A judge has ordered that Donald Trump will be sentenced on 10 January in his hush-money case in New York – less than two weeks before he is set to be sworn in as president.

New York Justice Juan Merchan signalled he would not sentence Trump to jail time, probation or a fine, but instead give him an “unconditional discharge”, and wrote in his order that the president-elect could appear in person or virtually for the hearing.

Trump had attempted to use his presidential election victory to have the case against him dismissed.

His team criticised the judge’s decision to go forward with sentencing and said the “lawless” case should be dismissed “immediately”.

Trump was convicted in May of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a $130,000 (£105,000) payment to adult-film star Stormy Daniels.

The charges related to attempts to cover up reimbursements to his ex-lawyer, Michael Cohen, who in the final days of the 2016 election campaign paid off the adult-film star to remain silent about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump.

The president-elect has denied all wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty, arguing the case was an attempt to harm his 2024 presidential campaign.

On Friday, Trump’s spokesperson criticised Judge Merchan’s sentencing order, saying it was part of a “witch hunt”.

“President Trump must be allowed to continue the presidential transition process and to execute the vital duties of the presidency, unobstructed by the remains of this or any remnants of the witch hunts,” Steven Cheung said.

“There should be no sentencing, and President Trump will continue fighting against these hoaxes until they are all dead.”

In his latest motion against the case, Trump had argued the case would hang over him during his presidency and impede his ability to govern.

Justice Merchan said he had been advised of several measures he could employ that could assuage Trump’s concerns about being distracted by a criminal case while serving as president that fell short of the “extreme remedy” of overturning the jury’s verdict.

His options included delaying the sentencing until Trump, 78, leaves the White House in 2029, or guaranteeing a sentence that would not involve prison time.

Trump had initially, and unsuccessfully, argued the case against him ran afoul of a Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity.

In July, the country’s top court ruled that presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution for “official actions” they take while in office.

However, last month Justice Merchan ruled Trump’s hush money conviction was valid.

Trump is currently set to be the first convicted felon to serve in the White House.

He may attempt to appeal against the conviction after the sentencing.

While falsifying business records is punishable by up to four years in prison in the US, there is no minimum sentence and incarceration is not required.

Even before his election victory, legal experts thought it was unlikely Trump would face jail time given his age and his legal record.

Trump has also been charged in three other state and federal criminal cases: one involving classified documents and two relating to his alleged efforts to overturn his loss in the election of 2020.

The president-elect was initially scheduled to be sentenced on 26 November, but Justice Merchan pushed the date back after Trump won the presidential election.

The stand-off started long before dawn. By the time we arrived in the dark, an army of police had pushed back suspended president Yoon Suk Yeol’s angry supporters, who’d camped out overnight hoping to stop his arrest. Some of those I spoke to were crying, others wailing, at what they feared was about to unfold.

As dawn broke, the first officers ran up to the house, but were instantly thwarted – blocked by a wall of soldiers protecting the compound. Reinforcements came, but could not help. The doors to Yoon’s house stayed tightly sealed, his security team refusing the police officers entry.

For several hours the investigators waited, the crowds outside growing more agitated – until, after a series of scuffles between the police and security officials, they decided their mission was futile, and gave up.

This is totally uncharted territory for South Korea. It is the first time a sitting president has ever faced arrest, so there is no rule book to follow – but the current situation is nonetheless astonishing.

When Yoon was impeached three weeks ago, he was supposedly stripped of his power. So to have law enforcement officers trying to carry out an arrest – which they have legal warrant for – only to be blocked by Yoon’s security team raises serious and uncomfortable questions about who is in charge here.

The investigating officers said they abandoned efforts to arrest Yoon not only because it looked impossible, but because they were concerned for their safety. They said 200 soldiers and security officers linked arms, forming a human wall to block the entrance to the presidential residence, with some carrying guns.

This is arguably part of Yoon’s plan, leveraging a system he himself designed. Before he declared martial law last month – a plan we now know he cooked up months earlier – he surrounded himself with close friends and loyalists, injecting them into positions of power.

One of those people is the current head of his security team, who took up the job in September.

But although alarming, this situation is not entirely surprising. Yoon has refused to cooperate with the authorities over this investigation, ignoring every request to come in for questioning.

This is how things reached this point, where investigators felt they had no choice but to bring him in by force. Yoon is being investigated for one of the most serious political crimes there is: inciting an insurrection, which is punishable by life in prison or death.

Yoon has also spurred on his supporters, who have gathered in force outside his residence every day since the arrest warrant was issued. He sent them a letter on New Years’ Day thanking them for “working hard” to defend both him and the country.

Although most people in South Korea are upset and angry at Yoon’s decision to impose martial law, a core of his supporters have stayed loyal. Some even camped overnight, in freezing temperatures, to try and stop police reaching his home.

Many told me this morning they were prepared to die to protect Yoon, and repeated the same unfounded conspiracy theories that Yoon himself has floated – that last year’s election was rigged, and the country had been infiltrated by pro-North Korea forces. They held up signs reading “stop the steal”, a slogan they chanted over and over.

Attention is also now on South Korea’s acting President Choi Sang-mok, and how far his powers extend; whether he could and should sack the president’s security chief and force the team to allow his arrest. The opposition party says police should be arresting anyone who stands in their way.

Although investigators have until 6 January to attempt this arrest again – this is when the warrant runs out – it is unlikely they will go in once more without changing their strategy or negotiating with the security team in advance. They will want to avoid a repeat of today’s failure.

They also have to contend with the throngs of Yoon’s supporters, who now feel victorious and empowered. They believe they are largely responsible for the authorities’ climb down. “We’ve won, we did it,” they have been singing all afternoon.

As their confidence grows, so will their numbers, especially with the weekend approaching.

A British national was among at least 14 people killed in the vehicle attack in New Orleans on New Year’s Day, the Foreign Office has confirmed.

He was named by the Metropolitan Police as Edward Pettifer, 31, of Chelsea, London.

In a statement, the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office said it was supporting the victim’s family.

During the attack, a man in a pick-up truck ploughed through crowds on the city’s Bourbon Street before being killed by police.

The New Orleans coroner gave Mr Pettifer’s preliminary cause of death as “blunt force injuries” suffered on Bourbon Street, PA reports.

In a statement, Mr Pettifer’s family said: “The entire family are devastated at the tragic news of Ed’s death in New Orleans. He was a wonderful son, brother, grandson, nephew and a friend to so many.

“We will all miss him terribly. Our thoughts are with the other families who have lost their family members due to this terrible attack. We request that we can grieve the loss of Ed as a family in private. Thank you.”

A well-known American college football player, a young aspiring nurse and a mother of a four-year-old are also among the victims.

Their names were released by families and relatives before the authorities in the US completed post-mortem examinations.

The attack is believed to have been carried out by a 42-year-old Texas resident and US Army veteran.

After driving the truck through the crowds the suspect is said to have got out and fired a weapon before being shot dead by police.

The FBI says an Islamic State group flag was found inside the vehicle.

Two improvised explosive devices were also found nearby, according to police.

• ‘No-one deserves this’: Victims’ families seek answers
• What we know about the New Orleans attack and driver
• What CCTV and social media videos reveal about the attack
• The rev of an engine and then screams – how revelry turned to mayhem in New Orleans

The suspect, named as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, is believed to have acted alone in a “premeditated and evil act”, the FBI has said.

At least 39 other people were injured during the attack, which took place in the city’s French Quarter – a bustling nightspot popular with locals and tourists – at around 03:15 (09:15 GMT) on Wednesday.

Some of the injured have been discharged from hospital but more than a dozen remain, with some being treated in the ICU.

Bourbon Street was opened to the public on Thursday morning ahead of the Sugar Bowl, a much-anticipated college American football match between Notre Dame and the University of Georgia, that draws thousands of attendees.

There were more than 100 police officers and they were armed with a warrant, but South Korean authorities failed to arrest suspended President Yoon Suk Yeol after a six-hour deadlock outside his home.

That’s how long the confrontation with Yoon’s security team lasted as they formed a human wall and used vehicles to block the arrest team’s path, according to local media.

It has been an unprecedented month for South Korean politics. Yoon’s shocking yet short-lived martial law order was followed by an impeachment vote against him. Then came the criminal investigation, his refusal to appear for questioning and, earlier this week, a warrant for his arrest.

The right-wing leader still has a strong support base. Thousands of them turned up outside his home on Friday morning to oppose his arrest.

But, by many accounts, Yoon is now a disgraced leader impeached by parliament and suspended from office, he awaits the decision of the constitutional court which can remove him from office.

So why has it proven so difficult for police to arrest him?

Although Yoon has been stripped of his presidential powers – after lawmakers voted to impeach him – he is still entitled to a security detail.

And those men played a key role in blocking the arrest on Friday.

The presidential security service (PSS) could have acted out of loyalty to Yoon or under “a misguided understanding of their legal and constitutional role”, says Mason Richey, an associate professor at Seoul’s Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.

Given that Yoon has been suspended, the PSS should be taking directions from acting President Choi Sang-mok. “They have either not been instructed by acting President Choi to stand down, or they are refusing his orders to do so,” says Assoc Prof Richey.

Some experts believe the security officers were showing “unconditional loyalty” to Yoon, rather than the office itself. They point to the fact that the PSS’s chief Park Jong-joon was appointed to the job by Yoon last September.

“It may well be the case that Yoon has seeded the organisation with hardline loyalists in preparation for precisely this eventuality,” says US-based lawyer and Korea expert Christopher Jumin Lee.

And that Park’s predecessor was former defence minister Kim Yong-hyun, who is accused of advising Yoon to impose martial law. He is currently being held for questioning as part of the criminal investigation into Yoon.

The “simplest” solution, Mr Lee says, is for acting president Choi to order the PSS to stand down in the interim.

“If he is unwilling to do so, that may be grounds for his own impeachment by the National Assembly,” he added.

Choi, who is the finance minister, had stepped in to lead the country after lawmakers voted to impeach Yoon’s first successor, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo.

This political stalemate also reflects the polarisation in South Korean politics between those who support Yoon, and his decision to impose martial law, and those who oppose it. And the differences don’t necessarily end there.

The vast majority of South Koreans agree that Yoon’s declaration of martial law on 3 Dec was wrong and that he needs to be held accountable, says Duyeon Kim, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, but they cannot agree on what accountability looks like.

“The actors involved disagree over process, procedure and their legal basis, which is adding to the current political uncertainty,” she explains.

That uncertainty is also creating tense stand-offs like the one that unfolded on Friday in and outside Yoon’s presidential residence, where his supporters have been camping out for days, leading to heated speeches and even skirmishes with police.

Law enforcement could return with more agents and use force but that would be “highly dangerous,” Assoc Prof Mason said.

The PSS too is heavily armed, so arresting officers would be looking to avoid any escalation.

“What happens if the police show up with additional warrants calling for the arrest of PSS personnel, [the PSS] defy those warrants as well and then brandish their guns?” Mr Lee asks.

Police have now said they are investigating the PSS director and his deputy for obstructing them – so there could be more charges and arrest warrants coming.

The fallout from Yoon’s martial law order is also a challenge for the Corruption Investigation Office (CIO) that is investigating him.

It has only been operating for four years. It was created in response to public anger over former president Park Geun-hye who was impeached, removed from office and later jailed over a corruption scandal.

While South Korean presidents have been jailed before, Yoon is the first one to face arrest before he steps down.

Investigators have until 6 January to arrest Yoon before the current warrant expires.

They may attempt to arrest Yoon again over the weekend, although the weekend could pose a bigger challenge if the crowds of supporters grow. They can also apply for a new warrant and try to detain him again.

Given how far South Korea has now slid into uncharted territory, the uncertainty is likely to continue.

China is now a country where a high-school handyman has a master’s degree in physics; a cleaner is qualified in environmental planning; a delivery driver studied philosophy, and a PhD graduate from the prestigious Tsinghua University ends up applying to work as an auxiliary police officer.

These are real cases in a struggling economy – and it is not hard to find more like them.

“My dream job was to work in investment banking,” says Sun Zhan as he prepares to start his shift as a waiter in a hot pot restaurant in the southern city of Nanjing.

The 25-year-old recently graduated with a master’s degree in finance. He was hoping to “make a lot of money” in a high-paying role but adds, “I looked for such a job, with no good results”.

China is churning out millions of university graduates every year but, in some fields, there just aren’t enough jobs for them.

The economy has been struggling and stalling in major sectors, including real estate and manufacturing.

Youth unemployment had been nudging 20% before the way of measuring the figures was altered to make the situation look better. In August 2024, it was still 18.8%. The latest figure for November has come down to 16.1%.

Many university graduates who’ve found it hard to get work in their area of selected study are now doing jobs well below what they’re qualified for, leading to criticism from family and friends.

When Sun Zhan became a waiter, this was met with displeasure by his parents.

“My family’s opinions are a big concern for me. After all, I studied for many years and went to a pretty good school,” he says.

He says his family is embarrassed by his job choice and would prefer he tried to become a public servant or official, but, he adds, “this is my choice”.

Yet he has a secret plan. He’s going to use his time working as a waiter to learn the restaurant business so he can eventually open his own place.

He thinks if he ends up running a successful business, the critics in his family will have to change their tune.

“The job situation is really, really challenging in mainland China, so I think a lot of young people have to really readjust their expectations,” says Professor Zhang Jun from the City University of Hong Kong.

She says many students are seeking higher degrees in order to have better prospects, but then the reality of the employment environment hits them.

“The job market has been really tough,” says 29-year-old Wu Dan, who is currently a trainee in a sports injury massage clinic in Shanghai.

“For many of my master’s degree classmates, it’s their first time hunting for a job and very few of them have ended up landing one.”

She also didn’t think this was where she would end up with a finance degree from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Prior to this, she worked at a futures trading company in Shanghai, where she was specialising in agricultural products.

When she returned to the mainland after finishing her studies in Hong Kong, she wanted to work in a private equity firm and did get some offers but was not happy with the conditions.

That she didn’t accept any of them and instead started training in sports medicine was not welcomed by her family.

“They thought I had such a good job before, and my educational background is quite competitive. They didn’t understand why I chose a low-barrier job that requires me to do physical work for little money.”

She admits that she couldn’t survive in Shanghai on her current salary, if not for the fact that her partner owns their home.

At first, she didn’t know anyone who supported her current career path, but her mother has been coming around after she recently treated her for her bad back, significantly reducing the pain she had been experiencing.

Now the one-time finance student says she feels that a life working in the investment world actually doesn’t suit her after all.

She says she is interested in sports injuries, likes the job and, one day, wants to open her own clinic.

Chinese graduates are being forced to change their perceptions regarding what might be considered “a good position”, Prof Zhang says.

In what might be seen as “a warning sign” for young people, “many companies in China, including many tech companies, have laid off quite a lot of staff”, she adds.

She also says that significant areas of the economy, which had once been big employers of graduates, are offering sub-standard conditions, and decent opportunities in these fields are disappearing altogether.

While they work out what to do in the future, unemployed graduates have also been turning to the film and television industry.

Big budget movies need lots of extras to fill out their scenes and, in China’s famous film production town of Hengdian, south-west of Shanghai, there are plenty of young people looking for acting work.

“I mainly stand beside the protagonist as eye candy. I am seen next to the lead actors but I have no lines,” says Wu Xinghai, who studied electronic information engineering, and was playing a bodyguard in a drama.

The 26-year old laughs that his good looks have helped him become employed as an extra.

He says people often come to Hengdian and work for just a few months at a time. He says this is a temporary fix for him too, till he finds something permanent. “I don’t make much money but I’m relaxed and feel free.”

“This is the situation in China, isn’t it? The moment you graduate, you become unemployed,” says Li, who didn’t want to give his first name.

He majored in film directing and screenwriting and has also signed up to work as an extra for a few months.

“I’ve come here to look for work while I’m still young. When I get older, I’ll find a stable job.”

But many fear they’ll never land a decent job and may have to settle for a role unlike what they had imagined.

The lack of confidence in the trajectory of the Chinese economy means young people often don’t know what the future will hold for them.

Wu Dan says even her friends who are employed can feel quite lost.

“They are quite confused and feel that the future is unclear. Those with jobs aren’t satisfied with them. They don’t know for how long they can hold onto these positions. And if they lose their current job, what else can they do?”

She says she will just “go with the flow and gradually explore what I really want to do”.

Family members of an Indian nurse who is on death row in war-torn Yemen say they are pinning their hopes on a last-ditch effort to save her.

Nimisha Priya, 34, was sentenced to death for the murder of a local man – her former business partner Talal Abdo Mahdi – whose chopped-up body was discovered in a water tank in 2017.

Lodged in the central jail of capital Sanaa, she is set to be executed soon, with Mahdi al-Mashat, president of the rebel Houthis’ Supreme Political Council, approving her punishment this week.

Under the Islamic judicial system, known as Sharia, the only way to stop the execution now is securing a pardon from the victim’s family. For months, Nimisha’s relatives and supporters have been trying to do this by raising diyah, or blood money, to be paid to Mahdi’s family, and negotiations have been going on.

But with time running out, supporters say their hopes rest entirely on the family’s decision.

With the presidential sanction coming in, the public prosecutor’s office will once again seek consent from Mahdi’s family and ask if they have any objections to the execution, said Samuel Jerome, a Yemen-based social worker who holds a power of attorney on behalf of Nimisha’s mother.

“If they say they do not want to or can pardon her, the sentence would be immediately stopped,” he said.

“Forgiveness is the first step. Whether the family accepts the blood money comes only after that.”

Under Yemen’s laws, Nimisha’s family cannot directly contact the family of the victim and must hire negotiators.

Subhash Chandran, a lawyer who has represented Nimisha’s family in India in the past, told the BBC that the family had already crowdfunded $40,000 (£32,268) for the victim’s family. The money has been given in two tranches to the lawyers hired by the Indian government to negotiate the case (a delay in sending the second tranche affected the negotiations, Mr Jerome says).

“We now need to explore the scope for discussions with the [victim’s] family, which is possible only with the Indian government’s support,” Mr Chandran said.

India’s foreign ministry has said they are aware of Nimisha’s situation and are extending all possible help to the family.

Her family is anxious but also hopeful.

“Nimisha has no knowledge of what is happening beyond the gates of prison,” said her husband Tony Thomas, who spoke to her hours before the approval of the death sentence. “The only thing she wants to know is if our daughter is fine.”

Nimisha’s mother is currently in Sanaa, having travelled there last year after a court in India allowed her to go to the region controlled by Houthi rebels. She has met her daughter twice in prison since then.

The first reunion was very emotional. “Nimisha saw me… she said I had become weak and asked me to keep courage, and that God would save her. She asked me not to be sad,” her mother Prema Kumari told the BBC.

The second time, Ms Kumari was accompanied by two nuns who held prayers for her daughter in prison.

Nimisha was barely 19 when she went to Yemen.

The daughter of a poorly-paid domestic worker, she wanted to change her family’s financial situation, and worked as a nurse in a government-run hospital in Sanaa for some years.

In 2011, she returned home – Kochi city in southern India – and married Mr Thomas, a tuk-tuk driver.

The couple moved to Yemen together shortly afterwards. But financial struggles forced Mr Thomas to return to India with their baby daughter.

Tired of low-paying hospital jobs, Nimisha decided to open her own clinic in Yemen.

As the law there mandated that she have a local partner, she opened the clinic jointly with Mahdi, a store owner.

The two were initially on good terms – when Nimisha briefly visited India for her daughter’s baptism, Mahdi accompanied her.

“He seemed like a nice man when he came to our house, ” Mr Thomas told the BBC.

But Mahdi’s attitude, Mr Thomas alleged, “suddenly changed” when the civil war broke out in Yemen in 2014.

At that time, Nimisha was trying to finalise paperwork so her husband and daughter could join her again.

But after the war broke out, the Indian government banned all travel to Yemen, making it impossible for them to go be with her.

Over the coming days, thousands of Indians were evacuated from the country, but Nimisha chose to stay, as she had taken out huge loans to open her clinic.

It was around then that Nimisha started to complain about Mahdi’s behaviour, including allegations of physical torture, Mr Thomas said.

A petition in court, filed by a group called Save Nimisha Priya International Action Council, alleged that Mahdi snatched all her money, seized her passport and even threatened her with a gun.

After Mahdi’s body was discovered in 2017, the police charged Nimisha with killing him by giving him an “overdose of sedatives”, and allegedly chopping up his body.

Nimisha denied the allegations. In court, her lawyer argued that she had tried to anaesthetise Mahdi just to retrieve her passport from him, but that the dose was accidentally increased.

In 2020, a local court sentenced Nimisha to death. Three years later, in 2023, her family challenged the decision in Yemen’s Supreme Court, but their appeal was rejected.

Even with so many twists and turns, the family is not willing to give up hope.

“My heart says that we can arrive at a settlement and save Nimisha’s life,” Mr Thomas said.

More than anything, he said he was worried about their daughter, now 13, who had “never experienced a mother’s love”.

“They speak on the phone every week and my daughter gets upset if she misses the call,” Mr Thomas said.

“She needs her mother. What will she do without her?”

Republican Mike Johnson survived a razor-thin vote to remain House Speaker in a drama-filled, highly-anticipated vote that marked the start of complete Republican control in Washington.

Johnson could only afford to lose two votes because of the tight margin of control Republicans have in Congress. While he came close to losing re-election, he survived the vote after some lobbying.

President-elect Donald Trump previously endorsed Johnson for the role of House speaker, saying “a win for Mike today will be a big win for the Republican Party”.

The House Speaker is one of the most powerful posts in Washington, controlling the lower chamber of the US Congress, and second in line to the presidency after the vice president.

Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, was backed by nearly all Republicans in his bid for re-election.

But that success was not without some controversary.

The vote for Speaker requires a candidate to receive the support of a majority of the House – 218 votes. But because of a razor-thin Republican majority in the House, Johnson could only stand to face opposition from two Republicans.

Johnson already faced one hard “no” from Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky.

“You can pull all my fingernails out. You can shove bamboo up in them. You can start cutting off my fingers. I am not voting for Mike Johnson,” Massie said Thursday in a television interview.

Several other Republicans had put themselves in the “undecided” column heading into the vote.

During the initial votes, three of those undecided Republicans voted for other lawmakers over Johnson, preventing him from reaching the 218 votes he needed.

Three lawmakers – Massie, South Carolina Congressman Ralph Norman and Texas Congressman Keith Self – named other options to serve as the next speaker.

That led Johnson to flee the House floor and lobby members to back him. Some 45 minutes later, he returned to the House chamber.

Both Norman and Self changed their votes to back Johnson.

The gavel struck and Johnson won re-election.

Norman told reporters after the election that he changed his vote after speaking with Johnson in a room outside the House chamber.

He said Johnson told him there would be more conservatives at the table during negotiations, less deals made between congressional and committee leadership without outside input from other lawmakers and enough time to read bill text before votes are scheduled.

“When we left that small room, he convinced me and Keith (Self),” Norman said. “He (Johnson) said I will do that, just give me the chance. He knew and I knew if it went to the second ballot it was going to get tougher and tougher.”

Another player got involved throughout the tense speaker election – President-elect Donald Trump.

Norman spoke with Trump twice during the speaker vote.

The first time was when fellow Republican Nancy Mace of South Carolina handed him her phone to speak with the president-elect. The second was while meeting with Johnson, Self and several others.

“(Trump) is as enthusiastic,” Norman said of the call with the presidnet-elect. “He said, ‘Norman, we have the most opportunity we’ve ever had – the House, Senate, a trifecta, you don’t get that opportunity.’ I said, ‘Mr. President I agree with you, I’m just hoping Mike has got the oomph to pull this off.”

Norman said the president-elect also said Johnson is the only one who has the likeability to win the speaker election.

Self told reporters after the vote that he spoke with Trump before and after the speaker election.

He said he changed his mind when Johnson pledged there would be more members, including from the far-right House Freedom Caucus, at the negotiating table.

“We shored up the reconciliation team because we know that this will be a heavy lift to get the Trump agenda across the line in the reconciliation line,” he said.

Friday marked the first day of the 119th Congress. Republicans have unified control of Washington, with majorities in both the House and Senate and with Trump returning to the White House later in January.

During his acceptance speech, Johnson said that this Congress would champion the idea of America first – a slogan promoted by Trump.

After Trump’s re-election, he said Americans are demanding their interests are put first again.

“And we will,” Johnson said.

Voting in a new speaker is the first requirement of the new session of Congress, and without that leader in place, the chamber cannot move on to any other function.

This has led to chaos in the past – including when former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had to go through 15 rounds of voting before he was confirmed to the leadership post.

Minutes before the vote on Friday, Johnson posted on X several of his plans, if elected.

He promised to create a “working group comprised of independent experts” to work with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that Trump named Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Republican Vivek Ramaswamy to lead.

That working group, he said, would review existing audits of federal agencies and entities created by Congress and issue a report.

“If we want to restore fiscal responsibility, we must start by being transparent about the dollars that are spent, address the issues we find, and then hold those accountable who have misspent funds,” Johnson wrote.

Chile’s President Gabriel Boric has become the first leader in the Americas to visit the South Pole, after arriving at a US base there.

The president said his visit to the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station reaffirmed Chile’s own claim to sovereignty over part of the Antarctic.

“This is a milestone for us,” Boric said in footage shown on Chilean television, before adding “it’s the first time a Chilean president has come to the South Pole and talked about Chile’s Antarctic mission”.

Boric travelled with a group of scientists and several cabinet members, including ministers for the armed forces and the environment, his office said.

Boric said his visit underlined Chile’s determination to play a key role in scientific projects in the area, especially those involving climate change.

In a statement, the government said research centres, universities, diplomats and the armed forces had united to ensure that Chile becomes the world’s gateway to the Antarctic.

Leftist President Gabriel Boric won Chile’s presidential election in 2021 to become the country’s youngest ever leader, at 35 years of age.

Only two other world leaders had visited the South Pole before Boric: the prime ministers of New Zealand and Norway.

Several countries, including Chile, the UK, France, Norway, Australia, New Zealand and Argentina, have laid claim to parts of Antarctica and many more have a presence there.

Antarctica is not a country: it has no government and no indigenous population. Instead, the entire continent is set aside as a scientific preserve.

The Antarctic Treaty, which came into force in 1961, enshrines an ideal of intellectual exchange.

The Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station is named after Roald Amundsen – the Norwegian explorer who led the first expedition to the South Pole – and also Robert Scott, the UK explorer whom Amundsen beat to the pole in 1911.

Scott and four companions died on the return leg of their trek after being caught in a blizzard.

The man identified inside the Tesla Cybertruck that exploded outside the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas on Wednesday morning had no animosity toward President-elect Donald Trump and likely suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the FBI.

Matthew Livelsberger, an active-duty US army member from Colorado who was found deceased inside the vehicle, also grappled with other family issues or personal grievances, FBI officials said.

Officials also emphasised the deadly truck attack in New Orleans that left 14 dead earlier on New Year’s Day was unrelated to the explosion in Las Vegas.

Police said the Las Vegas blast appeared to be a “tragic case of suicide”.

“There is no evidence that these two events are connected,” Las Vegas FBI agent Spencer Evans told reporters on Friday as officials laid out new information on the incident.

“Investigative steps have discovered, and information of the Army indicates, that he likely suffered from PTSD, and we’re also aware that there were potential other family issues or personal grievances in his own life that may have been contributing factors,” Mr Evans said.

Data uncovered from Mr Livelsberger’s phone, including a series of notes he appeared to have written, suggest that the 37-year-old suffered from PTSD related to his time in combat, officials said.

His body was found inside the charred Tesla, which exploded from fireworks that Mr Livelsberger had purchased on his way to Las Vegas from Colorado.

Mr Livelsberger’s identity had been confirmed via a DNA sample that authorities obtained from a family member.

Police said he also appeared to have suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

In the digital notes recovered by police, Livelsberger also mentioned political grievances, calling on his fellow Army officers to criticise military leadership.

In another note, police said he specifically wrote that the incident was “not a terrorist attack” but a “wake-up call”.

Mr Livelsberger was a decorated Special Forces intelligence sergeant who was serving in Germany, but was on approved leave at the time of the blast.

His father told BBC’s US partner CBS News 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 nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

Mr Livelsberger’s ex-girlfriend told the Washington Post that he had once told her he suffered a traumatic brain injury during his overseas deployment. Alicia Arritt, a 39-year-old nurse who dated Mr Livelsberger on and off from 2018 to 2021, said he admitted to struggling with memory, concentration and intense guilt over his actions on the battlefield.

The Daily Beast reported that Mr Livelsberger was a big supporter of Trump. A senior law enforcement official who spoke with Mr Livelsberger’s family told the outlet that he voted for Trump in November’s election.

Police had been able to track his movements in the days leading up to the incident thanks to surveillance cameras and other data obtained from the Tesla vehicle itself.

They said that Mr Livelsberger had rented the Tesla Cybertruck from a mobile application called Turo in Colorado on 28 December, and had driven it more than 800 miles to Las Vegas. He also legally purchased two firearms during that period, which were recovered inside the car.

Sheriff Kevin McMahill with the Las Vegas Police Department said authorities have not determined why Mr Livelsberger chose the site outside the Trump Hotel for the scene of the explosion, but added that evidence suggests it was one of multiple locations he had considered.

Seven people suffered minor injuries from the blast. All have since been released from hospital, Sheriff McMahill said.

He added that the investigation remains ongoing, and that police “are barely scratching the surface” of data they have recovered from the man’s devices.

In Donald Trump’s first term, governments around the world braced for his morning social media posts. What policy would be reversed, what insult thrown? Four years on, diplomats are once more getting twitchy when the sun rises on America’s east coast.

Back then, they learned to take Trump – as the adage had it – “seriously but not literally”. Despite many campaign promises, he did not take the US out of Nato or lock up Hilary Clinton. But can ministers stay so sanguine a second time around?

Trump’s latest morning salvo criticised the UK government’s decision to increase taxes on oil and gas firms working in the North Sea, in part to help fund renewable energy.

On his platform, Truth Social, Trump responded to a report about a US oil firm leaving the region, saying: “The U.K. is making a very big mistake. Open up the North Sea. Get rid of Windmills!”

Was this merely a familiar defence of a US firm by Trump and a repetition of his pro-fossil fuel instincts? Or was it evidence of a greater willingness by the president-elect to intervene in an ally’s own domestic policies?

The main difference – four years on – is that Trump is no longer alone at the keyboard; his increasingly powerful fellow traveller, Elon Musk, is even more prolific, using his own platform, X, to attack the British government across the board. He has criticised its handling of last summer’s riots, the running of the economy and now especially its attitude towards child abuse scandals.

Musk has issued a torrent of tweets attacking Sir Keir Starmer personally, accusing the prime minister of not doing enough to prosecute child grooming gangs while he was the director of public prosecutions.

British politicians cannot stem these posts from across the Atlantic. But they can control their reaction. During Trump’s first term, governments – and news desks – learned to pause and take a moment before responding to – or reporting – the latest electronic missives from the White House.

Thus far the Conservatives have chosen to engage with and echo Musk’s agenda. The party leader, Kemi Badenoch, said a full national inquiry into organised grooming gangs was “long overdue”.

But the Conservatives balked at Musk’s apparent support for the jailed far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson.

Musk has shared several posts on X calling for the release of Yaxley-Lennon, who was jailed in October after admitting contempt of court by repeating false claims against a Syrian refugee.

Alicia Kearns, the Conservative shadow safeguarding minister, said it was “frankly dangerous” of Musk to be “lionising people like Tommy Robinson”.

As for Labour, it seems keen to avoid picking a fight with one of the world’s richest men who could one day fund a rival political party. Nigel Farage’s Reform Party has said Musk is among “a number of billionaires” interested in donating money for their campaigns.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting said Musk’s comments about child grooming scandals were “misjudged and certainly misinformed” but asked the billionaire to work with the UK government to tackle online child abuse.

UK politicians are not alone in being the target of Musk’s increasingly eccentric interventions. He has described Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany as a “fool” and the country’s head of state, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, as “an anti-democratic tyrant”. He has also called President Justin Trudeau of Canada “an insufferable tool” who “won’t be in power for much longer”.

So the challenge once again for politicians in Britain and around the world is to work out which, if any, of these social media outbursts and interventions merit a response.

In Whitehall, there is some hope the arrival of Lord Mandelson as the new British ambassador might help stem the flow of personal vituperation across the Atlantic.

There is also weight being placed on Trump’s affection for the UK and the Royal Family; he had a good meeting with the Prince of Wales in Paris in December after the opening of Notre Dame.

Other officials are even musing that the relationship between Trump and Musk might prove too combustible in office.

But for now officials are monitoring their timelines closely. US social media diplomacy is back and some of it is heading our way.

US President Joe Biden has blocked the takeover of US Steel by a bigger Japanese firm, delivering on a political promise despite fears the move could hurt Washington’s relations with Tokyo and scare off other foreign investors.

Biden cited threats to national security in rejecting the Nippon Steel purchase, saying US ownership was important to keeping the US steel industry and its supply chains strong.

His intervention follows pressure from the United Steelworkers union, which had opposed a transaction that was a sensitive political issue in the 2024 US presidential campaign.

Nippon Steel and US Steel said Biden’s decision showed the review of the deal had been “corrupted” for political gain.

The two companies, which had previously threatened to sue the government if the deal did not happen, on Friday said they would take “appropriate action to protect their legal rights”.

“We believe that President Biden has sacrificed the future of American steelworkers for his own political agenda,” the companies said in a statement, adding that the move sent “a chilling message to any company based in a US allied country contemplating significant investment in the United States”.

Japanese officials also said they were disappointed by the decision.

“There are strong concerns from the economic circles of both Japan and the US, and especially from Japanese industry regarding future investments between Japan and the US, and the Japanese government has no choice but to take this matter seriously,” Japanese industry and trade minister Yoji Muto said in a statement to Reuters.

Biden’s decision comes a year after Nippon Steel first announced the $14.9bn (£12bn) deal to buy its smaller Pennsylvania-based rival.

It raises significant questions about the path forward for the company, a 124-year-old name that was once a symbol of American industrial might but is now much diminished.

It spent months looking for a buyer before announcing the tie-up with Nippon Steel, the world’s fourth largest steelmaker, in December 2023.

US Steel has warned that it might have to close factories without the investment that would come with a new owner, concerns that had been echoed by some workers and local politicians.

The two companies had pledged not to cut jobs and made other concessions in an effort to win support for the deal. Just this week, they offered to fund a workforce training centre – and reportedly give the government the right to veto potential production cuts.

But the arguments failed to convince Biden, who had come out in opposition to the deal early last year, as election season heated up and with the key swing state of Pennsylvania poised to play a key role.

The transaction was also criticised by President-elect Donald Trump and the incoming vice-president, JD Vance, whose appeals to union workers formed a big part of their campaign message.

The US government panel charged with reviewing the deal for national security risks failed to reach a consensus by late December, leaving the decision to Biden, who was required to act within a 15-day deadline.

In his announcement on Friday he said foreign ownership presented a risk and ordered the companies to abandon the deal within 30 days.

“A strong domestically owned and operated steel industry represents an essential national security priority and is critical for resilient supply chains,” he said.

“That is because steel powers our country: our infrastructure, our auto industry, and our defence industrial base. Without domestic steel production and domestic steel workers, our nation is less strong and less secure.”

The United Steelworkers union called the decision the “right move for our members and our national security”, saying its opposition had been driven by concerns about the long-term viability of its industry.

“We’re grateful for President Biden’s willingness to take bold action to maintain a strong domestic steel industry and for his lifelong commitment to American workers,” President David McCall said.

Prof Stephen Nagy, of the Department of Politics International Studies at the International Christian University in Tokyo, called Biden’s decision “political”, noting that the administration from its start promised a foreign policy “for the middle class”.

“This was a direct response and continuation of the Trump MAGA agenda of Making America Great Again,” he said. “The Biden administration couldn’t appear weak on foreign businesses, whether it’s an ally or adversary.”

White House spokesperson John Kirby dismissed suggestions the move could damage American relationships with allies, saying Biden had made clear the decision was not “about Japan”,

“This is about US steel-making and keeping one of the largest steel producers in the United States an American-owned company,” he said at a press conference.

Shares in US Steel fell more than 5% on Friday.

But analysts said the move might not mark the end of the deal. Biden’s order says the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States can extend the 30-day deadline to scrap the transaction.

Prof Nagy said he thought the companies could decide to try again under Trump, potentially offering different terms that would allow the new president to claim he had negotiated a better deal.

Political analyst Terry Haines of Pangaea Policy also said Trump, despite his criticism of the deal, might have reason to revisit the decision.

“One of the things that’s difficult about this decision is that Japan is a very close US ally,” he said. “The government’s got frankly a big evidentiary burden in order to justify what they’re doing today – and it hurts bilateral relations with Japan, something Trump will want to avoid.”

South Korea’s month-long political crisis saw another day of high drama with police failing to arrest suspended President Yoon Suk Yeol after a six-hour standoff.

Authorities had sought to arrest Yoon over his short-lived martial law declaration in early December – but they spent half the day locked in confrontation with the presidential security team.

This follows an unprecedented few weeks in which the opposition-dominated parliament voted to impeach Yoon and then the man who succeeded him as acting president.

Although hundreds of Yoon supporters gathered outside the presidential residence to protest the arrest, his future remains uncertain.

Officers were seeking to arrest him as part of a criminal investigation into the martial law declaration. But his fate is also in the hands of the country’s constitutional court, which can remove him from office by upholding the impeachment vote.

It was an hour to midnight on 3 December when South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law – which had never happened since the country became a democracy in 1987.

Yoon said he was protecting the country from “anti-state” forces that sympathised with North Korea – but it soon became clear that he was spurred by his own political troubles.

Ever since he took office in May 2022, Yoon has weathered scandals and low ratings. In 2024, he became a lame-duck president after the main opposition Democratic Party won by a landslide general elections. He was reduced to vetoing bills passed by the opposition, a tactic that they used with “unprecedented frequency”, says Celeste Arrington, director of The George Washington University Institute for Korean Studies.

Days before 3 Dec, the opposition slashed the budget Yoon’s government had proposed. And the opposition was also moving to impeach cabinet members for failing to investigate first lady Kim Keon Hee, who has also been embroiled in scandal.

Up against these political challenges, and reportedly under the advice of senior aides, Yoon decided to impose martial law.

But the decison sparked protests and public anger.

MPs voted down the declaration, with many climbing fences and breaking barricades to enter the heavily guarded National Assembly to do so.

Lawmakers across the political spectrum decried the move as unconstitutional. Even the then-leader of Yoon’s conservative People’s Power Party called it “wrong”.

Days and nights of protests followed in the chilly temperatures, with tens of thousands of people calling for Yoon to be removed from office.

“No martial law!” they chanted. “Strike down dictatorship!”

Opposition lawmakers soon filed a motion to impeach Yoon – it needed a two-thirds majority to pass.

With 192 of 300 seats in hand, the oppoition Democratic Party still required eight PPP members to vote for impeachment. But Yoon’s party members toed the line in that first vote, boycotting it to walk out of the chamber en masse.

An undeterred opposition vowed to file an impeachment motion every week until passed. But their second attempt on 14 Dec was successful, with 12 members of Yoon’s party voting for impeachment, alongside the opposition.

Yoon was suspended from office and is now awaiting the decision of the constitutional court, which has to decide within six months of the impeachment vote. Analysts expect judges to reach a verdict by February.

If Yoon is removed, the country must hold an election within the next 60 days to vote for a new leader. DP’s leader Lee Jae-myung is the frontrunner by large margin in opinion polls.

Meanwhile, the politcial uncertainty continues.

Yoon’s successor, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo who had stepped in as acting president, has also been impeached – the opposition accused him of stalling Yoon’s impeachment process. Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok is now acting president and acting prime minister.

Several former cabinet ministers and Yoon’s presidential aides have resigned over the events on 3 Dec. Some of them have been detained by the Corruption Investigation Office (CIO), which is investigating Yoon for abusing his power and inciting an insurrection with the martial law order.

Among those detained is former defence minister Kim Yong-hyun, who reportedly suggested the martial law declaration to Yoon. Kim had tried to take his own life while in detention.

Yoon has remained defiant throughout, refusing multiple summonses to appear for questioning, leading a Seoul court to issue a warrant for his arrest.

On 3 January, about 100 police and CIO officers went up against the president’s security team at his home in central Seoul.

Finally the CIO suspended its operation after a six-hour standoff, citing safety concerns for its team on the ground.

Investigators have until 6 January to arrest him before the warrant expires – after that they would need to apply for another warrant to detain him.

The acting president has pledged to do all he can to restore stability, but if the opposition finds him uncooperative, they could move to impeach him.

It’s been an unprecedented month in South Korea. Yoon is the first sitting president to face arrest and what comes next remains unclear.

Financial markets have reacted badly to the uncertainty – at the end of December, the South Korean won plunged to its lowest level against the dollar since the global financial crisis in 2008.

South Korea is one of the world’s most important economies and a crucial US ally – so turmoil on its shores is unwelcome on many fronts.

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.”

This article includes some discussion of the first episode of The Traitors, but does not contain major spoilers such as who the new traitors are or who gets murdered or banished.

Plot twists are happening already in Traitors season three, as one contestant from London lifted the lid on her charming – but false – Welsh accent.

Charlotte, 33, has lived in London her whole life but has decided to pretend she is from Abergavenny, in Monmouthshire, to maximise her chances of survival.

“I’ve been putting on a Welsh accent because my mum’s from Wales, it’s one of the most trustworthy accents,” she told the camera on New Year’s Day.

But is a Welsh lilt the key to gaining people’s trust as a faithful in the show?

The reality show centres around “traitors” selected by host Claudia Winkleman, who must deceive and gain the trust of other contestants, who are “faithfuls”.

Sociolinguistics professor at Cardiff University, Dr Mercedes Durham led research into the likeability of the Welsh accent and found people associate the accent with being friendly – but not necessarily clever.

“They genuinely appreciated it, they find it funny, attractive and friendly, but they didn’t take it seriously or associate it with intelligence,” said Dr Durham.

But friendliness and trustworthiness are linked, says Dr Durham, so there could be a method behind the mask.

Inspiration may have come from previous Welsh contestants Andrew Jenkins from Talbot Green, Rhondda Cynon Taf, and Amanda Lovett, from Swansea, who both eliminated faithfuls and narrowly missed out on the Traitor trophy in series one and two.

Amanda sailed through the very first series of Traitors in 2023, with her opponents swearing hand on heart that the humble character could never be a traitor.

“I think the Welsh accent is very relaxing, it definitely played a role in people trusting me in being a motherly figure,” said Amanda.

“Maybe they didn’t think I would be sharp enough, or the type capable of murdering, that I was too naive maybe,” she added.

“But I don’t know if I agree with pinching our Welsh accent,” Amanda laughed, “we are very proud of our Welsh heritage”.

Amanda said Traitors fans may even be wary of Welsh contestants this time, as both her and Andrew took their charming accents to the very end.

Andrew agreed the Welsh accent is trustworthy, but said he would have spotted Charlotte’s duff Welsh accent from a mile off.

“Oh I think it’s terrible, she keeps dipping in and out of her London accent,” he said.

“I just think the Welsh are lovely, friendly, trusting people, I went in and was authentic.

“I tried to make as many friends as I could and be myself to be honest, I think that helped.”

Charlotte is not the only Welsh person in the game this year, as Cardiff-based Elen is from north Wales and Leanne, is from Holywell in Flintshire.

There is a lot of variation in Welsh accents, and people tend to relate more to certain regions, according to Dr Durham.

“The main association of people outside of Wales is the south Wales valleys and Barry Island in the Vale of Glamorgan, thanks to Gavin and Stacey,” she said.

“Possibly more than the other two contestants, it’s an accent outsiders will associate the most with Wales.”

The Welsh accent has enticed new contact centres to set up or expand in Wales in recent years, including Starling Bank, Capital on Tap, Veezu and TCH Group.

One firm even chose Newport, over Teeside, Middlesborough, to open its funeral planning business, because of the “consoling” and “empathetic” Welsh accent.

Sandra Busby, chief executive of Cnect Wales, which supports contact centres, said Wales has always been an attractive location for many reasons with accents “playing their part”.

“Over the years the Welsh accent always comes in the top three regional accent surveys for friendliness and for being trustworthy,” she added.

The Welsh accent took top spot for the most relaxing accent across the UK in 2024, in a study by the University of Sheffield and Spa Seekers.

The public have a soft spot for all Celtic accents, Irish and Scottish included, thanks to their friendly connotations, said Dr Durham.

Received pronunciation, also known as “Queen’s English” does well to gain people’s trust, but mainly because of its social prestige.

But Birmingham, Liverpudlian and Cockney accents often aren’t favoured and can be found in the lower half of popularity polls.

Trust in accents can change over time depending on our social circles and daily relationships, according to a study by Ilaria Torre from Plymouth University.

Participants heard either a standard southern English accent or a “lesser trusted” Liverpudlian accent, and attitudes changed depending on first impressions and judgements.

If a person who spoke in a “trusted” accent went on to behave fairly, then this first impression of trustworthiness increased.

Yet if they went on to behave unfairly, they were seen as less trustworthy than those who had both a lesser trusted accent and behaviour.

Participants “were punishing them, so to speak, for not living up to the participants’ expectations”, said Ms Torre.

On the opposite side, those who were seen as sounding “untrustworthy” with a Liverpudlian accent but acted nicely were able to reverse negative preconceptions.

So, while a Welsh lilt might start you off in good stead as a trusted contestant, the odds are still all to play for.

With a mixture of different accents from across the UK, how will the Welsh ones do?

You can find out – the first three episodes of The Traitors are now on BBC iPlayer.

The series airs on BBC One at 21:00 GMT on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights.

There were more than 100 police officers and they were armed with a warrant, but South Korean authorities failed to arrest suspended President Yoon Suk Yeol after a six-hour deadlock outside his home.

That’s how long the confrontation with Yoon’s security team lasted as they formed a human wall and used vehicles to block the arrest team’s path, according to local media.

It has been an unprecedented month for South Korean politics. Yoon’s shocking yet short-lived martial law order was followed by an impeachment vote against him. Then came the criminal investigation, his refusal to appear for questioning and, earlier this week, a warrant for his arrest.

The right-wing leader still has a strong support base. Thousands of them turned up outside his home on Friday morning to oppose his arrest.

But, by many accounts, Yoon is now a disgraced leader impeached by parliament and suspended from office, he awaits the decision of the constitutional court which can remove him from office.

So why has it proven so difficult for police to arrest him?

Although Yoon has been stripped of his presidential powers – after lawmakers voted to impeach him – he is still entitled to a security detail.

And those men played a key role in blocking the arrest on Friday.

The presidential security service (PSS) could have acted out of loyalty to Yoon or under “a misguided understanding of their legal and constitutional role”, says Mason Richey, an associate professor at Seoul’s Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.

Given that Yoon has been suspended, the PSS should be taking directions from acting President Choi Sang-mok. “They have either not been instructed by acting President Choi to stand down, or they are refusing his orders to do so,” says Assoc Prof Richey.

Some experts believe the security officers were showing “unconditional loyalty” to Yoon, rather than the office itself. They point to the fact that the PSS’s chief Park Jong-joon was appointed to the job by Yoon last September.

“It may well be the case that Yoon has seeded the organisation with hardline loyalists in preparation for precisely this eventuality,” says US-based lawyer and Korea expert Christopher Jumin Lee.

And that Park’s predecessor was former defence minister Kim Yong-hyun, who is accused of advising Yoon to impose martial law. He is currently being held for questioning as part of the criminal investigation into Yoon.

The “simplest” solution, Mr Lee says, is for acting president Choi to order the PSS to stand down in the interim.

“If he is unwilling to do so, that may be grounds for his own impeachment by the National Assembly,” he added.

Choi, who is the finance minister, had stepped in to lead the country after lawmakers voted to impeach Yoon’s first successor, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo.

This political stalemate also reflects the polarisation in South Korean politics between those who support Yoon, and his decision to impose martial law, and those who oppose it. And the differences don’t necessarily end there.

The vast majority of South Koreans agree that Yoon’s declaration of martial law on 3 Dec was wrong and that he needs to be held accountable, says Duyeon Kim, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, but they cannot agree on what accountability looks like.

“The actors involved disagree over process, procedure and their legal basis, which is adding to the current political uncertainty,” she explains.

That uncertainty is also creating tense stand-offs like the one that unfolded on Friday in and outside Yoon’s presidential residence, where his supporters have been camping out for days, leading to heated speeches and even skirmishes with police.

Law enforcement could return with more agents and use force but that would be “highly dangerous,” Assoc Prof Mason said.

The PSS too is heavily armed, so arresting officers would be looking to avoid any escalation.

“What happens if the police show up with additional warrants calling for the arrest of PSS personnel, [the PSS] defy those warrants as well and then brandish their guns?” Mr Lee asks.

Police have now said they are investigating the PSS director and his deputy for obstructing them – so there could be more charges and arrest warrants coming.

The fallout from Yoon’s martial law order is also a challenge for the Corruption Investigation Office (CIO) that is investigating him.

It has only been operating for four years. It was created in response to public anger over former president Park Geun-hye who was impeached, removed from office and later jailed over a corruption scandal.

While South Korean presidents have been jailed before, Yoon is the first one to face arrest before he steps down.

Investigators have until 6 January to arrest Yoon before the current warrant expires.

They may attempt to arrest Yoon again over the weekend, although the weekend could pose a bigger challenge if the crowds of supporters grow. They can also apply for a new warrant and try to detain him again.

Given how far South Korea has now slid into uncharted territory, the uncertainty is likely to continue.

A selection of news photographs from around the world.

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 a man 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 Jack 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 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… We don’t even know what happened,” Ms 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.”

Playwright Banna Desta has brought to life an often-overlooked ancient African civilisation in her latest work – a compelling audio drama about an increasingly tyrannical queen and her scheming twin sons.

“As well as wanting the audience to be entertained – because the play is good fun – I wanted to add another dimension to people’s understanding of Africa,” Desta tells the BBC.

“I wanted to write about a time when the continent wasn’t afflicted by colonialism and there were thriving societies,” she says.

The Abyssinians is set in the 5th Century in the Aksumite Empire, also known as the Kingdom of Aksum.

Aksum was a wealthy and influential monarchy that at its height spanned what is now northern Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, southern Saudi Arabia and western Yemen. It lasted almost 1,000 years, from approximately 100BC to AD960.

It was where Christianity first came to Africa and the continent’s first coins were minted.

It lay at the heart of a trade network between India and the Mediterranean and its ships controlled the Red Sea trade through the port of Adulis and the inland routes of north-eastern Africa.

In the third century, it was considered one of the world’s four great powers, alongside Persia, Rome and China.

“I feel like Aksum is completely excluded out of that picture. Ethiopia is a cradle of civilisation – and yet I feel that it is never really included in our understanding of global history,” says Desta.

She chose that part of the world and that period of history because of her personal connections. She was born in the US to a mother from Tigray in northern Ethiopia and a father from Eritrea – the very areas that were at the heart of the old Aksumite empire.

“The impulse was really just wanting to learn more about a pre-colonial era – and I thought a wonderful place to start is my own heritage and ancestral lineage.”

The Abyssinians, released by Audible and directed by Shariffa Al, is Desta’s first audio play. It is a tragicomedy that mixes historical fact with the author’s imagination.

The play is “really also about the ways in which people hold on to their humanity in periods of immense change”, Desta says.

It tells the story of a monarchy at a crossroads in history.

Queen Yodit must decide which of her twin sons – Kaleb or Negus – must succeed her to the throne, just as she is contending with social and economic upheaval and clashing beliefs about religion and rights. There is also romance.

“Queen Yodit is… complex, regal, cunning, raw, sensual and compelling,” says Danielle Deadwyler – the Bafta-nominated movie star who played the role.

The character of Yodit was loosely inspired by the real Queen Yodit – or Judith – who reigned at a different time to the period in which the play is set.

She is a figure shrouded in mystery because of the lack of historical records and conflicting folklore about who she was.

She is seen by some as dictatorial and instrumental in Aksum’s downfall, says Desta – who travelled to Ethiopia as part of her research for the play.

“I thought that she was a good jumping-off point for that type of character,” Desta says.

“I think a lot of times the characters of female leaders have to be so ‘on point’ – and I love the idea of a woman being a tyrant in this period of history.”

Writer James Baldwin once said that artists are “emotional or spiritual historians” – and those words resonated profoundly with Desta as she wrote the play.

“I wanted to explore the full spectrum of human emotions – the characters’ private feelings, the things that they struggle with as human beings that have nothing to do with their public roles,” she tells the BBC.

Queen Yodit was a character who Desta felt did not have much love in her life.

“A lot of her reactions to the world are coming from that place of not being cherished as a partner and not really necessarily feeling like she has a place or that she has chosen to be a leader,” Desta says.

Another female character written to break stereotypes is Makeda, played by Arsema Thomas of Bridgerton spin-off Queen Charlotte fame.

She is sent to work as a servant in the royal household to pay off her father’s debts. But she is also someone “who can think for herself, can think bigger than her station in life and is a global thinker”.

Despite being set in a world of antiquity, the dialogue and dry humour in The Abyssinians makes it feel modern and relevant.

Queen Yodit, especially, is fond of dropping a snide comment right in the middle of a serious moment.

The production features an original Ethio-jazz score by DA Mekonnen, an Ethiopian-American musician, and Andrew Orkin – and features the Ethiopian-born multi-instrumentalist Kibrom Birhane.

“The score parallels and complements the tone of the play,” says Desta “because I feel like a lot of Ethiopian music has that ancient quality and then jazz is that sort of contemporary spin.”

Tony-winner André De Shields described being in The Abyssinians as an “opportunity of returning to one’s ancient culture” and an illustration of “the power of art to transform lives”.

It was crucial to Desta that actors of the black diaspora play the characters.

The cast also includes Zainab Jah, who in 2021 won the best actress award for Farewell Amor at Fespaco, Africa’s leading film festival.

Chukwudi Iwuji, who began his acting career with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the UK, and Phillip James Brannon, best known for his Broadway roles and the movie Contagion, also star.

“The talent was amazing,” Desta says, “I know that that doesn’t really happen for a lot of early playwrights, so I’m especially grateful.”

Desta’s next goal is to get The Abyssinians on to the stage with, she hopes, the same cast.

• The holy city were mosques are banned
• The gold rush endangering frankincense and myrrh
• The country where a year lasts 13 months
• How a massacre in the sacred city of Aksum unfolded

Neil Young has announced he will headline this year’s Glastonbury Festival, just days after saying he had turned down a slot because of the BBC’s involvement.

The 79-year-old had announced that he and his band would not play the event because the BBC “wanted us to do a lot of things in a way we were not interested in”.

But in a new post on his website, the rock legend wrote: “Due to an error in the information received, I had decided to not play the Glastonbury Festival, which I always have loved.

“Happily, the festival is now back on our itinerary and we look forward to playing. Hope to see you there!”

Glastonbury organiser Emily Eavis welcomed the decision and said Young would be among the headliners.

“What a start to the year!” she wrote on Instagram.

“Neil Young is an artist who’s very close to our hearts at Glastonbury. He does things his own way and that’s why we love him.

“We can’t wait to welcome him back here to headline the Pyramid in June.”

It is not known whether the change of heart means Young’s 2025 Glastonbury set will be televised.

The BBC has been Glastonbury’s exclusive broadcast partner since 1997, and broadcasts more than 50 hours of coverage every year.

However, the last time Young played the festival in 2009, he only allowed the BBC to show a short portion of his two-hour headline set.

The corporation said at the time it had spent a “couple of months” negotiating with Young’s management over televising the performance.

In the end, his team only agreed to let five songs be broadcast, a decision that was made as Young was playing on the Pyramid Stage.

“They believe in the live event and retaining its mystery and that of their artist,” explained Mark Cooper, the then-executive producer of the BBC’s Glastonbury coverage.

“You probably won’t find too many Neil Young performances available freely on TV or online,” he added. “He generally prefers the audience to find his albums.”

In his initial post on Tuesday, the star lashed out at what he described as the BBC’s “corporate control” of Glastonbury, and said the festival “is not the way I remember it being”.

Artists are not forced to hand over broadcast rights when they play the event, and often contracts are signed at the last minute.

Asked for a response to Young’s latest statement, the BBC said: “There’s always great excitement about Glastonbury’s bookings and who will appear at the legendary festival. We’ll talk more about our broadcast plans as the line-up shapes up.”

Apple has agreed to pay $95m (£77m) to settle a court case alleging some of its devices were listening to people without their permission.

The tech giant was accused of eavesdropping on its customers through its virtual assistant Siri.

The claimants also allege voice recordings were shared with advertisers.

Apple, which has not admitted any wrongdoing, has been approached for comment.

In the preliminary settlement, the tech firm denies any wrongdoing, as well as claims that it “recorded, disclosed to third parties, or failed to delete, conversations recorded as the result of a Siri activation” without consent.

Apple’s lawyers also say they will confirm they have “permanently deleted individual Siri audio recordings collected by Apple prior to October 2019”.

But the claimants say the tech firm recorded people who activated the virtual assistant unintentionally – without using the phrase “Hey, Siri” to wake it.

They say advertisers who received the recordings could then look for keywords in them to better target ads.

The lead plaintiff Fumiko Lopez claims she and her daughter were both recorded without their consent.

They allege they were served targeted ads after talking about products including Air Jordans.

Apple has proposed a decision date of 14 February in the court in Northern California.

Class action lawsuits work by a small number of people going to court on behalf of a larger group.

If they are successful, the money won is paid out across all claimants.

According to the court documents, each claimant – who has to be based in the US -could be paid up to $20 per Siri-enabled device they owned between 2014 and 2019.

In this case, the lawyers could take 30% of the fee plus expenses – which comes to just under $30m.

By settling, Apple not only denies wrongdoing, but it also avoids the risk of facing a court case which could potentially mean a much larger pay out.

The California company made $94.9bn in revenue in the three months up to 28 September 2024.

Apple has been involved in a number of class action lawsuits in recent years.

In January 2024, it started paying out in a $500m lawsuit which claimed it deliberately slowed down iPhones in the US.

In March, it agreed to pay $490m in a class action led by Norfolk County Council in the UK.

And in November, consumer group Which? started a class action against Apple, accusing it of ripping off customers through its iCloud service.

The same law firm is suing Google in a similar class action, accusing it of listening to customers using Google devices.

That lawsuit is currently going through the same court in Northern California.

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.”

A British woman and her South African fiance have been found dead in a holiday villa in Vietnam, local police have said.

Greta Marie Otteson, 33, was discovered by staff dead on a bed in a first-floor room in Hoi An, a coastal city in the central region of the south-east Asian nation, at around 11:18 local time (04:18 GMT) on 26 December, police said in a statement on Monday.

Her fiance Els Arno Quinton, 36, was found dead on a bed in another room in the villa that had reportedly been locked from the inside.

The UK Foreign Office confirmed it was in contact with local authorities and supporting the family of a British woman who had died in Vietnam.

Ms Otteson was a social media manager, and Mr Quinton was a musician and livestreamer.

A video announcing their engagement was posted on Instagram by videography company Red Eye Studios on 11 December.

Both had registered for long-term temporary residence at the Hoa Chuong villa, in the Cam Thanh commune, since last summer.

Police said a preliminary inspection of the bodies had found no signs of external force and that the rooms showed no sign of burglary.

Local media reports that several empty bottles of wine were found at the scene.

An investigation into the cause of the pair’s deaths is ongoing.

A spokesperson for the UK Foreign Office said in a statement: “We are supporting the family of a British woman who has died in Vietnam and are in contact with the local authorities.”

Elon Musk’s attack on the government’s handling of grooming gangs is “misjudged and certainly misinformed”, Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said.

Tech multi-billionaire Musk has posted a series of messages on his social media site X, accusing Sir Keir Starmer of failing to prosecute gangs that systematically groomed and raped young girls, and calling for safeguarding minister Jess Phillips to be jailed.

Asked about his comments, Streeting said “this government takes the issue of child sexual exploitation incredibly seriously”.

He invited Musk to “roll up his sleeves and work with us” against rape gangs.

The Tories have also criticised Musk for “sharing things that are factually inaccurate”.

While visiting a care home in Carlisle on Friday, Streeting said Labour was getting “on with the job” of implementing the recommendations of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse led by Professor Alexis Jay “in full”.

He told reporters: “Some of the criticisms Elon Musk has made I think are misjudged and certainly misinformed.

“But we’re willing to work with Elon Musk who I think has got a big role to play with his social media platform to help us and other countries tackle these serious issues.

“If he wants to work with us and roll his sleeves up, we’d welcome that.”

Musk, a key adviser to US President-elect Donald Trump, has accused Sir Keir of failing to properly prosecute rape gangs while director of public prosecutions (DPP), and has repeatedly retweeted Reform UK and Conservative MPs calling for a national inquiry.

He also suggested safeguarding minister Jess Phillips “deserves to be in prison” after she rejected a request for the Home Office to order a public inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Oldham. She said the council should commission a local inquiry instead, as happened in Rotherham and Telford.

The decision was criticised by several senior Tories, despite the previous Conservative government turning down a similar request in 2022.

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has called for a full national public inquiry into what she called the UK’s “rape gangs scandal”.

But the party has also criticised Musk for “sharing things that are factually inaccurate” and distanced itself from his call for Phillips to be jailed.

Alicia Kearns – who shadows Phillips as the Conservative spokesperson on safeguarding – told BBC Radio 5 Live Musk had “fallen prone” to sharing things on his X platform “without critically assessing them”.

She accused Musk of “drawing away attention from the survivors and from the victims” of rape gangs, and “lionising people like [far-right activist] Tommy Robinson – which is frankly dangerous”.

Meanwhile, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage praised Musk as “an absolute hero figure” and “very helpful to our cause” on Friday. The two men met at Trump’s Florida retreat last month.

He told the BBC that Musk had not donated to his party, but that “he’s fully in support of us, he wants us to win the next election”. He said that Musk “has said he’s minded to give us some money if there’s a legal way to do it”.

Police figures from 2023 reveal that group-based child sexual abuse accounted for 3.7% of all sexual offences against children reported to police.

According to the data, 26% of group-based child sexual abuse happened within families, compared with 17% involving groups including grooming gangs.

Schools, clubs and religious institutions accounted for 9%.

There have been numerous investigations into the systematic rape of girls and young women by organised gangs, including in Rotherham, Cornwall, Derbyshire and Bristol.

Inquiries into Greater Manchester Police’s (GMP) handling of historical child sex abuse cases in Manchester, Oldham and Rochdale have also been carried out.

Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham said tackling grooming gangs was “not something to be politicised”.

“We’ve done this when others were looking in a different direction,” Burnham added.

“This is something to be faced up to fully and unflinchingly in my view.”

Earlier on Friday, health minister Andrew Gwynne suggested Musk “ought to focus” on US politics, where he is set to act as an unelected adviser to the Trump administration on cutting federal spending.

Speaking to LBC Radio, Gwynne added that child grooming was a “very serious issue”, pointing to previous investigations which had taken place into sexual abuse scandals.

“There comes a point where we don’t need more inquiries, and had Elon Musk really paid attention to what’s been going on in this country, he might have recognised that there have already been inquiries,” he said.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse (IICSA), which published its final report in 2022, described the sexual abuse of children as an “epidemic that leaves tens of thousands of victims in its poisonous wake”.

It knitted several previous inquiries together alongside its own investigations.

Professor Jay said in November she felt “frustrated” that none of her report’s 20 recommendations to tackle abuse had been implemented more than two years later.

She said: “It’s a difficult subject matter, but it is essential that there’s some public understanding of it.

“But we can only do what we can to press the government to look at the delivery of all of this.

“It doesn’t need more consultation, it does not need more research or discussion, it just needs to be done.”

Shortly after Mike Johnson appeared to come up two votes shy of retaining the speakership of the House of Representatives on Friday, Marjorie Taylor Greene – the loyal Trump ally and firebrand Republican congresswoman from Georgia – stood in the middle of the House chamber, intently speaking on her mobile phone.

Although she covered the device with her hand, a sharp photographer for Reuters news agency, Evelyn Hockstein, captured the name of the person on the other end of the conversation – incoming White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.

It was a tangible sign of the enormous interest President-elect Donald Trump was taking in this vote. Trump had enthusiastically endorsed Johnson to be speaker for the incoming session of Congress earlier this week, and defeat in the first round of balloting would have been an embarrassment.

Behind the scenes, however, wheels were furiously turning – setting up a chaotic interlude in the House after Johnson had initially appeared headed to at least a temporary defeat.

At one point, Johnson walked out of the chamber, followed by two of the men who had opposed him, Ralph Norman of North Carolina and Keith Self of Texas. Meanwhile, other members of the House and their families milled about and chatted, waiting to see what happened next.

When Johnson ultimately returned, he was all smiles.

Trump himself had made a direct appeal to Norman and Self to back Johnson via speakerphone conversation, Republican sources told news outlets including Politico.

Because the vote had not been officially declared to be closed, Norman and Self were able to switch their votes to the Louisianian, putting him at just the 218 mark necessary to retain the speaker’s gavel. Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie was the lone Republican holdout.

Both Norman and Self told reporters after the vote that they had spoken to Trump during the course of the day.

Norman said he conversed with Trump twice on Friday. The first during a several-minute phone call when fellow Republican Nancy Mace handed him her phone and the president-elect was on the other line.

The second time was a longer, 15-minute call that included Norman, Johnson and Self, he said, without confirming the exact timing.

“Trump was exactly right when he told me Mike is the only one who has the likeability factor,” Norman said.

He went on to describe Trump as “enthusiastic” about the Republican trifecta in Washington – control of the House, Senate and presidency.

“I said, ‘Mr President I agree with you, I’m just hoping Mike has got the oomph to pull this off,'” Norman said.

Self also said he spoke with Trump several times on Friday.

“We had a discussion about the entire process,” he said of his conversation with the president-elect.

Ultimately, embarrassment was avoided – even if Trump publicly appeared to be more focused on other things.

In the midst of the voting, as the names of House members were called in alphabetical order, the president-elect was complaining on social media about the possibility that US flags would be at half-staff during his 20 January inauguration – part of the traditional mourning process following the death of former president Jimmy Carter.

Friday afternoon’s proceedings underscored just how tenuous the Republican majority in the House of Representatives will be over the course of the coming months.

Besides the three initial Republican votes against Johnson, another five hard-line conservatives – who have objected to the compromises Johnson has made with Democrats in the past – delayed casting their ballots during the initial roll call. While they ultimately relented, it was a very obvious shot across the speaker’s bow.

After the final vote, the House Freedom Caucus – some of whom were among the temporary holdouts – released a statement explaining that they ultimately backed Johnson because of their support for Trump.

“We did this despite our sincere reservations regarding the speaker’s track record over the past 15 months,” they wrote.

For now, the party holds a 219 to 215 edge over Democrats – but that could shrink by two if Congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York and Michael Waltz of Florida fill administration jobs Trump has offered them. It will be months until special elections determine their replacements.

That means Trump will have to hold his entire House Republican membership together if he wants to pass key pieces of his legislative agenda early in his presidency, including hardline immigration reforms, new tariffs, and tax and spending cuts.

As Friday demonstrated, this could be a tall task.

A judge has ordered that Donald Trump will be sentenced on 10 January in his hush-money case in New York – less than two weeks before he is set to be sworn in as president.

New York Justice Juan Merchan signalled he would not sentence Trump to jail time, probation or a fine, but instead give him an “unconditional discharge”, and wrote in his order that the president-elect could appear in person or virtually for the hearing.

Trump had attempted to use his presidential election victory to have the case against him dismissed.

His team criticised the judge’s decision to go forward with sentencing and said the “lawless” case should be dismissed “immediately”.

Trump was convicted in May of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a $130,000 (£105,000) payment to adult-film star Stormy Daniels.

The charges related to attempts to cover up reimbursements to his ex-lawyer, Michael Cohen, who in the final days of the 2016 election campaign paid off the adult-film star to remain silent about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump.

The president-elect has denied all wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty, arguing the case was an attempt to harm his 2024 presidential campaign.

On Friday, Trump’s spokesperson criticised Judge Merchan’s sentencing order, saying it was part of a “witch hunt”.

“President Trump must be allowed to continue the presidential transition process and to execute the vital duties of the presidency, unobstructed by the remains of this or any remnants of the witch hunts,” Steven Cheung said.

“There should be no sentencing, and President Trump will continue fighting against these hoaxes until they are all dead.”

In his latest motion against the case, Trump had argued the case would hang over him during his presidency and impede his ability to govern.

Justice Merchan said he had been advised of several measures he could employ that could assuage Trump’s concerns about being distracted by a criminal case while serving as president that fell short of the “extreme remedy” of overturning the jury’s verdict.

His options included delaying the sentencing until Trump, 78, leaves the White House in 2029, or guaranteeing a sentence that would not involve prison time.

Trump had initially, and unsuccessfully, argued the case against him ran afoul of a Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity.

In July, the country’s top court ruled that presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution for “official actions” they take while in office.

However, last month Justice Merchan ruled Trump’s hush money conviction was valid.

Trump is currently set to be the first convicted felon to serve in the White House.

He may attempt to appeal against the conviction after the sentencing.

While falsifying business records is punishable by up to four years in prison in the US, there is no minimum sentence and incarceration is not required.

Even before his election victory, legal experts thought it was unlikely Trump would face jail time given his age and his legal record.

Trump has also been charged in three other state and federal criminal cases: one involving classified documents and two relating to his alleged efforts to overturn his loss in the election of 2020.

The president-elect was initially scheduled to be sentenced on 26 November, but Justice Merchan pushed the date back after Trump won the presidential election.

Family members of an Indian nurse who is on death row in war-torn Yemen say they are pinning their hopes on a last-ditch effort to save her.

Nimisha Priya, 34, was sentenced to death for the murder of a local man – her former business partner Talal Abdo Mahdi – whose chopped-up body was discovered in a water tank in 2017.

Lodged in the central jail of capital Sanaa, she is set to be executed soon, with Mahdi al-Mashat, president of the rebel Houthis’ Supreme Political Council, approving her punishment this week.

Under the Islamic judicial system, known as Sharia, the only way to stop the execution now is securing a pardon from the victim’s family. For months, Nimisha’s relatives and supporters have been trying to do this by raising diyah, or blood money, to be paid to Mahdi’s family, and negotiations have been going on.

But with time running out, supporters say their hopes rest entirely on the family’s decision.

With the presidential sanction coming in, the public prosecutor’s office will once again seek consent from Mahdi’s family and ask if they have any objections to the execution, said Samuel Jerome, a Yemen-based social worker who holds a power of attorney on behalf of Nimisha’s mother.

“If they say they do not want to or can pardon her, the sentence would be immediately stopped,” he said.

“Forgiveness is the first step. Whether the family accepts the blood money comes only after that.”

Under Yemen’s laws, Nimisha’s family cannot directly contact the family of the victim and must hire negotiators.

Subhash Chandran, a lawyer who has represented Nimisha’s family in India in the past, told the BBC that the family had already crowdfunded $40,000 (£32,268) for the victim’s family. The money has been given in two tranches to the lawyers hired by the Indian government to negotiate the case (a delay in sending the second tranche affected the negotiations, Mr Jerome says).

“We now need to explore the scope for discussions with the [victim’s] family, which is possible only with the Indian government’s support,” Mr Chandran said.

India’s foreign ministry has said they are aware of Nimisha’s situation and are extending all possible help to the family.

Her family is anxious but also hopeful.

“Nimisha has no knowledge of what is happening beyond the gates of prison,” said her husband Tony Thomas, who spoke to her hours before the approval of the death sentence. “The only thing she wants to know is if our daughter is fine.”

Nimisha’s mother is currently in Sanaa, having travelled there last year after a court in India allowed her to go to the region controlled by Houthi rebels. She has met her daughter twice in prison since then.

The first reunion was very emotional. “Nimisha saw me… she said I had become weak and asked me to keep courage, and that God would save her. She asked me not to be sad,” her mother Prema Kumari told the BBC.

The second time, Ms Kumari was accompanied by two nuns who held prayers for her daughter in prison.

Nimisha was barely 19 when she went to Yemen.

The daughter of a poorly-paid domestic worker, she wanted to change her family’s financial situation, and worked as a nurse in a government-run hospital in Sanaa for some years.

In 2011, she returned home – Kochi city in southern India – and married Mr Thomas, a tuk-tuk driver.

The couple moved to Yemen together shortly afterwards. But financial struggles forced Mr Thomas to return to India with their baby daughter.

Tired of low-paying hospital jobs, Nimisha decided to open her own clinic in Yemen.

As the law there mandated that she have a local partner, she opened the clinic jointly with Mahdi, a store owner.

The two were initially on good terms – when Nimisha briefly visited India for her daughter’s baptism, Mahdi accompanied her.

“He seemed like a nice man when he came to our house, ” Mr Thomas told the BBC.

But Mahdi’s attitude, Mr Thomas alleged, “suddenly changed” when the civil war broke out in Yemen in 2014.

At that time, Nimisha was trying to finalise paperwork so her husband and daughter could join her again.

But after the war broke out, the Indian government banned all travel to Yemen, making it impossible for them to go be with her.

Over the coming days, thousands of Indians were evacuated from the country, but Nimisha chose to stay, as she had taken out huge loans to open her clinic.

It was around then that Nimisha started to complain about Mahdi’s behaviour, including allegations of physical torture, Mr Thomas said.

A petition in court, filed by a group called Save Nimisha Priya International Action Council, alleged that Mahdi snatched all her money, seized her passport and even threatened her with a gun.

After Mahdi’s body was discovered in 2017, the police charged Nimisha with killing him by giving him an “overdose of sedatives”, and allegedly chopping up his body.

Nimisha denied the allegations. In court, her lawyer argued that she had tried to anaesthetise Mahdi just to retrieve her passport from him, but that the dose was accidentally increased.

In 2020, a local court sentenced Nimisha to death. Three years later, in 2023, her family challenged the decision in Yemen’s Supreme Court, but their appeal was rejected.

Even with so many twists and turns, the family is not willing to give up hope.

“My heart says that we can arrive at a settlement and save Nimisha’s life,” Mr Thomas said.

More than anything, he said he was worried about their daughter, now 13, who had “never experienced a mother’s love”.

“They speak on the phone every week and my daughter gets upset if she misses the call,” Mr Thomas said.

“She needs her mother. What will she do without her?”

China is now a country where a high-school handyman has a master’s degree in physics; a cleaner is qualified in environmental planning; a delivery driver studied philosophy, and a PhD graduate from the prestigious Tsinghua University ends up applying to work as an auxiliary police officer.

These are real cases in a struggling economy – and it is not hard to find more like them.

“My dream job was to work in investment banking,” says Sun Zhan as he prepares to start his shift as a waiter in a hot pot restaurant in the southern city of Nanjing.

The 25-year-old recently graduated with a master’s degree in finance. He was hoping to “make a lot of money” in a high-paying role but adds, “I looked for such a job, with no good results”.

China is churning out millions of university graduates every year but, in some fields, there just aren’t enough jobs for them.

The economy has been struggling and stalling in major sectors, including real estate and manufacturing.

Youth unemployment had been nudging 20% before the way of measuring the figures was altered to make the situation look better. In August 2024, it was still 18.8%. The latest figure for November has come down to 16.1%.

Many university graduates who’ve found it hard to get work in their area of selected study are now doing jobs well below what they’re qualified for, leading to criticism from family and friends.

When Sun Zhan became a waiter, this was met with displeasure by his parents.

“My family’s opinions are a big concern for me. After all, I studied for many years and went to a pretty good school,” he says.

He says his family is embarrassed by his job choice and would prefer he tried to become a public servant or official, but, he adds, “this is my choice”.

Yet he has a secret plan. He’s going to use his time working as a waiter to learn the restaurant business so he can eventually open his own place.

He thinks if he ends up running a successful business, the critics in his family will have to change their tune.

“The job situation is really, really challenging in mainland China, so I think a lot of young people have to really readjust their expectations,” says Professor Zhang Jun from the City University of Hong Kong.

She says many students are seeking higher degrees in order to have better prospects, but then the reality of the employment environment hits them.

“The job market has been really tough,” says 29-year-old Wu Dan, who is currently a trainee in a sports injury massage clinic in Shanghai.

“For many of my master’s degree classmates, it’s their first time hunting for a job and very few of them have ended up landing one.”

She also didn’t think this was where she would end up with a finance degree from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Prior to this, she worked at a futures trading company in Shanghai, where she was specialising in agricultural products.

When she returned to the mainland after finishing her studies in Hong Kong, she wanted to work in a private equity firm and did get some offers but was not happy with the conditions.

That she didn’t accept any of them and instead started training in sports medicine was not welcomed by her family.

“They thought I had such a good job before, and my educational background is quite competitive. They didn’t understand why I chose a low-barrier job that requires me to do physical work for little money.”

She admits that she couldn’t survive in Shanghai on her current salary, if not for the fact that her partner owns their home.

At first, she didn’t know anyone who supported her current career path, but her mother has been coming around after she recently treated her for her bad back, significantly reducing the pain she had been experiencing.

Now the one-time finance student says she feels that a life working in the investment world actually doesn’t suit her after all.

She says she is interested in sports injuries, likes the job and, one day, wants to open her own clinic.

Chinese graduates are being forced to change their perceptions regarding what might be considered “a good position”, Prof Zhang says.

In what might be seen as “a warning sign” for young people, “many companies in China, including many tech companies, have laid off quite a lot of staff”, she adds.

She also says that significant areas of the economy, which had once been big employers of graduates, are offering sub-standard conditions, and decent opportunities in these fields are disappearing altogether.

While they work out what to do in the future, unemployed graduates have also been turning to the film and television industry.

Big budget movies need lots of extras to fill out their scenes and, in China’s famous film production town of Hengdian, south-west of Shanghai, there are plenty of young people looking for acting work.

“I mainly stand beside the protagonist as eye candy. I am seen next to the lead actors but I have no lines,” says Wu Xinghai, who studied electronic information engineering, and was playing a bodyguard in a drama.

The 26-year old laughs that his good looks have helped him become employed as an extra.

He says people often come to Hengdian and work for just a few months at a time. He says this is a temporary fix for him too, till he finds something permanent. “I don’t make much money but I’m relaxed and feel free.”

“This is the situation in China, isn’t it? The moment you graduate, you become unemployed,” says Li, who didn’t want to give his first name.

He majored in film directing and screenwriting and has also signed up to work as an extra for a few months.

“I’ve come here to look for work while I’m still young. When I get older, I’ll find a stable job.”

But many fear they’ll never land a decent job and may have to settle for a role unlike what they had imagined.

The lack of confidence in the trajectory of the Chinese economy means young people often don’t know what the future will hold for them.

Wu Dan says even her friends who are employed can feel quite lost.

“They are quite confused and feel that the future is unclear. Those with jobs aren’t satisfied with them. They don’t know for how long they can hold onto these positions. And if they lose their current job, what else can they do?”

She says she will just “go with the flow and gradually explore what I really want to do”.

There were more than 100 police officers and they were armed with a warrant, but South Korean authorities failed to arrest suspended President Yoon Suk Yeol after a six-hour deadlock outside his home.

That’s how long the confrontation with Yoon’s security team lasted as they formed a human wall and used vehicles to block the arrest team’s path, according to local media.

It has been an unprecedented month for South Korean politics. Yoon’s shocking yet short-lived martial law order was followed by an impeachment vote against him. Then came the criminal investigation, his refusal to appear for questioning and, earlier this week, a warrant for his arrest.

The right-wing leader still has a strong support base. Thousands of them turned up outside his home on Friday morning to oppose his arrest.

But, by many accounts, Yoon is now a disgraced leader impeached by parliament and suspended from office, he awaits the decision of the constitutional court which can remove him from office.

So why has it proven so difficult for police to arrest him?

Although Yoon has been stripped of his presidential powers – after lawmakers voted to impeach him – he is still entitled to a security detail.

And those men played a key role in blocking the arrest on Friday.

The presidential security service (PSS) could have acted out of loyalty to Yoon or under “a misguided understanding of their legal and constitutional role”, says Mason Richey, an associate professor at Seoul’s Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.

Given that Yoon has been suspended, the PSS should be taking directions from acting President Choi Sang-mok. “They have either not been instructed by acting President Choi to stand down, or they are refusing his orders to do so,” says Assoc Prof Richey.

Some experts believe the security officers were showing “unconditional loyalty” to Yoon, rather than the office itself. They point to the fact that the PSS’s chief Park Jong-joon was appointed to the job by Yoon last September.

“It may well be the case that Yoon has seeded the organisation with hardline loyalists in preparation for precisely this eventuality,” says US-based lawyer and Korea expert Christopher Jumin Lee.

And that Park’s predecessor was former defence minister Kim Yong-hyun, who is accused of advising Yoon to impose martial law. He is currently being held for questioning as part of the criminal investigation into Yoon.

The “simplest” solution, Mr Lee says, is for acting president Choi to order the PSS to stand down in the interim.

“If he is unwilling to do so, that may be grounds for his own impeachment by the National Assembly,” he added.

Choi, who is the finance minister, had stepped in to lead the country after lawmakers voted to impeach Yoon’s first successor, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo.

This political stalemate also reflects the polarisation in South Korean politics between those who support Yoon, and his decision to impose martial law, and those who oppose it. And the differences don’t necessarily end there.

The vast majority of South Koreans agree that Yoon’s declaration of martial law on 3 Dec was wrong and that he needs to be held accountable, says Duyeon Kim, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, but they cannot agree on what accountability looks like.

“The actors involved disagree over process, procedure and their legal basis, which is adding to the current political uncertainty,” she explains.

That uncertainty is also creating tense stand-offs like the one that unfolded on Friday in and outside Yoon’s presidential residence, where his supporters have been camping out for days, leading to heated speeches and even skirmishes with police.

Law enforcement could return with more agents and use force but that would be “highly dangerous,” Assoc Prof Mason said.

The PSS too is heavily armed, so arresting officers would be looking to avoid any escalation.

“What happens if the police show up with additional warrants calling for the arrest of PSS personnel, [the PSS] defy those warrants as well and then brandish their guns?” Mr Lee asks.

Police have now said they are investigating the PSS director and his deputy for obstructing them – so there could be more charges and arrest warrants coming.

The fallout from Yoon’s martial law order is also a challenge for the Corruption Investigation Office (CIO) that is investigating him.

It has only been operating for four years. It was created in response to public anger over former president Park Geun-hye who was impeached, removed from office and later jailed over a corruption scandal.

While South Korean presidents have been jailed before, Yoon is the first one to face arrest before he steps down.

Investigators have until 6 January to arrest Yoon before the current warrant expires.

They may attempt to arrest Yoon again over the weekend, although the weekend could pose a bigger challenge if the crowds of supporters grow. They can also apply for a new warrant and try to detain him again.

Given how far South Korea has now slid into uncharted territory, the uncertainty is likely to continue.

Republican Mike Johnson survived a razor-thin vote to remain House Speaker in a drama-filled, highly-anticipated vote that marked the start of complete Republican control in Washington.

Johnson could only afford to lose two votes because of the tight margin of control Republicans have in Congress. While he came close to losing re-election, he survived the vote after some lobbying.

President-elect Donald Trump previously endorsed Johnson for the role of House speaker, saying “a win for Mike today will be a big win for the Republican Party”.

The House Speaker is one of the most powerful posts in Washington, controlling the lower chamber of the US Congress, and second in line to the presidency after the vice president.

Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, was backed by nearly all Republicans in his bid for re-election.

But that success was not without some controversary.

The vote for Speaker requires a candidate to receive the support of a majority of the House – 218 votes. But because of a razor-thin Republican majority in the House, Johnson could only stand to face opposition from two Republicans.

Johnson already faced one hard “no” from Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky.

“You can pull all my fingernails out. You can shove bamboo up in them. You can start cutting off my fingers. I am not voting for Mike Johnson,” Massie said Thursday in a television interview.

Several other Republicans had put themselves in the “undecided” column heading into the vote.

During the initial votes, three of those undecided Republicans voted for other lawmakers over Johnson, preventing him from reaching the 218 votes he needed.

Three lawmakers – Massie, South Carolina Congressman Ralph Norman and Texas Congressman Keith Self – named other options to serve as the next speaker.

That led Johnson to flee the House floor and lobby members to back him. Some 45 minutes later, he returned to the House chamber.

Both Norman and Self changed their votes to back Johnson.

The gavel struck and Johnson won re-election.

Norman told reporters after the election that he changed his vote after speaking with Johnson in a room outside the House chamber.

He said Johnson told him there would be more conservatives at the table during negotiations, less deals made between congressional and committee leadership without outside input from other lawmakers and enough time to read bill text before votes are scheduled.

“When we left that small room, he convinced me and Keith (Self),” Norman said. “He (Johnson) said I will do that, just give me the chance. He knew and I knew if it went to the second ballot it was going to get tougher and tougher.”

Another player got involved throughout the tense speaker election – President-elect Donald Trump.

Norman spoke with Trump twice during the speaker vote.

The first time was when fellow Republican Nancy Mace of South Carolina handed him her phone to speak with the president-elect. The second was while meeting with Johnson, Self and several others.

“(Trump) is as enthusiastic,” Norman said of the call with the presidnet-elect. “He said, ‘Norman, we have the most opportunity we’ve ever had – the House, Senate, a trifecta, you don’t get that opportunity.’ I said, ‘Mr. President I agree with you, I’m just hoping Mike has got the oomph to pull this off.”

Norman said the president-elect also said Johnson is the only one who has the likeability to win the speaker election.

Self told reporters after the vote that he spoke with Trump before and after the speaker election.

He said he changed his mind when Johnson pledged there would be more members, including from the far-right House Freedom Caucus, at the negotiating table.

“We shored up the reconciliation team because we know that this will be a heavy lift to get the Trump agenda across the line in the reconciliation line,” he said.

Friday marked the first day of the 119th Congress. Republicans have unified control of Washington, with majorities in both the House and Senate and with Trump returning to the White House later in January.

During his acceptance speech, Johnson said that this Congress would champion the idea of America first – a slogan promoted by Trump.

After Trump’s re-election, he said Americans are demanding their interests are put first again.

“And we will,” Johnson said.

Voting in a new speaker is the first requirement of the new session of Congress, and without that leader in place, the chamber cannot move on to any other function.

This has led to chaos in the past – including when former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had to go through 15 rounds of voting before he was confirmed to the leadership post.

Minutes before the vote on Friday, Johnson posted on X several of his plans, if elected.

He promised to create a “working group comprised of independent experts” to work with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that Trump named Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Republican Vivek Ramaswamy to lead.

That working group, he said, would review existing audits of federal agencies and entities created by Congress and issue a report.

“If we want to restore fiscal responsibility, we must start by being transparent about the dollars that are spent, address the issues we find, and then hold those accountable who have misspent funds,” Johnson wrote.

A British national was among at least 14 people killed in the vehicle attack in New Orleans on New Year’s Day, the Foreign Office has confirmed.

He was named by the Metropolitan Police as Edward Pettifer, 31, of Chelsea, London.

In a statement, the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office said it was supporting the victim’s family.

During the attack, a man in a pick-up truck ploughed through crowds on the city’s Bourbon Street before being killed by police.

The New Orleans coroner gave Mr Pettifer’s preliminary cause of death as “blunt force injuries” suffered on Bourbon Street, PA reports.

In a statement, Mr Pettifer’s family said: “The entire family are devastated at the tragic news of Ed’s death in New Orleans. He was a wonderful son, brother, grandson, nephew and a friend to so many.

“We will all miss him terribly. Our thoughts are with the other families who have lost their family members due to this terrible attack. We request that we can grieve the loss of Ed as a family in private. Thank you.”

A well-known American college football player, a young aspiring nurse and a mother of a four-year-old are also among the victims.

Their names were released by families and relatives before the authorities in the US completed post-mortem examinations.

The attack is believed to have been carried out by a 42-year-old Texas resident and US Army veteran.

After driving the truck through the crowds the suspect is said to have got out and fired a weapon before being shot dead by police.

The FBI says an Islamic State group flag was found inside the vehicle.

Two improvised explosive devices were also found nearby, according to police.

• ‘No-one deserves this’: Victims’ families seek answers
• What we know about the New Orleans attack and driver
• What CCTV and social media videos reveal about the attack
• The rev of an engine and then screams – how revelry turned to mayhem in New Orleans

The suspect, named as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, is believed to have acted alone in a “premeditated and evil act”, the FBI has said.

At least 39 other people were injured during the attack, which took place in the city’s French Quarter – a bustling nightspot popular with locals and tourists – at around 03:15 (09:15 GMT) on Wednesday.

Some of the injured have been discharged from hospital but more than a dozen remain, with some being treated in the ICU.

Bourbon Street was opened to the public on Thursday morning ahead of the Sugar Bowl, a much-anticipated college American football match between Notre Dame and the University of Georgia, that draws thousands of attendees.

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.

A British woman and her South African fiance have been found dead in a holiday villa in Vietnam, local police have said.

Greta Marie Otteson, 33, was discovered by staff dead on a bed in a first-floor room in Hoi An, a coastal city in the central region of the south-east Asian nation, at around 11:18 local time (04:18 GMT) on 26 December, police said in a statement on Monday.

Her fiance Els Arno Quinton, 36, was found dead on a bed in another room in the villa that had reportedly been locked from the inside.

The UK Foreign Office confirmed it was in contact with local authorities and supporting the family of a British woman who had died in Vietnam.

Ms Otteson was a social media manager, and Mr Quinton was a musician and livestreamer.

A video announcing their engagement was posted on Instagram by videography company Red Eye Studios on 11 December.

Both had registered for long-term temporary residence at the Hoa Chuong villa, in the Cam Thanh commune, since last summer.

Police said a preliminary inspection of the bodies had found no signs of external force and that the rooms showed no sign of burglary.

Local media reports that several empty bottles of wine were found at the scene.

An investigation into the cause of the pair’s deaths is ongoing.

A spokesperson for the UK Foreign Office said in a statement: “We are supporting the family of a British woman who has died in Vietnam and are in contact with the local authorities.”

The stand-off started long before dawn. By the time we arrived in the dark, an army of police had pushed back suspended president Yoon Suk Yeol’s angry supporters, who’d camped out overnight hoping to stop his arrest. Some of those I spoke to were crying, others wailing, at what they feared was about to unfold.

As dawn broke, the first officers ran up to the house, but were instantly thwarted – blocked by a wall of soldiers protecting the compound. Reinforcements came, but could not help. The doors to Yoon’s house stayed tightly sealed, his security team refusing the police officers entry.

For several hours the investigators waited, the crowds outside growing more agitated – until, after a series of scuffles between the police and security officials, they decided their mission was futile, and gave up.

This is totally uncharted territory for South Korea. It is the first time a sitting president has ever faced arrest, so there is no rule book to follow – but the current situation is nonetheless astonishing.

When Yoon was impeached three weeks ago, he was supposedly stripped of his power. So to have law enforcement officers trying to carry out an arrest – which they have legal warrant for – only to be blocked by Yoon’s security team raises serious and uncomfortable questions about who is in charge here.

The investigating officers said they abandoned efforts to arrest Yoon not only because it looked impossible, but because they were concerned for their safety. They said 200 soldiers and security officers linked arms, forming a human wall to block the entrance to the presidential residence, with some carrying guns.

This is arguably part of Yoon’s plan, leveraging a system he himself designed. Before he declared martial law last month – a plan we now know he cooked up months earlier – he surrounded himself with close friends and loyalists, injecting them into positions of power.

One of those people is the current head of his security team, who took up the job in September.

But although alarming, this situation is not entirely surprising. Yoon has refused to cooperate with the authorities over this investigation, ignoring every request to come in for questioning.

This is how things reached this point, where investigators felt they had no choice but to bring him in by force. Yoon is being investigated for one of the most serious political crimes there is: inciting an insurrection, which is punishable by life in prison or death.

Yoon has also spurred on his supporters, who have gathered in force outside his residence every day since the arrest warrant was issued. He sent them a letter on New Years’ Day thanking them for “working hard” to defend both him and the country.

Although most people in South Korea are upset and angry at Yoon’s decision to impose martial law, a core of his supporters have stayed loyal. Some even camped overnight, in freezing temperatures, to try and stop police reaching his home.

Many told me this morning they were prepared to die to protect Yoon, and repeated the same unfounded conspiracy theories that Yoon himself has floated – that last year’s election was rigged, and the country had been infiltrated by pro-North Korea forces. They held up signs reading “stop the steal”, a slogan they chanted over and over.

Attention is also now on South Korea’s acting President Choi Sang-mok, and how far his powers extend; whether he could and should sack the president’s security chief and force the team to allow his arrest. The opposition party says police should be arresting anyone who stands in their way.

Although investigators have until 6 January to attempt this arrest again – this is when the warrant runs out – it is unlikely they will go in once more without changing their strategy or negotiating with the security team in advance. They will want to avoid a repeat of today’s failure.

They also have to contend with the throngs of Yoon’s supporters, who now feel victorious and empowered. They believe they are largely responsible for the authorities’ climb down. “We’ve won, we did it,” they have been singing all afternoon.

As their confidence grows, so will their numbers, especially with the weekend approaching.