure. Not yet. But I sense that it is a key question.

The answer to it may well influence how the war ends – and Russia’s future direction.

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.

Three people have died attempting to cross the English Channel in a small boat on Sunday morning, the French coastguard says.

People ended up in the water after trying to board a boat off the coast of Sangatte, near Calais, at about 06:00 local time (05:00 GMT).

The three people later declared dead were recovered from the water by helicopter, while a further 45 were given treatment on the beach, many suffering from hypothermia. Four were taken to hospital.

It has been the deadliest year on record for Channel crossings.

Dame Angela Eagle, minister for border security and asylum, said lives had been lost because “ruthless criminals running the small boat trade are overloading people into unseaworthy vessels”.

She said the government was “committed to smashing these gangs” and was supporting the French authorities.

“It never stops,” the mayor of Sangatte Guy Allemand told AFP. “It’s crossing after crossing, without any let-up.”

He said seven people had needed intensive care after the incident.

The French coastguard said a search was ongoing at sea for any other survivors.

The Home Office confirmed there had been an incident in French waters, with French authorities leading the response and investigation.

Pierre-Henri Dumont, MP for the Pas-de-Calais region, told the BBC: “Any attempt to cross the Channel in this way is very, very dangerous – but at this time of year, it is even more deadly.”

He said rescue teams can respond quickly, but current temperatures mean “spending even a few minutes in the water” can be fatal.

The incident follows four days in which 1,485 people made the journey, meaning it has been the busiest Christmas period since records began in 2018.

More than 36,000 people have crossed the Channel in small boats so far this year, surpassing the 2023 total of 29,437, government figures suggest.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM), a UN agency which tracks the number of people who die crossing the Channel, says 77 people have died attempting to make the journey this year.

A number of other boats were reported to have departed from the coast on Sunday, the French coastguard said in its statement.

Australian actor and comedian Rebel Wilson has legally married Ramona Agruma in Sydney, the star has announced on social media.

The couple had a wedding ceremony in Sardinia in September but have since married again in a service officiated by Wilson’s sister.

The actress proposed to Agruma, a fashion and jewellery designer, at Disneyland in 2023.

Among well-wishers commenting on social media were Pitch Perfect co-stars Adam Devine and Elizabeth Banks, who offered their congratulations to the couple.

Wilson, 44, said it felt “right” to have the wedding in her hometown. “It meant my 94-year-old grandmother Gar could come which was very special to us to have her included,” she wrote on Instagram.

Agruma also shared photos from the day adding: “Married officially in Australia to my Australian princess.”

The couple are pictured beaming with the famous Sydney Harbour Bridge serving as the backdrop.

The Bridesmaids actress announced the birth of her first child via surrogate in November 2022. Sharing a picture of daughter Royce Lilly, she described her as a “beautiful miracle”.

The star made headlines earlier this year when the US version of her memoir, Rebel Rising, about Wilson’s sexuality, weight and fertility, was released, and made allegations against Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen.

The British edition of the book, published on 25 April, blacked out text believed to be relating to him.

A spokesman for Baron Cohen at the time said the redactions represented a “clear victory”, and reiterated his position that Wilson’s claims were “demonstrably false”.

In her memoir, Wilson also talked about being a “late bloomer” and losing her virginity at 35.

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.”

The producer of the world’s bestselling LP, an Oscar-winning British actress who conquered screen and stage, a fearless Russian opposition politician and one of Ireland’s greatest novelists – here are some of the well-known faces no longer with us.

Among those we remember are acting legend Dame Maggie Smith, former teen star Shannen Doherty, and “the most beautiful man in cinema”, Alain Delon.

As Ken “Hutch” Hutchinson, one half of the cop duo Starsky & Hutch, David Soul became one of the biggest TV stars of the 1970s. The US actor’s fame led to a parallel music career and two UK number one hits, Don’t Give Up On Us Baby and Silver Lady. Later in life, he moved to the UK where he acted in theatre and TV.

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Shannen Doherty’s first big film role was in the 1988 black comedy Heathers. This was followed by four seasons of the TV show Beverly Hills 90210. Her character, Brenda, was a Midwest girl transplanted with her family to the wealthy Los Angeles suburb. Doherty also appeared in the TV series Charmed and the film Mallrats.

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Dame Maggie Smith’s acting career spanned stage, cinema and television for more than 70 years. Her best-known film roles include The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (for which she won a best actress Oscar) and A Room with a View. In her later years, she was the imperious Dowager Countess of Grantham in Downton Abbey, and Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter films.

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US actor who starred in dozens of films, but whose most famous role was probably the one in which he did not actually appear – the voice of Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy. James Earl Jones also enjoyed a distinguished stage career, winning two Tony awards.

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The youngest member of the Home Guard platoon in Dad’s Army, one of the BBC’s best-loved sitcoms. Ian Lavender played Pike, the guileless young bank clerk and subject of Captain Mainwaring (Arthur Lowe)’s put-down: “You stupid boy!” Later in life, the Birmingham-born actor appeared in EastEnders.

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Shelley Duvall’s most famous film role was probably Wendy, the terror-stricken wife of Jack Nicholson in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. She starred in several other critically acclaimed films including Annie Hall, Nashville and Thieves Like Us, as well as appearing as Olive Oyl in the 1980s musical, Popeye.

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Canadian actor who started his long career in British TV and theatre, before achieving film stardom in the war films Kelly’s Heroes and The Dirty Dozen. Among his many notable films were M*A*S*H, Don’t Look Now, Casanova, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Ordinary People. More recently, he starred in The Hunger Games trilogy as the evil President Snow.

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Reportedly once described as the most beautiful man in cinema, Parisian Alain Delon was one of Europe’s leading film stars in the 1960s and 70s, appearing in Plein Soleil, Le Samourai and The Leopard. Delon’s last major public appearance was to receive an honorary Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2019.

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French actress whose performance in the 1966 film A Man and a Woman earned her a Golden Globe and a Bafta award for best actress, as well as an Oscar nomination – the first time an actor or actress had been nominated for a French language performance.

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Manchester-born, Bernard Hill became a Liverpool icon for the ages as Yosser “Gizza Job” Hughes in Alan Bleasdale’s 1982 TV series, Boys from the Blackstuff. Hill later had major roles in the hit films Titanic and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and most recently appeared in BBC series including Wolf Hall and The Responder.

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US actress who was nominated for an Oscar for 1974’s A Woman Under the Influence and 1980’s Gloria. Both films were collaborations with her late husband, the director John Cassavetes. Gena Rowlands also won four Emmys and two Golden Globes before retiring in 2015.

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Timothy West was known for roles on stage and screen including the TV sitcom Brass, dramas such as Bleak House and Gentleman Jack, and soaps Coronation Street and EastEnders. He was married to the actress Prunella Scales. In recent years, the couple filmed 10 series of Channel 4’s Great Canal Journeys.

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Scottish comedian who used details from her extremely tough upbringing for material. She endured poverty, abuse and the murder of a parent before taking to comedy in her 30s. Janey Godley achieved international fame for her stand-up and for her many internet videos. Fittingly, her memoir was titled Nothing Left Unsaid.

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Actors and performers who also died in 2024 include:

• Glynis John – actress who played Mrs Banks in Mary Poppins
• John Savident – Coronation Street star
• Gudrun Ure – Supergran, in the 1980s children’s TV show of the same name
• Cheng Pei-pei – star of Oscar-winning film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
• Carl Weathers – Apollo Creed from Rocky movies

Including “radio genius” Steve Wright, sex therapist Dr Ruth Westheimer, and one half of the Hairy Bikers, Dave Myers.

Renowned sex therapist and talk show host, “Dr Ruth” was famous for speaking frankly about sex in her unmistakable German accent. A Holocaust survivor born in Frankfurt, Ruth Westheimer came to fame as the host of a local radio programme in the US, Sexually Speaking, which was nationally syndicated in 1984. She then went on to write Dr Ruth’s Guide To Good Sex, the first of more than 40 books.

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Described as a “radio genius” by one former colleague, Steve Wright was a DJ on BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2 for more than four decades. The long-time presenter of the afternoon show on first Radio 1 and then its sister station, he brought his own inimitable style to bear on his programmes. Wright was appointed an MBE for services to radio only weeks before his death.

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One half of the TV cooking duo the Hairy Bikers, Myers travelled around the UK and the world with his friend Si King, sampling and cooking food as they went. The Hairy Bikers published more than 30 recipe books, selling more than six million copies, and also documented their weight loss in Hairy Dieters: How To Love Food And Lose Weight.

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The first female presenter on BBC Radio 1 and the station’s longest-serving DJ, Annie Nightingale joined the station in 1970 and broadcast her last show in December 2023. She was passionate about a wide range of music, championing genres ranging from prog rock and punk to acid house and grime. She was also a long-time presenter of BBC Two’s The Old Grey Whistle Test.

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Doctor, broadcaster and author famous for popularising the idea of intermittent fasting, Michael Mosley’s books on the 5:2 and Fast 800 diets were international bestsellers. His BBC Radio 4 series Just One Thing, which focused on simple, accessible health tips, attracted 25 million listeners around the world.

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Media figures who also died in 2024 include:

• Johnnie Irwin – presenter of the Channel 4 show, Escape To The Country
• Morgan Spurlock – documentary-maker who made Super Size Me about the fast-food industry
• Chris Serle – presenter of BBC TV’s long-running show, That’s Life
• Robin Windsor – Strictly Come Dancing professional

Our look back includes record producer Quincy Jones, One Direction star Liam Payne and French singer-songwriter Françoise Hardy.

Liam Payne was one of five solo contestants in the 2010 series of The X Factor, who were told by the judges to unite and compete as a boy band – the result was One Direction. Although they only came third in the talent show, they went on to become one of the biggest UK bands of the 21st Century, with four UK number one albums and chart-topping singles around the world. Payne also had some solo success before his tragic early death at the age of 31.

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French singer-songwriter, known for her melancholy ballads, Françoise Hardy’s most famous songs included All the Girls and Boys (Tous les garçons et les filles), It Hurts to Say Goodbye (Comment te dire adieu) and My Friend the Rose (Mon amie la rose).

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One of the greatest music producers of the 20th Century, Quincy Jones began his career working with Frank Sinatra. In the 1980s he produced Michael Jackson’s two most successful LPs – Thriller and Bad – as well as co-writing several of the songs. Quincy Jones also masterminded the USA for Africa single, We Are The World.

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An actor and musician, Kris Kristofferson had success as a performer but more impact as a songwriter, penning hits including Help Me Through The Night and Me And Bobby McGee. The Texan also starred in the films Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid, Heaven’s Gate and – drawing on his musical background – the 1977 remake of A Star Is Born, alongside Barbra Streisand.

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Musicians who also died in 2024 include:

• Steve Harley – Cockney Rebel singer, who reached number one in 1975 with Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)
• Melanie – 1960s singer made famous by her appearance at the 1969 Woodstock festival
• Herbie Flowers – bass player on Lou Reed’s Walk On The Wild Side, and writer of Clive Dunn’s number one novelty hit, Grandad
• Sergio Mendes – Brazilian bossa nova legend remembered internationally for his hit, Mas Que Nada
• Mary Weiss – lead singer of 1960s vocal group The Shangri-Las, who sang The Leader of the Pack

This year saw the deaths of Russia’s leading opposition politician, Alexei Navalny, the UK’s former deputy prime minister, John Prescott, and ex-first minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond.

Russia’s most prominent opposition politician, Alexei Navalny campaigned relentlessly against President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of running a corrupt and “feudal” state. After surviving repeated attempts to poison him, Alexei Navalny died in mysterious circumstances in a Russian prison.

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John Prescott was deputy prime minister in the Blair government and one of the most recognisable politicians of the New Labour era. Renowned as a political scrapper, he gained notoriety in 2001 for punching a protester who had thrown an egg at him. After serving as East Hull’s MP for 40 years, he was made Lord Prescott.

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A leading figure in Scotland’s nationalist movement, Alex Salmond was Scottish first minister from 2007-14, and led the unsuccessful pro-independence referendum campaign in 2014. Later in life he attracted controversy after quitting the Scottish National Party and setting up a rival nationalist party, Alba.

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One of Australia’s most revered Aboriginal leaders, Lowitja O’Donoghue was instrumental in negotiating Australia’s historic Native Title legislation which granted land rights to First Nations people. She received some of the nation’s top honours for her pioneering work and in 1984 was named Australian of the Year.

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Former Labour minister and crossbench peer, Lord Field spent 40 years as MP for Birkenhead and was a leading voice on welfare reform for much of his career. He was a minister for a period in the Blair government but was regarded as a maverick within his own party, in no small part because of his close personal friendship with Margaret Thatcher.

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Political figures who also died in 2024 include:

• Alberto Fujimori – former president of Peru, who was convicted of human rights abuses and corruption
• Michael Ancram – served as deputy leader of the Conservative Party for five years
• Nguyen Phu Trong – long-serving Vietnamese leader
• John Bruton – Irish politician who served as taoiseach from 1994 to 1997
• Derek Draper – Former Labour spin doctor whose struggle with Covid was the subject of an ITV documentary

Writers who died this year include the novelists Edna O’Brien and Paul Auster, and the short-story writer Alice Munro.

US author of The New York Trilogy – a collection of detective stories with a philosophical twist, centred on a shady quartet of private investigators named Blue, Brown, Black and White. His other novels included Timbuktu and The Brooklyn Follies. Paul Auster was praised for his sharp dialogue, and his books have been translated into more than 40 languages.

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Irish novelist whose first book, The Country Girls, remains her most famous. Published in 1960, it tells the story of two convent girls, and its frank portrayal (for its time) of their sex lives resulted in the book being banned in Ireland. Edna O’Brien wrote more than 20 works of fiction and was described by fellow novelist Philip Roth as “the most gifted woman now writing in English”.

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Yorkshire-born writer best known for her first novel, A Woman Of Substance. The 1979 saga of a young woman’s journey from rags to riches stayed on the New York Times’ bestseller list for 43 weeks. It spawned seven sequels and a successful TV adaptation.

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Author whose fiction focused on rural life in her home country of Canada. In 2013, Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize for Literature – she was the first Canadian to receive the accolade, and the only laureate to be honoured primarily for short-story writing.

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Acclaimed poet at the forefront of the Black Arts Movement in the US, known across the world for her defiant yet endearing writing about race, gender, sex and love. Nikki Giovanni authored more than 30 books, ranging from poetry to children’s books. Her last work, titled The Last Book, is set to be published in 2025.

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Writers who also died in 2024 include:

• Lynne Reid Banks – British author of The L-Shaped Room
• Maryse Condé – Guadeloupe-born author of epic novels tackling the legacy of colonialism in Africa and the Caribbean
• John Burnside – award-winning Scottish poet

Our list includes the Nobel prize-winning British physicist Peter Higgs, charity founder Camila Batmanghelidjh and the former head of the British army, Sir Mike Jackson.

Flamboyant and sometimes controversial founder of Kids Company, a charity set up to provide support to deprived and vulnerable inner-city children and young people. Ms Batmanghelidjh attracted many influential backers, but the charity closed in 2015 because of financial difficulties, and she was forced to step down.

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Nobel prize-winning British physicist, who gave his name to the “Higgs boson”, a particle that helps explain why the basic building blocks of the Universe – atoms – have mass. The particle’s existence was confirmed in 2012 by scientists using the Large Hadron Collider at Cern in Switzerland. Higgs’ reaction? “It’s very nice to be right sometimes.”

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The founder of breast cancer awareness charity CoppaFeel!, Kris Hallenga was herself diagnosed with the disease 15 years ago when she was 23. She was also a columnist at The Sun and a bestselling author. In 2014, a documentary about her life and work – Kris: Dying to Live – was aired on BBC Three.

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Behavioural psychologist who wrote the best-selling book Thinking, Fast and Slow. This took issue with one of the central ideas underlying economics – that people are rational beings who always act out of self-interest. Daniel Kahnemann suggested that, on the contrary, they often act irrationally, based on instinct. In 2002, he won the Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics.

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The former head of the British Army, General Sir Mike Jackson was in charge during the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. In Kosovo in 1999, he famously refused an order from his US commander to intercept Russian forces when they entered the country without Nato’s agreement, saying: “I’m not going to start the Third World War for you.”

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Public figures who also died in 2024 include:

• Susan Wojcicki – former YouTube boss and one of Google’s first employees
• Iris Apfel – US designer and fashion icon
• Kiingi Tuheitia Pōtatau Te Wherowhero VII – the Maori king of New Zealand
• Akira Endo – scientist whose work led to the creation of statins
• Eddie Stobart – founder of the self-named UK haulage company

German footballing legend Franz Beckenbauer, snooker’s first TV star Ray Reardon, and marathon world champion Kevin Kiptum all died in 2024.

The UK’s most famous shot putter, Geoff Capes twice won gold at both the Commonwealth Games and the European Indoor Championships. The Lincolnshire-born athlete also twice held the title of World’s Strongest Man. He was a three-time Olympian and came closest to winning a medal with a fifth-place finish at the 1980 Games in Moscow.

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The life of men’s marathon world record holder Kelvin Kiptum was tragically cut short by a road accident in his home country, Kenya. In October 2023, the 24-year-old long-distance runner bettered the record of his compatriot Eliud Kipchoge, completing the Chicago Marathon in two hours and 35 seconds.

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The first non-British manager of the England football team, Sven-Goran Eriksson led them to quarter-finals at three major tournaments between 2001 and 2006. The Swede also managed 12 clubs including Manchester City, Leicester, Roma and Lazio, winning 18 trophies.

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Ugandan long-distance runner Rebecca Cheptegei made her marathon debut in 2021 and recorded a personal best of two hours 22 minutes and 47 seconds the following year, making her the second-fastest Ugandan woman of all time. At the Paris Olympics she came 44th. Rebecca Cheptegei was murdered in September this year at the age of 33.

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Nicknamed “Der Kaiser”, German footballer Franz Beckenbauer was widely regarded as one of the game’s greatest players. He won the World Cup as captain of West Germany in 1974 and lifted the trophy again as manager in 1990. Franz Beckenbauer also played 582 times for Bayern Munich and won the German top-flight as both player and manager.

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Welsh snooker player who dominated the game in the 1970s, claiming six world titles between 1970 and 1978. Ray Reardon became famous among early adopters of colour TV as the main draw on Pot Black, the BBC’s first snooker showcase. He retired in 1991 and later worked as a consultant for Ronnie O’Sullivan, helping him win the world title in 2004.

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Leeds Rhinos and Great Britain rugby league player, Rob Burrow’s 17-year career included winning eight Super League Grand Finals, three World Club Challenges and two Challenge Cups. Two years after his retirement, Rob Burrow was diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND) and spent the remainder of his life fundraising and raising awareness of the disease while battling it himself.

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Regarded as one of Italy’s top players in the 1950s and 60s, Lea Pericoli reached the last 16 of the French Open twice and the Wimbledon championships three times. On top of her athletic achievements, Ms Pericoli’s contest outfits, adorned with feather and fur, made her a style icon. She later became a popular television presenter and journalist.

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Former England and Surrey cricketer, Graham Thorpe played 100 Tests for his country between 1993 and 2005, as well as 82 one-day internationals. A stylish left-handed batter, he scored 6,744 Test runs, including 16 centuries. At county level, Thorpe spent his entire first-class playing career at Surrey, from 1988 to 2005.

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John Peter Rhys Williams became an icon of Wales’s period of rugby glory in the 1970s, when they won three Five Nations grand slams. The full-back earned 55 caps for his country, and played for London Welsh, Bridgend and Barbarians. JPR Williams also accumulated eight Test caps touring for British and Irish Lions.

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Sports personalities who also died in 2024 include:

• Barry John – 1970s star of Welsh rugby union
• Derek Underwood – bowler for Kent and England cricket teams
• David Wilkie – Scottish swimmer who won gold at the 1976 Montreal Olympics
• Willy Mays – legendary US baseball player
• Terry Griffiths – former world snooker champion

“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.”

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.”

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.

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?

A 40-year-old man has died after being attacked by a shark on the edge of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, local police said.

Luke Walford, a youth pastor, had been spearfishing with his family when he was bitten on Saturday afternoon.

He sustained “life-threatening injuries” and despite paramedics’ efforts, he died at the scene about an hour later, authorities said.

He and his family had been in the water at Humpy Island, in the Great Barrier Reef’s Keppel Bay Islands National Park, when the attack happened. The area is a popular spot for diving and snorkelling.

Walford had been a school chaplain and pastor at the Cathedral of Praise church in Rockhampton, Queensland.

Donna Kirkland, his local MP, said she was in shock, and that Walford was a friend to her and “countless others.”

“My prayers and heartfelt condolences are with his beautiful family and indeed the many who will be devastated, as I am, at this news”, she added.

A family friend told ABC News he had watched the rescue helicopter fly over his house, unaware it was for his friend.

“I always say a little tribute for whoever it may be, but to find out it was Luke was a very sad day,” Doug Webber said.

Queensland police said a report would be prepared for the coroner.

Australia’s last fatal shark attack happened in December 2023, when a teenage boy was killed in the south.

Just this year, there have been four other shark incidents in Australia, according to a local database.

In general, Australia sees more shark attacks than any other country except the US.

Growing up, actor Kiefer Sutherland “wasn’t aware” of his father Donald’s success.

And it was only when he moved to Hollywood to pursue his own career, aged 17, that he realised what a “special and great” actor his father was.

“I phoned my dad and I said, ‘I feel so terrible,'” Kiefer says, in an interview being shown on BBC Two’s Lives Well Lived programme at 18:00 GMT on Sunday 29 December.

Donald Sutherland, who appeared in more than 200 screen roles, died in June, aged 88.

“So I’m 17 years old, I’ve moved to Los Angeles and a friend had this incredible collection of all of my father’s films on VHS [Video Home System],” Kiefer says.

Over two or three days, the teenager binge-watched his father’s work.

“When I see his work, it’s just astounding,” Kiefer says.

He told his father: “I didn’t realise how special and great you are as an actor.”

“And he was so sweet – he kind of almost cried and said, ‘Well, how could you? You were just a boy.’

“And that was a really special moment for both of us and our relationship kind of took a turn at that point.”

When the pair later worked together, on 2016 western Forsaken, “It was a great time to spend together,” Kiefer says.

Set in 1872, Forsaken focuses on embittered gunslinger John Henry Clayton’s return to his hometown and his attempts to build bridges with his estranged father.

Their on-screen characters are in fierce conflict – but the off-screen relationship between the two actors was harmonious.

“I just loved watching him do his thing,” Kiefer says.

Known for an array of major parts, including in The Dirty Dozen, M*A*S*H, Don’t Look Now, Klute and Six Degrees of Separation, Donald Sutherland was not always destined for an acting career.

From a small fishing village in eastern Canada, he was part way through an engineering degree at the University of Toronto when he quit and went to England to follow his dream of becoming an actor.

“The courage to do that is extraordinary,” Kiefer says.

An early appearance on British television came in a 1960s production of Hamlet, with a young Michael Caine.

But his big break was in The Dirty Dozen, in which, at first, he had a non-speaking part but was picked for something far bigger, apparently at random, by director Bob Aldrich.

“He didn’t even know my name,” Sutherland said.

“We’d all had our hair shaved off. He looked around the table and he said, ‘You with the big ears, you do it.'”

Kiefer describes this as “a real breakout moment for my father”.

But the fact he then “managed to be in films that were incredibly important each decade, is a testament to his capabilities as an actor – and I’m incredibly proud of him for it”, he says.

Never nominated for an Oscar, Donald Sutherland received an Academy Honorary Award in 2017 for his lifetime contribution to cinema.

“His love and his humour and his kindness were huge,” Kiefer says.

“He had, I think, superhuman skill as an actor and it’s wonderful to have it.

“I’m very lucky as a son, you know, to be able to throw on a film and, you know, get to see my dad.”

Lives Well Lived is on BBC Two at 18:00 GMT on Sunday 29 December.

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.

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.”

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.

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 Organization (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.

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.

More than 170 people have died after a plane crashed as it was landing in South Korea on Sunday morning.

The Jeju Air plane came off the runway before colliding with a wall at Muan International Airport in the south west of the country.

The plane, which was returning from Bangkok, in Thailand, was carrying 181 people – 179 of whom have died, while two crew members were rescued from the wreckage.

Authorities are investigating the cause of the crash, which fire officials have indicated may have occurred due to a bird strike and bad weather. However experts have warned the crash could have been caused by a number of factors.

The flight, 7C2216, was a Boeing 737-800 operated by Jeju Air, Korea’s most popular budget airline.

The plane arrived in Muan at about 09:00 local time (00:00 GMT).

A South Korean transport official said that the plane had been attempting to land but was forced to hold off after air traffic control gave a bird strike warning – an alert about the risk of a collision with birds.

About two minutes later, the pilot called in a Mayday and air traffic command gave permission for the plane to land from the opposite direction, the official said.

One passenger on the flight messaged a relative, saying that a bird “was stuck in the wing” and that the plane could not land, local media reported.

One video appears to show the plane touching down without using its wheels or any other landing gear. It skidded down the runway and crashed into a wall before erupting into flames.

A witness told the South Korean news agency Yonhap that they heard a “loud bang” followed by a “series of explosions”.

Videos from the scene show the plane ablaze with smoke billowing into the sky. Fire crews have since extinguished the fire.

Lee Jeong-hyun, the chief of the Muan fire department, told a televised briefing that the tail section of the plane was identifiable but “one cannot recognise the shape of the rest of the plane”.

He said that the bird strike and bad weather may have caused the crash – but that the exact cause is still being investigated. The flight and voice recorders from the plane have been recovered.

The head of Jeju Air’s management said that the crash was not due to “any maintenance issues”, the Yonhap news agency reported.

The South Korean transport department said that the head pilot on the flight had held the role since 2019 and had more than 6,800 hours of flight experience.

A bird strike is a collision between a plane in flight and a bird. They are very common – in the UK, there were more than 1,400 bird strikes reported in 2022, only about 100 of which affected the plane, according to data from the Civil Aviation Authority.

The best known bird strike occurred in 2009, when an Airbus plane ditched into New York’s Hudson River after colliding with a flock of geese. All 155 passengers and crew survived.

Professor Doug Drury, who teaches aviation at CQUniversity Australia, wrote in an article for The Conversation this summer that Boeing planes have turbofan engines, which can be severely damaged in a bird strike.

He said that pilots are trained to be especially vigilant during the early morning or at sunset, when birds are most active.

The plane was carrying 175 passengers and six crew. Two of the passengers were Thai and the rest are believed to have been South Korean, authorities have said. Many are thought to have been returning from a Christmas holiday in Thailand.

The official death toll stands at 179 – making it the deadliest plane crash in South Korean history.

All the passengers and four members of crew died.

Authorities have so far identified at least 88 bodies.

Five of the people who died were children under the age of 10. The youngest passenger was a three-year-old boy and the oldest was 78, authorities said, citing the passenger manifest.

South Korea’s National Fire Agency said two members of flight crew – a man and a woman – survived the crash. They were found in the tail side of the aircraft after the crash and taken to hospital, it said.

More than 1,500 emergency personnel have been deployed as part of recovery efforts, including 490 fire employees and 455 police officers. They have been searching the area around the runway for parts of the plane and those who were onboard.

Acting President Choi Sang-mok has declared a special disaster zone in Muan, which makes central government funding available to the local government and victims.

All flights to and from Muan International Airport have been cancelled.

Families of the victims of the crash have been travelling to the airport in the hope of finding out what happened to their relatives. Video footage from Reuters shows officials reading names of the victims out loud.

Airport authorities and the Red Cross have set up more than a dozen tents in the airport for bereaved families to grieve in private.

Sounds of crying echoed through the terminal. Some are frustrated at how long it is taking to identify the bodies.

Jeju Air has apologised to families. Its chief executive said in a news conference that the airline had no history of accidents. It is believed that Sunday’s crash has been the only fatal accident since the airline was launched in 2005.

Plane manufacturer Boeing has offered condolences to those affected.

Choi, South Korea’s acting president, said: “I express my deepest condolences to the many victims in the incident. I will do all I can for the injured to quickly recover.”

The government has declared a period of national mourning for the country for the next seven days, during which flags at government offices will be lowered.

All passengers and most of the crew on board a Jeju Air flight have died after the plane crash-landed at an airport in South Korea on Sunday.

A total of 179 of the 181 people on board the Boeing 737-800 were killed, with just two survivors, both cabin staff, pulled from the burning wreckage.

The plane landed at Muan International Airport in the country’s south, skidding off the runway and crashing into a wall in a fiery explosion.

Flight 2216 was returning from Bangkok, Thailand with six crew and 175 passengers, many of them holidaymakers.

Distraught families gathered in the airport’s arrival hall in tears, as they waited for bodies to be identified.

Some of those killed have only been identifiable by their fingerprints.

Maeng Gi-su, 78, told the BBC his nephew and his nephew’s two sons had been on the plane.

It was the family’s first trip abroad, to mark the youngest son finishing his college entrance exams.

“I can’t believe the entire family has just disappeared. My heart aches so much,” he said.

The passengers included 173 South Koreans and two Thai nationals. They were aged between 3 and 78, although most were in their 40s, 50s and 60s, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported.

Footage shared of the crash – which happened shortly after 09:00 local time (00:00 GMT) – showed the aircraft landing without wheels, overshooting the runway and crashing into the airport’s perimeter wall, before it exploded into flames.

An investigation into the cause is under way. There had been no initial reports of plane or maintenance problems at take-off.

South Korean transport officials are reporting the plane ran into difficulties approaching landing – with the pilot, who had more than 6,800 hours of flight experience – pulling out of the first attempt due to bird interference.

Soon after, the pilot issued a mayday call and made the ill-fated emergency landing attempt.

A malfunction with the landing gear may have arisen from birds getting caught in the plane’s systems, local media reported.

One passenger sent a relative a message saying a bird was stuck in the wing, the South Korean News1 agency said.

The disaster is a national tragedy for South Korea, which has been embroiled in a political crisis after President Yoon and his temporary successor were both impeached by parliament.

Acting President Choi Sang-mok, who was only appointed on Friday, visited the site of the crash on Sunday.

“I express my deepest condolences to the many victims in the incident. I will do all I can for the injured to quickly recover,” Choi said.

South Korea’s airlines have typically been seen as “industry best practice” with good safety records, analysts have said.

The Jeju Air crash is the worst for any South Korean airline since the 1997 Korean Air crash in Guam, which killed more than 200 people. Prior to Sunday, the deadliest on South Korean soil was an Air China crash flight that killed 129.

The Muan airport crash also marks the first fatal accident for Jeju Air, one of South Korea’s largest low-cost airlines which was set up in 2005.

Jeju Air bosses bowed deeply as they gave a public apology at a press conference on Sunday.

“We deeply apologise to all those affected by the incident. We will make every effort to resolve the situation,” the firm said in a statement.

Boeing Airlines, which manufactured the 737-800 jet, has said it is in touch with the airline.

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. The next step would be repeating the success with some of these embryos.

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”.

I will never forget New Year’s Eve 1999.

I was working as a producer in the BBC’s Moscow bureau. Suddenly there was breaking news: Russia’s President Boris Yeltsin had stepped down.

His decision to resign took everyone by surprise, including the British press corps in Moscow. When the news broke there was no correspondent in the office. That meant I had to step in to write and broadcast my first BBC dispatch.

“Boris Yeltsin always said he would see out his full term in office,” I wrote. “Today he told Russians he’d changed his mind.”

It was the start of my career as a reporter.

And the start of Vladimir Putin’s as Russia’s leader.

Following Yeltsin’s resignation, in accordance with the Russian constitution, Prime Minister Putin became acting president. Three months later he won the election.

On leaving the Kremlin, Yeltsin’s parting instruction to Putin was: “Take care of Russia!”

I’ve found myself recalling these words of Yeltsin more and more, the closer Russia’s war on Ukraine gets to the three-year mark.

That’s because President Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has had devastating consequences.

Primarily for Ukraine, which has seen massive destruction and casualties in its cities. Almost 20% of its territory has been occupied and 10 million of its citizens have been displaced.

But for Russia, too:

• Since Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch his so-called “special military operation” Russia has sustained heavy losses on the battlefield
• Russian towns and cities come under regular drone attack
• Ukrainian soldiers have occupied a part of Russia’s Kursk region
• International sanctions are heaping pressure on Russia’s economy
• What’s more, the country’s demographic situation is dire
• Domestic repression has picked up apace

I’ve been reporting on Putin since he came to power a quarter of a century ago.

On 31 December 1999, who would have thought that Russia’s new leader would still be in power two and a half decades later? Or that Russia today would be waging war on Ukraine and facing off with the West?

I often wonder whether the course of history would have been drastically different if Yeltsin had picked someone else to succeed him. The question, of course, is academic. History is full of ifs and buts and maybes.

One thing I can say with certainty: over twenty-five years I’ve seen different Putins.

And I’m not the only one.

“The Putin I met with, did good business with, established a Nato-Russia Council with, is very, very different from this almost megalomaniac at the present moment,” former Nato chief Lord Robertson told me in 2023.

“The man who stood beside me in May 2002, right beside me, and said Ukraine is a sovereign and independent nation state which will make its own decisions about security, is now the man who says that [Ukraine] is not a nation state.

“I think that Vladimir Putin has a very thin skin and a huge ambition for his country. The Soviet Union was recognised as the second superpower in the world. Russia can’t make any claims in that direction. And I think that ate away at his ego.”

That is one possible explanation for the change we’ve seen in Putin: his burning ambition to “Make Russia Great Again” (and to make up for what many perceive as Moscow’s defeat in the Cold War) put Russia on an inevitable collision course with its neighbours – and with the West.

The Kremlin has a different explanation.

From the speeches he gives, the comments he makes, Putin appears driven by resentment, by an all-encompassing feeling that for years Russia has been lied to and disrespected, its security concerns dismissed by the West.

But does Putin himself believe that he has fulfilled Yeltsin’s request to “take care of Russia?”

I recently had a chance to find out.

More than four hours into his lengthy end-of-year press conference, Putin invited me to ask a question.

“Boris Yeltsin told you to take care of Russia,” I reminded the president. “But what of the significant losses in your so-called ‘special military operation’, the Ukrainian troops in Kursk region, the sanctions, the high inflation. Do you think you’ve taken care of your country?”

“Yes,” President Putin replied. “And I haven’t just taken care of it. We’ve pulled back from the edge of the abyss.”

He portrayed Yeltsin’s Russia as a country that had been losing its sovereignty. He accused the West of having “patronisingly patted” Yeltsin on the shoulder while “using Russia for its own purposes”. But he, Putin, was “doing everything”, he said, “to ensure Russia was an independent sovereign state”.

Presenting himself as the defender of Russian sovereignty: is this a view he’s come up with retrospectively to try to justify the war in Ukraine? Or does Putin really believe this take on modern Russian history?

I’m still not sure. Not yet. But I sense that it is a key question.

The answer to it may well influence how the war ends – and Russia’s future direction.

Australian actor and comedian Rebel Wilson has legally married Ramona Agruma in Sydney, the star has announced on social media.

The couple had a wedding ceremony in Sardinia in September but have since married again in a service officiated by Wilson’s sister.

The actress proposed to Agruma, a fashion and jewellery designer, at Disneyland in 2023.

Among well-wishers commenting on social media were Pitch Perfect co-stars Adam Devine and Elizabeth Banks, who offered their congratulations to the couple.

Wilson, 44, said it felt “right” to have the wedding in her hometown. “It meant my 94-year-old grandmother Gar could come which was very special to us to have her included,” she wrote on Instagram.

Agruma also shared photos from the day adding: “Married officially in Australia to my Australian princess.”

The couple are pictured beaming with the famous Sydney Harbour Bridge serving as the backdrop.

The Bridesmaids actress announced the birth of her first child via surrogate in November 2022. Sharing a picture of daughter Royce Lilly, she described her as a “beautiful miracle”.

The star made headlines earlier this year when the US version of her memoir, Rebel Rising, about Wilson’s sexuality, weight and fertility, was released, and made allegations against Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen.

The British edition of the book, published on 25 April, blacked out text believed to be relating to him.

A spokesman for Baron Cohen at the time said the redactions represented a “clear victory”, and reiterated his position that Wilson’s claims were “demonstrably false”.

In her memoir, Wilson also talked about being a “late bloomer” and losing her virginity at 35.

Thousands of Georgians protested in the capital Tbilisi as a new president allied with the ruling Georgian Dream party was inaugurated.

Mikheil Kavelashvili, a former pro-footballer, has been sworn in during a critical political period for the country after the government suspended its application to join the European Union.

Georgian Dream won parliamentary elections in October, but the victory was mired in allegations of fraud which have since sparked several street protests.

Outgoing president Salome Zourabichvili refused to step down on Sunday, saying she was the “only legitimate president”.

Addressing crowds gathered outside, Zourabichvili said she would leave the presidential palace but branded her successor illegitimate.

“This building was a symbol only as long as a legitimate president was sitting here,” she said.

A few minutes’ walk away, Kavelashvili was sworn in at a closed-doors ceremony in parliament, where he was accompanied by his family. Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze also attended the inauguration.

Speaking after taking the oath, Kavelashvili went on to praise Georgian “traditions, values, national identity, the sanctity of the family, and faith”.

“Our history clearly shows that, after countless struggles to defend our homeland and traditions, peace has always been one of the main goals and values for the Georgian people,” he said.

Georgia’s four main opposition groups have rejected Kavelashvili and boycotted parliament.

Kavelashvili is a former MP with the Georgian Dream party and was the only candidate for the job. Zourabichvili has previously denounced his election as a travesty.

• Zourabichvili: Georgia’s pro-West president refusing to step down

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.

On Saturday, protesters waving Georgian and EU flags gathered again ahead of the inauguration, forming a human chain that spanned kilometres.

“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.

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.

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.

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.”

The producer of the world’s bestselling LP, an Oscar-winning British actress who conquered screen and stage, a fearless Russian opposition politician and one of Ireland’s greatest novelists – here are some of the well-known faces no longer with us.

Among those we remember are acting legend Dame Maggie Smith, former teen star Shannen Doherty, and “the most beautiful man in cinema”, Alain Delon.

As Ken “Hutch” Hutchinson, one half of the cop duo Starsky & Hutch, David Soul became one of the biggest TV stars of the 1970s. The US actor’s fame led to a parallel music career and two UK number one hits, Don’t Give Up On Us Baby and Silver Lady. Later in life, he moved to the UK where he acted in theatre and TV.

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Shannen Doherty’s first big film role was in the 1988 black comedy Heathers. This was followed by four seasons of the TV show Beverly Hills 90210. Her character, Brenda, was a Midwest girl transplanted with her family to the wealthy Los Angeles suburb. Doherty also appeared in the TV series Charmed and the film Mallrats.

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Dame Maggie Smith’s acting career spanned stage, cinema and television for more than 70 years. Her best-known film roles include The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (for which she won a best actress Oscar) and A Room with a View. In her later years, she was the imperious Dowager Countess of Grantham in Downton Abbey, and Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter films.

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US actor who starred in dozens of films, but whose most famous role was probably the one in which he did not actually appear – the voice of Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy. James Earl Jones also enjoyed a distinguished stage career, winning two Tony awards.

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The youngest member of the Home Guard platoon in Dad’s Army, one of the BBC’s best-loved sitcoms. Ian Lavender played Pike, the guileless young bank clerk and subject of Captain Mainwaring (Arthur Lowe)’s put-down: “You stupid boy!” Later in life, the Birmingham-born actor appeared in EastEnders.

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Shelley Duvall’s most famous film role was probably Wendy, the terror-stricken wife of Jack Nicholson in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. She starred in several other critically acclaimed films including Annie Hall, Nashville and Thieves Like Us, as well as appearing as Olive Oyl in the 1980s musical, Popeye.

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Canadian actor who started his long career in British TV and theatre, before achieving film stardom in the war films Kelly’s Heroes and The Dirty Dozen. Among his many notable films were M*A*S*H, Don’t Look Now, Casanova, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Ordinary People. More recently, he starred in The Hunger Games trilogy as the evil President Snow.

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Reportedly once described as the most beautiful man in cinema, Parisian Alain Delon was one of Europe’s leading film stars in the 1960s and 70s, appearing in Plein Soleil, Le Samourai and The Leopard. Delon’s last major public appearance was to receive an honorary Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2019.

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French actress whose performance in the 1966 film A Man and a Woman earned her a Golden Globe and a Bafta award for best actress, as well as an Oscar nomination – the first time an actor or actress had been nominated for a French language performance.

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Manchester-born, Bernard Hill became a Liverpool icon for the ages as Yosser “Gizza Job” Hughes in Alan Bleasdale’s 1982 TV series, Boys from the Blackstuff. Hill later had major roles in the hit films Titanic and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and most recently appeared in BBC series including Wolf Hall and The Responder.

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US actress who was nominated for an Oscar for 1974’s A Woman Under the Influence and 1980’s Gloria. Both films were collaborations with her late husband, the director John Cassavetes. Gena Rowlands also won four Emmys and two Golden Globes before retiring in 2015.

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Timothy West was known for roles on stage and screen including the TV sitcom Brass, dramas such as Bleak House and Gentleman Jack, and soaps Coronation Street and EastEnders. He was married to the actress Prunella Scales. In recent years, the couple filmed 10 series of Channel 4’s Great Canal Journeys.

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Scottish comedian who used details from her extremely tough upbringing for material. She endured poverty, abuse and the murder of a parent before taking to comedy in her 30s. Janey Godley achieved international fame for her stand-up and for her many internet videos. Fittingly, her memoir was titled Nothing Left Unsaid.

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Actors and performers who also died in 2024 include:

• Glynis John – actress who played Mrs Banks in Mary Poppins
• John Savident – Coronation Street star
• Gudrun Ure – Supergran, in the 1980s children’s TV show of the same name
• Cheng Pei-pei – star of Oscar-winning film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
• Carl Weathers – Apollo Creed from Rocky movies

Including “radio genius” Steve Wright, sex therapist Dr Ruth Westheimer, and one half of the Hairy Bikers, Dave Myers.

Renowned sex therapist and talk show host, “Dr Ruth” was famous for speaking frankly about sex in her unmistakable German accent. A Holocaust survivor born in Frankfurt, Ruth Westheimer came to fame as the host of a local radio programme in the US, Sexually Speaking, which was nationally syndicated in 1984. She then went on to write Dr Ruth’s Guide To Good Sex, the first of more than 40 books.

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Described as a “radio genius” by one former colleague, Steve Wright was a DJ on BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2 for more than four decades. The long-time presenter of the afternoon show on first Radio 1 and then its sister station, he brought his own inimitable style to bear on his programmes. Wright was appointed an MBE for services to radio only weeks before his death.

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One half of the TV cooking duo the Hairy Bikers, Myers travelled around the UK and the world with his friend Si King, sampling and cooking food as they went. The Hairy Bikers published more than 30 recipe books, selling more than six million copies, and also documented their weight loss in Hairy Dieters: How To Love Food And Lose Weight.

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The first female presenter on BBC Radio 1 and the station’s longest-serving DJ, Annie Nightingale joined the station in 1970 and broadcast her last show in December 2023. She was passionate about a wide range of music, championing genres ranging from prog rock and punk to acid house and grime. She was also a long-time presenter of BBC Two’s The Old Grey Whistle Test.

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Doctor, broadcaster and author famous for popularising the idea of intermittent fasting, Michael Mosley’s books on the 5:2 and Fast 800 diets were international bestsellers. His BBC Radio 4 series Just One Thing, which focused on simple, accessible health tips, attracted 25 million listeners around the world.

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Media figures who also died in 2024 include:

• Johnnie Irwin – presenter of the Channel 4 show, Escape To The Country
• Morgan Spurlock – documentary-maker who made Super Size Me about the fast-food industry
• Chris Serle – presenter of BBC TV’s long-running show, That’s Life
• Robin Windsor – Strictly Come Dancing professional

Our look back includes record producer Quincy Jones, One Direction star Liam Payne and French singer-songwriter Françoise Hardy.

Liam Payne was one of five solo contestants in the 2010 series of The X Factor, who were told by the judges to unite and compete as a boy band – the result was One Direction. Although they only came third in the talent show, they went on to become one of the biggest UK bands of the 21st Century, with four UK number one albums and chart-topping singles around the world. Payne also had some solo success before his tragic early death at the age of 31.

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French singer-songwriter, known for her melancholy ballads, Françoise Hardy’s most famous songs included All the Girls and Boys (Tous les garçons et les filles), It Hurts to Say Goodbye (Comment te dire adieu) and My Friend the Rose (Mon amie la rose).

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One of the greatest music producers of the 20th Century, Quincy Jones began his career working with Frank Sinatra. In the 1980s he produced Michael Jackson’s two most successful LPs – Thriller and Bad – as well as co-writing several of the songs. Quincy Jones also masterminded the USA for Africa single, We Are The World.

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An actor and musician, Kris Kristofferson had success as a performer but more impact as a songwriter, penning hits including Help Me Through The Night and Me And Bobby McGee. The Texan also starred in the films Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid, Heaven’s Gate and – drawing on his musical background – the 1977 remake of A Star Is Born, alongside Barbra Streisand.

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Musicians who also died in 2024 include:

• Steve Harley – Cockney Rebel singer, who reached number one in 1975 with Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)
• Melanie – 1960s singer made famous by her appearance at the 1969 Woodstock festival
• Herbie Flowers – bass player on Lou Reed’s Walk On The Wild Side, and writer of Clive Dunn’s number one novelty hit, Grandad
• Sergio Mendes – Brazilian bossa nova legend remembered internationally for his hit, Mas Que Nada
• Mary Weiss – lead singer of 1960s vocal group The Shangri-Las, who sang The Leader of the Pack

This year saw the deaths of Russia’s leading opposition politician, Alexei Navalny, the UK’s former deputy prime minister, John Prescott, and ex-first minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond.

Russia’s most prominent opposition politician, Alexei Navalny campaigned relentlessly against President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of running a corrupt and “feudal” state. After surviving repeated attempts to poison him, Alexei Navalny died in mysterious circumstances in a Russian prison.

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John Prescott was deputy prime minister in the Blair government and one of the most recognisable politicians of the New Labour era. Renowned as a political scrapper, he gained notoriety in 2001 for punching a protester who had thrown an egg at him. After serving as East Hull’s MP for 40 years, he was made Lord Prescott.

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A leading figure in Scotland’s nationalist movement, Alex Salmond was Scottish first minister from 2007-14, and led the unsuccessful pro-independence referendum campaign in 2014. Later in life he attracted controversy after quitting the Scottish National Party and setting up a rival nationalist party, Alba.

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One of Australia’s most revered Aboriginal leaders, Lowitja O’Donoghue was instrumental in negotiating Australia’s historic Native Title legislation which granted land rights to First Nations people. She received some of the nation’s top honours for her pioneering work and in 1984 was named Australian of the Year.

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Former Labour minister and crossbench peer, Lord Field spent 40 years as MP for Birkenhead and was a leading voice on welfare reform for much of his career. He was a minister for a period in the Blair government but was regarded as a maverick within his own party, in no small part because of his close personal friendship with Margaret Thatcher.

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Political figures who also died in 2024 include:

• Alberto Fujimori – former president of Peru, who was convicted of human rights abuses and corruption
• Michael Ancram – served as deputy leader of the Conservative Party for five years
• Nguyen Phu Trong – long-serving Vietnamese leader
• John Bruton – Irish politician who served as taoiseach from 1994 to 1997
• Derek Draper – Former Labour spin doctor whose struggle with Covid was the subject of an ITV documentary

Writers who died this year include the novelists Edna O’Brien and Paul Auster, and the short-story writer Alice Munro.

US author of The New York Trilogy – a collection of detective stories with a philosophical twist, centred on a shady quartet of private investigators named Blue, Brown, Black and White. His other novels included Timbuktu and The Brooklyn Follies. Paul Auster was praised for his sharp dialogue, and his books have been translated into more than 40 languages.

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Irish novelist whose first book, The Country Girls, remains her most famous. Published in 1960, it tells the story of two convent girls, and its frank portrayal (for its time) of their sex lives resulted in the book being banned in Ireland. Edna O’Brien wrote more than 20 works of fiction and was described by fellow novelist Philip Roth as “the most gifted woman now writing in English”.

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Yorkshire-born writer best known for her first novel, A Woman Of Substance. The 1979 saga of a young woman’s journey from rags to riches stayed on the New York Times’ bestseller list for 43 weeks. It spawned seven sequels and a successful TV adaptation.

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Author whose fiction focused on rural life in her home country of Canada. In 2013, Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize for Literature – she was the first Canadian to receive the accolade, and the only laureate to be honoured primarily for short-story writing.

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Acclaimed poet at the forefront of the Black Arts Movement in the US, known across the world for her defiant yet endearing writing about race, gender, sex and love. Nikki Giovanni authored more than 30 books, ranging from poetry to children’s books. Her last work, titled The Last Book, is set to be published in 2025.

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Writers who also died in 2024 include:

• Lynne Reid Banks – British author of The L-Shaped Room
• Maryse Condé – Guadeloupe-born author of epic novels tackling the legacy of colonialism in Africa and the Caribbean
• John Burnside – award-winning Scottish poet

Our list includes the Nobel prize-winning British physicist Peter Higgs, charity founder Camila Batmanghelidjh and the former head of the British army, Sir Mike Jackson.

Flamboyant and sometimes controversial founder of Kids Company, a charity set up to provide support to deprived and vulnerable inner-city children and young people. Ms Batmanghelidjh attracted many influential backers, but the charity closed in 2015 because of financial difficulties, and she was forced to step down.

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Nobel prize-winning British physicist, who gave his name to the “Higgs boson”, a particle that helps explain why the basic building blocks of the Universe – atoms – have mass. The particle’s existence was confirmed in 2012 by scientists using the Large Hadron Collider at Cern in Switzerland. Higgs’ reaction? “It’s very nice to be right sometimes.”

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The founder of breast cancer awareness charity CoppaFeel!, Kris Hallenga was herself diagnosed with the disease 15 years ago when she was 23. She was also a columnist at The Sun and a bestselling author. In 2014, a documentary about her life and work – Kris: Dying to Live – was aired on BBC Three.

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Behavioural psychologist who wrote the best-selling book Thinking, Fast and Slow. This took issue with one of the central ideas underlying economics – that people are rational beings who always act out of self-interest. Daniel Kahnemann suggested that, on the contrary, they often act irrationally, based on instinct. In 2002, he won the Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics.

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The former head of the British Army, General Sir Mike Jackson was in charge during the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. In Kosovo in 1999, he famously refused an order from his US commander to intercept Russian forces when they entered the country without Nato’s agreement, saying: “I’m not going to start the Third World War for you.”

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Public figures who also died in 2024 include:

• Susan Wojcicki – former YouTube boss and one of Google’s first employees
• Iris Apfel – US designer and fashion icon
• Kiingi Tuheitia Pōtatau Te Wherowhero VII – the Maori king of New Zealand
• Akira Endo – scientist whose work led to the creation of statins
• Eddie Stobart – founder of the self-named UK haulage company

German footballing legend Franz Beckenbauer, snooker’s first TV star Ray Reardon, and marathon world champion Kevin Kiptum all died in 2024.

The UK’s most famous shot putter, Geoff Capes twice won gold at both the Commonwealth Games and the European Indoor Championships. The Lincolnshire-born athlete also twice held the title of World’s Strongest Man. He was a three-time Olympian and came closest to winning a medal with a fifth-place finish at the 1980 Games in Moscow.

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The life of men’s marathon world record holder Kelvin Kiptum was tragically cut short by a road accident in his home country, Kenya. In October 2023, the 24-year-old long-distance runner bettered the record of his compatriot Eliud Kipchoge, completing the Chicago Marathon in two hours and 35 seconds.

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The first non-British manager of the England football team, Sven-Goran Eriksson led them to quarter-finals at three major tournaments between 2001 and 2006. The Swede also managed 12 clubs including Manchester City, Leicester, Roma and Lazio, winning 18 trophies.

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Ugandan long-distance runner Rebecca Cheptegei made her marathon debut in 2021 and recorded a personal best of two hours 22 minutes and 47 seconds the following year, making her the second-fastest Ugandan woman of all time. At the Paris Olympics she came 44th. Rebecca Cheptegei was murdered in September this year at the age of 33.

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Nicknamed “Der Kaiser”, German footballer Franz Beckenbauer was widely regarded as one of the game’s greatest players. He won the World Cup as captain of West Germany in 1974 and lifted the trophy again as manager in 1990. Franz Beckenbauer also played 582 times for Bayern Munich and won the German top-flight as both player and manager.

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Welsh snooker player who dominated the game in the 1970s, claiming six world titles between 1970 and 1978. Ray Reardon became famous among early adopters of colour TV as the main draw on Pot Black, the BBC’s first snooker showcase. He retired in 1991 and later worked as a consultant for Ronnie O’Sullivan, helping him win the world title in 2004.

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Leeds Rhinos and Great Britain rugby league player, Rob Burrow’s 17-year career included winning eight Super League Grand Finals, three World Club Challenges and two Challenge Cups. Two years after his retirement, Rob Burrow was diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND) and spent the remainder of his life fundraising and raising awareness of the disease while battling it himself.

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Regarded as one of Italy’s top players in the 1950s and 60s, Lea Pericoli reached the last 16 of the French Open twice and the Wimbledon championships three times. On top of her athletic achievements, Ms Pericoli’s contest outfits, adorned with feather and fur, made her a style icon. She later became a popular television presenter and journalist.

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Former England and Surrey cricketer, Graham Thorpe played 100 Tests for his country between 1993 and 2005, as well as 82 one-day internationals. A stylish left-handed batter, he scored 6,744 Test runs, including 16 centuries. At county level, Thorpe spent his entire first-class playing career at Surrey, from 1988 to 2005.

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John Peter Rhys Williams became an icon of Wales’s period of rugby glory in the 1970s, when they won three Five Nations grand slams. The full-back earned 55 caps for his country, and played for London Welsh, Bridgend and Barbarians. JPR Williams also accumulated eight Test caps touring for British and Irish Lions.

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Sports personalities who also died in 2024 include:

• Barry John – 1970s star of Welsh rugby union
• Derek Underwood – bowler for Kent and England cricket teams
• David Wilkie – Scottish swimmer who won gold at the 1976 Montreal Olympics
• Willy Mays – legendary US baseball player
• Terry Griffiths – former world snooker champion

Growing up, actor Kiefer Sutherland “wasn’t aware” of his father Donald’s success.

And it was only when he moved to Hollywood to pursue his own career, aged 17, that he realised what a “special and great” actor his father was.

“I phoned my dad and I said, ‘I feel so terrible,'” Kiefer says, in an interview being shown on BBC Two’s Lives Well Lived programme at 18:00 GMT on Sunday 29 December.

Donald Sutherland, who appeared in more than 200 screen roles, died in June, aged 88.

“So I’m 17 years old, I’ve moved to Los Angeles and a friend had this incredible collection of all of my father’s films on VHS [Video Home System],” Kiefer says.

Over two or three days, the teenager binge-watched his father’s work.

“When I see his work, it’s just astounding,” Kiefer says.

He told his father: “I didn’t realise how special and great you are as an actor.”

“And he was so sweet – he kind of almost cried and said, ‘Well, how could you? You were just a boy.’

“And that was a really special moment for both of us and our relationship kind of took a turn at that point.”

When the pair later worked together, on 2016 western Forsaken, “It was a great time to spend together,” Kiefer says.

Set in 1872, Forsaken focuses on embittered gunslinger John Henry Clayton’s return to his hometown and his attempts to build bridges with his estranged father.

Their on-screen characters are in fierce conflict – but the off-screen relationship between the two actors was harmonious.

“I just loved watching him do his thing,” Kiefer says.

Known for an array of major parts, including in The Dirty Dozen, M*A*S*H, Don’t Look Now, Klute and Six Degrees of Separation, Donald Sutherland was not always destined for an acting career.

From a small fishing village in eastern Canada, he was part way through an engineering degree at the University of Toronto when he quit and went to England to follow his dream of becoming an actor.

“The courage to do that is extraordinary,” Kiefer says.

An early appearance on British television came in a 1960s production of Hamlet, with a young Michael Caine.

But his big break was in The Dirty Dozen, in which, at first, he had a non-speaking part but was picked for something far bigger, apparently at random, by director Bob Aldrich.

“He didn’t even know my name,” Sutherland said.

“We’d all had our hair shaved off. He looked around the table and he said, ‘You with the big ears, you do it.'”

Kiefer describes this as “a real breakout moment for my father”.

But the fact he then “managed to be in films that were incredibly important each decade, is a testament to his capabilities as an actor – and I’m incredibly proud of him for it”, he says.

Never nominated for an Oscar, Donald Sutherland received an Academy Honorary Award in 2017 for his lifetime contribution to cinema.

“His love and his humour and his kindness were huge,” Kiefer says.

“He had, I think, superhuman skill as an actor and it’s wonderful to have it.

“I’m very lucky as a son, you know, to be able to throw on a film and, you know, get to see my dad.”

Lives Well Lived is on BBC Two at 18:00 GMT on Sunday 29 December.

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.