Just hours before the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve, Jack Bech got on a phone call with his older brother Martin – an avid outdoorsman and former football star mostly known to friends and teammates as “Tiger”.

Jack, 22, was in Dallas visiting family members, while Tiger, a 28-year-old former Princeton alumnus who lived in New York, was in New Orleans, getting ready to celebrate the New Year.

“We just thought it was going to be another conversation,” he told the BBC. “I was showing him what we were eating, and he was showing us what he was eating.”

The two brothers would never speak again.

“I hung up the phone, and that was the last time I ever spoke with him,” Jack recalled.

Tiger was among the 14 people killed when an attacker ploughed through a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

• The rev of an engine and then screams – how revelry turned to mayhem in New Orleans
• Fans flock to Sugar Bowl in New Orleans after deadly New Year’s attack

The attacker, 42-year-old army veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar, was killed in a gunfight with police after he drove a pick-up truck into the crowds, according to authorities. Though he posted videos online proclaiming allegiance to the Islamic State group before the attack, FBI officials said they believe he was acting alone.

While the identities of all the victims have not been made public yet, a picture is slowly emerging of a group of mostly young people, many of whom – like Tiger – were Louisiana locals.

Jack – who remembers his brother as his best friend, role model and inspiration – says that the close-knit Bech family will never be the same.

Most of the family is in the town of Lafayette, about 136 miles (218km) away from New Orleans.

“This is something we’re going to have to deal with. Every time we wake up, and every time we go to sleep, it’s going to be something,” he added. “Every holiday, there’s going to be an empty seat at the table.”

But Tiger said that his brother “wouldn’t want us to grieve and mourn”. Instead, he has encouraged his family to remember him as “a fighter”.

“He’d want us to keep attacking life…he’d want us to go and be there for each other,” he said.

“I told my family that instead of seeing him a couple of times a year, he’ll be with us every moment,” Jack added. “Whenever we’re waking up and we’re going to sleep and we’re walking, when we’re at work, doing whatever, he’ll be with us.”

Among the other victims of the attack in the early morning hours of 1 January was Matthew Tenedorio, an audio-visual technician at New Orleans’ Caesars’ Superdome.

Tenedorio, who just turned 25 in October, had spent the earlier part of his evening at his brother’s home in the town of Slidell, about 35 minutes away from New Orleans.

With him were his father and mother – who just recently recovered from cancer.

His cousin, Christina Bounds, told the BBC that his family “begged” him not to go into New Orleans, fearful of the large crowd and potential dangers.

Despite their pleas, he went, along with two friends. When the news broke, his mother eventually got a hold of one of them.

“They said they were walking down Bourbon, and saw a body fall,” she said, noting that they now believe it was a body thrown into the air by the attacker’s truck.

Amid screams and gunshots, Tenedorio was separated from his friends.

His family says he was shot, and believe he was killed during the exchange of gunfire between the attacker and police officers on Bourbon Street.

The BBC is unable to independently verify this claim.

According to Ms Bounds, the family’s tragedy has been made more painful by the slow, nearly non-existent trickle of communications they’ve had with local authorities.

“We couldn’t get any information when my aunt [Tenedorio’s mother, Cathy] showed up at the hospital,” she said. “There has been no information from doctors, hospitals, or cops. Nobody.”

“They have zero information, and that’s the part that’s pissing everybody off. We don’t even know what happened,” Bounds added. “Was he carried out by the EMS? Was he in an ambulance? Did he die instantly?”

These answers, she added, would “help people accept” what happened.

“But now it’s like total shock,” she added. “It’s not registering.”

The family has started a GoFundMe page to gather funds for Tenedorio’s funeral expenses – which Ms Bounds said have been made difficult by his mother’s significant medical bills during her cancer diagnosis.

Another cousin of Tenedorio’s, Zach Colgan, remembers him as a “goofball” who was quick to make a joke, cared deeply about animals and was an avid storyteller.

“He cared. He was definitely a people person. A happy-go-lucky guy,” Mr Colgan told the BBC. “It’s sad that a terrorist attack took him…no family should ever have to bury their son, especially for something so senseless.”

Mr Colgan, who has experience working with law enforcement in Louisiana, says he believes officers have done the best they can in an extremely hectic casualty situation.

“I know it’s chaotic. But part of closure is getting answers. I know my aunt and uncle weren’t able to get much besides ‘yes – Matthew was killed’,” he said.

“It’d be nice to know a little bit more,” Mr Colgan added. “”If it was my kid, I’d want to know.”

Even as his family continues to search for answers, Mr Colgan says he hopes that the government and public’s focus continues to be on the victims, rather than on law enforcement’s response or what else could have been done to prevent the attack.

“I want every single one of them to be remembered,” he said. “They didn’t deserve this. No one deserves this.”

Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico has threatened to cut financial support for more than 130,000 Ukrainian refugees as a dispute with Ukraine over Russian gas supplies escalates.

On 1 January, Kyiv shut off a pipeline that for decades was used to supply Central Europe with Russian natural gas.

Slovakia had been the main entry point and the country now stands to lose millions of euros in transit fees.

The UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) estimated last month that there were 130,530 Ukrainian refugees in Slovakia out of 6,813,900 globally.

Fico – who in December made a surprise visit to Moscow for talks with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin – described Kyiv’s move as “sabotage”.

The prime minister of the EU state said he would propose halting electricity exports to Ukraine and also “sharply reducing” financial support for Ukrainians who have found shelter in Slovakia.

He said there was no risk of Slovakia itself suffering from gas shortages, as it had already made alternative arrangements.

But Fico added that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision to turn off the taps would deprive Slovakia of 500m euros (£415m; $518m) in transit fees from other countries.

He said his party was ready to debate “halting supplies of electricity” and the “significant lowering of support for Ukrainian citizens in Slovakia”.

“The only alternative for a sovereign Slovakia is renewal of transit or demanding compensation mechanisms that will replace the loss in public finances,” he added.

Last month Zelensky accused Fico of helping Putin to “fund the war and weaken Ukraine”.

“Fico is dragging Slovakia into Russia’s attempts to cause more suffering for Ukrainians,” the Ukrainian president had said.

Poland has offered to support Kyiv in case Slovakia cuts off its electricity exports – supplies that are crucial to Ukraine, whose power plants come under regular attack from Russia.

Poland’s government called Ukraine’s shutdown of Russian gas supplies “another victory” against Moscow while the European Commission said the EU had prepared for the change and most states could cope.

Moldova, which is not in the EU, is already suffering shortages.

Russia can still send gas to Hungary, Turkey and Serbia through the TurkStream pipeline across the Black Sea.

It’s dawn on Darwin Harbour and government ranger Kelly Ewin – whose job is to catch and remove crocodiles – is balancing precariously on a floating trap.

Heavy rain clouds from the storm that has recently passed are overhead. The engine of the boat has been cut so now it’s mostly silent – that is, apart from the intermittent splashing coming from inside the trap.

“You get pretty much zero chances with these guys,” says Ewin as he attempts to loop a noose around the jaw of the agitated reptile.

We’re in Australia’s Northern Territory (NT), home to an estimated 100,000 wild saltwater crocodiles, more than anywhere in the world.

The capital, Darwin, is a small coastal city surrounded by beaches and wetlands.

And, as you quickly learn here in the NT, where there is water, there usually are crocs.

Saltwater crocs – or salties, as they are known to locals – were nearly hunted to extinction 50 years ago.

After World War Two, the uncontrolled trade in their skins soared and numbers fell to around 3,000.

But when hunting was banned in 1971, the population started rising again – and fast.

They still are a protected species, but are no longer threatened.

The recovery of the saltwater crocodile has been so dramatic that Australia now faces a different dilemma: managing their numbers to keep people safe and the public onside.

“The worst thing that can happen is when people turn [against crocodiles],” explains croc expert Prof Grahame Webb.

“And then a politician will invariably come along with some knee-jerk reaction [that] they’re going to ‘solve’ the crocodile problem.”

The NT’s hot temperatures and abundant coastal surroundings create the perfect habitat for cold-blooded crocs, who need warmth to keep their body temperature constant.

There also are big saltie populations in Northern Queensland and Western Australia as well as in parts of South East Asia.

While most species of crocodile are harmless, the saltie is territorial and aggressive.

Fatal incidents are rare in Australia, but they do happen.

Last year, a 12-year-old was taken – the first death from a crocodile in the NT since 2018.

This is busiest time of year for Ewin and his colleagues.

Breeding season has just started, which means salties are on the move.

His team are on the water several times a week, checking the 24 crocodile traps surrounding the city of Darwin.

The area is popular for fishing, as well as for some brave swimmers.

The crocodiles that are removed from the harbour are most often killed, because if they are released elsewhere, they’re likely to return to the harbour.

“It’s our job to try and keep people as safe as we can,” says Ewin, who’s been doing his “dream job” for two years. Before that, he was a policeman.

“Obviously, we’re not going to capture every crocodile, but the more we take out of the harbour, the less risk there’s going to be an encounter with crocodiles and people.”

Another tool helping to keep the public safe is education.

The NT government goes into schools with its programme “Be Crocwise” – which teaches people how to behave responsibly around croc habitats.

It’s been such a success that Florida and the Philippines are now looking to borrow it, in order to better understand how the world’s most dangerous predators can live alongside humans with minimal interactions.

“We’re living in crocodile country, so it’s about how we [keep ourselves] safe around the waterways – how should we be responding?” says Natasha Hoffman, a ranger who runs the programme in the NT.

“If you’re on the boats when you’re fishing, you need to be aware that they’re there. They’re ambush hunters, they sit, watch and wait. If the opportunity is there for them to grab some food, that’s what they’re going to do.”

In the NT, mass culling is currently not on the table given the protected status of the species.

Last year though, the government approved a new 10-year crocodile management plan to help control the numbers, which increased the quota of crocs that can be killed annually from 300 to 1,200.

This is on top of the work Ewin’s team is doing to remove any crocodiles that pose a direct threat to humans.

Every time there’s a death, it reignites the debate about crocodiles living in close proximity to people.

In the days after the 12-year-old girl was taken last year, the Territory’s then leader Eva Lawler made it clear she wouldn’t allow the reptiles to outnumber the human population of the NT.

Currently that stands at 250,000, well above the number of wild crocs.

It’s a conversation that goes beyond the NT.

Queensland is home to about a quarter of the number of crocs that the Top End of NT has, but there are far more tourists, and more deaths, which means talk of culls sometimes feature in election debates.

The apex predators may court controversy, but they’re also a big draw card for the NT – for tourists but also for fashion brands keen to buy their leather.

Visitors can head to the Adelaide River to watch “croc jumping” – which involves salties being fed bits of meat on the end of a stick if they can leap out of the water for their audience.

“I’m supposed to tell you to put your [life-jackets] on,” jokes the head skipper at Spectacular Jumping Croc Cruises, Alex ‘Wookie’ Williams, as he explains the house rules of the boat.

“The bit I don’t have to tell you… [is that] life jackets are pretty useless out here.”

For Williams, who’s been obsessed with crocs since childhood, there’s plenty of opportunity to work alongside them.

“It’s boomed over the last 10 years or so,” he says of the number of tourists coming to the region.

Farming, which was brought in when hunting was banned, has also become an economic driver.

It’s estimated there are now about 150,000 crocodiles in captivity in the NT.

Fashion labels such as Louis Vuitton and Hermès – which sells a Birkin 35 croc handbag for as much as A$800,000 ($500,000; £398,000) – have all invested in the industry.

“The commercial incentives were effectively put in place to help people tolerate crocodiles, because we need a social licence to be able to use wildlife,” says Mick Burns, one of the NT’s most prominent farmers who works with luxury brands.

His office is in downtown Darwin. Spread across the floor is a massive croc skin. Pinned to the wall of the conference room, there is another skin that spans at least four metres.

Burns is also involved with a ranch in remote Arnhem Land, about 500km (310 miles) east of Darwin. There, he works with Aboriginal rangers to harvest and hatch croc eggs to sell their skins to the luxury goods industry.

One of the area’s Traditional Owners, Otto Bulmaniya Campion, who works alongside Burns, says more partnerships like theirs are crucial for ensuring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities share in the financial benefits of the industry.

For tens of thousands of years, crocs have played a significant role in Indigenous cultures, shaping their sacred stories, lives and livelihoods.

“My father, all the elders, used to go and harpoon crocodiles, get a skin, and go and trade it for tea, flour, and sugar. [However] there was no money at that time,” the Balngarra man says.

“Now, we want to see our own people handling reptiles.”

But not everyone is on board with farming as a practice – even if those involved say it helps with conservation.

The concern among animal activists lies in the way the crocs are held in captivity.

Despite being social animals, they are usually confined to individual pens to ensure their skins are flawless – as a scrap between two territorial crocs would almost certainly damage a valuable commodity.

Everyone in Darwin has a story about these formidable creatures, regardless of whether they want to see them hunted in greater numbers or more rigorously preserved.

But the threat they continue to pose is not imagined.

“If you go [swimming in] the Adelaide river next to Darwin, there’s a 100% chance you’ll be killed,” says Prof Webb matter-of-factly.

“The only question is whether it’s going to take five minutes or 10 minutes. I don’t think you’ll ever get to 15 – you’ll be torn apart,” he adds, pushing up his trouser leg to reveal a huge scar on his calf – evidence of a close encounter with one angry female nearly forty years ago as he was collecting eggs.

He is unapologetic about what he calls the pragmatism of authorities to manage numbers and make money out of crocs along the way – a way of life that, in the near future at least, is here to stay.

“We’ve done what very few people can do, which is take a very serious predator…and then manage them in such a way that the public is prepared to [tolerate] them.

“You try and get people in Sydney or London or New York to put up with a serious predator – they aren’t going to do it.”

Shoppers in China are getting rare discounts on iPhones as Apple faces growing competition from local brands.

The four-day promotion, which starts this Saturday (4 January), includes discounts of as much as 500 yuan ($68.50, £55.30) on some of the US technology giant’s newest handsets.

Chinese phone maker Huawei has also cut prices of its high-end mobile devices by as much as 20%.

The discounts come as consumers in China remain hesitant about spending because of the country’s economic challenges.

The offer covers Apple’s top models, including the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max, as well as older handsets and some other devices.

The firm held a similar promotion in China last year ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday. This year, the festival starts at the end of January.

“Apple’s strategy has changed to adapt to the change in Chinese consumers’ shopping behaviour,” said Will Wong, a senior research manager for market intelligence firm International Data Corporation (IDC).

“The value-seeking trend has made price discounts more attractive to consumers. Apple may fall behind other competitors if it doesn’t adopt such a pricing strategy.”

The discounts being offered by Apple and Huawei reflect a wider trend in China.

From online retail giants to the country’s car makers, deals are being offered in a bid to attract customers who have been reluctant to spend as the world’s second largest economy slows.

Against this backdrop, Apple’s share of the Chinese market has come under increasing pressure from local rivals, such as Vivo and Xiaomi.

The US firm re-entered China’s top five smartphone makers in the third quarter of 2024 after briefly dropping off the list.

According to IDC’s latest research, Vivo was China’s best-selling smartphone maker in the period as its sales jumped by more than 20%.

During the same period, Apple saw sales dip by 0.3%. Huawei’s jumped by more than 40%.

“We’ve seen market competition increase with almost everyone launching a flagship last quarter,” said Ivan Lam, a senior analyst at Counterpoint Research.

Huawei has seen demand for its products surge after its return to the premium smartphone market in August last year.

The Shenzhen-based firm has since launched several new devices powered by advanced technology despite the company facing US restrictions.

On a chilly December morning, a group of women wrapped in colourful saris, warm shawls and woollen caps huddled outside a three-storey building in a busy neighbourhood in Delhi.

Within the walls of the building ran a unit of one of India’s oldest social enterprises, owned and run by women.

The co-operative – now called Shri Mahila Griha Udyog Lijjat Papad – was started in 1959 in Mumbai (then Bombay) by seven housewives who made the humble papad or poppadoms, a crispy, savoury snack that is a staple of Indian meals.

Sixty-five years later, the co-operative – headquartered in Mumbai – has spread across India with more than 45,000 women members. It has an annual turnover of 16bn rupees ($186m; £150m) and exports products to countries including the UK and US.

Working mostly from home, the women in this co-operative produce items including detergents, spices and chapatis (flatbreads), but their most-loved product is the Lijjat brand of poppadoms.

“Lijjat is a temple for us. It helps us earn money and feed our families,” says Lakshmi, 70, who manages the Delhi centre.

Ms Lakshmi, who uses only one name, joined the co-operative about four decades ago after her husband died, which forced her to look for work.

“I hadn’t finished my studies and didn’t know what else to do. That’s when my neighbour told me about Lijjat,” she says.

The decision to join the women’s co-operative transformed her life, she says. She now manages 150 women at the centre.

For women like Ms Lakshmi, the co-operative offers a chance to earn a decent income while balancing their work at home.

Every morning, the women members take a bus hired by the co-operative to the nearest Lijjat centre. There, they collect their share of pre-mixed dough made with lentils and spices, which they take home to roll into poppadoms.

“I used to go home with this dough and do all my housework, feed my children and sit with my chakla [a flat wooden board] and a belan [rolling pin] in the afternoon to make small round thin papads,” says Ms Lakshmi.

Initially, it took her four-five hours to make 1kg of dried lentil papad, but she says she can now produce that amount in just half an hour.

The head office in Mumbai buys raw materials like lentils, spices and oil in bulk, mixes the flour and sends it to Lijjat offices around the country.

Once the women make and dry the poppadoms at home, they deliver them back to the centre for packaging. Lijjat’s distributor network then transports the products to retail shops.

The enterprise has come a long way since it was founded.

In the 1950s, a newly independent India was focusing on rebuilding itself, trying to strike a balance between promoting small-scale, rural industries and pushing for large urban factories.

It was also a time when the government owned most of the factories in the country. Life for women was especially challenging as they had to negotiate a deeply conservative and patriarchal society to get educated and work.

The group of women who founded Lijjat – Jaswantiben Jamnadas Poppat, Parvatiben Ramdas Thodani, Ujamben Narandas Kundalia, Banuben N Tanna, Laguben Amritlal Gokani, Jayaben V Vithalani and Diwaliben Lukka – were in their 20s and 30s, living in a crowded tenement in Mumbai and looking for ways to support their families.

Their idea was simple – work from home and earn money by using the cooking skills passed down to them through generations of women.

But they did not have money to buy ingredients and sought financial assistance from Chhaganlal Karamshi Parekh, a social worker.

He offered them a loan of 80 rupees ($0.93; £0.75 at today’s rates), which was enough to get started at the time.

But the women soon realised that there were no takers for their poppadoms. Narrating the story, Swati Paradkar, the current president of the co-operative, says that the women had to return to Parekh for help.

He again lent them 80 rupees, but this time with the condition that they would repay 200 rupees to him. Parekh – whom the women called Bappa (meaning father) – and other social workers took the poppadoms to local shopkeepers, who agreed to stock them only if they could pay after the products were sold.

Only one shopkeeper agreed to pay the women immediately. “He began purchasing four to six packets daily and gradually the poppadoms became quite popular,” Ms Paradkar says.

As the business grew, more women joined the co-operative – not as employees, but as co-owners with a say in decision-making. The women call each other or sister in Gujarati.

“We are like a co-operative and not a company. Even though I am the president, I am not the owner. We are all co-owners and have equal rights. We all share profits and even losses,” Ms Paradkar says. “I think that’s the secret of our success.”

For decades, the co-operative produced its poppadoms without the iconic Lijjat brand name.

In 1966, the Khadi Development And Village Industries Commission, a government organisation to promote small rural industries, suggested that they come up with a brand name.

The co-operative placed an advertisement in newspapers asking for suggestions. “We received a lot of entries but one of our own sisters suggested Lajjat. We tweaked it to Lijjat, which means taste in Gujarati”, Ms Paradkar says.

Over the decades, the co-operative has allowed generations of women to attain financial independence.

“Today I have put my children through school, built a house and got them married,” says Ms Lakshmi.

“Working here, I have found not just an income but respect.”

Former deputy prime minister Sir Nick Clegg is to step down from his current job as president of global affairs at social media giant Meta.

In a post on Meta’s Facebook on Thursday, Sir Nick, a former leader of the Liberal Democrats, said he was departing the company after nearly seven years.

He will be replaced by his current deputy and Republican Joe Kaplan, who previously served as deputy chief of staff in the White House during President George W Bush’s administration, and is known for handling the company’s relations with Republicans.

He added that he would spend “a few months handing over the reins” and representing Facebook at international gatherings before moving on to “new adventures”.

Sir Nick’s resignation comes just weeks before Donald Trump returns to the White House.

The president-elect has repeatedly accused Meta and other platforms of censorship and silencing conservative speech.

His relations with Mr Zuckerberg have been particularly strained, after Facebook and Instagram suspended the former president’s accounts for two years in 2021, after they said he praised those engaged in violence at the Capitol on 6 January.

More recently, Trump threatened to imprison Mr Zuckerberg if he interfered in the 2024 election, and even called Facebook an “enemy of the people” in March.

However tensions appear to be thawing between the two, with the pair dining at Trump’s Florida estate in Mar-a-Lago since the US election.

Mr Zuckerberg also congratulated him on his victory and donated $1m (£786,000) to an inauguration fund.

Sir Nick’s departure is seen by some analysts as a nod to the changing of the guard in Washington.

He joined Facebook in 2018, after losing his seat as an MP in 2017. He was later promoted to president of global affairs, a prominent position at Meta.

He was instrumental in launching Meta’s oversight board, a panel of experts that makes decisions and advises Mr Zuckerberg on policies around content moderation, privacy, and other issues.

Sir Nick has been open about his views on Trump’s close ally, Elon Musk, describing him as a political puppet master, claiming he has turned X, formerly Twitter, into a “one-man hyper-partisan hobby horse”.

The former Liberal Democrat leader moved to Silicon Valley initially but returned to London in 2022.

In his statement, he said he was moving on to “new adventures” with “immense gratitude and pride” at what he had been part of.

He said: “My time at the company coincided with a significant resetting of the relationship between ‘big tech’ and the societal pressures manifested in new laws, institutions and norms affecting the sector.

“I hope I have played some role in seeking to bridge the very different worlds of tech and politics – worlds that will continue to interact in unpredictable ways across the globe.”

He added: “I am simply thrilled that my deputy, Joel Kaplan, will now become Meta’s chief global affairs officer…He is quite clearly the right person for the right job at the right time!”

The Duchess of Sussex has announced a new show on Netflix – which the streaming service describes as a lifestyle show that blends “practical how-to’s and candid conversation”.

With Love, Meghan premieres on 15 January and includes eight 30-minute episodes featuring appearances from celebrities such as actress Mindy Kaling and former Suits star Abigail Spencer.

In the trailer released on Thursday, Meghan garnishes a cake with raspberries and harvests honey in California, where she lives with her husband Prince Harry and two children.

She posted the trailer on her new Instagram account, writing: “I have been so excited to share this with you! I hope you love the show as much as I loved making it.”

The news comes a day after the duchess returned to Instagram under the account @meghan.

Her first post showed her dressed in white, running on an overcast beach, to write 2025 in the sand, before dashing past the camera laughing.

Her second post shared the trailer for her upcoming show.

In it, she is seen making food in a home kitchen, shopping for flowers, and laughing and eating with friends.

“I’m going to share some little tips and tricks… and how you incorporate these practices every day,” Meghan says in the trailer’s voiceover.

“We’re not in the pursuit of perfection… we’re in the pursuit of joy,” she continues.

In one scene with others, Kaling says “this is probably one of the most glamorous moments of my life,” making Meghan burst into laughter.

Chefs Roy Choi and Alice Waters are also among the guests in the series.

“Everyone’s invited to create wonder in every moment,” the text of the trailer says.

Meghan’s husband Prince Harry even makes a brief appearance, with the two embracing as they hold drinks on a sunny outdoor patio. One of the couple’s dogs, Guy, also has a starring role.

Meghan, formerly an actress, married Prince Harry in 2018. The couple stepped down as senior royals in 2020 and moved to California.

Since then, the pair have started a production company and charitable foundation, and pursued various ventures, including another Netflix show, called Harry & Meghan, about their relationship.

In April, the couple’s media company Archewell said two new series were in production, one celebrating “the joys of cooking & gardening, entertaining, and friendship” (now known to be With Love, Meghan), and another exploring the world of professional polo which aired in December.

Meghan also previously hosted a Spotify podcast Archetypes about stereotypes against women, and launched a lifestyle brand called American Riviera Orchard in 2024.

Two people have died and 18 others were injured after a small plane crashed into a commercial building in southern California, officials say.

Ten people were taken to hospital with injuries, the Fullerton Police Department said in a post on X on Thursday afternoon. Eight others were treated for injuries and released at the scene.

The single-engine Van’s RV-10 crashed at 14:15PST (20:15GMT), according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

Officials have provided no further details about how the crash occurred. It is unclear whether the two people who died were workers or were on board the plane.

Police say they are evacuating buildings in the area, and are asking the public to stay away from the crash site.

Congressman Lou Correa, who represents the area of Orange County, about 25 miles (40km) south of Los Angeles, said that the building that was struck is a furniture manufacturing business.

In a post on X, Correa said that at least a dozen of the victims are factory workers.

Aerial photos of the scene show parts of the plane inside the building. The crash also sparked a fire which was extinguished by fire crews.

Security footage recorded from a building across the street shows a fiery explosion, according to local news outlets.

“People are just shaken over the situation,” witness Mark Anderson told KRCA-TV.

“It was just a large boom, and then one of the people went out and said, ‘Oh my gosh, the building’s on fire.'”

The area where the plane crashed is near the Fullerton Municipal Airport, about 6 miles (10 kilometers) from Disneyland.

The plane appears to have been turning back to the airport shortly after takeoff, according to KRCA-TV.

Around 100 people were ultimately evacuated from the Michael Nicholas Designs furniture factory, according to the Orange County Register newspaper.

Juanita Ramirez, an employee, told the newspaper that she heard a loud bang before seeing a large ball of fire flying towards her.

“It felt like a dream,” she said.

This is the second plane to crash in the area in the past two months, according to CBS, the BBC’s US partner.

On 25 November, another plane crashed into a tree roughly one block away from this most recent crash. No major injures were reported in that crash.

The names of around 425,000 people suspected of collaborating with the Nazis during the German occupation of the Netherlands have been published online for the first time.

The names represent individuals who were investigated through a special legal system established towards the end of World War 2. Of them, more than 150,000 faced some form of punishment.

The full records of these investigations were previously only accessible by visiting the Dutch National Archives in The Hague.

The Huygens Institute, which helped digitise the archive, says this is a major barrier for people wishing to research the Netherlands’ occupation, which lasted from its invasion in 1940 to 1945.

“This archive contains important stories for both present and future generations,” the Huygens Institute says.

“From children who want to know what their father did in the war, to historians researching the grey areas of collaboration.”

The archive contains files on war criminals, the approximately 20,000 Dutch people who enlisted in the German armed forces, and alleged members of the National Socialist Movement (NSB) – the Dutch Nazi party.

But it also contains the names of people who were found to be innocent.

This is because the archive is comprised of files from the Special Jurisdiction, which from 1944 investigated suspected collaborators.

The online database only contains the names of suspects – as well as the date and place of their birth – which are only searchable using specific personal details.

It does not specify whether a particular person was found guilty, or what form of collaboration they were suspected of.

But it will tell users what file to request to see this information if they visit the National Archives. People accessing the physical files must declare a legitimate interest in viewing them.

There has been some concern in the Netherlands about personal information pertaining to a sensitive period of history being made freely available – prompting the information published online to be initially limited.

“I am afraid that there will be very nasty reactions,” Rinke Smedinga, whose father was an NSB member and worked at Camp Westerbork, from which people were deported to concentration camps, told Dutch online publication DIT.

“You have to anticipate that. You should not just let it happen, as a kind of social experiment.”

Tom De Smet, the director of the National Archives, told DIT that relatives of both collaborators and victims of the occupation had to be taken into account.

But he added: “Collaboration is still a major trauma. It is not talked about. We hope that when the archives are opened, the taboo will be broken.”

In a letter to parliament on 19 December, Culture Minister Eppo Bruins wrote: “Openness of archives is crucial for facing the effects of [the Netherlands’] difficult shared past and to process it as a society.”

How much information made available online would be limited given privacy concerns, and those visiting the archive in person will not be allowed to make copies, he said. Bruins has expressed a wish to change the law to allow more information to be disclosed publicly.

The online database’s website says that people who might still be alive are not listed online.

There is concern growing in Syria that the new Islamist-led authorities have already decided on changes to the school curriculum, without the input of the rest of society.

The Facebook page of the transitional government’s education ministry has posted the new curriculum for all age groups, which will take on a more Islamic slant, as well as dropping any reference to the Assad era across all subjects.

The phrase “Defending the nation” has been replaced by “Defending Allah”, among other changes.

The Education Minister, Nazir al-Qadri, downplayed the move, saying the curriculum is essentially unchanged and will remain so until specialised committees have been set up to review and revise it.

Other proposed changes include Evolution and the Big Bang theory being dropped from science teaching.

References to the gods worshipped in Syria before Islam, as well as images of their statues, are also being dropped.

The significance of the great Syrian heroine Queen Zenobia, who once ruled Palmyra in the Roman era, seems to have been downplayed.

The Assad era has essentially been excised from the curriculum, including poems celebrating both Bashar al-Assad and his father, Hafez, in Arabic language courses.

In a statement, al-Qadri said the only instructions he had issued were related to the removal of content that he described as glorifying the “defunct Assad regime” and the instatement of the Syrian revolutionary flag in all textbooks.

The minister also said that “inaccuracies” in the Islamic education curriculum had been corrected.

The changes have been welcomed by some Syrians.

But the move has set off alarm bells among resurgent civil society activists, many of whom have returned to Syria for the first time in many years.

They fear it is a sign that their voices – and those of groups and communities across the country – may not be listened to as the country develops under its new leadership.

There have already been calls for protests ahead of the start of the new school term on Sunday.

Activists want to make clear their opposition to any moves by the transitional government to bring in changes to the education system – or any other state institution – without the participation of all sections of Syrian society.

The new authorities have made much of the fact that they are to hold a National Dialogue Conference.

Officials have been holding meetings with many different communities – from Christians to Kurds, to artists and intellectuals.

The message has been that they want to create a new Syria with the involvement of all sections of society so that all will have a stake in the country’s future.

But activists believe the unilateral changes in the school curriculum undercut such promises and want to make a stand right from the start for the values of freedom and inclusion that the removal of Bashar al-Assad has now made possible.

It was the end of one year and the beginning of another. A time for reflection.

But how much attention did you pay to what’s been going on in the world over the past seven days?

Quiz compiled by Ben Fell.

Fancy some more? Try our most recent weekly quiz, have a go at something from the archives, or take on the 2024 Quiz of the Year.

Part one: January to March

Part two: April to June

Part three: July to September

Part four: October to December

Japanese toilets – equipped with music players, automatic flushes, and heated seats – are clearly not afraid of making a splash with their innovative designs.

But these cutting edge seats have an unlikely nemesis: toilet paper.

Toto, a top Japanese toilet bowl maker, said last week that users should refrain from wiping their seats with toilet paper, as it risks creating micro scratches on the surface.

The company’s advice came after a series of posts on social media complaining about scratches and discolouration.

A Toto representative told Japanese newspaper Mainichi Shimbun that its bidet toilet seats are made of plastic resin due to the material’s “resistance to detergents and its ability to be molded into complex shapes”.

However, wiping the seat with toilet paper or dry cloth can cause small, invisible scratches where dirt may accumulate, leading to discolouration.

But Toto is not the only manufacturer that has advised users against using toilet paper to wipe its toilet seats.

Similar recommendations have previously been issued by cleaning experts and also published on lifestyle sites.

Instead of dry toilet paper, people recommend using soft cloth soaked in tap water or detergent. They also advise against using thinners, nylon or metal scrubbers, or abrasives – all of which could damage the surface of the toilet seat.

The company said that while it was looking into more scratch-resistant materials, “there are no plans to change the material at this time.”

The Washlet, Toto’s flagship bidet toilet, includes features like an automatic lid, an air dryer and pressure controls for the bidet’s water stream.

Japanese toilets, with their thoughtful designs viewed as an extension of the country’s hospitality culture, have become an unlikely tourist attraction for foreigners and a source of pride at home.

On a bright January morning in 1979, then US president Jimmy Carter greeted a historic guest in Washington: Deng Xiaoping, the man who unlocked China’s economy.

The first leader of Communist China to visit the United States, Deng had arrived the previous evening, to light snow and a welcome by the US vice-president, the secretary of state and their spouses.

It was the start of a diplomatic relationship that would forever change the world, setting the stage for China’s economic ascent – and later, its rivalry with the US.

Establishing formal ties with China was among Carter’s more remarkable legacies, during a turbulent presidency that ended with one term.

Born on 1 October, the same date as the founding of the People’s Republic of China, “he liked to say it was destiny that brought him and China together”, said Yawei Liu, a close friend of Carter’s.

Even after leaving office, he painstakingly cultivated a close bond with the Chinese people – but that was affected as ties between Washington and Beijing cooled.

Yet he remains one of a small group of US statesmen cherished by Beijing for helping to bring Communist China out of isolation in the 1970s.

Beijing has expressed its condolences, calling Carter the “driving force” behind the 1979 agreement. But the Chinese internet has gone much further, referring to him as “Meirenzong” or the “benevolent American”, giving him a title that was once reserved for emperors.

• What to know about Jimmy Carter’s funeral
• Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter’s legendary 77-year marriage

Carter’s first encounter with China was in 1949, while the country was suffering the final convulsions of a bloody decades-long civil war.

As a young US naval officer, his submarine unit was dispatched to Qingdao in eastern China. They were to aid Kuomintang troops who were fending off a Communist siege by Mao Zedong’s army.

Just kilometres away behind enemy lines was a Chinese commander named Deng Xiaoping.

When they finally met decades later, it was as leaders of their respective countries.

It was an earlier US President, Richard Nixon, and his secretary of state Henry Kissinger who had laid the groundwork for wooing what was then Mao’s China. With Beijing and Moscow at loggerheads, they had sensed an opportunity to draw away a Soviet ally.

But those efforts culminated under Carter – and Deng – who pushed for deeper ties. For months, the US president dispatched trusted negotiators for secret talks with Beijing.

The breakthrough came in late 1978. In the middle of December, the two countries announced that they would “recognise each other and establish diplomatic relations from January 1, 1979”.

The world was surprised and Beijing was elated, but the island of Taiwan, which had long relied on US support against Chinese claims, was crushed. Carter is still a controversial figure there.

Previously, the US had only recognised the government of Taiwan, which China viewed as a renegade province. And for years US support for Taiwan had been the sticking point in negotiations.

Switching recognition to Beijing meant the US had finally acknowledged China’s position that there was only one Chinese government – and it was in Beijing. This is the One China policy, which, to this day, forms the cornerstone of US-China relations.

But the pivot raised inevitable questions about US commitment to its allies. Uneasy with Carter’s decision, Congress eventually forced through a law codifying its right to provide Taiwan with defensive weapons, thus creating a lasting contradiction in US foreign policy.

Still historians agree that 1979 signalled an extraordinary set of moves that reoriented global power: not only did it unite the US and China against the Soviet Union, but also paved the way for peace and rapid economic growth in East Asia.

But Carter could not have done it without his special relationship with Deng Xiaoping. “It’s a pleasure to negotiate with him,” Carter wrote in his diary after spending a day with Deng during his January visit, according to Deng’s biographer Ezra Vogel.

“The two of them followed common sense, there were actually significant similarities in their no-nonsense personalities,” said Dali Yang, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago. “There was something really unique between the two men that really established trust.”

Deng Xiaoping had survived three political purges under Mao to emerge as one of China’s most consequential leaders. Historians credit his vision, self-assurance, frankness and sharp wit in no small part for this crucial diplomatic win.

He sensed the opportunity Carter offered, Vogel writes – to both thwart Soviet power and to kickstart the modernisation that had begun in Japan, Taiwan and even South Korea. He knew it would elude China without US help.

Deng’s visit to the US began with a warm first meeting at the White House, where he chuckled while revealing his Qingdao connection to Carter, according to Chinese reports. He was exuberant as the two clasped hands in front of cameras in the Rose Garden, saying: “Now our two countries’ peoples are shaking hands.”

Over the next few days, Deng staged a whirlwind charm offensive on the Americans as he toured several states with Carter. In one famous image, Deng is seen grinning as he dons a cowboy hat at a Texan rodeo. “Deng avoids politics, goes Texan,” read a local newspaper headline.

Carter described Deng as “smart, tough, intelligent, frank, courageous, personable, self-assured, friendly”, according to Vogel.

He later wrote in his diary the trip was “one of the delightful experiences of my Presidency… to me, everything went right, and the Chinese leader seemed equally pleased.”

“Carter was really a catalytic agent for what was more than a diplomatic rapprochement – it was a dramatic moment of signalling,” said Orville Schell, the director of the Asia Society’s Centre on US-China Relations who, as a journalist in 1979, covered Deng’s trip.

“He introduced Deng to the country and actually to the world. It made what had been a contentious relationship to something very congenial. The way Carter and Deng interacted, these were signals that it was okay to both peoples to set history aside and start a new relationship.”

Under Carter, China was granted “most favoured nation” trade status, boosting its economy and creating jobs. Within a year, two-way trade between the two countries doubled.

Throughout the next decade China became an important trade partner not just for the US but also the world, which was “extraordinarily important” for China’s growth, noted Prof Yang.

Carter’s connection with China endured long after his presidency ended.

In the 1990s his non-profit group The Carter Center played a significant role in China’s nascent grassroots democracy where – on the invitation of the Chinese government – it observed village elections, trained officials and educated voters.

Unusually for a former US president, Carter returned several times to China on personal visits. On one trip, he and his wife Rosalynn helped to build shelters for victims of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.

His commitment to humanitarian work, his humble background as the son of a peanut farmer, and “folksy style” – which stood in contrast to the formal public personas of Chinese leaders – endeared him to many Chinese, according to Prof Yang: “He will be seen as a role model of a leader who cares, not just in rhetoric but also in actions.”

“Everywhere he travelled in China, people showed their warm feelings for him… The Chinese people really liked him for his courage and his honesty,” said Dr Liu, a senior adviser with the Carter Center. He accompanied Carter on several trips, including a 2014 tour where he was fêted by local officials and universities.

In Qingdao, the city put on a surprise fireworks show for his 90th birthday. In Beijing, Deng’s daughter hosted a banquet and presented a gift – a copy of the People’s Daily front page of the 1979 communique. “Both were moved to tears,” Dr Liu recalled.

That was to be his last visit. As the US-China relationship grew rockier, so too did Carter’s ties with the Chinese leadership, particularly after Xi Jinping took power.

On the eve of his 2014 visit, top government officials instructed universities not to sponsor his events, prompting a last-minute scramble to change venues, Carter noted.

A state dinner held for him at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing was sparsely attended, recalled Mr Schell. Notably, it was hosted by then vice-president Li Yuanchao, while Xi was said to be entertaining another dignitary elsewhere in the complex.

“He wouldn’t even come to tip his hat to Carter. That really showed the state of relations,” Mr Schell said. “Carter was really very angry. Two of his aides told me he even felt like leaving early because he felt disrespected.”

The Carter Center’s activities in China were eventually curtailed, and a website they maintained to document the village elections was taken offline. No clear explanation was given at the time, but Dr Liu attributed this to China’s growing suspicion of foreign organisations following the 2010 Arab Spring.

Though Carter said little about the snub publicly, it would have been felt no less acutely, given the lengths he had gone to advocate for engagement.

It has also raised questions whether his approach on human rights with China – he characterised it as “patience” but others criticised it as soft-pedalling – was justified in the end.

Carter often “made a tremendous effort… not to stick fingers into China’s eyes on the human rights question,” Mr Schell noted. “He did temper himself even when he was out of office, as The Carter Center had a real stake in the country.”

Some see his decision to engage with Communist China as born out of an American sincerity at the time. Following the violent chaos of the Cultural Revolution, there was “a disbelief among many Americans – how could the Chinese be living in angry isolation?” Prof Yang said. “There was a genuine desire among American leaders to really help.”

Others say that in attempting to shore up support against the Soviets, the US set the course for China’s rise and ended up creating one of its greatest rivals.

But these actions also benefited millions of Chinese, helping to lift them out of poverty and – for a time – widening political freedom at the local level.

“I think all of us from that generation were children of engagement,” Mr Schell said. “We were hoping Carter would find the formula that would slowly bring China into a comfortable relationship with [the] US and the rest of the world.”

Toward the end of his life, Carter grew more alarmed about the growing distrust between the US and China, and frequently warned of a possible “modern Cold War”.

“In 1979, Deng Xiaoping and I knew we were advancing the cause of peace. While today’s leaders face a different world, the cause of peace remains just as important,” he wrote on the 40th anniversary of normalisation of relations.

“[Leaders] must accept our conviction that the United States and China need to build their futures together, for themselves and for humanity at large.”

Heavy snow blends into white thick clouds in Skellefteå, a riverside city in northern Sweden that is home to 78,000 residents.

It’s also the location of what was supposed to become Europe’s biggest and greenest electric battery factory, powered by the region’s abundance of renewable energy.

Swedish start-up Northvolt opened its flagship production plant here in 2022, after signing multi-billion euro contracts with carmakers including BMV, Volkswagen and Nordic truck manufacturer Scania.

But it ran into major financial troubles last year, reporting debts of $5.8bn (£4.6bn) in November, and filing for bankruptcy in the US, where it had been hoping to expand its operations.

Since September it’s laid off around a quarter of its global workforce including more than 1,000 staff in Skellefteå.

“A lot of people have moved out already,” says 43-year-old Ghanaian Justice Dey-Seshie, who relocated to Skellefteå for a job at Northvolt, after previously studying and working in southern Sweden.

“I need to secure a job in order to extend my work permit. Otherwise, I have to exit the country, sadly.”

Many researchers and journalists tracking Northvolt’s downfall share the view that it was at least partly caused by a global dip in demand for electric vehicles (EVs).

In September Volvo abandoned its target to only produce EVs by 2030, arguing that “customers and markets are moving at different speeds”. Meanwhile China, the market leader in electric batteries, has been able to undercut Northvolt’s prices.

Missing production targets (a key factor in BMW pulling out of a €2bn deal in June), expanding too quickly, and the company’s leadership have also been widely cited as factors fuelling the crisis.

“To build batteries is a very complex process. It takes a lot of capital, it takes time, and they obviously just didn’t have the right personnel running the company,” argues Andreas Cervenka, a business author and economics commentator for Swedish daily Aftonbladet.

At Umeå university, Madeleine Eriksson, a geographer researching the impact of so-called “green industries” says Northvolt presented a “save the world mentality” that impressed investors, media and local politicians.

But this “now-or-never” approach, she argues, glossed over the fact it was a risk-taking start-up that “never finished attracting investment”.

Northvolt did not respond to multiple requests from the BBC to respond to comments about its downfall or future plans.

The firm has hired German Marcus Dangelmaier, from global electronics company TE Connectivity to run Northvolt’s operations in Skellefeå, from January, as it seeks to attract fresh investment.

Northvolt’s co-founder and CEO Peter Carlsson – a former Tesla executive – resigned in November.

• Listen Business Daily: Crisis at Northvolt

As the postmortem into the crisis continues, there are debates about the potential impact on Sweden’s green ambitions.

Northern Sweden, dubbed the “Nordic Silicon Valley of sustainability” by consultancy firm McKinsey, has swiftly gained global reputation for new industries designed to fast-track Europe’s green transition.

The region is a hub for biotech and renewable energy. Alongside Northvolt, high profile companies include Stegra (formerly called H2 Green Steel) and Hybrit, which are both developing fossil-free fuel using hydrogen.

But Mr Cervenka, the economics commentator, argues Northvolt’s downfall has damaged Sweden’s “very good brand” when it comes to green technologies.

“There was a huge opportunity to build this champion, and to build this Swedish icon, but I think investors that lost money are going to be hesitant to invest again in a similar project in the north of Sweden,” he says.

Some local businesses say the publicity around Northvolt’s crisis is already having a negative impact.

“I feel it myself when I travel now – even to the southern parts of Sweden – and abroad, that people really ask me questions,” says Joakim Nordin, CEO of Skellefteå Kraft, a major hydropower and wind energy provider, which was an early investor in Northvolt.

Headquartered in Malmö in southern Sweden, Cleantech for Nordics is an organisation that represents a coalition of 15 major investors in sustainability-focussed start-ups.

Here, climate policy analyst Eva Andersson believes the nation’s long legacy as an environmental champion will remain relevant.

“I think it would be presumptuous to say that, okay, now we are doomed here in the Nordics because one company has failed,” she argues.

Cleantech for Nordics’ research suggests there were more than 200 investments in clean tech projects in Sweden in 2023.

Another study by Dealroom, which gathers data on start-ups indicates 74% of all venture capital funding to Swedish start-ups went to so-called impact companies which prioritise environmental or social sustainability, compared to a European average of just 35%.

“Sweden is still punching above its weight in this sector. And I think we could expect it to continue to do so moving forward as well,” predicts Anderson.

There are growing calls for increased state support to help Sweden maintain its position. The Swedish government refused to bail out Northvolt, suggesting all startups – sustainable or not – should be subject to market forces rather than bailed out by taxpayers. But as other parts of the world ramp up battery production and other carbon-cutting industries, the decision has faced a backlash.

“The US and China have massive support packages for green industry, and they definitely are catching up and overtaking in some sectors. And so that is definitely a threat to be reckoned with,” argues Andersson.

Just 3% of global battery cell production currently takes place in Europe – according to research for international consultancy firm McKinsey – with Asian firms leading the market.

Sweden’s minister for Energy, Business and Industry Ebba Busch argues more EU support rather than funding from individual governments is the answer.

Last month she told Swedish television the situation at Northvolt was “not a Swedish crisis”, rather a reflection of a Europe-wide challenge when it comes to competitiveness in the electric battery sector.

But while the government insists it wants Sweden to play a key role in Europe’s battery industry, and the wider green transition, it has been accused of sending mixed messages. The right-wing coalition, which came into power in 2022 has cut taxes on petrol and diesel, and abolished subsidies for EVs.

“This is a very politically sensitive area,” says journalist Cervenka. “The Swedish government is being actually criticised internationally for not fulfilling its climate obligations. And that is a stark contrast to the image of Sweden as a pioneer.”

The BBC approached Busch’s media team, but was not granted an interview.

Back in Skellefteå, where it has been dark since just after lunch, Joachim Nordin is preparing to commute home in the snow.

He says there’s a strong industrial will for Sweden to remain a green tech role model, despite policymakers being “not as ambitious” as previous administrations.

The criteria that enticed Northvolt to establish its first factory in Skellefteå will also attract other big global players to the region, according to the energy company CEO.

“It’s 100% almost renewable energy up here… and that’s that’s pretty unique if you compare it to the rest of Europe. But on top of that we are among the cheapest places in the world for the electricity prices. So if you combine those two things, it’s a huge opportunity.”

Skellefeå Kraft recently announced a collaboration with Dutch fuel company Sky NRG. Their ambition is to open a large factory by 2030, making fossil-free plane fuel (produced using hydrogen combined with carbon dioxide captured from biogenic sources).

“The publicity around Northvolt is not helping now, of course. But I hope that that’s just something that will be remembered as a little bump in the road, when we look back at this 10 years from now,” says Mr Nordin.

US officials say hackers linked to the Chinese government are responsible for breaching security at major telecommunications companies and US agencies.

The latest hack, announced on Monday, targeted the US Department of the Treasury, which called the infiltration a “major incident”.

Officials said the hackers were able to access employee workstations and some unclassified documents. China denies involvement.

It’s the latest in a string of cyber-attacks that have emerged in recent months against US and other Western targets.

The treasury department hack followed news in late October that the two major US presidential campaigns were targeted.

The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa) said the hack targeting the White House campaigns was carried out “by actors affiliated with the People’s Republic of China”.

In September, reports surfaced of an operation that managed to breach security at top telecommunications firms.

The White House recently said at least nine companies were hacked, including telecoms giants AT&T and Verizon.

And earlier in the year, in March, seven Chinese nationals were charged with running a hacking operation that lasted at least 14 years and targeted foreign critics of China, businesses and politicians.

Operations linked by Western governments to China have also targeted the UK’s Electoral Commission, and the UK and New Zealand parliaments.

While full details have yet to be revealed, the hacks appear to be the work of several different units – each, US authorities say, linked to the Chinese state.

The hacking groups are given nicknames by security firms. For instance the group behind the telecoms hack is most commonly known by Salt Typhoon, the name given to it by researchers at Microsoft. Other firms have dubbed it Famous Sparrow, Ghost Emperor and Earth Estrie.

Salt Typhoon is thought to be behind the telecoms hack. A separate group, nicknamed Volt Typhoon, has been accused of breaking into critical infrastructure organisations for potential disruption attacks.

The seven Chinese citizens charged with hacking were linked by US justice department officials to an operation known as Zirconium or Judgment Panda.

The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre says the same operation targeted UK parliamentarians’ emails in 2021.

The most recent hacks seem to have been aimed at powerful individuals and collecting data that could benefit the Chinese government.

Among others, they targeted the phones of President-elect Donald Trump, Vice-President-elect JD Vance, and people working for Vice-President Kamala Harris’s campaign.

The hackers have also accessed a database of phone numbers subject to law enforcement wiretaps – knowledge that experts say could be used to discover which foreign spies are under surveillance.

And millions of Americans may have had their data breached by the attacks on telecoms companies.

Richard Forno, assistant director of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County Cybersecurity Institute, said the Chinese efforts were being directed at a variety of targets.

“It’s more generic information gathering, let’s see what we can get into, and see what we can find,” he said.

US lawmakers of both parties have expressed concern about the hacks.

Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat, called Salt Typhoon’s activities the “worst telecom hack in our nation’s history”.

Brendan Carr, Trump’s pick for chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, said an intelligence briefing about the hack was “deeply, deeply concerning”.

“The information I heard, it made me want to basically smash my phone at the end of it,” he told CNBC.

FBI Director Christopher Wray recently said that Salt Typhoon’s hack of telecoms companies was China’s “most significant cyber-espionage campaign in history”.

He previously said China’s hacking programme was bigger “than [that of] every other major nation combined”.

In addition to charges laid against the seven Chinese nationals, earlier this month US authorities warned China Telecom Americas, the US subsidiary of one of China’s largest communications companies, that it is a national security threat.

The company has 30 days to respond, and could ultimately face a ban.

In May, the UK sanctioned two individuals and Wuhan Xiaoruizhi Science and Technology Company Ltd, which it said was linked to Judgment Panda.

Trump’s incoming national security adviser Mike Waltz has said that foreign hackers must face “higher costs and consequences”.

Mr Forno, of the UMBC Cybersecurity Institute, said the hacks were probably years in the making.

“China traditionally takes a very long and strategic view of how they conduct their espionage and intelligence operations,” he said. “The US tends to be much more reactive and much more interested in immediate and visible results.”

China’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told a news briefing that the accusations were “baseless” and “lacking evidence”.

“China consistently opposes all forms of hacking and firmly rejects the dissemination of false information targeting China for political purposes,” Mao said.

A Chinese embassy spokesman said in a statement: “The US needs to stop using cybersecurity to smear and slander China, and stop spreading all kinds of disinformation about the so-called Chinese hacking threats.”

Until a few days ago, 10-year-old Sushila Meena lived an ordinary life, far from the public eye, in a small village in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan.

But everything changed when legendary cricketer Sachin Tendulkar shared a video on social media of her playing cricket, bringing her into the media spotlight.

He praised her bowling action and said it had “shades of” former Indian bowler Zaheer Khan – who was known for his accuracy, swing, clever variations with the ball and a distinct bowling action.

The video was an instant hit and while it has been viewed by millions and shared by tens of thousands of people, there’s an ironic twist – the girl does not recognise the cricket icon who made her famous.

“I don’t know who he [Sachin Tendulkar] is,” Sushila says, explaining that her family doesn’t own a television and she has never watched cricket.

However, she is grateful to him.

Sushila, who is from a poor tribal family, is now being recognised and appreciated by everyone she meets. From politicians to social activists and even distant relatives, everyone now wants a picture with her.

Sushila struggles to find the right words to describe this new reality. She simply smiles and poses for photographs, still baffled by her newfound fame.

But as soon as she dons her school uniform and steps onto the field with a rubber ball in hand, the shy girl transforms into someone fearless, strong and focused.

“Once the ball is in my hand, all I can think about is getting the batter out,” she says.

Her classmate Asha, who is often on the other side with a bat in her hand, describes Sushila’s bowling as “difficult”.

“Her ball turns unexpectedly and then suddenly hits the wicket,” she says.

At home, Sushila’s mother Shantibai is proud of what her daughter has achieved.

She says that while many are eager to meet her, not everyone has been supportive.

A few have questioned the parents for allowing their daughter to play cricket instead of doing household chores.

Such opinions are common in parts of rural India, where girls are often expected to stay at home and discouraged from pursuing sports or activities outside the traditional gender roles.

“I don’t say anything to them, nor do I listen to what they are saying,” Shantibai says.

“I will never stop her from playing cricket.”

Everyone in Sushila’s school plays cricket and the credit for it goes to their teacher, Ishwarlal Meena.

“I started encouraging students to play cricket when I joined in 2017,” he says. “A fun activity is needed to keep them engaged at school – otherwise, they will stay at home.”

Mr Meena says that initially, he and other teachers would form teams and make the students play with them. Soon everyone wanted to join in.

Even though he has taken on the role of their coach, Mr Meena has no formal cricket training. He watches YouTube videos to learn and teach new techniques to the students.

Once he had enough students, Mr Meena created a social media account to showcase their cricketing talent. Slowly people started reacting to his videos – some even gave tips on form and techniques.

Sushila is not the first student from the school to become an internet sensation.

Last year, another student, Renuka Pargi, went viral for her batting skills. She is currently enrolled at a private cricket academy – which also pays all her expenses – in Rajasthan state’s capital, Jaipur.

But the school and the students here need more than just social media attention.

Sushila’s village and her school remain in poor condition.

“People come, they make big promises, but nothing changes,” Mr Meena says.

He adds that the school offers education only until primary level.

“Once they cross grade five, the cricket will stop. They will have no opportunities,” he points out.

Local government officials say they will see what can be done to provide better facilities to the village and its students. The forest department has sent some officials to do a survey and check if some land can be given to the school to extend its cricket field.

But nothing has happened until now.

Meanwhile, Sushila’s home is flooded with gifts. There are bats everywhere, even though she is a bowler.

Her teacher says no one has got her a proper cricket ball yet. They are much harder than the rubber ball she currently practises with and are needed to play higher levels of the sport.

When asked what she will do with so many bats, Sushila says shyly that she “will try to use them”.

Meanwhile, the big question in the village is whether Sushila’s viral fame will end up like the gifts she receives – a lot of attention and excitement, but ultimately making no real difference to her life.

An eight-year-old boy has been found alive after surviving five days in a game park inhabited by lions and elephants in northern Zimbabwe, according to a member of parliament.

The ordeal began when Tinotenda Pudu wandered 23 km (14 miles) from home into the “perilous” Matusadona Game Park, said Mashonaland West MP Mutsa Murombedzi on X.

He spent five days “sleeping on a rocky perch, amidst roaring lions, passing elephants, eating wild fruits”, she said.

Matusadona game park has about 40 lions. At one point, it had one of the highest lion population densities in Africa, according to African Parks.

The Zimbabwe Parks & Wildlife Management Authority confirmed the incident to the BBC but did not share any further details.

Murombedzi said the boy used his knowledge of the wild and survival skills to stay alive.

Tinotenda survived his ordeal by eating wild fruit. He also dug small wells into dry riverbeds with a stick to access drinking water – a skill taught in the drought-prone area.

Members of the local Nyaminyami community started a search party and beat drums each day to try and guide him back home.

But ultimately, it was park rangers who managed to find him.

On his fifth day in the wild, Tinotenda heard a ranger’s car and ran toward it, narrowly missing it, the MP said.

Luckily, the rangers returned, spotted “fresh little human footprints,” and searched the area until they found him.

“This was probably his last chance of being rescued after 5 days in the wilderness,” said the MP.

The park is over 1,470 sq km (570 sq miles) and is home to zebras, elephants, hippos, lions, and antelope.

Across social media, people have been praising the young boy for his resilience.

“This is beyond human comprehension,” one person wrote on X.

Another user wrote: “He’s going to have one hell of a story to tell when he gets back to school.”

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The Palestinian Authority says it has suspended broadcasting by the prominent Arab channel Al Jazeera in parts of the occupied West Bank, citing incitement and bias.

Qatari-owned Al Jazeera expressed shock and denounced the decision as “an attempt to hide the truth about events in the occupied territories”.

It links the closure to news coverage of the recent major crackdown by Palestinian security forces on armed Islamist groups in Jenin refugee camp where at least 11 people have been killed.

Al Jazeera, which is widely watched by Palestinians particularly for its exhaustive coverage of the Gaza war, has already been stopped in Arabic and English in Israel.

For the second time in months, Al Jazeera has broadcast the scene from within its own office in Ramallah as security forces enter and order it to close. Last year, it was Israeli soldiers who raided and this time, Palestinian police went in.

On Wednesday evening, a uniformed officer was shown handing an official order to an Al Jazeera correspondent who reads and signs it.

Fatah, the Palestinian faction which dominates the Palestinian Authority (PA), has accused the Al Jazeera network of sowing division in “our Arab homeland in general and in Palestine in particular”. Al Jazeera insists it is impartial.

The PA, which cooperates with Israel on security, is increasingly unpopular with the Palestinian public and has little control over Jenin’s urban refugee camp, historically seen as a stronghold for armed groups.

Since early December, its forces have been fighting members of the Jenin Battalion, most of whom are affiliated with Islamic Jihad or Hamas, whose 7 October 2023 attack on Israel triggered war in Gaza.

Analysts say that the PA is trying to reassert its authority in the West Bank and prove its potential value to the incoming Trump administration. They suggest it may also want to show its ability to take a role in the future governance of Gaza.

However, ongoing events have drawn condemnation from many Palestinians.

“Al Jazeera has successfully maintained its professionalism throughout its coverage of the unfolding events in Jenin,” it said in a statement earlier this week.

According to the official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, Al Jazeera network has been deemed in violation of Palestinian laws and regulations and its operations suspended temporarily. The stoppage order applies to all work by its journalists and staff.

The network is accused of broadcasting “inciting materials” and “misleading reports” that “provoke strife and interfere in Palestinian internal affairs,” Wafa said.

Israel’s parliament voted to close Al Jazeera in Israel last May saying it threatened national security. Israeli police then raided a Jerusalem hotel room used by Al Jazeera for broadcasting and some of its equipment was confiscated. The channel’s Arabic staff relocated to the West Bank.

In September, Israeli troops ordered the Al Jazeera office in Ramallah in the West Bank to close for 45 days claiming it was being used to support terrorist activities.

Israeli officials, including the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, have often accused Al Jazeera of being a mouthpiece for Hamas.

Israel has also accused Al Jazeera staff in Gaza of belonging to the Islamist group. In July, the Israeli military killed Ismail al-Ghoul, an Al Jazeera reporter in Gaza City, claiming he was a member of Hamas’ s armed wing. Al Jazeera strongly rejects all the allegations.

There is also a long history of hostility between Al Jazeera and the PA, with some PA officials accusing it of showing support for Hamas, a political rival of Fatah.

In 2011, Al Jazeera’s publication of the so-called Palestine Papers, a leak of confidential files detailing years of negotiations between Israel and Palestinian teams, embarrassed PA officials who accused the network of distortion. The documents purported to show offers of major concessions to Israel.

Some Palestinian journalists have criticised the PA decision to bar Al Jazeera saying it comes against a background of an increasingly authoritarian crackdown on dissent. The Foreign Press Association expressed “grave concern” over the action saying that it “raises serious questions about press freedom and democratic values in the region.”

Stunning election wins by a new left-leaning president and his party have changed Sri Lanka’s political landscape – but the cash-strapped island’s new rulers are quickly realising that campaign promises are easier to make than to keep.

Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s remarkable victory in the presidential election in September was swiftly followed by a landslide for his National People’s Power (NPP) alliance in parliamentary elections.

As a new year starts, he and his supporters want this to be a turning point for the country, which is trying to recover from devastating economic crisis and years of misrule.

However, they have limited room for manoeuvre to make good on pledges to voters, whose expectations from the new government are high.

Since the financial meltdown of 2022, economic recovery has been fragile and Sri Lanka is far from out of the woods.

The NPP won 159 seats in the 225-member assembly in November – an unprecedented two-thirds majority – giving Dissanayake a sweeping mandate to push through major economic and constitutional reforms.

However, even as the results were coming in, the new president had to gear up for a meeting with a visiting delegation from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), with which the outgoing government had negotiated a $2.9bn (£2.31bn) bailout package.

The IMF deal became controversial as it led to severe austerity measures, tax rises and cuts in energy subsidies – hitting common people hard.

During the campaign Dissanayake and his alliance promised that they would re-negotiate parts of the IMF agreement.

But in his address to the new parliament, he performed a U-turn.

“The economy is in such a state that it cannot take the slightest shock… There’s no room to make mistakes,” Dissanayake said.

“This is not the time to discuss if the terms [of the IMF loan] are good or bad, if the agreement is favourable to us or not… The process had taken about two years, and we cannot start all over again.”

The voters’ overwhelming verdict for the NPP is seen as the culmination of a people’s uprising triggered by the economic crisis. The uprising toppled president Gotabaya Rajapaksa in the summer of 2022, when Sri Lanka ran out of foreign currency and struggled to import food and fuel.

The country had earlier declared bankruptcy after defaulting on its external debt of about $46bn. India, China and Japan are among those who have loaned billions of dollars.

The recent election results also reflected people’s anger towards established political parties – of former presidents Mahinda Rajapaksa and Ranil Wickremesinghe and others – for failing to handle the economic meltdown.

“One of the priorities for Dissanayake will be to give some economic relief to the people due to excessive taxation and the cost-of-living crisis. Debt management is another big challenge,” veteran political analyst Prof Jayadeva Uyangoda told the BBC.

So far the massive political changes don’t seem to have had any impact on people like Niluka Dilrukshi, a mother-of-four who lives in a suburb of the capital Colombo. Her husband is a daily-wage labourer and the family still find it hard to get by.

The BBC spoke to her about the soaring cost of living in January 2022, months before mass protests erupted.

At that time, she said her family was eating only two meals a day, instead of three, and they were giving only vegetables and rice to their children due to the high cost of fish and meat.

“We are still struggling to make ends meet and nothing has changed. The price of rice, which is the staple food, has increased further. We are not getting any relief from the government,” Mrs Dilrukshi says.

People like her want the new government to take immediate steps to bring down the cost of essentials. Sri Lanka is an import-dependent nation, and it needs foreign currency to bring in items like food and medicine.

For now, Colombo is able to hold on to its currency reserves as it has suspended its debt repayments.

The real struggle, experts point out, will start probably in the next three or four years when it starts repaying its debt.

People’s perception of President Dissanayake and his new government could change if there’s no visible change in their standard of living in the next two or three years.

“People have given him a huge mandate. The IMF should respect that by allowing him to give some relief to the people through social welfare programmes,” says Prof Uyangoda.

Dissanayake must also contend with India and China, which are jostling for influence in Sri Lanka, where both have invested heavily in recent years.

“Both India and China will try to bring Colombo under their sphere of influence. I think the new government’s foreign policy will be very pragmatic without aligning with anyone,” says Prof Uyangoda.

In a careful diplomatic manoeuvre, Dissanayake chose Delhi as his first official overseas destination in mid-December. During the visit, India promised to supply liquefied natural gas for Sri Lankan power plants and work on connecting the power grids of the two countries in the long run.

China’s increasing foothold in Sri Lanka, especially calls by Chinese “research” vessels to the island’s ports – so close to India’s southern tip – has triggered concern in Delhi.

“I have given an assurance to the prime minister of India that we will not allow our land to be used in any way in a manner that is detrimental to the interest of India,” Dissanayake said after talks with Narendra Modi.

Delhi will no doubt be pleased with the assurance, but Dissanayake will find out what Beijing expects when he visits China in mid-January.

From fun viral videos and celebration of Indian sporting glory to moments that made us shake our heads in wonder – the year 2024 had all of this and more to offer on Indian social media.

Here are some of the most memorable moments that we have picked for you.

Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani and his family kept the world captivated for several months with opulent celebrations for his son Anant’s wedding.

The extravaganza first caught people’s eye in March when some of the world’s most influential people started arriving in India to attend a pre-wedding event. The star of that show was pop star Rihanna, whose performance at the event was her first in India.

Over the next few months, Backstreet Boys, Katy Perry, Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli and Justin Bieber performed at different events leading up to the wedding.

Guests included Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, Bill Gates, Kim Kardashian, actor John Cena, former British prime ministers Tony Blair and Boris Johnson, Samsung chairman Jay Y Lee and Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan among hundreds of others.

Dolly Chaiwala, a tea vendor from the state of Maharashtra, found himself going viral online after he served a cup of tea to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

The tea seller was already known for his flamboyant social media presence and unique style of serving tea.

Gates’s video of the moment has more than 176m views on his official Instagram page.

“In India, you can find innovation everywhere you turn – even in the preparation of a simple cup of tea,” he wrote.

Dolly Chaiwala later told news agency ANI he didn’t know he’d served tea to the tech billionaire.

“I was not aware of it at all. I thought that he was a guy from a foreign country and I had to serve him tea,” he said.

Sushila Meena, a 10-year-old girl from the small tribal hamlet Ramer Talab in the northern state of Rajasthan, went viral on social media this month after cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar shared a video of her bowling on X, formerly Twitter.

The young girl’s video, originally shared on Instagram by her school teacher, showed her bowling in slow motion on a makeshift cricket pitch in her village.

Tendulkar shared the video, commenting that her bowling action was “smooth, effortless, and lovely to watch!” He also said Meena had “shades of” former India bowler Zahir Khan.

Khan promptly agreed. Several former cricketers have now come forward to help her realise her dream of playing for India.

India celebrated as Gukesh Dommaraju defeated China’s Ding Liren this month to become the youngest-ever world chess champion.

Dommaraju, 18, is four years younger than the former record-holder, Russian grand-master Garry Kasparov, who was 22 when he won the title in 1985.

Indians had been following the 14-game World Championship competition with an intensity usually reserved for major cricket tournaments.

Fans began celebrating after a blunder by Liren paved the way for Dommaraju’s win.

The teenager burst into tears as his win was announced and the room erupted with cheers.

The video of his tearful reaction quickly went viral on social media.

Is caramel popcorn just like any other popcorn? No, argued India’s Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council which determines the rates at which various products are taxed.

Earlier this month, the council announced that non-branded popcorn that was mixed with salt and spices would be taxed at 5% but caramel popcorn, which it categorised as a sugar confectionery, would attract an 18% tax.

India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman explained that the presence of added sugar made caramel popcorn a “mithai” or confectionery, hence attracting tax under a different category than regular popcorn.

The decision had Indians up in arms, sparking a range of memes and criticism online.

“Our country’s tax system has truly evolved, popcorn is now the gold standard of luxury,” one user wrote on X.

Instagram influencer and celebrity popularly known as Orry commented that caramel popcorn was injurious to “financial health”.

Jairam Ramesh, a spokesman of main opposition Congress party, said the “absurdity of three different tax slabs for popcorn under GST… only brings to light a deeper issue: the growing complexity of a system that was supposed to be a Good and Simple Tax”.

Authorities in India have removed hundreds of tonnes of toxic waste from a chemical factory that witnessed one of the world’s deadliest gas leaks 40 years ago.

Thousands of people died in the central city of Bhopal in December 1984 after breathing a poisonous gas leaked from the factory.

On Wednesday, around 337 tonnes of toxic waste was taken from the Union Carbide plant to an incinerator facility around 230km (143 miles) away after a court last month set a four-week deadline for it to be disposed of.

Officials say it will take between three and nine months to treat and destroy the waste but activists have raised concerns about potential damage to people’s health at the new location.

Since the disaster, the toxic material had been lying in the mothballed factory, polluting groundwater in the surrounding areas.

The toxic waste cleared from the factory this week included five types of hazardous materials – including pesticide residue and “forever chemicals” left from its manufacturing process. These chemicals get the name because they retain their toxic properties indefinitely.

Over decades, these chemicals at the abandoned factory site had been slowly seeping into the surrounding environment, creating a persistent health hazard for people who live in nearby areas.

A 2018 study by the Indian Institute of Toxicology Research revealed that high concentrations of metals and chemicals have contaminated groundwater across 42 residential areas near the factory.

After decades of inaction, the Madhya Pradesh state High Court on 3 December set a four-week deadline for authorities to dispose of the toxic waste material from the site.

The court said that authorities were “still in a state of inertia despite 40 years”.

The process of moving the waste began on Sunday when officials started packing it in leak-proof bags. These bags were then loaded onto 12 sealed trucks on Wednesday.

Officials said the waste was transported under tight security.

A police escort, ambulances, fire engines and a quick response team accompanied the convoy of trucks carrying the waste, the Indian Express newspaper reported.

Swatantra Kumar Singh, the head of Bhopal gas tragedy relief and rehabilitation department, told the PTI news agency that initially, some of the waste would be burnt at the disposal unit in Pithampur and its residue examined for toxic remains.

He said that special arrangements had been made to ensure that fumes from the incinerator or the ash left after do not pollute the air and water.

But activists and people living near the disposal site have been protesting against the move.

They said that a small amount of waste from the Union Carbide factory was destroyed at the plant on a trial basis in 2015, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported.

It ended up polluting the soil, underground water as well as fresh water bodies in the nearby villages, they said.

Mr Singh has denied these claims, saying that incineration of toxic waste would not have “any adverse impact” on nearby villages.

But Rachna Dhingra, from the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, told BBC World Service that the transfer of waste would “create a slow-motion Bhopal” in the new location.

She adds that the transported waste is only a tiny percentage of the actual contamination that people in Bhopal are still dealing with.

“The 1.1 million tonnes of toxic soil and waste still continues to contaminate the groundwater of hundreds and thousands of people [in Bhopal],” she says, referring to an estimate from a 2010 government study.

Over the years, officials have made several attempts to dispose of the waste from the Bhopal factory but dropped their plans after facing resistance from activists.

In 2005, India’s pollution control board said that the toxic waste would be incinerated in Gujarat but the plan was dropped after protests.

The board later identified sites in Hyderabad and Maharashtra state as well, but faced similar resistance.

The Bhopal gas tragedy is the one of the world’s largest industrial disasters.

According to government estimates, around 3,500 people died within days of the gas leak and more than 15,000 in the years since.

But activists say that the death toll is much higher. Victims continue to suffer from the side-effects of being poisoned even today.

In 2010, an Indian court convicted seven former managers at the plant, handing down minor fines and brief prison sentences. But many victims and campaigners say that justice has still not been served, given the magnitude of the tragedy.

Union Carbide paid $470m (£282m) in compensation to the Indian government in an out-of-court settlement in 1989. Another US firm Dow Chemicals, which bought Union Carbide in 1999, says this settlement resolved all existing and future claims against the company.

A drunken police officer in Zambia freed 13 suspects from custody so that they could go and celebrate the new year, officials say.

Detective inspector Titus Phiri was arrested after releasing the suspects from Leonard Cheelo police station in the capital, Lusaka, before running away himself.

The 13 detainees were accused of crimes such as assault, robbery and burglary.

They are all currently on the run and a manhunt has been launched to find them.

Police spokesperson Rae Hamoonga said that Mr Phiri, “in a state of intoxication, forcibly seized cell keys” from constable Serah Banda on New Year’s Eve.

“Subsequently, detective inspector Phiri unlocked both the male and female cells and instructed the suspects to leave, stating they were free to cross over into the new year,” he said.

“Out of the 15 suspects in custody, 13 escaped. Following the incident, the officer fled the scene.”

Mr Phiri has not yet commented on the allegations.

Reacting to the incident, former presidential spokesperson and lawyer Dickson Jere wrote on Facebook: “I keep laughing each time I picture the scenario – comical! But then, I remembered a similar incident in 1997.”

On New Year’s Eve in 1997, the late, controversial High Court Judge Kabazo Chanda ordered the release of 53 suspects, some of whom were deemed dangerous by the police.

Mr Chanda was annoyed that the suspects had been arrested as long ago as 1992, but had not yet appeared in court.

“Justice delayed, is justice denied,” he said.

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The UK’s biggest ever dinosaur trackway site has been discovered in a quarry in Oxfordshire.

About 200 huge footprints, which were made 166 million years ago, criss-cross the limestone floor.

They reveal the comings and goings of two different types of dinosaurs that are thought to be a long-necked sauropod called Cetiosaurus and the smaller meat-eating Megalosaurus.

The longest trackways are 150m in length, but they could extend much further as only part of the quarry has been excavated.

“This is one of the most impressive track sites I’ve ever seen, in terms of scale, in terms of the size of the tracks,” said Prof Kirsty Edgar, a micropalaeontologist from the University of Birmingham.

“You can step back in time and get an idea of what it would have been like, these massive creatures just roaming around, going about their own business.”

The tracks were first spotted by Gary Johnson, a worker at Dewars Farm Quarry, while he was driving a digger.

“I was basically clearing the clay, and I hit a hump, and I thought it’s just an abnormality in the ground,” he said, pointing to a ridge where some mud has been pushed up as a dinosaur’s foot pressed down into the earth.

“But then it got to another, 3m along, and it was a hump again. And then it went another 3m – hump again.”

Another trackway site had been found nearby in the 1990s, so he realised the regular bumps and dips could be dinosaur footprints.

“I thought I’m the first person to see them. And it was so surreal – a bit of a tingling moment, really,” he told BBC News.

This summer, more than 100 scientists, students and volunteers joined an excavation at the quarry which features on the new series of Digging for Britain.

The team found five different trackways.

Four of them were made by sauropods, plant-eating dinosaurs that walked on four legs. Their footprints look a bit like an elephant’s – only much much bigger – these beasts reached up to 18m in length.

Another track is thought to have been created by a Megalosaurus.

“It’s almost like a caricature of a dinosaur footprint”, explained Dr Emma Nicholls, a vertebrate palaeontologist from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

“It’s what we call a tridactyl print. It’s got these three toes that are very, very clear in the print.”

The carnivorous creatures, which walked on two legs, were agile hunters, she said.

“The whole animal would have been 6-9m in length. They were the largest predatory dinosaurs that we know of in the Jurassic period in Britain.”

The environment they lived in was covered by a warm, shallow lagoon and the dinosaurs left their prints as they ambled across the mud.

“Something must have happened to preserve these in the fossil record,” said Prof Richard Butler, a palaeobiologist from the University of Birmingham.

“We don’t know exactly what, but it might be that there was a storm event that came in, deposited a load of sediments on top of the footprints, and meant that they were preserved rather than just being washed away.”

The team studied the trackways in detail during the dig. As well as making casts of the tracks, they took more than 20,000 photographs to create 3D models of both the complete site and individual footprints.

“The really lovely thing about a dinosaur footprint, particularly if you have a trackway, is that it is a snapshot in the life of the animal,” Prof Butler explained.

“You can learn things about how that animal moved. You can learn exactly what the environment that it was living in was like. So tracks give us a whole different set of information that you can’t get from the bone fossil record.”

One area of the site even reveals where the paths of a sauropod and megalosaurus once crossed.

The prints are so beautifully preserved that the team have been able to work out which animal passed through first – they believe it was the sauropod, because the front edge of its large, round footprint is slightly squashed down by the three-toed megalosaurus walking on top of it.

“Knowing that this one individual dinosaur walked across this surface and left exactly that print is so exhilarating,” said Dr Duncan Murdock from Oxford University.

“You can sort of imagine it making its way through, pulling its legs out of the mud as it was going.”

The future fate of the trackways hasn’t yet been decided but the scientists are working with Smiths Bletchington, who operate the quarry, and Natural England on options for preserving the site for the future.

They believe there could be more footprints, these echoes of our prehistoric past, just waiting to be discovered.

Digging for Britain

The man who drove a Tesla Cybertruck that exploded outside the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas was an active-duty US special forces soldier and shot himself dead before the blast, officials have said.

Las Vegas police have identified Matthew Alan Livelsberger, 37, of Colorado Springs, Colorado, as the driver of the vehicle, which he rented more than 800 miles away and drove to the Nevada hotel on the morning of the blast.

Mr Livelsberger’s cause of death was suicide from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to the Clark County Coroner’s office.

Seven people were injured when the vehicle – filled with fuel canisters and firework mortars – exploded on New Year’s Day. Officials said all injuries were minor.

Mr Livelsberger drove the Cybertruck to the city on Wednesday morning, less than two hours before the detonation, police have said. Parked in front of the hotel near a glass entrance, the vehicle started to smoke, then exploded.

• Follow updates live here

Las Vegas authorities said the Cybertruck helped contain the explosion, sending it vertical rather than outward. The nearby glass doors and windows of the hotel did not shatter in the blast.

Authorities said they have yet to determine any motive behind the incident.

“I’m comfortable calling it a suicide with a bombing that occurred immediately after,” Sheriff McMahill said during Thursday’s press conference.

The sheriff said investigators recovered a military ID, a passport, two semi-automatic pistols, fireworks, an iPhone, a smart watch and several credit cards in Mr Livelsberger’s name from the charred vehicle.

The body in the vehicle was burnt beyond recognition and was found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, Las Vegas Sheriff Kevin McMahill said on Thursday.

Mr McMahill said they found two tattoos on the driver’s remains matching ones Livelsberger had.

The Colorado Springs native rented the Cybertruck on 28 December in Denver.

Police were able to track his movements using a number of photographs on the drive from Denver, Colorado to Las Vegas, Nevada, along with Tesla’s charging technology that helped map where he stopped along the route. He was the only one seen driving the vehicle.

Mr McMahill said there are several parallels – but no definitive link – between the suspects in the incident in Las Vegas and a truck attack in New Orleans that left 14 dead, which both took place on New Year’s Day.

Both suspects served at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, though there is no record they served in same unit or were there at the same time. They also both served in Afghanistan in 2009, but there is no evidence they were in the same region or unit.

Both also used rental company Turo for the vehicles involved in the incidents, Mr McMahill said.

“We don’t believe there’s any further threat from this subject or anybody associated to him here in Las Vegas,” he said.

Mr Livelsberger had decades of experience with the US military, having served in both the Army and National Guard. He was a decorated Special Forces Intelligence Sergeant.

He was serving in Germany but on approved leave at the time of the incident.

Mr Livelsberger’s father told the BBC’s news partner CBS that his son was in Colorado to see his wife and eight-month-old daughter.

He said he last spoke to his son at Christmas and that everything seemed normal.

There is concern growing in Syria that the new Islamist-led authorities have already decided on changes to the school curriculum, without the input of the rest of society.

The Facebook page of the transitional government’s education ministry has posted the new curriculum for all age groups, which will take on a more Islamic slant, as well as dropping any reference to the Assad era across all subjects.

The phrase “Defending the nation” has been replaced by “Defending Allah”, among other changes.

The Education Minister, Nazir al-Qadri, downplayed the move, saying the curriculum is essentially unchanged and will remain so until specialised committees have been set up to review and revise it.

Other proposed changes include Evolution and the Big Bang theory being dropped from science teaching.

References to the gods worshipped in Syria before Islam, as well as images of their statues, are also being dropped.

The significance of the great Syrian heroine Queen Zenobia, who once ruled Palmyra in the Roman era, seems to have been downplayed.

The Assad era has essentially been excised from the curriculum, including poems celebrating both Bashar al-Assad and his father, Hafez, in Arabic language courses.

In a statement, al-Qadri said the only instructions he had issued were related to the removal of content that he described as glorifying the “defunct Assad regime” and the instatement of the Syrian revolutionary flag in all textbooks.

The minister also said that “inaccuracies” in the Islamic education curriculum had been corrected.

The changes have been welcomed by some Syrians.

But the move has set off alarm bells among resurgent civil society activists, many of whom have returned to Syria for the first time in many years.

They fear it is a sign that their voices – and those of groups and communities across the country – may not be listened to as the country develops under its new leadership.

There have already been calls for protests ahead of the start of the new school term on Sunday.

Activists want to make clear their opposition to any moves by the transitional government to bring in changes to the education system – or any other state institution – without the participation of all sections of Syrian society.

The new authorities have made much of the fact that they are to hold a National Dialogue Conference.

Officials have been holding meetings with many different communities – from Christians to Kurds, to artists and intellectuals.

The message has been that they want to create a new Syria with the involvement of all sections of society so that all will have a stake in the country’s future.

But activists believe the unilateral changes in the school curriculum undercut such promises and want to make a stand right from the start for the values of freedom and inclusion that the removal of Bashar al-Assad has now made possible.

Former deputy prime minister Sir Nick Clegg is to step down from his current job as president of global affairs at social media giant Meta.

In a post on Meta’s Facebook on Thursday, Sir Nick, a former leader of the Liberal Democrats, said he was departing the company after nearly seven years.

He will be replaced by his current deputy and Republican Joe Kaplan, who previously served as deputy chief of staff in the White House during President George W Bush’s administration, and is known for handling the company’s relations with Republicans.

He added that he would spend “a few months handing over the reins” and representing Facebook at international gatherings before moving on to “new adventures”.

Sir Nick’s resignation comes just weeks before Donald Trump returns to the White House.

The president-elect has repeatedly accused Meta and other platforms of censorship and silencing conservative speech.

His relations with Mr Zuckerberg have been particularly strained, after Facebook and Instagram suspended the former president’s accounts for two years in 2021, after they said he praised those engaged in violence at the Capitol on 6 January.

More recently, Trump threatened to imprison Mr Zuckerberg if he interfered in the 2024 election, and even called Facebook an “enemy of the people” in March.

However tensions appear to be thawing between the two, with the pair dining at Trump’s Florida estate in Mar-a-Lago since the US election.

Mr Zuckerberg also congratulated him on his victory and donated $1m (£786,000) to an inauguration fund.

Sir Nick’s departure is seen by some analysts as a nod to the changing of the guard in Washington.

He joined Facebook in 2018, after losing his seat as an MP in 2017. He was later promoted to president of global affairs, a prominent position at Meta.

He was instrumental in launching Meta’s oversight board, a panel of experts that makes decisions and advises Mr Zuckerberg on policies around content moderation, privacy, and other issues.

Sir Nick has been open about his views on Trump’s close ally, Elon Musk, describing him as a political puppet master, claiming he has turned X, formerly Twitter, into a “one-man hyper-partisan hobby horse”.

The former Liberal Democrat leader moved to Silicon Valley initially but returned to London in 2022.

In his statement, he said he was moving on to “new adventures” with “immense gratitude and pride” at what he had been part of.

He said: “My time at the company coincided with a significant resetting of the relationship between ‘big tech’ and the societal pressures manifested in new laws, institutions and norms affecting the sector.

“I hope I have played some role in seeking to bridge the very different worlds of tech and politics – worlds that will continue to interact in unpredictable ways across the globe.”

He added: “I am simply thrilled that my deputy, Joel Kaplan, will now become Meta’s chief global affairs officer…He is quite clearly the right person for the right job at the right time!”

The names of around 425,000 people suspected of collaborating with the Nazis during the German occupation of the Netherlands have been published online for the first time.

The names represent individuals who were investigated through a special legal system established towards the end of World War 2. Of them, more than 150,000 faced some form of punishment.

The full records of these investigations were previously only accessible by visiting the Dutch National Archives in The Hague.

The Huygens Institute, which helped digitise the archive, says this is a major barrier for people wishing to research the Netherlands’ occupation, which lasted from its invasion in 1940 to 1945.

“This archive contains important stories for both present and future generations,” the Huygens Institute says.

“From children who want to know what their father did in the war, to historians researching the grey areas of collaboration.”

The archive contains files on war criminals, the approximately 20,000 Dutch people who enlisted in the German armed forces, and alleged members of the National Socialist Movement (NSB) – the Dutch Nazi party.

But it also contains the names of people who were found to be innocent.

This is because the archive is comprised of files from the Special Jurisdiction, which from 1944 investigated suspected collaborators.

The online database only contains the names of suspects – as well as the date and place of their birth – which are only searchable using specific personal details.

It does not specify whether a particular person was found guilty, or what form of collaboration they were suspected of.

But it will tell users what file to request to see this information if they visit the National Archives. People accessing the physical files must declare a legitimate interest in viewing them.

There has been some concern in the Netherlands about personal information pertaining to a sensitive period of history being made freely available – prompting the information published online to be initially limited.

“I am afraid that there will be very nasty reactions,” Rinke Smedinga, whose father was an NSB member and worked at Camp Westerbork, from which people were deported to concentration camps, told Dutch online publication DIT.

“You have to anticipate that. You should not just let it happen, as a kind of social experiment.”

Tom De Smet, the director of the National Archives, told DIT that relatives of both collaborators and victims of the occupation had to be taken into account.

But he added: “Collaboration is still a major trauma. It is not talked about. We hope that when the archives are opened, the taboo will be broken.”

In a letter to parliament on 19 December, Culture Minister Eppo Bruins wrote: “Openness of archives is crucial for facing the effects of [the Netherlands’] difficult shared past and to process it as a society.”

How much information made available online would be limited given privacy concerns, and those visiting the archive in person will not be allowed to make copies, he said. Bruins has expressed a wish to change the law to allow more information to be disclosed publicly.

The online database’s website says that people who might still be alive are not listed online.

Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico has threatened to cut financial support for more than 130,000 Ukrainian refugees as a dispute with Ukraine over Russian gas supplies escalates.

On 1 January, Kyiv shut off a pipeline that for decades was used to supply Central Europe with Russian natural gas.

Slovakia had been the main entry point and the country now stands to lose millions of euros in transit fees.

The UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) estimated last month that there were 130,530 Ukrainian refugees in Slovakia out of 6,813,900 globally.

Fico – who in December made a surprise visit to Moscow for talks with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin – described Kyiv’s move as “sabotage”.

The prime minister of the EU state said he would propose halting electricity exports to Ukraine and also “sharply reducing” financial support for Ukrainians who have found shelter in Slovakia.

He said there was no risk of Slovakia itself suffering from gas shortages, as it had already made alternative arrangements.

But Fico added that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision to turn off the taps would deprive Slovakia of 500m euros (£415m; $518m) in transit fees from other countries.

He said his party was ready to debate “halting supplies of electricity” and the “significant lowering of support for Ukrainian citizens in Slovakia”.

“The only alternative for a sovereign Slovakia is renewal of transit or demanding compensation mechanisms that will replace the loss in public finances,” he added.

Last month Zelensky accused Fico of helping Putin to “fund the war and weaken Ukraine”.

“Fico is dragging Slovakia into Russia’s attempts to cause more suffering for Ukrainians,” the Ukrainian president had said.

Poland has offered to support Kyiv in case Slovakia cuts off its electricity exports – supplies that are crucial to Ukraine, whose power plants come under regular attack from Russia.

Poland’s government called Ukraine’s shutdown of Russian gas supplies “another victory” against Moscow while the European Commission said the EU had prepared for the change and most states could cope.

Moldova, which is not in the EU, is already suffering shortages.

Russia can still send gas to Hungary, Turkey and Serbia through the TurkStream pipeline across the Black Sea.

The Duchess of Sussex has announced a new show on Netflix – which the streaming service describes as a lifestyle show that blends “practical how-to’s and candid conversation”.

With Love, Meghan premieres on 15 January and includes eight 30-minute episodes featuring appearances from celebrities such as actress Mindy Kaling and former Suits star Abigail Spencer.

In the trailer released on Thursday, Meghan garnishes a cake with raspberries and harvests honey in California, where she lives with her husband Prince Harry and two children.

She posted the trailer on her new Instagram account, writing: “I have been so excited to share this with you! I hope you love the show as much as I loved making it.”

The news comes a day after the duchess returned to Instagram under the account @meghan.

Her first post showed her dressed in white, running on an overcast beach, to write 2025 in the sand, before dashing past the camera laughing.

Her second post shared the trailer for her upcoming show.

In it, she is seen making food in a home kitchen, shopping for flowers, and laughing and eating with friends.

“I’m going to share some little tips and tricks… and how you incorporate these practices every day,” Meghan says in the trailer’s voiceover.

“We’re not in the pursuit of perfection… we’re in the pursuit of joy,” she continues.

In one scene with others, Kaling says “this is probably one of the most glamorous moments of my life,” making Meghan burst into laughter.

Chefs Roy Choi and Alice Waters are also among the guests in the series.

“Everyone’s invited to create wonder in every moment,” the text of the trailer says.

Meghan’s husband Prince Harry even makes a brief appearance, with the two embracing as they hold drinks on a sunny outdoor patio. One of the couple’s dogs, Guy, also has a starring role.

Meghan, formerly an actress, married Prince Harry in 2018. The couple stepped down as senior royals in 2020 and moved to California.

Since then, the pair have started a production company and charitable foundation, and pursued various ventures, including another Netflix show, called Harry & Meghan, about their relationship.

In April, the couple’s media company Archewell said two new series were in production, one celebrating “the joys of cooking & gardening, entertaining, and friendship” (now known to be With Love, Meghan), and another exploring the world of professional polo which aired in December.

Meghan also previously hosted a Spotify podcast Archetypes about stereotypes against women, and launched a lifestyle brand called American Riviera Orchard in 2024.

It’s dawn on Darwin Harbour and government ranger Kelly Ewin – whose job is to catch and remove crocodiles – is balancing precariously on a floating trap.

Heavy rain clouds from the storm that has recently passed are overhead. The engine of the boat has been cut so now it’s mostly silent – that is, apart from the intermittent splashing coming from inside the trap.

“You get pretty much zero chances with these guys,” says Ewin as he attempts to loop a noose around the jaw of the agitated reptile.

We’re in Australia’s Northern Territory (NT), home to an estimated 100,000 wild saltwater crocodiles, more than anywhere in the world.

The capital, Darwin, is a small coastal city surrounded by beaches and wetlands.

And, as you quickly learn here in the NT, where there is water, there usually are crocs.

Saltwater crocs – or salties, as they are known to locals – were nearly hunted to extinction 50 years ago.

After World War Two, the uncontrolled trade in their skins soared and numbers fell to around 3,000.

But when hunting was banned in 1971, the population started rising again – and fast.

They still are a protected species, but are no longer threatened.

The recovery of the saltwater crocodile has been so dramatic that Australia now faces a different dilemma: managing their numbers to keep people safe and the public onside.

“The worst thing that can happen is when people turn [against crocodiles],” explains croc expert Prof Grahame Webb.

“And then a politician will invariably come along with some knee-jerk reaction [that] they’re going to ‘solve’ the crocodile problem.”

The NT’s hot temperatures and abundant coastal surroundings create the perfect habitat for cold-blooded crocs, who need warmth to keep their body temperature constant.

There also are big saltie populations in Northern Queensland and Western Australia as well as in parts of South East Asia.

While most species of crocodile are harmless, the saltie is territorial and aggressive.

Fatal incidents are rare in Australia, but they do happen.

Last year, a 12-year-old was taken – the first death from a crocodile in the NT since 2018.

This is busiest time of year for Ewin and his colleagues.

Breeding season has just started, which means salties are on the move.

His team are on the water several times a week, checking the 24 crocodile traps surrounding the city of Darwin.

The area is popular for fishing, as well as for some brave swimmers.

The crocodiles that are removed from the harbour are most often killed, because if they are released elsewhere, they’re likely to return to the harbour.

“It’s our job to try and keep people as safe as we can,” says Ewin, who’s been doing his “dream job” for two years. Before that, he was a policeman.

“Obviously, we’re not going to capture every crocodile, but the more we take out of the harbour, the less risk there’s going to be an encounter with crocodiles and people.”

Another tool helping to keep the public safe is education.

The NT government goes into schools with its programme “Be Crocwise” – which teaches people how to behave responsibly around croc habitats.

It’s been such a success that Florida and the Philippines are now looking to borrow it, in order to better understand how the world’s most dangerous predators can live alongside humans with minimal interactions.

“We’re living in crocodile country, so it’s about how we [keep ourselves] safe around the waterways – how should we be responding?” says Natasha Hoffman, a ranger who runs the programme in the NT.

“If you’re on the boats when you’re fishing, you need to be aware that they’re there. They’re ambush hunters, they sit, watch and wait. If the opportunity is there for them to grab some food, that’s what they’re going to do.”

In the NT, mass culling is currently not on the table given the protected status of the species.

Last year though, the government approved a new 10-year crocodile management plan to help control the numbers, which increased the quota of crocs that can be killed annually from 300 to 1,200.

This is on top of the work Ewin’s team is doing to remove any crocodiles that pose a direct threat to humans.

Every time there’s a death, it reignites the debate about crocodiles living in close proximity to people.

In the days after the 12-year-old girl was taken last year, the Territory’s then leader Eva Lawler made it clear she wouldn’t allow the reptiles to outnumber the human population of the NT.

Currently that stands at 250,000, well above the number of wild crocs.

It’s a conversation that goes beyond the NT.

Queensland is home to about a quarter of the number of crocs that the Top End of NT has, but there are far more tourists, and more deaths, which means talk of culls sometimes feature in election debates.

The apex predators may court controversy, but they’re also a big draw card for the NT – for tourists but also for fashion brands keen to buy their leather.

Visitors can head to the Adelaide River to watch “croc jumping” – which involves salties being fed bits of meat on the end of a stick if they can leap out of the water for their audience.

“I’m supposed to tell you to put your [life-jackets] on,” jokes the head skipper at Spectacular Jumping Croc Cruises, Alex ‘Wookie’ Williams, as he explains the house rules of the boat.

“The bit I don’t have to tell you… [is that] life jackets are pretty useless out here.”

For Williams, who’s been obsessed with crocs since childhood, there’s plenty of opportunity to work alongside them.

“It’s boomed over the last 10 years or so,” he says of the number of tourists coming to the region.

Farming, which was brought in when hunting was banned, has also become an economic driver.

It’s estimated there are now about 150,000 crocodiles in captivity in the NT.

Fashion labels such as Louis Vuitton and Hermès – which sells a Birkin 35 croc handbag for as much as A$800,000 ($500,000; £398,000) – have all invested in the industry.

“The commercial incentives were effectively put in place to help people tolerate crocodiles, because we need a social licence to be able to use wildlife,” says Mick Burns, one of the NT’s most prominent farmers who works with luxury brands.

His office is in downtown Darwin. Spread across the floor is a massive croc skin. Pinned to the wall of the conference room, there is another skin that spans at least four metres.

Burns is also involved with a ranch in remote Arnhem Land, about 500km (310 miles) east of Darwin. There, he works with Aboriginal rangers to harvest and hatch croc eggs to sell their skins to the luxury goods industry.

One of the area’s Traditional Owners, Otto Bulmaniya Campion, who works alongside Burns, says more partnerships like theirs are crucial for ensuring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities share in the financial benefits of the industry.

For tens of thousands of years, crocs have played a significant role in Indigenous cultures, shaping their sacred stories, lives and livelihoods.

“My father, all the elders, used to go and harpoon crocodiles, get a skin, and go and trade it for tea, flour, and sugar. [However] there was no money at that time,” the Balngarra man says.

“Now, we want to see our own people handling reptiles.”

But not everyone is on board with farming as a practice – even if those involved say it helps with conservation.

The concern among animal activists lies in the way the crocs are held in captivity.

Despite being social animals, they are usually confined to individual pens to ensure their skins are flawless – as a scrap between two territorial crocs would almost certainly damage a valuable commodity.

Everyone in Darwin has a story about these formidable creatures, regardless of whether they want to see them hunted in greater numbers or more rigorously preserved.

But the threat they continue to pose is not imagined.

“If you go [swimming in] the Adelaide river next to Darwin, there’s a 100% chance you’ll be killed,” says Prof Webb matter-of-factly.

“The only question is whether it’s going to take five minutes or 10 minutes. I don’t think you’ll ever get to 15 – you’ll be torn apart,” he adds, pushing up his trouser leg to reveal a huge scar on his calf – evidence of a close encounter with one angry female nearly forty years ago as he was collecting eggs.

He is unapologetic about what he calls the pragmatism of authorities to manage numbers and make money out of crocs along the way – a way of life that, in the near future at least, is here to stay.

“We’ve done what very few people can do, which is take a very serious predator…and then manage them in such a way that the public is prepared to [tolerate] them.

“You try and get people in Sydney or London or New York to put up with a serious predator – they aren’t going to do it.”

Just hours before the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve, Jack Bech got on a phone call with his older brother Martin – an avid outdoorsman and former football star mostly known to friends and teammates as “Tiger”.

Jack, 22, was in Dallas visiting family members, while Tiger, a 28-year-old former Princeton alumnus who lived in New York, was in New Orleans, getting ready to celebrate the New Year.

“We just thought it was going to be another conversation,” he told the BBC. “I was showing him what we were eating, and he was showing us what he was eating.”

The two brothers would never speak again.

“I hung up the phone, and that was the last time I ever spoke with him,” Jack recalled.

Tiger was among the 14 people killed when an attacker ploughed through a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

• The rev of an engine and then screams – how revelry turned to mayhem in New Orleans
• Fans flock to Sugar Bowl in New Orleans after deadly New Year’s attack

The attacker, 42-year-old army veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar, was killed in a gunfight with police after he drove a pick-up truck into the crowds, according to authorities. Though he posted videos online proclaiming allegiance to the Islamic State group before the attack, FBI officials said they believe he was acting alone.

While the identities of all the victims have not been made public yet, a picture is slowly emerging of a group of mostly young people, many of whom – like Tiger – were Louisiana locals.

Jack – who remembers his brother as his best friend, role model and inspiration – says that the close-knit Bech family will never be the same.

Most of the family is in the town of Lafayette, about 136 miles (218km) away from New Orleans.

“This is something we’re going to have to deal with. Every time we wake up, and every time we go to sleep, it’s going to be something,” he added. “Every holiday, there’s going to be an empty seat at the table.”

But Tiger said that his brother “wouldn’t want us to grieve and mourn”. Instead, he has encouraged his family to remember him as “a fighter”.

“He’d want us to keep attacking life…he’d want us to go and be there for each other,” he said.

“I told my family that instead of seeing him a couple of times a year, he’ll be with us every moment,” Jack added. “Whenever we’re waking up and we’re going to sleep and we’re walking, when we’re at work, doing whatever, he’ll be with us.”

Among the other victims of the attack in the early morning hours of 1 January was Matthew Tenedorio, an audio-visual technician at New Orleans’ Caesars’ Superdome.

Tenedorio, who just turned 25 in October, had spent the earlier part of his evening at his brother’s home in the town of Slidell, about 35 minutes away from New Orleans.

With him were his father and mother – who just recently recovered from cancer.

His cousin, Christina Bounds, told the BBC that his family “begged” him not to go into New Orleans, fearful of the large crowd and potential dangers.

Despite their pleas, he went, along with two friends. When the news broke, his mother eventually got a hold of one of them.

“They said they were walking down Bourbon, and saw a body fall,” she said, noting that they now believe it was a body thrown into the air by the attacker’s truck.

Amid screams and gunshots, Tenedorio was separated from his friends.

His family says he was shot, and believe he was killed during the exchange of gunfire between the attacker and police officers on Bourbon Street.

The BBC is unable to independently verify this claim.

According to Ms Bounds, the family’s tragedy has been made more painful by the slow, nearly non-existent trickle of communications they’ve had with local authorities.

“We couldn’t get any information when my aunt [Tenedorio’s mother, Cathy] showed up at the hospital,” she said. “There has been no information from doctors, hospitals, or cops. Nobody.”

“They have zero information, and that’s the part that’s pissing everybody off. We don’t even know what happened,” Bounds added. “Was he carried out by the EMS? Was he in an ambulance? Did he die instantly?”

These answers, she added, would “help people accept” what happened.

“But now it’s like total shock,” she added. “It’s not registering.”

The family has started a GoFundMe page to gather funds for Tenedorio’s funeral expenses – which Ms Bounds said have been made difficult by his mother’s significant medical bills during her cancer diagnosis.

Another cousin of Tenedorio’s, Zach Colgan, remembers him as a “goofball” who was quick to make a joke, cared deeply about animals and was an avid storyteller.

“He cared. He was definitely a people person. A happy-go-lucky guy,” Mr Colgan told the BBC. “It’s sad that a terrorist attack took him…no family should ever have to bury their son, especially for something so senseless.”

Mr Colgan, who has experience working with law enforcement in Louisiana, says he believes officers have done the best they can in an extremely hectic casualty situation.

“I know it’s chaotic. But part of closure is getting answers. I know my aunt and uncle weren’t able to get much besides ‘yes – Matthew was killed’,” he said.

“It’d be nice to know a little bit more,” Mr Colgan added. “”If it was my kid, I’d want to know.”

Even as his family continues to search for answers, Mr Colgan says he hopes that the government and public’s focus continues to be on the victims, rather than on law enforcement’s response or what else could have been done to prevent the attack.

“I want every single one of them to be remembered,” he said. “They didn’t deserve this. No one deserves this.”

Two people have died and 18 others were injured after a small plane crashed into a commercial building in southern California, officials say.

Ten people were taken to hospital with injuries, the Fullerton Police Department said in a post on X on Thursday afternoon. Eight others were treated for injuries and released at the scene.

The single-engine Van’s RV-10 crashed at 14:15PST (20:15GMT), according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

Officials have provided no further details about how the crash occurred. It is unclear whether the two people who died were workers or were on board the plane.

Police say they are evacuating buildings in the area, and are asking the public to stay away from the crash site.

Congressman Lou Correa, who represents the area of Orange County, about 25 miles (40km) south of Los Angeles, said that the building that was struck is a furniture manufacturing business.

In a post on X, Correa said that at least a dozen of the victims are factory workers.

Aerial photos of the scene show parts of the plane inside the building. The crash also sparked a fire which was extinguished by fire crews.

Security footage recorded from a building across the street shows a fiery explosion, according to local news outlets.

“People are just shaken over the situation,” witness Mark Anderson told KRCA-TV.

“It was just a large boom, and then one of the people went out and said, ‘Oh my gosh, the building’s on fire.'”

The area where the plane crashed is near the Fullerton Municipal Airport, about 6 miles (10 kilometers) from Disneyland.

The plane appears to have been turning back to the airport shortly after takeoff, according to KRCA-TV.

Around 100 people were ultimately evacuated from the Michael Nicholas Designs furniture factory, according to the Orange County Register newspaper.

Juanita Ramirez, an employee, told the newspaper that she heard a loud bang before seeing a large ball of fire flying towards her.

“It felt like a dream,” she said.

This is the second plane to crash in the area in the past two months, according to CBS, the BBC’s US partner.

On 25 November, another plane crashed into a tree roughly one block away from this most recent crash. No major injures were reported in that crash.

An eight-year-old boy has been found alive after surviving five days in a game park inhabited by lions and elephants in northern Zimbabwe, according to a member of parliament.

The ordeal began when Tinotenda Pudu wandered 23 km (14 miles) from home into the “perilous” Matusadona Game Park, said Mashonaland West MP Mutsa Murombedzi on X.

He spent five days “sleeping on a rocky perch, amidst roaring lions, passing elephants, eating wild fruits”, she said.

Matusadona game park has about 40 lions. At one point, it had one of the highest lion population densities in Africa, according to African Parks.

The Zimbabwe Parks & Wildlife Management Authority confirmed the incident to the BBC but did not share any further details.

Murombedzi said the boy used his knowledge of the wild and survival skills to stay alive.

Tinotenda survived his ordeal by eating wild fruit. He also dug small wells into dry riverbeds with a stick to access drinking water – a skill taught in the drought-prone area.

Members of the local Nyaminyami community started a search party and beat drums each day to try and guide him back home.

But ultimately, it was park rangers who managed to find him.

On his fifth day in the wild, Tinotenda heard a ranger’s car and ran toward it, narrowly missing it, the MP said.

Luckily, the rangers returned, spotted “fresh little human footprints,” and searched the area until they found him.

“This was probably his last chance of being rescued after 5 days in the wilderness,” said the MP.

The park is over 1,470 sq km (570 sq miles) and is home to zebras, elephants, hippos, lions, and antelope.

Across social media, people have been praising the young boy for his resilience.

“This is beyond human comprehension,” one person wrote on X.

Another user wrote: “He’s going to have one hell of a story to tell when he gets back to school.”

• I blame the Church for my brother’s death, says Zimbabwean sister of UK child abuser’s victim
• Digging riverbeds in Zimbabwe in desperate search for water
• Parents beg US diplomat for apology over fatal crash