More Vietnamese attempted small-boat Channel crossings in the first half of 2024 than any other nationality. Yet they are coming from one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. Why, then, are so many risking their lives to reach Britain?

Phuong looked at the small inflatable boat and wondered whether she should step in. There were 70 people packed in, and it was sitting low in the water. She recalls the fear, exhaustion and desperation on their faces. There weren’t enough lifejackets to go around.

But Phuong was desperate. She says she had been stuck in France for two months, after travelling there from Vietnam via Hungary, sleeping in tents in a scrubby forest.

Already she had refused to travel on one boat because it seemed dangerously overcrowded, and previously had been turned back in the middle of the Channel three times by bad weather or engine failure.

Her sister, Hien, lives in London, and recalls that Phuong used to phone her from France in tears. “She was torn between fear and a drive to keep going.

“But she had borrowed so much – around £25,000 – to fund this trip. Turning back wasn’t an option.” So, she climbed on board.

Today Phuong lives in London with her sister, without any legal status. She was too nervous to speak to us directly, and Phuong is not her real name. She left it to her sister, who is now a UK citizen, to describe her experiences.

In the six months to June, Vietnamese made up the largest number of recorded small boat arrivals with 2,248 landing in the UK, ahead of people from countries with well-documented human rights problems, including Afghanistan and Iran.

The extraordinary efforts made by Vietnamese migrants to get to Britain is well documented, and in 2024 the BBC reported on how Vietnamese syndicates are running successful people-smuggling operations.

It is not without significant risks. Some Vietnamese migrants end up being trafficked into sex work or illegal marijuana farms. They make up more than one-tenth of those in the UK filing official claims that they are victims of modern slavery.

And yet Vietnam is a fast-growing economy, acclaimed as a “mini-China” for its manufacturing prowess. Per capita income is eight times higher than it was 20 years ago. Add to that the tropical beaches, scenery and affordability, which have made it a magnet for tourists.

So what is it that makes so many people desperate to leave?

Vietnam, a one-party Communist state, sits near the bottom of most human rights and freedom indexes. No political opposition is permitted. The few dissidents who raise their voices are harassed and jailed.

Yet most Vietnamese have learned to live with the ruling party, which leans for legitimacy on its record of delivering growth. Very few who go to Britain are fleeing repression.

Nor are the migrants generally fleeing poverty. The World Bank has singled Vietnam out for its almost unrivalled record of poverty reduction among its 100 million people.

Rather, they are trying to escape what some call “relative deprivation”.

Despite its impressive economic record, Vietnam started far behind most of its Asian neighbours, with growth only taking off well after the end of the Cold War in 1989. As a result, average wages, at around £230 a month, are much lower than in nearby countries like Thailand, and three-quarters of the 55-million-strong workforce are in informal jobs, with no security or social protection.

“There is a huge disparity between big cities like Hanoi and rural areas,” says Nguyen Khac Giang, a Vietnamese academic at the Institute of South East Asian Studies-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. “For a majority of workers with limited skills, there is a glass ceiling. Even if you work 14 hours a day you cannot save enough to build a house or start a family.”

This was what Phuong felt, despite coming from Haiphong, Vietnam’s third-largest city.

Her sister Hien had made it to Britain nine years earlier, smuggled inside a shipping container. It had cost her around £22,000 but she was able to pay that back in two years, working long hours in kitchens and nail salons. Hien married a Vietnamese man who already had British citizenship, and they had a daughter; all three are now UK citizens.

In Haiphong, jobs were scarce after the pandemic and at 38 years old, Phuong wanted what her sister had in London: the ability to save money and start a family.

“She could survive in Vietnam, but she wanted a home, a better life, with more security,” explains Hien.

Lan An Hoang, a professor in development studies at Melbourne University, has spent years studying migration patterns. “Twenty to thirty years ago, the urge to migrate overseas was not as strong, because everyone was poor,” she says. “People were happy with one buffalo, one motorbike and three meals a day.

“Suddenly a few people successfully migrated to countries like Germany or the UK, to work on cannabis farms or open nail salons. They started to send a lot of money home. Even though the economic conditions of those left behind have not changed, they feel poor relative to all these families with migrants working in Europe.”

This tradition of seeking better lives overseas goes back to the 1970s and 80s, when Vietnam was allied to the Soviet Union following the defeat of US forces in the south.

The state-led economy had hit rock bottom. Millions were destitute; some areas suffered food shortages. Tens of thousands left to work in eastern bloc countries like Poland, East Germany and Hungary.

This was also a time when 800,000 mainly ethnic Chinese boat people fled the communist party’s repressive actions, making perilous sea journeys across the South China Sea, eventually resettling in the USA, Australia or Europe.

The economic hardships of that time threatened the legitimacy of the communist party, and in 1986 it made an abrupt turn, abandoning the attempt to build a socialist system and throwing the doors open to global markets. The new theme of Vietnam’s national story was to catch up, and get rich, any way possible. For many Vietnamese, that meant going abroad.

“Money is God in Vietnam,” says Lan An Hoang. “The meaning of ‘the good life’ is primarily anchored in your ability to accumulate wealth. There is also a strong obligation to help your family, especially in central Vietnam.

“That is why the whole extended family pools resources to finance the migration of one young person because they believe they can send back large sums of money, and facilitate the migration of other people.”

Drive through the flat rice fields of Nghe An, one of Vietnam’s poorer provinces lying south of Hanoi, and where there were once smaller concrete houses, you will now find large, new houses with gilded gates. More are under construction, thanks, in part, to money earned in the West.

The new houses are prominent symbols of success for returnees who have done well overseas.

Vietnam is now enjoying substantial inflows of foreign investment, as it is considered an alternative to China for companies wanting to diversify their supply chains. This investment is even beginning to reach places like Nghe An, too.

Foxconn, a corporate giant that manufactures iPhones, is one of several foreign businesses building factories in Nghe An, offering thousands of new jobs.

But monthly salaries for unskilled workers only reach around £300, even with overtime. That is not enough to rival the enticing stories of the money to be made in the UK, as told by the people smugglers.

The business of organising the travel for those wishing to leave the province is now a very profitable one. Publicly, companies present themselves as either travel agents or brokers for officially-approved overseas labour contracts, but in practice many also offer to smuggle people to the UK via other European countries. They usually paint a rosy picture of life in Britain, and say little about the risks and hardships they will face.

“Brokers” typically charge between £15,000 and £35,000 for the trip to the UK. Hungary is a popular route into the EU because it offers guest-worker visas to Vietnamese passport holders. The higher the price, the easier and faster the journey.

The communist authorities in Vietnam have been urged by the US, the UK and UN agencies to do more to control the smuggling business.

Remittances from abroad earn Vietnam around £13bn a year, and the government has a policy of promoting migration for work, although only through legal channels, mostly to richer Asian countries.

More than 130,000 Vietnamese workers left in 2024 under the official scheme. But the fees for these contracts can be high, and the wages are much lower than they can earn in Britain.

The huge risks of the illicit routes used to reach the UK were brought home in 2019, when 39 Vietnamese people were found dead in Essex, having suffocated while being transported inside a sealed container across the Channel.

Yet this has not noticeably reduced demand for the smugglers’ services. The increased scrutiny of container traffic has, however, pushed them to find alternative Channel crossings, which helps explain the sharp rise in Vietnamese people using small boats.

“The tragedy of the 39 deaths in 2019 is almost forgotten,” says the cousin of one of the victims, Le Van Ha. He left behind a wife, two young children and a large debt from the cost of the journey. His cousin, who does not want to be named, says attitudes in their community have not changed.

“People hardly care anymore. It’s a sad reality, but it is the truth.

“I see the trend of leaving continuing to grow, not diminish. For people here, the success stories still outweigh the risks.”

Three of the victims came from the agricultural province of Quang Binh. The headteacher of a secondary school in the region, who also asked not to be named, says that 80% of his students who graduate soon plan to go overseas.

“Most parents here come from low-income backgrounds,” he explains. “The idea of [encouraging their child to] broaden their knowledge and develop their skills is not the priority.

“For them, sending a child abroad is largely about earning money quickly, and getting it sent back home to improve the family’s living standards.”

In March the UK Home Office started a social media campaign to deter Vietnamese people from illegal migration. Some efforts were also made by the Vietnamese government to alert people to the risks of using people-smugglers. But until there are more appealing economic opportunities in those provinces, it is likely the campaigns will have little impact.

“They cannot run these campaigns just once,” argues Diep Vuong, co-founder of Pacific Links, an anti-trafficking organisation. “It’s a constant investment in education that’s needed.”

She has first-hand experience, leaving Vietnam to the US in 1980 as part of the exodus of Vietnamese boat people.

“In Vietnam, people believe they have to work hard, to do everything for their families. That is like a shackle which they cannot easily escape. But with enough good information put out over the years, they might start to change this attitude.”

But the campaigns are up against a powerful narrative. Those who go overseas and fail – and many do – are often ashamed, and keep quiet about what went wrong. Those who succeed come back to places like Nghe An and flaunt their new-found wealth. As for the tragedy of the 39 people who died in a shipping container, the prevailing view in Nghe An is still that they were just unlucky.

James Lee Williams, better known as drag queen The Vivienne, has died aged 32.

Publicist Simon Jones said the performer, who died over the weekend, was “an incredibly loved, warm-hearted and amazing person”.

The Vivienne starred in musical theatre and TV productions, and won the first series of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK in 2019.

The show paid tribute to the drag star on social media, saying they were “deeply saddened” by the news of the performer’s death.

“She will be dearly missed, but her legacy will live on as a beacon of creativity and authenticity – she embodied what it means to be a true champion”.

“Her talent, humour, and dedication to the art of drag was an inspiration,” the show said in a post on X.

“Our hearts go out to her family and fans during this difficult time.”

The show’s judge Michelle Visage also called the star “a beacon to so many”.

Writing on social media, Visage called the news “heartbreaking”, adding: “My darling The Vivienne, we go back to when I started coming over here to the UK.”

“You were always there, always laughing, always giving, always on point.”

“Your laughter, your wit, your talent, your drag. I loved all of it but I loved your friendship most of all.”

Drag Race UK star Bimini Bon Boulash also reacted to the news, writing on Instagram: “I’m so sorry I’m in total shock”.

Cheryl – who used to go by Cheryl Hole – took part in the same series of Drag Race as The Vivienne. The performer wrote on Instagram: “I will love you forever Viv.”

John Hyland, community partnerships lead at Sahir, a LGBTQ+ and HIV charity in Liverpool, also paid tribute. Drag fans have been donating to Sahir’s latest campaign as a mark of respect for The Vivienne, who posted about the appeal just days before their death.

John said: “It says a lot to Viv’s character that her last social post was about our Pound for Sahir campaign. She just wanted to give back.

“If you look at the response tonight, I think we’re going to be in mourning in this city for a long time. The Vivienne was an amazing character, an amazing influence.”

Natasha Von Spirit, a Liverpool drag queen, said that The Vivienne had put British drag “in the mainstream” and that they would be playing songs in tribute to them throughout the night.

They said: “Whenever she was out on the scene after drag race she was just one of the Liverpool gays.

“I’m going to play all sorts for Viv tonight – definitely Walking in Memphis because before Drag Race she sung that none stop, and definitely a bit of her own music as well.”

Williams was born in Wales, and adopted the drag name because of a love for wearing Vivienne Westwood clothing.

Rydal Penrhos school in Colwyn Bay, where Williams was a former pupil, said it was “deeply shocked and saddened” by the star’s death.

“The Vivienne’s successful career as a performer and artist proved a source of inspiration and joy to so many”, the school said in a statement.

As well as winning Drag Race, The Vivienne came third on the 2023 edition of Dancing On Ice, and performed as the Wicked Witch of the West in a UK and Ireland tour of The Wizard Of Oz musical.

The performer reprised the role in the West End at the Gillian Lynne Theatre last year.

The Vivienne also competed on an all-winners season of the RuPaul franchise in the US in 2022, and starred in BBC Three show The Vivienne Takes On Hollywood in 2020.

In an Instagram post on Boxing Day, The Vivienne put up a series of photos, captioning it: “24′ highlights.”

“What a year it’s been. Here’s to reaching new heights and achieving dreams in 25,” the star wrote, before signing off: “Viv xxx.”

Mr Jones said words announcing The Vivienne’s death were ones he “never ever wanted to write”.

“No one has ever made me laugh in my life as much as Viv did. Their comic genius and quick wit was like no other,” he said.

“I’m so proud and lucky that Viv was such a big part of my life every day for the last 5 years.”

Mr Jones asked for privacy for the star’s family and said no further details would be released at this time.

Fiona Campbell, BBC controller of youth audience, called the news “deeply sad”, adding: “We are fiercely proud of The Vivienne’s achievements, including winning the first ever series of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK.

“Right now our thoughts are with their family and friends, the Drag Race sisterhood and their many fans.”

Ukraine has launched a counter-attack in Russia’s Kursk region, the Russian defence ministry says.

As officials in Ukraine also suggested an operation was under way, Moscow said it had met the attack with artillery and air power.

Ukrainian forces entered Kursk region in August, seizing a chunk of territory. Russian forces have pushed them back in some areas without managing to eject them entirely.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that security guarantees leading to an end to the war would only be effective if the US under Donald Trump provided them.

During a podcast interview with Lex Fridman, Zelensky praised the incoming US president’s influence and suggested Trump had the leverage to at least halt Russia’s ongoing invasion.

Trump pledged during his election campaign to quickly end the war, without giving details.

Zelensky said “Trump and I will come to an agreement and… offer strong security guarantees, together with Europe, and then we can talk to the Russians”.

According to the Russian defence ministry, a Ukrainian assault detachment consisting of two tanks, one military engineering vehicle and 12 armoured fighting vehicles (AFVs) attacked near the village of Berdin around 09:00 (06:00 GMT) on Sunday.

Russian forces hit back, it said, destroying both tanks, the military engineering vehicle and seven armoured fighting vehicles. Fighting continued, it added.

Aerial video of a column of armour moving through snow-covered countryside in daylight and coming under fire, with vehicles taking hits, was published by Russian state news agency Ria.

The BBC was not immediately able to verify the Russian footage or claims.

Speaking earlier, the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, said there “was good news from Kursk Region” and that Russia was “getting what it deserves”.

Ukraine’s top counter-disinformation official Andriy Kovalenko said in a Telegram post on Sunday: “The Russians in Kursk are experiencing great anxiety because they were attacked from several directions and it came as a surprise to them.”

Oner Russian blogger, Yury Podolyaka, suggested the operation might have been diversionary, while another, Alexander Kots, did not rule out that the main attack could be launched somewhere else.

Kyiv’s forces are reportedly suffering from manpower shortages and have been losing ground in the east of Ukraine in recent months, as Russian troops advance.

It comes as the Ukrainian Air Force said Russia launched another drone attack on Ukraine overnight.

It said it had shot down 61 drones over Kyiv, Poltava, Sumy, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Dnipropetrovsk, Zhytomyr, and Khmelnytskyy regions

There were no direct hits, but a few houses were damaged in Kharkiv Region by an intercepted drone, the air force said.

In November, Ukraine reported its troops had engaged in combat with North Korean troops in the Kursk region.

The reported appearance of North Korean soldiers was in response to a surprise attack launched across the border by Ukrainian troops in August, advancing up to 18 miles (30km) into Russian land.

Moscow evacuated almost 200,000 people from areas along the border and President Vladimir Putin condemned the Ukrainian offensive as a “major provocation”.

After a fortnight, Ukraine’s top commander claimed to control more than 1,200 sq km of Russian territory and 93 villages.

Some of that territory has been regained by Russia.

More than 60 million Americans are under winter weather alerts as a huge winter storm is forecast to bring the heaviest snowfall and coldest temperatures in over a decade.

Much of Canada and 30 US states from Kansas to the East Coast are under weather alerts, the National Weather Service (NWS) said. Snowfall of 6-12in (15-30cm) is expected from Ohio to Washington DC.

A state of emergency has been declared in Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Kansas, Arkansas and Missouri. Even parts of normally balmy Florida are expected to experience freezing conditions.

Forecasters say the extreme weather is being caused by the polar vortex, an area of cold air that circulates around the Arctic.

After blanketing the Central Plains, the storm is expected to hit the US East Coast by Sunday evening.

Parts of upstate New York have experienced at least 3ft of snow so far.

• Follow live updates on this story
• How to drive in snow and icy weather

Washington DC is bracing for between 5-9in of snow. The city’s mayor has declared a snow emergency until at least Sunday evening.

Congress is due to meet on Monday afternoon to certify Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election three months ago, but it is unclear if the foul weather could delay some lawmakers returning to the capital from their constituencies.

The Annapolis area near Baltimore, Maryland, could see 8-12in of snow, the NWS predicts.

Blizzard warnings have been issued in Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska.

Parts of northern Missouri have already experienced 14in of sleet and snow, while Kansas has had 10in.

“For locations in this region that receive the highest snow totals, it may be the heaviest snowfall in at least a decade,” the NWS said on Sunday.

AccuWeather forecaster Dan DePodwin said: “This could lead to the coldest January for the US since 2011.”

He added that “temperatures that are well below historical average” could linger for a week. Temperatures 12-25F (7-14C) below normal are forecast.

Severe travel delays are expected. Nearly 1,500 flights into and out of the US have been cancelled and nearly 5,000 more delayed, according to FlightAware.com.

Amtrak has also cancelled numerous train services.

American, Delta, Southwest and United airlines are waiving change fees for passengers because of the potential flight disruptions.

Further north, Canadians are also feeling the effects of the polar vortex.

Much of Canada is under extreme weather alerts this weekend with frigid temperatures spanning the country.

Some areas are also seeing snow squalls – a sudden heavy snowfall accompanied by strong winds.

In the central province of Manitoba, the wind chill could see temperatures plummet to as low as -40C.

Meanwhile, parts of Ontario could see as much as 15in of snow on Sunday.

Conditions on roads have already deteriorated, with crashes involving lorries and cars, as well as a fire engine rolling over near Salina, Kansas.

“Whiteout conditions will make travel extremely hazardous, with impassable roads and a high risk of motorists becoming stranded,” the NWS warned.

Meanwhile, severe thunderstorms capable of producing tornadoes will move east from Arkansas and Louisiana into Mississippi and Alabama on Sunday evening, the NWS said.

Private meteorologist Ryan Maue said: “It’s going to be a mess, a potential disaster. This is something we haven’t seen in quite a while.”

How have you been affected by the storm? Share your experiences by following this link.

The body of an Indian journalist who had reported on alleged corruption in the country has been found in a septic tank in Chhattisgarh state.

Mukesh Chandrakar, 32, went missing on New Year’s Day and his family registered a complaint with the police.

His body was found on Friday in the compound of a road construction contractor in the Bijapur town area after officers tracked his mobile phone.

Three people have been arrested in connection with his death, reportedly including two of his relatives. A media watchdog has demanded a thorough investigation.

Police in the Bijapur district did not find anything during an initial visit to the compound on 2 January.

“However, after further inspection on 3 January, we discovered Mukesh’s body in the newly floored septic tank near the badminton court,” a senior police officer said, referring to the fact concrete slabs had been placed on top of the tank.

Police said his body showed severe injuries consistent with a blunt-force attack.

Mr Chandrakar, a freelance journalist, had reported widely on alleged corruption in public construction projects.

He also ran a popular YouTube channel, Bastar Junction.

Following his death, the Press Council of India called for a report “on the facts of the case” from the state’s government.

The chief minister of the state described Mr Chandrakar’s death as “heartbreaking”.

In a post on X, he said a special investigation team had been formed to investigate the case.

It has been reported in Indian media that one of those under arrest over the journalist’s death is his cousin.

One of the main suspects – compound owner Suresh Chandrakar, also a relative – is on the run.

Local journalists have held a protest demanding strict action against the alleged perpetrators.

Attacks on journalists reporting on corruption or environmental degradation is not uncommon in India.

In May 2022, Subhash Kumar Mahto, a freelance journalist known for his reporting on people involved in illegal sand mining, was fatally shot in the head by four unidentified men outside his home in Bihar.

Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders has said that an average of three or four journalists are killed in connection with their work in India every year, making it one of the world’s most dangerous countries for the media.

US actors Demi Moore and Sebastian Stan are among the big winners at the Golden Globe Awards, which are taking place in Los Angeles.

Moore was named best actress in a musical or comedy for her performance in body horror The Substance, which has revitalised her career and could see her score an Oscar nomination.

“I’m just in shock right now… I really wasn’t expecting that,” Moore said as she took to the stage. “I’ve been doing this a long time, over 45 years, and this is the first time I’ve ever won anything as an actor.”

Other winners have included Kieran Culkin and Zoe Saldaña and TV series Baby Reindeer and Shōgun.

Blockbuster Wicked missed out on the major prizes, but won the box office and cinematic achievement prize, which was introduced last year.

In her acceptance speech, Moore said: “Thirty years ago, I had a producer tell me I was a popcorn actress, and at that time I made that mean that [awards] weren’t something I was allowed to have, that I could do movies that were successful and made a lot of money but couldn’t be acknowledged.

“And I bought in and believed that. That corroded me over time to the point where a few years ago I thought maybe this is it, maybe I was complete, I had done what I was supposed to do.

“And as I was at a low point, I had this creative, out of the box, bonkers script come across my desk, called the Substance, and the universe told me I was not done.”

Stan was named best actor in a musical or comedy for A Different Man, which sees him play a character who drastically changes his appearance.

“Our ignorance and discomfort around disability and disfigurement has to end now, we have to normalise it and continue to expose ourselves to it, and our children, encourage acceptance.”

Culkin won best supporting actor for his performance in A Real Pain, about two cousins who travel across Poland in memory of their grandmother.

“The first ever acknowledgement I got as an actor was a Golden Globe nomination when I was basically a kid. Now, it’s like the best date night my wife and I ever have,” he joked.

Saldaña, who won best supporting actress for her role in Spanish-language musical Emilia Pérez, said: “My heart is full of gratitude.”

“I’m so blessed to be sharing this moment with my fellow nominees,” she continued. “I know this is a competition but all I have witnessed is just us showing up for each other and celebrating each other and it’s just so beautiful.”

The film also won best non-English language film which saw director Jacques Audiard take to the stage with a French translator to accept the award.

“In these troubled times I hope Emilia Perez will be a beacon of light,” he said. “I hope to offer a comforting hug to those who are worried… I urge them to keep they heads held high and hope for a better few days ahead.”

Accepting Wicked’s prize for box office achievement, director Jon M Chu paid tribute to the movie and stage musical’s loyal fanbase.

“This is for you, the fans out there, who came to the movie theatres, brought your friends and family, we saw your videos, your singalongs, your make-up, hair products, bakery items,” he said.

“It shows us how important making this stuff is, in a time when pessimism and cynicism rule the planet, that we can still make art that is a radical act of optimism.”

There was a surprise but welcome winner in the animated feature category, which saw box office juggernauts The Wild Robot and Inside Out 2 beaten by Flow, a film about animals who must work together to survive following a flood.

“This film was made by a very small, young, but passionate team, in a place where there isn’t a big film industry, so this is the first time a film from Latvia has been here so this is huge for us,” said director Gints Zilbalodis.

• Nikki Glaser’s best jokes at the Golden Globes
• Golden Globes: The winners and nominees (updating live)
• Golden Globes: The red carpet in pictures

Elsewhere, Baby Reindeer was named best limited TV series, which was accepted by its writer and creator Richard Gadd.

“A lot of people ask me why a show this dark has gone on to be the success that it has,” he said. “And I think in a lot of ways, people were crying out for something that spoke to the painful inconsistencies of being human.

“For a while there’s been this belief in television that stories which are too dark and complicated won’t sell and no-one will watch them, so I hope Baby Reindeer has done away with that theory, because right now, when the world’s in the state that it’s in and people are really struggling, we need stories which speak to the complicated and difficult nature of our times.”

British actress Jessica Gunning was named best TV supporting actress for her portrayal as a stalker in the hit Netflix series.

In her acceptance speech, Gunning shared an anecdote about getting a hamster for Christmas as a child, and thinking that she couldn’t believe it was happening to her. She said that phrase had become the “soundtrack of my life this year”.

“Thank you to Richard Gadd, Baby Reindeer has changed my life in ways that I can’t even explain. I can’t believe this is happening to me,” she repeated, “and I know that eight-year-old me wouldn’t either, she’d be chuffed to bits.”

Irish actor Colin Farrell won his third Golden Globe, for playing the Batman villain Penguin in an HBO series of the same name.

On stage, he joked that he had “no one to thank” and “did it all by myself”.

Recalling the three hours it took to fit him with prosthetics to make him the bloated villain in his latest film, he said: “In the morning, I drank black coffee, listened to 80s music, and I became a canvas for that team’s brilliance.”

Farrell also said: “Thank you for employing me. And yeah, I guess it’s prosthetics from here on out.”

The Golden Globes mark the first major ceremony of the film awards season, which culminates with the Oscars on 2 March.

A win at the Globes can help boost a film’s profile at a crucial time, when Bafta and Oscar voters are preparing to fill in their nomination ballots.

Elon Musk has called for Nigel Farage to be replaced as leader of Reform UK, just weeks after reports the multi-billionaire was in talks to donate to the party.

In a post on his social media site X, Musk said Farage “doesn’t have what it takes” to lead the party – but did not explain his reasoning.

Farage suggested this was due to a disagreement over Musk’s support for far-right activist Tommy Robinson.

He said Musk’s comment was “a surprise”, but that he would “never sell out my principles”.

The comment from the tech entrepreneur comes hours after Farage described Musk as a “friend” in an interview on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme.

Musk has been a vocal supporter of Farage and his party, posting on X in December that Britain “absolutely” needs Reform UK.

But this week a rift emerged over Musk’s support for Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who is currently serving an 18-month prison sentence for contempt of court.

Robinson admitted in court to breaching an injunction against repeating claims about a Syrian refugee schoolboy after losing a 2021 libel case.

In a social media post on Sunday in response to Musk’s comment, Farage said: “Elon is a remarkable individual but on this I am afraid I disagree”.

“My view remains that Tommy Robinson is not right for Reform and I never sell out my principles.”

Minutes after Farage made his statement, Musk posted on X: “Free Tommy Robinson now.”

In the interview broadcast earlier on Sunday, Farage called Musk a “hero” who makes Reform UK “look cool”.

But he added that Musk’s support “doesn’t mean I have to agree with every single statement he makes on X”.

Farage said he planned to “have a conversation with (Musk) on a variety of things” – including Robinson – at the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump.

Farage has maintained close ties to Trump, who has given Musk a role in his administration.

The question now is whether Farage’s friendship with the president-elect is affected.

Farage founded Reform UK in 2018, then called the Brexit Party, and returned as the party’s leader before being elected as an MP in 2024.

In December, Farage, along with Reform’s new party treasurer Nick Candy, met Musk at Mar-a-Lago for an hour-long meeting, and began “open negotiations” about a donation to the party.

Musk’s father Errol has suggested the SpaceX and Tesla mogul might even be prepared to become a UK citizen to make a $100m (£80.5 m) donation to Reform UK. Farage later said speculation about the figure was “for the birds”.

As a US citizen, Musk cannot make personal political donations in the UK – but could make one through the British branch of his company X.

For now, at least it seems the rumours of a large donation from Musk to Reform are on ice.

Since his meeting with Farage, Musk has increasingly taken an interest in UK politics – focusing on criticism of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.

Musk has spent the week amplifying calls by Reform UK and the Conservative Party for a national inquiry into grooming gangs.

The calls came after the government turned down a request to conduct an inquiry into historical cases of sexual abuse in Oldham, saying the council should lead it instead.

This prompted Musk to accuse Sir Keir of failing to properly prosecute “rape gangs” while he was director of public prosecutions.

Musk also said Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips “deserves to be in prison” and called her a “rape genocide apologist”.

Asked about Musk’s comments on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Farage said the CEO had used “very tough terms, but that “free speech was back” on X under his ownership.

In 2022, an independent inquiry by Greater Manchester Combined Authority found that vulnerable children were left exposed to sexual exploitation in Oldham because of “serious failings” by the police and council.

The government has rejected the calls for a national inquiry, instead asking Oldham Council to set up its own. The previous Conservative government turned down a similar request in 2022.

Phillips and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said in a letter to the Conservatives that the local authority had already started setting up an inquiry.

The letter also pointed to the 2022 Child Sexual Abuse Inquiry, which investigated abuse in care homes, churches, homes or by grooming gangs.

The report knitted several previous inquiries into grooming gangs together, including in Rotherham, Rochdale and Telford, alongside its own investigations.

Speaking on Sunday, Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the government was prioritising “getting on with” implementing the report’s 20 recommendations to combat child sexual abuse.

He told the BBC that Musk’s criticism of Phillips was a “disgraceful smear” and said “people like Keir Starmer and Jess Phillips have done the hard yards of actually locking up wife beaters, rapists and paedophiles”.

One of the UK’s most promising new guitar bands, English Teacher, have kicked off the countdown of the top five on the BBC’s annual list of music’s rising stars.

The Leeds quartet have been voted in fifth place in BBC Radio 1’s Sound of 2025 poll – with a panel of 180 music industry experts choosing them as one of the acts with “the best chance of mainstream success” in the next 12 months.

They got well on their way last year. In September, the band beat pop stars like Charli XCX and CMAT to win the Mercury Prize for their debut album, This Could Be Texas.

The record deals in sharp portraits of life in sleepy northern towns, where the background hum of racism, loneliness and deprivation is thrown into sharp relief by sublime scenery and lifelong friendships.

Their music, meanwhile, is constantly surprising – full of shifting time signatures, needle-point guitar riffs and soaring melodies that are simultaneously odd and captivating.

“We never really set out with an aim to create something specific,” says guitarist Lewis Whiting. “But, that’s the fun part, right? Trying to make something new and interesting.”

They say the acclaim they’ve received so far still doesn’t feel real. “Where we come from, this just doesn’t happen,” says frontwoman Lily Fontaine.

“I keep telling people that I feel like I’m living in a simulation.”

“It does feel dream-like,” adds Whiting.

“Best year of my life, craziest year of my life.”

Over the last 12 months, the group have played more than 100 gigs in 16 countries, rising steadily up festival bills as they go, and surviving on “willpower, laughter and Red Bull”.

Along the way, they told journalists their origin story more times than they care to count. Eventually, they got tired of the “boring” reality (they met studying music at Leeds Conservatoire) and started inventing less prosaic stories.

“We said we were distant relatives who met at a wedding 20 years ago in Leeds,” laughs Fontaine.

“They put us at the odd table. We were sort of like the outcasts,” adds Whiting, continuing the story.

“But we really clicked,” says Fontaine. “We started talking about Shakira and how we wanted to be like her, then they played Hips Don’t Lie at the disco and we said, ‘We should start a band’.”

English Teacher, it should be noted, sound nothing like Shakira. They started out as a dream-pop outfit called Frank and, after the addition of Whiting on guitar, began to lean into a more angular, post-punk sound.

Key references include Radiohead, Sonic Youth and Pavement. “But, famously, we don’t agree on our favourite bands,” says Whiting.

The quartet released their first single, The World’s Biggest Paving Slab, in 2020.

Like many of their songs, it draws inspiration from Fontaine’s hometown of Colne in Lancashire, where the titular paving stone resides outside the town hall.

The lyrics reference a host of local heroes – from Life On Mars actor John Simm to novelist Charlotte Bronte – juxtaposing the colour and vigour of the town’s history against the social problems it faces in the current day.

It’s an itch she continues to scratch throughout the band’s catalogue, addressing social deprivation and political mismanagement (““) alongside themes of identity, self-doubt and emotional turbulence.

Incredibly, she only started writing relatively recently. As a teenager, she’d been in a wedding band with her friend, playing Amy Winehouse and Adele covers. She didn’t consider composing until she applied for university.

“I wrote my first song for the audition,” she recalls. “It was awful, but it worked. I got a place to study singing and performance, but I very quickly switched to composition, because I was suddenly spending all my time writing songs.”

During that period, English Teacher’s members – completed by drummer Douglas Frost and bassist Nicholas Eden – circled each other on Leeds’ live music scene, playing with various other bands before settling on their current line-up.

Their breakthrough came with the 2021 single R&B, where Fontaine addresses the challenge of being a woman of colour fronting an indie band: (““).

It’s a perception she struggled with herself as a teenager, frustrated that she wasn’t capable of “the kind of the vocal runs that the black singers I looked up to were able to do”.

As a frontwoman, she developed her own style – a droll mixture of sprechgesang and her fluttering, airy upper register. But she still encountered prejudice.

“There’d be times where I told people that I made music, and they’d give a certain expression when I said that it was guitar music or it was indie music,” she says.

“There were a lot of small comments after gigs. People would come up and say, ‘Oh, that’s not what I was expecting at all’,” adds Whiting.

Fontaine is careful not to make too big an issue of it. “I think I’ve got a lot of privilege, because I’m quite a light skinned woman of colour,” she says.

“I think if I was dark skinned it would be even harder – but it did affect me, not seeing people who looked like me in bands.

“I think it made me start a band later in life. Maybe I would have started when I was a teenager, and not when I was leaving university.”

English Teacher’s early songs gained an audience during the first wave of the Covid pandemic – which meant they didn’t get to play a gig together until the lockdown ended.

Their first show was as part of an all-day mini festival in May 2021, where the audience still had to be seated and socially distanced.

“Those first gigs were kind of jarring,” Whiting recalls. “It was quite strange because everything up ’til then felt very online, which doesn’t feel as tangible. And then when you go and play a gig, it’s like, ‘Yeah, this is actually going somewhere.'”

“We were so nervous, too,” says Fontaine. “I feel like it was only late into 2023 that we really found our confidence.”

By that point, they were deep into recording their debut album with Italian producer Marta Salogni (Bjork, Depeche Mode, MIA) – including new, more polished versions of R&B and The World’s Biggest Paving Slab.

The band say they put “immense pressure” on themselves to perfect the record, fixating on its push-pull dynamics, adding extra layers of context, and experimenting with new instruments.

“It was an intense time in our personal lives, trying to get it finished and out. We gave a lot to it,” says Whiting.

“Recording your first album is just a huge opportunity,” continues Fontaine. “I think we were very aware of that.”

The hard work paid off.

Record Collector Magazine called This Could Be Texas “one of the most confident and charismatic debuts in years”. The Mercury Prize judges said the band’s “winning lyrical mix of surrealism and social observation… displays a fresh approach to the traditional guitar band format”.

The quartet are endearingly amazed that anyone paid attention at all.

“I wasn’t sure that it would connect with people, because the lyrics are quite specific to the area I grew up in,” says Fontaine.

Instead, it was the bigger themes – of leaving home and finding your place in a world that’s “going up in flames” – that helped them find an ever-growing audience.

On The World’s Biggest Paving Slab, Fontaine mockingly describes herself as “the world’s smallest celebrity” – a lyric that’s rapidly becoming obsolete.

“I’m not the smallest, but certainly not the biggest,” she laughs.

“In the alphabet of celebrity, I’m probably on the X-list.”

Three Chinese nationals have been arrested with 12 gold bars and $800,000 (£650,000) in cash in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, officials say.

The gold and money was hidden under the seats of the vehicle they were travelling in, according to Jean Jacques Purusi, the governor of South Kivu province.

He said the operation to arrest the men had been kept secret after the recent release of another group of Chinese nationals accused of running an illegal gold mine in the area.

Eastern DR Congo has abundant reserves of gold, diamonds and the minerals used to make batteries for mobile phones and electric vehicles.

This mineral wealth has been plundered by foreign groups since the colonial era and is one of the main reasons why the region has been plagued by instability for the last 30 years.

Militia groups control many of the mines in eastern DR Congo and their leaders become wealthy by selling it to middle-men.

• Rwanda-backed rebels seize key town in DR Congo

Purusi said some of these dealers in precious metals enjoyed good relations with influential people in the capital, Kinshasa, and this was why the mission to carry out these latest arrests had to be kept quiet.

He said they had been acting on a tip-off and that the gold and money was only found after a meticulous search of the vehicle in the Walungu area not far from the border with Rwanda.

He did not say exactly how much gold had been seized.

Last month, the governor told reporters he was shocked to hear that 17 Chinese nationals, who had been arrested on allegations they had been running an illegal gold mine, had been freed and allowed to return to China.

He said this undermined efforts to clean up DR Congo’s notoriously murky mineral sector.

They owed $10m in taxes and fines to the government, the Reuters news agency quotes him as saying.

The Chinese embassy has not commented on the allegations.

The arrests come as fighting continues to flare in the neighbouring North Kivu province, where a Rwanda-backed rebel group has captured large areas of territory.

Last month, DR Congo said it was suing Apple over the use of “blood minerals”, prompting the tech giant to say it had stopped getting supplies from both DR Congo and neighbouring Rwanda.

Rwanda has denied being a conduit for the export of illegal minerals from DR Congo.

In their lawsuit, lawyers acting for the Congolese government alleged that the minerals taken from conflict areas was then “laundered through international supply chains”.

“These activities have fuelled a cycle of violence and conflict by financing militias and terrorist groups and have contributed to forced child labour and environmental devastation,” they said.

• Apple accused of using DR Congo conflict minerals
• Rwanda and Uganda backed M23 rebels, UN experts say
• Why TikTokers are quitting vapes over DR Congo
• A quick guide to DR Congo

Prof Alexis Jay, the former chair of a national inquiry into child sexual abuse, has called for the “full implementation” of reforms set out in her 2022 report, which warned of “endemic” abuse across society in England and Wales.

A campaign group chaired by Prof Jay, called Act on IICSA, said ministers must commit to a “clear timeline” to adopt the recommendations laid out by the Independent Inquiry Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA). The government says it supports the changes.

The group warned against “politicising” sexual violence and pushed back against “misinformation”.

Prof Jay also distanced herself from calls from the Conservatives and Reform UK for a new inquiry into grooming gangs.

The IICSA national inquiry was set up in 2015 and carried out 15 investigations, including into grooming gangs and abuse in schools and church settings.

Prof Jay had previously led a landmark local inquiry into widescale abuse in Rotherham, where it was estimated 1,400 children were exploited between 1997 and 2013, predominantly by men of Pakistani heritage.

The IICSA’s final report was published in 2022 and set out 20 recommendations it said were necessary to reduce child suffering.

They included setting up a national child protection authority, implementing tighter controls on who can work with vulnerable children, legislating to force tech firms to take stronger action over online abuse material and making not reporting abuse a criminal offence.

In a statement issued on Sunday, Act on IICSA said: “Politicising the issue of sexual violence fails to acknowledge its lifelong impact and hinders the implementation of vital and urgent overhaul to our systems required.”

Prof Jay said: “Our mission is not to call for new inquiries but to advocate for the full implementation of IICSA’s recommendations.”

She has previously said she was “frustrated” at the previous Conservative government’s lack of progress in adopting the recommendations, and described its response as “weak”, which the Home Office disputed at the time.

On Sunday, Act on IICSA also said recent media coverage of child sexual abuse has highlighted a “troubling trend of misinformation that undermines the true scale of the crisis and the pressing need for reform”.

Speaking on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the government was prioritising “getting on with” implementing the recommendations.

Prof Jay’s comments came after Tory leader Kemi Badenoch called for a national public inquiry into the UK’s “rape gangs scandal” on Thursday, which Reform leader Nigel Farage also supports.

The issue of grooming gangs was put back in the spotlight after Home Office minister Jess Phillips rejected Oldham Council’s request for a government-led inquiry into historical child sexual exploitation in the town, in favour of a locally-led investigation.

That decision was criticised by senior Tory and Reform figures, while billionaire Elon Musk also fuelled online anger over the move in a series of posts on social media.

The perpetrator of a deadly New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans visited the Louisiana city twice in the months before the attack and wore Meta smart glasses as he apparently scoped out the scene and during the incident itself, the FBI has said.

Shamsud-Din Jabbar also travelled to Egypt and Canada in 2023, though it is not yet clear if those trips were linked to the plot, said investigators.

Fourteen people died and at least 35 more were injured as the driver of the pick-up truck targeted revellers in the French Quarter, in an attack that US officials say was inspired by the Islamic State (IS) group.

Here’s what we know so far.

At 03:15 local time on New Year’s Day, Jabbar drove a pick-up truck through crowds gathered on Bourbon Street – known globally as one of the largest places for New Year’s Eve parties – in the heart of New Orleans’ French Quarter.

Wearing a ballistic vest and helmet, the former US Army soldier got out of the car and began firing at police officers, injuring two, investigators said.

He died following the gunfight with three responding officers, the FBI said.

A couple of hours before the attack, Jabbar placed two improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, in two coolers on Bourbon Street. A transmitter that was supposed to detonate the IEDs was found in his vehicle, the FBI said.

But the bombs did not go off because Jabbar did not have access to a detonator, said investigators.

Bomb-making materials were also found at a nearby Airbnb where Jabbar was staying and at his home in Houston, Texas.

He tried to burn down the Airbnb by setting a fire in a hallway, but the flames petered out before firefighters arrived.

The white Ford he was driving was electric and rented from the platform Turo six weeks beforehand.

• ‘No-one deserves this’: Victims’ families seek answers
• Who were the victims?
• Watch: How day of deadly attack unfolded

Lyonel Myrthil, FBI special agent in charge of the New Orleans field office, told a news conference on Sunday that the suspect in the attack had travelled to Cairo, Egypt, in the summer of 2023. A few days later he visited Ontario, Canada.

“Our agents are getting answers to where he went, who he went with and how those trips may or may not tie into his actions here,” Mr Myrthil said.

Jabbar also stayed at a rental home in New Orleans from 30 October last year for a few days and CCTV shows him riding through the French Quarter on a bicycle wearing “Meta glasses” that are capable of recording or livestreaming, said Mr Myrthil.

The perpetrator also visited New Orleans on 10 November, and investigators are still tracking his movements during that trip.

Jabbar also wore a pair of Meta smart glasses while carrying out the attack on New Year’s Day, but he did not activate the livestream function, said officials. The glasses were found on him after his death.

The 42-year-old US Army veteran was brought up in Beaumont, a city in eastern Texas near the Louisiana border.

He was raised Muslim but left the religion for many years and only recently returned to his faith, his brother said.

According to a now-removed LinkedIn profile, Jabbar worked in various roles in the US Army, including in human resources and IT, before he was discharged in 2015.

He was deployed to Afghanistan from February 2009 to January 2010. His most recent address was in Houston.

He studied at Georgia State University from 2015-17, graduating with a degree in computer information systems.

Accountancy firm Deloitte confirmed that Jabbar was hired by the company in 2021 and he reportedly also worked for Ernst & Young.

The suspect had been married three times and had children from two relationships. His first marriage ended in 2012, and his second lasted from 2013-16. He married once again in 2017 before divorcing in 2022.

Court records relating to Jabbar’s most recent divorce point to financial difficulties – with his monthly expenses, including child support, exceeding his income.

Separate documents reveal that his then-wife had accused him of financial mismanagement and had obtained a temporary restraining order against him.

Jabbar also appears to have worked in real estate – holding a licence that expired in 2023. He had a criminal record, relating to traffic offences and theft.

His brother, Abdur Rahem Jabbar, told Houston news outlet KPRC that his family was shocked by the incident and that their hearts go out to the victims.

“We’re all grieving about this,” he said. “This wasn’t the man I knew. This wasn’t the father, the son, that I knew. And also, this isn’t any representation of Islam, or Muslims or the Muslim community.”

During his drive from Houston to New Orleans, Jabbar posted videos online in which he professed his support for IS, authorities said.

In one of the clips Jabbar said he initially intended to harm his family, but decided against it, believing it would not have illustrated the “war between the believers and the disbelievers”.

Jabbar said in the videos that he joined IS before the summer and offered a will and testament, FBI deputy assistant director Christopher Raia said.

But the FBI said it believed Jabbar had acted alone.

“We have not seen any indications of an accomplice in the United States, but we are still looking into potential associates in the US and outside of our borders,” said Mr Raia.

Investigators have so far ruled out any connection between the New Orleans attack and an explosion of a vehicle the same morning outside the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas, which killed the car’s driver and injured seven others.

Since the attack, police have used vehicles and barricades to block traffic at Bourbon and Canal streets, a well-known nightlife and tourist hotspot that is filled with restaurants, bars and clubs with live music.

President Joe Biden is planning to travel to New Orleans with First Lady Jill Biden on Monday to “grieve with the families and community members impacted by the tragic attack”.

The first parade of the Carnival season leading up to Mardi Gras is due to take place on Monday evening.

New Orleans will also host the Super Bowl on 9 February.

The city previously installed retractable steel bollards to restrict vehicle access to Bourbon Street, but the posts stopped working after being littered with Mardi Gras beads and other refuse.

The bollards were not in position on New Year’s Eve, but will be replaced ahead of the Super Bowl, officials said.

The Arctic recently made headlines after Donald Trump repeated his desire to buy Greenland. Trump cited national security interests, but for many the territory’s vast mineral wealth is the main attraction. Yet economic development elsewhere in the vast polar region has ground to a halt.

Working conditions in the Arctic Ocean are extremely challenging at this time of the year for Norwegian fisherman Sondre Alnes-Bonesmo.

The sun last rose at the end of October, and it is not due to appear in the sky again until the middle of February.

In addition to the endless dark, temperatures can plummet below minus 40C, and storms can bring vast waves.

Mr Alnes-Bonesmo, 30, works two six-hour shifts a day, during five-week tours on a ship called Granit. One of the largest factory trawlers fishing in Arctic waters north of Norway, and off the coast of Greenland, it doesn’t stop for winter.

Unsurprisingly, he prefers the endless daylight of summer. “I do like it when the weather is nice, as we’re not sent crashing into the walls and such, the way we are during storms, when the waves can be fairly big,” he grins in understatement.

Mr Alnes-Bonesmo is a participant in the so-called Arctic “cold rush”.

A play on words with gold rush, it began in earnest around 2008 when a series of reports identified vast mineral and hydrocarbon reserves across the Arctic region. Reserves that, together with large fishing stocks, could continue to become more accessible as climate change reduces ice levels.

This reduction in ice has also increasingly opened up Arctic sea routes, north of the Canadian mainland and Russia.

So much so that, in the decade from 2013 to 2023, the total recorded annual distances sailed by ships in the Arctic Sea more than doubled from 6.1 million to 12.9 million miles.

The hope in the longer term is that cargo ships can travel from Asia to Europe and the east coast of the US, through Arctic waters above Canada and Russia.

But the question Mr Alnes-Bonesmo now asks himself is this – did he arrive too late?

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 much of the planned economic development of the Arctic region ground to a halt as relations between Russia and the West deteriorated.

“Russia had great plans in the Arctic,” says Morten Mejlaender-Larsen, Arctic operation and technology director from Norwegian firm DNV. His company sets rules and standards for the maritime sector.

“They began constructing regional rescue centres complete with ships and helicopters to facilitate both destination shipping for gas, oil and coal projects in Siberia, as well as for shipping along the Northeast Passage [north of Russia].

“[But] since the invasion of Ukraine, international shipping in the Northeast passage has all but stopped, apart from a few Chinese ships,” observes Mr Mejlaender-Larsen.

He adds that Norway has also halted oil and gas exploration in the region. “It’s completely stopped,” he says.

“We don’t expect to see any further developments in the Barents Sea north of Bear Island.” This small Norwegian island is some 400km (250 miles) north of Norway’s mainland.

Norway’s scaled back ambitions in the Arctic have pleased environmentalists who have consistently warned about the impact of drilling for hydrocarbons on both wildlife and the fragile environment of the polar region.

Last month Greenpeace welcomed the decision of the Norwegian government to stop the first round of licencing for deep sea mining in Arctic waters between Norway’s Svalbard and Jan Mayen islands.

Commentators say that while poor relations with Russia is a key reason why Norway is wary of ploughing money into Arctic projects, its interest in the polar region had already cooled.

Helene Tofte, director of international cooperation and climate at the Norwegian Shipowners Association, says that in hindsight the outlook for shipping in the Arctic had been “exaggerated”.

She points out that despite the impact of climate change, the Arctic remains a difficult place in which to operate. “Conditions in the Arctic can be extremely challenging, even when the absence of sea ice allows passage,” she says.

“Large parts of the route are far from emergency response capacities, such as search and rescue, and environmental clean-up resources.

“Increased shipping in this area would require substantial investments in ships, emergency preparedness, infrastructure, and weather forecasting systems, for a route that is unpredictable and has a short operational season. At present, we have no indication that our members view this as commercially interesting.”

Mr Mejlaender-Larsen points to a “belief that thanks to global warming there’ll be summers up there. That’ll never happen. If it’s minus 40C and it gets 3C warmer, it’s still not warm.”

Moreover, Prof Arild Moe, from Norwegian research group Fridtjof Nansen Institute, says the entire cold rush of the Arctic was based on exaggerated assumptions. “The exuberance was excessive,” says the expert on oil and gas exploration in the region.

“What the reports from 2008 referred to weren’t actual reserves, but potential and highly uncertain resources, which would be risky, expensive, and difficult to locate and exploit.”

Regarding Trump’s renewed interest in Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, authorities in Greenland and Denmark were again quick to reply that it was not for sale.

Prof Moe says that Trump’s “crude and undiplomatic statement” shows that the US under Trump eyes both security and economic interests in the island, including its “rich mineral resources”.

The Danish government also responded by announcing a huge increase in defence spending for Greenland.

Elsewhere in the Arctic, Trump is expected to allow increased oil and gas exploration in Alaska, specifically in the resource rich Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

This 19 million acre expanse is the US’s largest wildlife refuge, and back in 2020 Trump authorised drilling in one section of it.

Meanwhile, Canada is continuing to build a deep-water port at Grays Bay, on the north coast of Nunavut, its most northern territory. Grays Bay is approximately in the centre of the so-called Northwest Passage, the Arctic sea route north of the Canadian mainland.

Back on the Granit fishing ship, Mr Alnes-Bonesmo says that, while he has earned good money, fishing quotas continue to go down to try to preserve stocks in Norwegian Arctic waters.

Nevertheless, he is philosophical. “After a few years at sea I’ve grown more scared of the Arctic Ocean, but I’ve also come to respect and value it for all its power and beauty.”

With his leopard-like spots, Navarro – a male lynx – calls out during mating season as he walks towards a camera trap.

Just short of 100cm (39 inches) in length and 45cm in height, the Iberian lynx is a rare sight. But there are now more than 2,000 in the wild across Spain and Portugal, so you’re much more likely to see them than you were 20 years ago.

“The Iberian lynx was very, very close to extinction,” says Rodrigo Serra, who runs the reproduction programme across Spain and Portugal.

At the lowest point there were fewer than 100 lynxes left in two populations that didn’t interact, and only 25 of them were females of reproductive age.

“The only feline species that was threatened at this level was the sabre tooth tiger thousands of years ago.”

The decline of the lynx population was partly down to more and more land being used for agriculture, a rise in fatalities on the roads, and a struggle for food.

Wild rabbits are essential prey for the lynx and two pandemics led to a 95% fall in their number.

By 2005, Portugal had no lynxes left, but it was also the year that Spain saw the first litter born in captivity.

It took another three years before Portugal decided on a national conservation action plan to save the species. A National Breeding Centre for Iberian lynxes was built in Silves in the Algarve.

Here they are monitored 24 hours a day. The aim is twofold – to prepare them for life in the wild and to pair them for reproduction.

Serra speaks in a whisper, because even from a distance of 200m you can cause stress to the animals in the 16 pens where most of the animals are kept.

Sometimes, though, stress is exactly what the lynxes need.

“When we notice a litter is becoming a bit more confident, we go in and chase them and make noise so they are scared again and climb the fences,” says Serra. “We’re training them not to get close to people in the wild.”

That’s partly for their own protection, but also so they stay away from people and their animals. “A lynx should be a lynx, not be treated like a house cat.”

So the lynxes never associate food with people, they are fed through a tunnel system at the centre.

Then, when the time comes, they are released into the wild.

Genetics determines where they end up, to diminish the risks of inbreeding or disease. Even if a lynx was born in Portugal it might be taken to Spain.

Pedro Sarmento is responsible for reintroducing the lynx in Portugal and has studied the Iberian lynx for 30 years.

“As a biologist there are two things that strike me when I’m handling a lynx. It’s an animal with a fairly small head for its body and extraordinarily wide paws. That gives them an impulse and ability to jump which are rare.”

The breeding programme and the return of the lynx have been hailed as great successes, but as their numbers climb there may be problems too.

As lynxes are often released on private land in Portugal, the organisers of the reproduction programme have to reach an agreement with the owners first.

Where the animals go after that is up to them, and although there have been some attacks on chicken coops, Sarmento says there have not been many.

“This can lead to uneasiness within locals. We’ve been strengthening the coops so lynxes can’t access them, and in some cases we keep monitoring the lynxes and scare them off if needed.”

He recounts the story of Lítio, one of the first lynxes released in Portugal.

For six months Lítio stayed in the same area but then the team lost track of him.

He eventually made his way to Doñana, a national park in southern Spain where he had come from originally.

As Lítio was sick, he was treated and then returned to the reproduction team in the Algarve.

Within days of his release from the centre he began heading back to Doñana, swimming across the Guadiana river to reach Spain.

For a time he disappeared, but eventually he was brought back to the Algarve.

When he was released for a third time, Lítio did not venture back to Spain but instead he walked 3km (two miles), found a female and never moved again.

“He is the oldest lynx we have here, and he’s fathered plenty of cubs ever since,” says Sarmento.

Three decades after Spain decided to save the lynx, the species is no longer endangered, and Sarmento hopes it’ll reach a favourable conservation status by 2035.

For that to happen, the numbers need to reach 5,000-6,000 in the wild.

“I saw the species disappearing. It’s surreal that we’re in a place where we can see lynxes in nature or through camera trapping almost daily,” says Sarmento.

The reproduction team are not being complacent and there are risks involved in their work. Last year 80% of lynx deaths took place on the roads.

For now, though, they feel confident the Iberian lynx has been saved.

Sixty-year-old Chinese grandmother Su Min had no intention of becoming a feminist icon.

She was only trying to escape her abusive husband when she hit the road in 2020 in her white Volkswagen hatchback with a rooftop tent and her pension.

“I felt like I could finally catch my breath,” she says, recalling the moment she drove away from her old life. “I felt like I could survive and find a way of life that I wanted.”

Over the next four years and 180,000 miles, the video diaries she shared of her adventures, while detailing decades of pain, earned her millions of cheerleaders online. They called her the “road-tripping auntie” as she inadvertently turned into a hero for women who felt trapped in their own lives.

Her story is now a hit film that was released in September – Like a Rolling Stone – and she made it to the BBC’s list of 100 inspiring and influential women of 2024.

It was a year of big moments, but if she had to describe what 2024 meant to her in a single word, she says that word would be “freedom”.

As soon as Su Min started driving, she felt freer, she told the BBC over the phone from Shenyang – just before she headed south for winter in her new SUV with a caravan.

But it wasn’t until 2024, when she finally filed for divorce, that she experienced “another kind of freedom”.

It took a while to get there: it’s a complicated process in China and her husband refused to divorce her until she agreed to pay him. They settled on 160,000 yuan ($21,900; £17,400) but she is still waiting for the divorce certificate to come through.

But she is resolute that she doesn’t want to look back: “I’m saying goodbye to him.”

In her new life on the road, Su Min’s duty is to herself.

Her videos mostly feature only her. Although she drives alone, she never seems lonely. She chats with her followers as she films her journey, sharing what she has been cooking, how she spent the previous day and where she’s going next.

Her audience travels with her to places they never knew they would long for – Xinjiang’s snow-capped mountains, Yunnan’s ancient river towns, sparkling blue lakes, vast grasslands, endless deserts.

They applaud her bravery and envy the freedom she has embraced. They had rarely heard such a raw first-hand account about the reality of life as a “Chinese auntie”.

“You’re so brave! You chose to break free,” wrote one follower, while another urged her to “live the rest of your life well for yourself!”. One woman sought advice because she too “dreams of driving alone” and an awe-struck follower said: “Mom, look at her! When I get older, I’ll live a colourful life like hers if I don’t get married!”

For some, the takeaways are more pragmatic yet inspiring: “After watching your videos, I’ve learned this: as women, we must own our own home, cultivate friendships far and wide, work hard to be financially independent, and invest in unemployment insurance!”

Through it all, Su Min processes her own past. A stray cat she encounters on the road reminds her of herself, both of them having “weathered the wind and rain for years but still managing to love this world that dusts our faces”. A visit to the market, where she smells chili peppers, evokes “the smell of freedom” because throughout her marriage spicy food was forbidden by her husband who didn’t like it.

For years Su Min had been the dutiful daughter, wife and mother – even as her husband repeatedly struck her.

“I was a traditional woman and I wanted to stay in my marriage for life,” she says. “But eventually I saw that I got nothing in return for all my energy and effort – only beatings, violence, emotional abuse and gaslighting.”

Her husband, Du Zhoucheng, has admitted to hitting her. “It’s my mistake that I beat you,” he said in a video she recently shared on Douyin, TikTok’s China platform.

A high school graduate, he had a government job in the water resources ministry for 40 years before retiring, according to local media reports. He told an outlet in 2022 that he beat his wife because she “talked back” and that it was “an ordinary thing”: “In a family, how can there not be some bangs and crashes?”

Su Min married Du Zhoucheng “really to avoid my father’s control, and to avoid the whole family”.

She was born and raised in Tibet until 1982, when her family moved to Henan, a bustling province in the valley along the Yellow River. She had just finished high school and found work in a fertiliser factory, where most of her female colleagues, including those younger than 20, already had husbands.

Her marriage was arranged by a matchmaker, which was common at the time. She had spent much of her life cooking for and looking after her father and three younger brothers. “I wanted to change my life,” she says.

The couple met only twice before the wedding. She wasn’t looking for love, but she hoped that love would grow once they married.

Su Min did not find love. But she did have a daughter, and that is one reason she convinced herself she needed to endure the abuse.

“We are always so afraid of being ridiculed and blamed if we divorce, so we all choose to endure, but in fact, this kind of patience is not right,” she says. “I later learned that, in fact, it can have a considerable impact on children. The child really doesn’t want you to endure, they want you to stand up bravely and give them a harmonious home.”

She thought of leaving her husband after her daughter got married, but soon she became a grandmother. Her daughter had twins – and once again duty called. She felt she needed to help care for them, although by now she had been diagnosed with depression.

“I felt that if I didn’t leave, I would get sicker,” she says. She promised her daughter she would care for the two boys until they went to kindergarten, and then she would leave.

The spark of inspiration for her escape came in 2019 while flicking through social media. She found a video about someone travelling while living in their van. This was it, she thought to herself. This was her way out.

Even the pandemic did not stop her. In September 2020, she drove away from her marital home in Zhengzhou and she barely looked back as she made her way through 20 Chinese provinces and more than 400 cities.

It’s a decision that has certainly resonated with women in China. To her millions of followers, Su Min offers comfort and hope. “We women are not just someone’s wife or mother… Let’s live for ourselves!” wrote one follower.

Many of them are mothers who share their own struggles. They tell her that they too feel trapped in suffocating marriages – some say her stories have inspired them to walk out of abusive relationships.

“You are a hero to thousands of women and many now see the possibility of a better life because of you,” reads one of the top comments on one of her most-watched videos.

“When I turn 60, I hope I can be as free as you,” another comment says.

A third woman asks: “Auntie Su, can I travel with you? I’ll cover all the expenses. I just want to take a trip with you. I feel so trapped and depressed in my current life.”

“Can you have the life of your dreams?” Su Min pondered over the call. “I want to tell you that no matter how old you are, as long as you work hard, you will definitely find your answer. Just like me, even though I’m 60 now, I found what I was looking for.”

She admits it wasn’t easy and she had to live frugally on her pension. She thought the video blogs might help raise some money – she had no idea they would go viral.

She talks about what she’s learned over the years and her latest challenge – finalising the divorce.

“I haven’t got my divorce certificate yet, because the law has a cooling-off period and we are now in that period.”

One of her followers wrote that the money she paid her husband was “worth every penny”, adding: “Now it’s your turn to see the world and live a vibrant, unrestrained life. Congratulations, Auntie – here’s to a colourful and fulfilling future!”

She says it’s hard to get a divorce because “many of our laws in China are to protect the family. Women often dare not divorce because of family disharmony”.

At first, she thought that Du Zhoucheng’s behaviour might improve with time and distance, but she said he still threw “pots and pans” at her on her return.

He has only called her twice in the last few years – once because her highway access card was tied to his credit card and he wanted her to return 81 yuan (£8.91). She says she hasn’t used that card since then.

Undeterred by the delay in securing a divorce, Su Min keeps planning more trips and hopes to one day travel abroad.

She’s worried about overcoming language barriers, but is confident her story will resonate around the world – as it has in China.

“Although women in every country are different, I would like to say that no matter what environment you are in, you must be good to yourself. Learn to love yourself, because only when you love yourself can the world be full of sunshine.”

The new year in politics starts with the bang of a billionaire with a bigger mouth than his bank balance.

Elon Musk has been lobbing almost as many digital darts over the Atlantic as Luke Littler has the real things in the last couple of days.

The world’s richest man has been sounding off in the strongest possible terms about the prime minister for almost as long as Sir Keir Starmer has been in Downing Street.

In recent days, the focus has been on child sexual exploitation and Musk’s allegation that the prime minister was “complicit in the rape of Britain” when he was Director of Public Prosecutions by failing to deal with the scandal.

I’m told Sir Keir “will not want to get into a food fight with Musk” but will make a robust defence of his time as chief prosecutor.

He is also keen to emphasise the importance of political debate being grounded in verifiable facts and that Musk is making claims that are “blatantly untrue” as one source put it. Sources point, for instance, to those defending the Prime Minister’s record as DPP.

Those in government also point to the local inquiries there have been into the abuse and rape of vulnerable young girls by groups of men mainly of Pakistani descent – and the national inquiry conducted by Professor Alexis Jay.

The Conservatives, Reform and Elon Musk have each expressed varying degrees of outrage in recent days that the government has said no to a public inquiry into the scandal.

But few expected this weekend’s twist: that within hours of the Reform leader Nigel Farage describing Musk as a “hero” who “makes us look cool,” the X owner said Reform needed a new leader as Farage “doesn’t have what it takes”.

“It’s not been the perfect day,” said one Reform figure with a splash of understatement and a smile. “We probably do look a bit silly.”

Farage’s repeated statements distancing himself from the far-right activist Stephen Yaxley Lennon, who calls himself Tommy Robinson, appear to be at the heart of the spat.

Reform hadn’t seen this coming. Just weeks ago they were talking up the prospect of a big money donation from Elon Musk – but are now trying to put the best spin on things.

“Nigel is not for sale,” is how one senior party figure put it to me, saying this showed that the Reform leader was willing to stand up to anybody, including the richest man in the world.

Another said that if Reform were to be treated as a serious political outfit – and remember, Nigel Farage has said he wants to win the next general election – that means robustly and consistently rejecting any association with Robinson, whatever the consequences.

The one politician to attract some praise from Elon Musk, for now at least, is the Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, for her calls for a public inquiry into child sexual abuse.

Badenoch sees the scandal as a case study in what she sees as our broken politics.

For Badenoch, 2025 will be a crucial year as she fights to rebuild her party and fights for attention – not easy, when Nigel Farage is around.

She got yet another taste of that over Christmas in a very public row with him over party membership numbers: Badenoch suggested Reform’s claim on Boxing Day to have overtaken the Tories’ membership numbers were “fake” as their tally was automatically rising.

Reform invited journalists to verify that this was not the case and the Financial Times among others concluded there was “strong evidence” the party’s tally was accurate.

In the coming weeks, we can expect to hear from Badenoch about the so-called Policy Commissions she is setting up, and who will lead them.

It will be worth keeping an eye too on the man she beat to the leadership, Robert Jenrick, who hasn’t exactly gone quietly.

He is her shadow justice secretary but his willingness to carry on campaigning almost as if the leadership race was still on is irking some senior Tories, who want him to stay in his lane on policy and not stray all over the place talking about whatever he likes.

As for the prime minister, a bruising first six months into office and with noises off at home and abroad, his big hope is delivery.

He is forgoing the usual new year big picture speech as his team feel he did just that with his big speech last month.

Instead, he is focusing on a specific promise: getting hospital waiting lists down in England.

He will do similar style events and visits in the coming weeks on the government’s other big promises.

So here goes with politics in 2025.

We are not even a week in and it is proving lively already.

Exactly two months after her election loss to Donald Trump, Vice-President Kamala Harris will preside over the certification of her own defeat.

As president of the Senate, on Monday she will stand at the House Speaker’s rostrum to lead the counting of Electoral College votes, officially cementing her rival’s triumph two weeks before he returns to the White House.

The circumstances are painful and awkward for a candidate who decried her opponent as an urgent threat to American democracy, but Harris aides insist she will conduct her constitutional and legal duty with seriousness and grace.

It is not the first time a losing candidate will lead the joint session of Congress to count their opponent’s presidential electors – Al Gore endured the indignity in 2001 and Richard Nixon in 1961.

But it’s a fitting coda to an improbable election that saw Harris elevated from a back-up to the nation’s oldest president to the Democratic standard bearer – whose fleeting campaign provided a jolt of hope to her party before a crushing loss exposed deep internal faultlines.

Harris and her team are now deliberating her second act, and weighing whether it includes another run for the White House in 2028 or pursuing a bid for the governor’s mansion in her home state of California.

While recent Democratic candidates who lost elections – Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton – have decided against seeking the presidency again, aides, allies and donors argue that the groundswell of support Harris captured in her unsuccessful bid and the unusual circumstances of her condensed campaign proves there’s still scope for her to seek the Oval Office.

They even point to Donald Trump’s own circuitous political path – the former and future president’s bookend wins in 2016 and 2024, despite losing as the incumbent in 2020.

But while many Democrats do not blame Harris for Trump’s win, some – stung by a bruising loss that has called the party’s strategy into question – are deeply sceptical of giving her another shot at the White House. A host of Democratic governors who coalesced behind the vice-president in 2024 but have ambitions of their own are seen by some strategists as fresher candidates with a much better chance of winning.

Harris herself is said to be in no rush to make any decisions, telling advisers and supporters she is open to all the possibilities that await her after Inauguration Day on 20 January.

She is assessing the last few months, which saw her launch an entirely new White House campaign, vet a running-mate, lead a party convention and barnstorm the country in just 107 days. And aides point out that she remains the US vice-president, at least for another two weeks.

“She has a decision to make and you can’t make it when you’re still on the treadmill. It may have slowed down – but she’s on the treadmill until 20 January,” said Donna Brazile, a close Harris ally who advised the campaign.

“You can’t put anyone in a box. We didn’t put Al Gore in a box and it was obvious the country was very divided after the 2000 election,” said Brazile, who ran Gore’s campaign against George W Bush and pointed to his second life as an environmental activist. “All options are on the table because there’s an appetite for change and I do believe that she can represent that change in the future.”

But the nagging question that shadows any potential 2028 run is whether the 60-year-old can separate herself from Joe Biden – something she failed to do in the election campaign.

Her allies in the party say that Biden’s choice to seek re-election despite worries about his age, only then to ultimately drop out of the race with months to go, doomed her candidacy.

Though Trump swept all seven battleground states and is the first Republican in 20 years to win the popular vote, his margin of victory was relatively narrow while Harris still won 75 million votes, an outcome her supporters argue can’t be ignored as a currently faceless Democratic party rebuilds over the next four years.

On the other side, those close to Biden remain convinced he could have defeated Trump again, despite surveys showing he had been bleeding support from key Democratic voting blocs.

They point out that Harris fell short where the president didn’t in 2020, underperforming with core Democratic groups like black and Latino voters. Critics continue to bring up her 2019 campaign to become the Democratic presidential nominee, which sputtered out in less than a year.

“People forget that had there been a real primary [in 2024], she never would have been the nominee. Everyone knows that,” said one former Biden adviser.

The adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, applauded Harris for reviving the Democratic base and helping key congressional races, but said Trump’s campaign successfully undercut her on critical campaign issues including the economy and the border.

Members of Trump’s team, however, including his chief pollster, have acknowledged that Harris performed stronger as a candidate than Biden on certain issues like the economy among voters.

Yet there’s no escaping that any Democratic primary contest for 2028 would be a tough fight, with rising stars like Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and California Governor Gavin Newsom already weighing presidential runs.

Some Democrats say that Harris would nonetheless start ahead of the pack, with national name recognition, a much-coveted mailing list and a deep bench of volunteers.

“What state party would not want her to come help them set the table for the 2026 midterm elections?” Brazile said. “She’s going to have plenty opportunities not only to rebuild, but to strengthen the coalition that came together to support her in 2024.”

Others have suggested she could step out of the political arena entirely, running a foundation or establishing an institute of politics at her alma mater, Howard University, the Washington-based historically black college where she held her election night party.

The former top state prosecutor could also be a contender for secretary of state or attorney general in a future Democratic administration. And she’ll need to decide if she wants to write another book.

For all of her options, Harris has told aides, she wants to remain visible and be seen as a leader in the party. One adviser suggested that she could exist outside the domestic political fray, taking on a more global role on an issue that matters to her, but that’s a difficult perch without a platform as large as the vice-presidency.

In the waning days of the Biden-Harris administration, she plans to embark on an international trip to multiple regions, according to a source familiar with the plans, signalling her desire to maintain a role on the world stage and build a legacy beyond being Biden’s number two.

For Harris and her team, the weeks since the election have been humbling, a mix of grief and resolve. Several aides described the three-month sprint that began when Biden dropped out as having begun with the campaign “digging out of a hole” and ending with their candidate more popular than when she began, even if she didn’t win.

“There’s a sense of peace knowing that given the hand we were dealt, we ran through the tape,” said one senior aide.

Following the election, Harris and her husband, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, spent a week in Hawaii with a small group of aides to relax and discuss her future.

During a staff holiday party at her official residence before Christmas, Harris recounted election night and how she delivered a pep talk to her family as the results became clear.

“We are not having a pity party!” she told the crowd of her reaction that night.

Advisers and allies say she is still processing what happened, and wants to wait and see how the new administration unfolds in January before staking out any position, let alone seeking to become the face of any so-called Trump “resistance”.

Democrats have found the resistance movement that took off among liberals in the wake of his 2016 win no longer resonates in today’s political climate, where the Republican has proven that his message and style appeals to a huge cross-section of Americans.

They have adopted a more conciliatory approach in confronting the incoming president’s agenda. As several Democrats put it: “What resistance?”

Though she’s kept a relatively low profile since her loss, Harris provided a glimpse of her mindset at an event for students at Prince George’s Community College in Maryland in December.

“The movements for civil rights, women’s rights, workers’ rights, the United States of America itself, would never have come to be if people had given up their cause after a court case, or a battle, or an election did not go their way,” she said.

“We must stay in the fight,” she added, a refrain she has repeated since her 2016 Senate win. “Everyone of us.”

What that means is less clear. For some donors and supporters, staying “in the fight” could translate to a run for California governor in 2026, when a term-limited Gavin Newsom will step down and potentially pursue his own White House ambitions. The job, leading the world’s fifth-largest economy, would also put Harris in direct conflict with Trump, who has regularly assailed the state for its left-leaning policies.

But governing a major state is no small feat, and would derail any presidential run, as she would be sworn into office about the same time she would need to launch a national campaign.

Those who have spoken to Harris said she remains undecided about the governor’s race, which some allies have described as a potential “capstone” to her career.

She has won statewide office three times as California’s attorney general and later as a US senator. But a gubernatorial win would give her another historic honour – becoming the nation’s first black female governor.

Still, some allies acknowledge it would be difficult to transition from being inside a 20-car motorcade and having a seat across the table from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the governor’s mansion.

The private sector is another option.

“For women at other levels of office, when they lose an election, sometimes options are not as available to them compared to men, who get a soft landing at a law firm or insurance business, and it gives them a place to take a beat, make some money and then make decisions about what’s next,” said Debbie Walsh, director for the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem for Kamala Harris. I think doors will open for her if she wants to open them.”

But for Harris, who has been in elected office for two decades, and worked as a public prosecutor before that, an afterlife as governor may be the most fitting option.

“When you’ve had one client – the people – for the entirety of your career,” said one former adviser, “where do you go from here?”

Hollywood stars are bringing plenty of style (as well as The Substance) to the Golden Globes red carpet, as awards season kicks off in Los Angeles.

The ceremony is the first major celebrity event of the year, and a key early milestone on the film awards calendar, which concludes with the Oscars on 2 March.

• Host Nikki Glaser’s best jokes at the Golden Globes
• Golden Globes: The winners and nominees (updating live)

Fresh from the Christmas break, celebrities are usually in a playful and relaxed mood at the Globes, and ready to have some fun on the red carpet.

Here are some of the stars and outfits that have stood out so far – with plenty more to follow.

The first congestion charge scheme for vehicles in the US has come into effect in New York City.

Car drivers will pay up to $9 (£7) a day, with varying rates for other vehicles.

“The system has been in operation since midnight [05:00 GMT Sunday],” Janno Lieber, CEO of the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), told reporters.

Four hundred lanes of traffic are now covered by more than 1,400 cameras, with more than 110 detection points and more than 800 signs, he said.

President-elect Donald Trump is among those resisting the scheme, but Mr Lieber said he was confident agreements with the government would “stand up to changes of administration”.

The congestion zone covers an area south of Central Park, taking in such well-known sites as the Empire State Building, Times Square and the financial district around Wall Street.

The scheme aims to ease New York’s notorious traffic problems and raise billions for the public transport network.

New York state Governor Kathy Hochul made the case for a congestion charge two years ago, but it was delayed and revised following complaints from some commuters and businesses.

The new plan revives one scheme that she paused in June, saying there were “too many unintended consequences for New Yorkers”.

Most drivers will be charged $9 once per day to enter the congestion zone at peak hours, and $2.25 at other times.

Small trucks and non-commuter buses will pay $14.40 to enter Manhattan at peak times, while larger trucks and tourist buses will pay a $21.60 fee.

Hours after the scheme began traffic was moving briskly along the northern edge of the congestion zone at 60th Street and 2nd Avenue, the Associated Press reports.

Many motorists seemed unaware that the newly activated cameras, set along the arm of a steel gantry above the street, would soon send a new charge to their E-Z Passes, it says.

“Drivers are going to start to see the toll charges appearing on their E-Z Pass bills in a few days,” Mr Lieber said later.

The charge has encountered plenty of opposition.

“Are you kidding me?” New Jersey estate agent Chris Smith asked, speaking to AP. “Whose idea was this? Kathy Hochul? She should be arrested for being ignorant.”

The most high-profile opposition has come from Trump, a native New Yorker who has vowed to kill the scheme when he returns to office this month.

Local Republicans have already asked him to intervene.

Congressman Mike Lawler, who represents a suburban district just north of New York City, asked Trump in November to commit to “ending this absurd congestion pricing cash grab once and for all”.

A judge denied an 11th-hour effort on Friday by New Jersey state officials to block the scheme on grounds of its environmental impact on adjoining areas.

Last year, New York City was named the world’s most-congested urban area for the second year in a row, according to INRIX, a traffic data analysis firm.

Vehicles in downtown Manhattan drove at a speed of 11mph (17km/h) during peak morning periods in the first quarter of last year, the report said.

Among those welcoming the new scheme was Phil Bauer, a surgeon who lives in midtown Manhattan.

“I think the idea would be good to try to minimise the amount of traffic down and try to promote people to use public transportation,” he told AP.

Tony Blair was just halfway through his time as prime minister and FA Cup finals were being played in Cardiff when one of the UK’s most expensive and complex road upgrade projects this century began.

But after 23 years, roadworks on the A465 Heads of the Valleys road in south Wales are finally going.

The 28-mile (45km) £2bn upgrade to almost motorway standard was designed to bring prosperity to one of the UK’s most deprived areas.

But some of those living there have called it the “road from hell”.

Work to make the road that links Swansea to Monmouthshire a full dual carriageway began back in 2002.

This was 12 years after Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative UK government drew up an upgrade programme in 1990.

Parts were already two lanes each way, but there was severe congestion and frequent serious road crashes on other parts of the route.

Almost 35 years later after enormous overspends, major delays, devolution, a global pandemic, unsuitable ground for road building and hundreds of carriageway closures, the end is finally in sight.

“It’s like the road from hell,” said one man from affected Merthyr Tydfil. “Not even Chris Rea would dare come here.”

The road crosses the south Wales coalfields, a national park and twists mightily close to people’s homes.

The work was split into six sections, done from the most to least dangerous for drivers.

Almost 70 structures – including more than 40 new bridges and a dozen new junctions – have been built.

Workers have planted 285,000 trees to mitigate its significant environmental impact – offsetting more than seven million kilograms of CO2 a year – in a country that declared a climate emergency six years ago.

Creatures, including bats, dormice and great crested newts, have also been moved.

“The part of Wales we’re in is home to some nationally and European protected valuable species and habitats,” said chartered environmentalist Tim Wroblewski.

Engineers have also built almost nine miles (14km) of routes for walkers and cyclists in the latest section – shifting almost 2,200 Olympic-sized swimming pools’ worth of earth.

Welsh ministers, who took on the building of the project after devolution in 1999, insist the improvement will help communities “left behind after the mines closed” in the 1980s and early 1990.

“In 50 years’ time, experts will look back and say the single biggest thing the Welsh government has done to raise the prospects of Heads of the Valleys communities is building this road,” said Wales’ transport minister Ken Skates.

The A465 was part of a World War Two prosperity project to connect the south Wales’ steel industry with the UK’s old car manufacturing hub of the Midlands.

While the M5 and M50 were built as fast roads, the valleys were a tougher challenge.

Improvements were needed due to poor visibility leading to serious crashes on what was predominantly a three-lane road with few safe overtaking places.

Now drivers can mostly do 70mph without having to stop for roundabouts, which is hoped will make it easier for local people to get around and create a resilient alternative route between the Midlands and south-west Wales, easing pressure on the often congested M4 at Newport.

“This isn’t just about moving people and goods around,” added Skates.

“This is about generating jobs, prosperity, opportunities and better connecting and benefiting communities across the region.”

The construction cost given for the entire project is more than £1.3bn.

The headline price tag for the last two sections currently under construction is £590m. But the figure for the final two stages is also actually £1.4bn – more than £250m than initially revealed – because of the way the project is funded and the Welsh government has not yet paid a penny.

Explaining why costs to pay for the final stage have risen, the government said it had to pay non-recoverable VAT after “detailed discussions with HMRC”.

It is being financed using something called the Mutual Investment Model (MIM) – which is a bit like getting a car on finance.

But in this case the Welsh government will pay about £40m a year for 30 years and get an 11-mile stretch of road that will be maintained by the private firm until it is brought back into public ownership in 2055.

Plaid Cymru has said this way of funding was a “waste of public money” and private firms would “cream off” a “substantial amount of profit”.

The UK left the European Union during the scheme, meaning access to money that had helped on previous sections was no longer available.

The Welsh government said without borrowing cash the way it has, it would not have been able to finish the final section.

Skates said trying to build something of a similar magnitude in future would be difficult.

The previous five-mile (8km) section also caused controversy too, opening three years late and costing £336m – £133m more than initially agreed.

It came after a dispute about how much building work was needed and construction completion on the delicate site through the protected steep Clydach Gorge site, which includes hidden caves and geological hazardous terrain.

“As a whole, the Heads of the Valleys project is one of the UK’s biggest road upgrade projects for many years,” said Keith Jones of the Institution of Civil Engineers.

“And what’s been so challenging is keeping the existing road operational while the work has gone on in some challenging and bleak terrain.”

These factors combined mean the entire cost will be about £2bn when everything is included.

The Labour Welsh government said it had learned lessons from the project, changing construction contracts and reviewing indicators of contractor performance.

But Welsh Conservative transport spokesman Peter Fox said the projects cost and delays “epitomises Labour’s 25 years of failure here in Wales”.

He said the final “gargantuan” cost would have almost covered the scrapped M4 relief road, and the Welsh public would question if it was worth it.

The £1.6bn M4 relief road south of Newport’s Brynglas Tunnels congestion hotspot was axed in 2019 – 29 years after it was first proposed – because of its cost and impact on the environment.

Almost four times as many cars a day use that stretch of motorway than the Heads of the Valleys road.

“We don’t want to invest in those areas that are already successful and where there’s already opportunity and plenty of jobs,” added Skates.

But those in the communities near the long-running roadworks have been affected the most.

“It’s been a nightmare,” said Tanya Houghton, from Merthyr Tydfil.

“It’s been terrible as my partner has been working in that direction so getting to and from work has been a nightmare, I’ll be glad when it’s finished and I think it’ll be worth it.”

Her sister Kayleigh did not agree, saying it was not needed and “cost too much money”.

One trader in the town centre claimed trade had dropped 50% due to the roadworks.

“It puts people off coming to town as they’re in the queues for so long, it’s blinking terrible and it has really affected us,” said Paula Owen, who has run Paula’s Boutique in St Tydfil Shopping Centre for more than six years.

“With impact of Covid, the cost of living crisis and this, it’s been hard.”

She said the works had affected trade for a “long time” but the road would “make a big difference when its finished”.

All major road building projects in Wales, as well as the M4 relief road, were scrapped under Mark Drakeford’s administration, but the current transport minister said there was a “careful balance” to be struck.

“You’ve got to drive down carbon emissions but also drive prosperity and improve people’s lives by investing in skills and infrastructure,” said Skates.

Politicians also point to a legacy of 250 engineering apprentices that have been trained on this scheme as well as the 5,000 workers that have been employed at various points during the project, with some days 1,000 contractors working on site at any one time.

Two businesses at each end of the project said they had doubled their number of employees.

“The project has enabled us to upscale in both employees and equipment,” said Tony Gibbons, whose firm Atlas are looking after the drainage of this project.

“We are employing 60 plus people from the local community and it has been transformative for us.

“It’s also helped us successfully tender for other projects as people are confident they can rely on our work because of what we have been able to do on this scheme.”

The body of an Indian journalist who had reported on alleged corruption in the country has been found in a septic tank in Chhattisgarh state.

Mukesh Chandrakar, 32, went missing on New Year’s Day and his family registered a complaint with the police.

His body was found on Friday in the compound of a road construction contractor in the Bijapur town area after officers tracked his mobile phone.

Three people have been arrested in connection with his death, reportedly including two of his relatives. A media watchdog has demanded a thorough investigation.

Police in the Bijapur district did not find anything during an initial visit to the compound on 2 January.

“However, after further inspection on 3 January, we discovered Mukesh’s body in the newly floored septic tank near the badminton court,” a senior police officer said, referring to the fact concrete slabs had been placed on top of the tank.

Police said his body showed severe injuries consistent with a blunt-force attack.

Mr Chandrakar, a freelance journalist, had reported widely on alleged corruption in public construction projects.

He also ran a popular YouTube channel, Bastar Junction.

Following his death, the Press Council of India called for a report “on the facts of the case” from the state’s government.

The chief minister of the state described Mr Chandrakar’s death as “heartbreaking”.

In a post on X, he said a special investigation team had been formed to investigate the case.

It has been reported in Indian media that one of those under arrest over the journalist’s death is his cousin.

One of the main suspects – compound owner Suresh Chandrakar, also a relative – is on the run.

Local journalists have held a protest demanding strict action against the alleged perpetrators.

Attacks on journalists reporting on corruption or environmental degradation is not uncommon in India.

In May 2022, Subhash Kumar Mahto, a freelance journalist known for his reporting on people involved in illegal sand mining, was fatally shot in the head by four unidentified men outside his home in Bihar.

Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders has said that an average of three or four journalists are killed in connection with their work in India every year, making it one of the world’s most dangerous countries for the media.

The fate of two killer whales is uncertain following the closure of a marine zoo in France on Sunday.

Campaigners and the zoo’s managers have been locked in disagreement about what should happen to the orca whales with the French government already blocking one proposal to rehome them.

Last month Marineland Antibes, located near Cannes in the French Riviera, said it would permanently shut on 5 January following new animal welfare laws.

The legislation, which bans the use of dolphins and whales in marine zoo shows, was passed in 2021 but comes into effect next year.

Marineland, which describes itself as the largest of its kind in Europe, currently keeps two killer whales – Wikie, 23, and her 11-year-old son Keijo.

Managers say shows featuring killer whales and dolphins attract 90% of Marineland’s visitors – and that without it the business isn’t viable.

Several destinations for the whales have been proposed but there is disagreement on where they should go and what should happen to them.

Most experts agree that releasing the two whales, which are Icelandic orcas specifically, into the wild would not be suitable as both were born in captivity and would not have the skills to survive.

“It’s a bit like taking your dog out of the house and sending him into the woods to live freely as a wolf,” says Hanne Strager.

In 2023 the marine biologist published The Killer Whale Journals, which details her decades long interest in the ocean predator and how they behave.

“Those whales, that have spent their entire lives in captivity, their closest relationship is with humans. They are the ones who have provided them with food, care, activities and social relations.

“Killer whales are highly social animals, as social as we [humans] are, and they depend on social bonds. They have established those bonds with their trainers … They depend on humans and that is the only thing they know.”

A deal to send Wikie and Keijo to a marine zoo in Japan, backed by managers at Marineland, caused outcry among campaigners who said they would receive worse treatment.

Last November the French government blocked the deal, saying the animal welfare laws in Japan were relaxed compared to those in Europe and that the 13,000km (8,000 mile) journey would cause stress to the orcas.

Another option is to send them to a Spanish marine zoo in the Canary Islands.

Loro Parque, in Tenerife, complies with European animal welfare standards but campaigners fear Wikie and Keijo will still be made to perform there.

There have also been several orca deaths there in the last few years.

A 29-year-old male called Keto passed away in November and three other orcas died there between March 2021 and September 2022.

Loro Parque say scientific examinations of those three orcas by the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria show the deaths were unavoidable.

Katheryn Wise, from the charity World Animal Protection (Wap), tells the BBC: “It would be devastating for Wikie and Keijo to end up in another entertainment venue like Loro Parque – from one whale jail to another.”

Wap want the orcas to be rehomed in an adapted ocean bay.

“[We and] many others have urged the government of France to do everything it can to facilitate the movement of the orcas to a sanctuary off the coast of Nova Scotia.”

The organisation hoping to build the facility in eastern Canada say it would be able to attract funding if it received a commitment from the French government to send the two whales there.

The Whale Sanctuary Project (WSP) proposes to close off an area of seawater measuring 40 hectares (98 acres) with nets.

Wikie and Keijo could then use the large expanse of water, with human support from vets and welfare workers, until the end of their lives.

The average lifespan of a male killer whale is about 30 years, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration agency. Females usually live about 50 years.

“Life at the sanctuary will be as close as is possible to what they would have experienced growing up in the ocean,” say the WSP. “It will be a new life that will make up for so much of what went before.”

This kind of project has been done before.

Keiko, the orca that starred in the 1993 move Free Willy, was rescued from captivity in 1996 before being taken to a bay in Iceland in 1998.

Unlike Wikie and Keijo, he was born in the wild and was able to relearn some of the necessary survival skills while living in the bay for four years.

He eventually left with a pod of orcas he had joined and swam to Norway where he died in 2003 following an infection.

Strager warns that the proposed sanctuary might feel as alien to Wikie and Keijo as open ocean would.

“We have this conception that animals enjoy freedom in the same sense we do, ‘now they are free and they will love it.’

“We don’t know if they see freedom the same way … Are they going to be scared because it is so different to what they’re used to? I don’t know.”

She tells the BBC: “I don’t think there are any good solutions for animals that have been kept in captivity their whole lives.”

More than 4,000 animals will be moved out of Marineland, which was founded in 1970 by Count Roland de la Poype.

He was a decorated fighter pilot who fought during World War Two before establishing himself in the plastics industry and opening Marineland due to his interest in sea life.

The closure of his passion project is the latest step in a campaign targeting marine zoos that has gained momentum over the last 15 years.

The actress Pamela Anderson called for the closure of Marineland in 2017 and held a protest outside its entrance saying “captivity kills”.

In 2013, the documentary Blackfish detailed how an orca called Tilikum killed trainer Dawn Brancheau after a show at SeaWorld Orlando in 2010.

He grabbed her and dragged her into the water where he tore off her arm and drowned her.

The film also outlines how Tilikum was also involved in the deaths of two other people.

Researchers interviewed in the film argued that orcas captured from the wild and trained to perform become violent in captivity.

Visitor numbers and financial revenues at SeaWorld suffered in the aftermath of the documentary and in 2016 they suspended their captive breeding programme.

They rejected calls to release their remaining orcas into the wild, saying they would likely die if left to fend for themselves.

Eighteen months ago they opened a new marine zoo in the United Arab Emirates, SeaWorld’s first outside the US.

The new facility in Abu Dhabi is a $1.2bn (£966m) venture with state-owned leisure developer Miral and boasts the largest aquarium in the world.

There aren’t any orcas on show here but, to the dismay of campaigners, dolphins still are.

Wap have helped convince Expedia not to sell any more holidays involving performances by dolphins in captivity and want other travel companies to do the same.

“Blackfish was more than a hit – it was a phenomenon,” writes the scientist Naomi Rose in a report by Wap. “I am convinced it pushed western society past the tipping point on the subject of captive cetaceans.”

Sushi restaurateurs in Tokyo say they have paid 207m yen ($1.3m; £1m) for a bluefin tuna which is about the size and weight of a motorbike.

The sale is the second highest price ever paid at the annual new year auction at Toyosu Fish Market in the Japanese capital.

Onodera Group, which had the winning bid, said the tuna – which weighs in at 276kg (608lb) – would be served at its Michelin-starred Ginza Onodera restaurants, as well as Nadaman restaurants across the country.

“The first tuna is something meant to bring in good fortune,” Onodera official Shinji Nagao told reporters after the auction, news agency AFP reported.

Mr Nagao added that he hoped people would eat the tuna – caught off the Aomori region in northern Japan – and “have a wonderful year”.

The group has paid the top price in the Ichiban Tuna auction for five years straight.

Last year, it forked out 114m yen for the top tuna.

The highest auction price since comparable records began in 1999 was 333.6m yen in 2019 for a 278kg bluefin.

It was paid by self-styled Japanese “Tuna King” and sushi restaurant owner Kiyoshi Kimura.

Toyosu fish market, which opened in 1935, claims to be the biggest fish market in the world, and is known for pre-dawn daily tuna auctions.

But tuna was not the only catch on offer on Sunday, with Hokkaido sea urchins also fetching a record-breaking 7m yen according to the Japan Times.

A woman who had eight organs removed after being diagnosed with a rare cancer has returned to work.

Faye Louise, from Horsham, West Sussex, began planning her own funeral after doctors found a tumour in her appendix in 2023.

But after “the mother of all surgeries”, she said she was cancer free and able to return to work as a flight dispatcher at Gatwick Airport.

“To have been told there is no evidence of disease, it was the greatest Christmas gift that I could have got,” she said.

Ms Louise added that she was unsure if she’d be able to work again this time last year.

“The job is very physical, but I love aviation and I’m happy that I’m back in the role,” she told BBC Radio Sussex.

The former model began to have pains in spring 2023, which she initially put down to period problems, before an ultrasound revealed an ovarian cyst.

However, after an operation to rectify the problems, she said she “heard the dreaded C-word” and was diagnosed with pseudomyxoma peritonei – a rare tumour that causes a build-up of a jelly-like substance in the abdomen.

As the tumour had ruptured, spreading cancer cells around her body, Ms Louise needed an operation which involved removing eight of her organs.

The surgery included the removal of her spleen, gallbladder, appendix, ovaries, uterus, fallopian tubes, belly button, greater and lesser omentum – which connect the stomach and duodenum to other abdominal organs – and part of her liver, as well as the scraping of her diaphragm and pelvis.

She will continue to have yearly scans every November as a result.

“Waiting for the results will sadly make or break every Christmas for me. But you just have to keep pushing forward and never give up,” she said.

“Some days I have been down to the depths of despair, but more often than not now, I’m having more positive days.”

She has since returned to work, and fundraised for Cancer Research UK – including being gunged with 15 litres of orange gloop in the garden of the Red Lyon pub in Slinfold.

She has also completed the Race for Life in Stanmer Park, Brighton, to raise funds for the charity.

US actors Demi Moore and Sebastian Stan are among the big winners at the Golden Globe Awards, which are taking place in Los Angeles.

Moore was named best actress in a musical or comedy for her performance in body horror The Substance, which has revitalised her career and could see her score an Oscar nomination.

“I’m just in shock right now… I really wasn’t expecting that,” Moore said as she took to the stage. “I’ve been doing this a long time, over 45 years, and this is the first time I’ve ever won anything as an actor.”

Other winners have included Kieran Culkin and Zoe Saldaña and TV series Baby Reindeer and Shōgun.

Blockbuster Wicked missed out on the major prizes, but won the box office and cinematic achievement prize, which was introduced last year.

In her acceptance speech, Moore said: “Thirty years ago, I had a producer tell me I was a popcorn actress, and at that time I made that mean that [awards] weren’t something I was allowed to have, that I could do movies that were successful and made a lot of money but couldn’t be acknowledged.

“And I bought in and believed that. That corroded me over time to the point where a few years ago I thought maybe this is it, maybe I was complete, I had done what I was supposed to do.

“And as I was at a low point, I had this creative, out of the box, bonkers script come across my desk, called the Substance, and the universe told me I was not done.”

Stan was named best actor in a musical or comedy for A Different Man, which sees him play a character who drastically changes his appearance.

“Our ignorance and discomfort around disability and disfigurement has to end now, we have to normalise it and continue to expose ourselves to it, and our children, encourage acceptance.”

Culkin won best supporting actor for his performance in A Real Pain, about two cousins who travel across Poland in memory of their grandmother.

“The first ever acknowledgement I got as an actor was a Golden Globe nomination when I was basically a kid. Now, it’s like the best date night my wife and I ever have,” he joked.

Saldaña, who won best supporting actress for her role in Spanish-language musical Emilia Pérez, said: “My heart is full of gratitude.”

“I’m so blessed to be sharing this moment with my fellow nominees,” she continued. “I know this is a competition but all I have witnessed is just us showing up for each other and celebrating each other and it’s just so beautiful.”

The film also won best non-English language film which saw director Jacques Audiard take to the stage with a French translator to accept the award.

“In these troubled times I hope Emilia Perez will be a beacon of light,” he said. “I hope to offer a comforting hug to those who are worried… I urge them to keep they heads held high and hope for a better few days ahead.”

Accepting Wicked’s prize for box office achievement, director Jon M Chu paid tribute to the movie and stage musical’s loyal fanbase.

“This is for you, the fans out there, who came to the movie theatres, brought your friends and family, we saw your videos, your singalongs, your make-up, hair products, bakery items,” he said.

“It shows us how important making this stuff is, in a time when pessimism and cynicism rule the planet, that we can still make art that is a radical act of optimism.”

There was a surprise but welcome winner in the animated feature category, which saw box office juggernauts The Wild Robot and Inside Out 2 beaten by Flow, a film about animals who must work together to survive following a flood.

“This film was made by a very small, young, but passionate team, in a place where there isn’t a big film industry, so this is the first time a film from Latvia has been here so this is huge for us,” said director Gints Zilbalodis.

• Nikki Glaser’s best jokes at the Golden Globes
• Golden Globes: The winners and nominees (updating live)
• Golden Globes: The red carpet in pictures

Elsewhere, Baby Reindeer was named best limited TV series, which was accepted by its writer and creator Richard Gadd.

“A lot of people ask me why a show this dark has gone on to be the success that it has,” he said. “And I think in a lot of ways, people were crying out for something that spoke to the painful inconsistencies of being human.

“For a while there’s been this belief in television that stories which are too dark and complicated won’t sell and no-one will watch them, so I hope Baby Reindeer has done away with that theory, because right now, when the world’s in the state that it’s in and people are really struggling, we need stories which speak to the complicated and difficult nature of our times.”

British actress Jessica Gunning was named best TV supporting actress for her portrayal as a stalker in the hit Netflix series.

In her acceptance speech, Gunning shared an anecdote about getting a hamster for Christmas as a child, and thinking that she couldn’t believe it was happening to her. She said that phrase had become the “soundtrack of my life this year”.

“Thank you to Richard Gadd, Baby Reindeer has changed my life in ways that I can’t even explain. I can’t believe this is happening to me,” she repeated, “and I know that eight-year-old me wouldn’t either, she’d be chuffed to bits.”

Irish actor Colin Farrell won his third Golden Globe, for playing the Batman villain Penguin in an HBO series of the same name.

On stage, he joked that he had “no one to thank” and “did it all by myself”.

Recalling the three hours it took to fit him with prosthetics to make him the bloated villain in his latest film, he said: “In the morning, I drank black coffee, listened to 80s music, and I became a canvas for that team’s brilliance.”

Farrell also said: “Thank you for employing me. And yeah, I guess it’s prosthetics from here on out.”

The Golden Globes mark the first major ceremony of the film awards season, which culminates with the Oscars on 2 March.

A win at the Globes can help boost a film’s profile at a crucial time, when Bafta and Oscar voters are preparing to fill in their nomination ballots.

More Vietnamese attempted small-boat Channel crossings in the first half of 2024 than any other nationality. Yet they are coming from one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. Why, then, are so many risking their lives to reach Britain?

Phuong looked at the small inflatable boat and wondered whether she should step in. There were 70 people packed in, and it was sitting low in the water. She recalls the fear, exhaustion and desperation on their faces. There weren’t enough lifejackets to go around.

But Phuong was desperate. She says she had been stuck in France for two months, after travelling there from Vietnam via Hungary, sleeping in tents in a scrubby forest.

Already she had refused to travel on one boat because it seemed dangerously overcrowded, and previously had been turned back in the middle of the Channel three times by bad weather or engine failure.

Her sister, Hien, lives in London, and recalls that Phuong used to phone her from France in tears. “She was torn between fear and a drive to keep going.

“But she had borrowed so much – around £25,000 – to fund this trip. Turning back wasn’t an option.” So, she climbed on board.

Today Phuong lives in London with her sister, without any legal status. She was too nervous to speak to us directly, and Phuong is not her real name. She left it to her sister, who is now a UK citizen, to describe her experiences.

In the six months to June, Vietnamese made up the largest number of recorded small boat arrivals with 2,248 landing in the UK, ahead of people from countries with well-documented human rights problems, including Afghanistan and Iran.

The extraordinary efforts made by Vietnamese migrants to get to Britain is well documented, and in 2024 the BBC reported on how Vietnamese syndicates are running successful people-smuggling operations.

It is not without significant risks. Some Vietnamese migrants end up being trafficked into sex work or illegal marijuana farms. They make up more than one-tenth of those in the UK filing official claims that they are victims of modern slavery.

And yet Vietnam is a fast-growing economy, acclaimed as a “mini-China” for its manufacturing prowess. Per capita income is eight times higher than it was 20 years ago. Add to that the tropical beaches, scenery and affordability, which have made it a magnet for tourists.

So what is it that makes so many people desperate to leave?

Vietnam, a one-party Communist state, sits near the bottom of most human rights and freedom indexes. No political opposition is permitted. The few dissidents who raise their voices are harassed and jailed.

Yet most Vietnamese have learned to live with the ruling party, which leans for legitimacy on its record of delivering growth. Very few who go to Britain are fleeing repression.

Nor are the migrants generally fleeing poverty. The World Bank has singled Vietnam out for its almost unrivalled record of poverty reduction among its 100 million people.

Rather, they are trying to escape what some call “relative deprivation”.

Despite its impressive economic record, Vietnam started far behind most of its Asian neighbours, with growth only taking off well after the end of the Cold War in 1989. As a result, average wages, at around £230 a month, are much lower than in nearby countries like Thailand, and three-quarters of the 55-million-strong workforce are in informal jobs, with no security or social protection.

“There is a huge disparity between big cities like Hanoi and rural areas,” says Nguyen Khac Giang, a Vietnamese academic at the Institute of South East Asian Studies-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. “For a majority of workers with limited skills, there is a glass ceiling. Even if you work 14 hours a day you cannot save enough to build a house or start a family.”

This was what Phuong felt, despite coming from Haiphong, Vietnam’s third-largest city.

Her sister Hien had made it to Britain nine years earlier, smuggled inside a shipping container. It had cost her around £22,000 but she was able to pay that back in two years, working long hours in kitchens and nail salons. Hien married a Vietnamese man who already had British citizenship, and they had a daughter; all three are now UK citizens.

In Haiphong, jobs were scarce after the pandemic and at 38 years old, Phuong wanted what her sister had in London: the ability to save money and start a family.

“She could survive in Vietnam, but she wanted a home, a better life, with more security,” explains Hien.

Lan An Hoang, a professor in development studies at Melbourne University, has spent years studying migration patterns. “Twenty to thirty years ago, the urge to migrate overseas was not as strong, because everyone was poor,” she says. “People were happy with one buffalo, one motorbike and three meals a day.

“Suddenly a few people successfully migrated to countries like Germany or the UK, to work on cannabis farms or open nail salons. They started to send a lot of money home. Even though the economic conditions of those left behind have not changed, they feel poor relative to all these families with migrants working in Europe.”

This tradition of seeking better lives overseas goes back to the 1970s and 80s, when Vietnam was allied to the Soviet Union following the defeat of US forces in the south.

The state-led economy had hit rock bottom. Millions were destitute; some areas suffered food shortages. Tens of thousands left to work in eastern bloc countries like Poland, East Germany and Hungary.

This was also a time when 800,000 mainly ethnic Chinese boat people fled the communist party’s repressive actions, making perilous sea journeys across the South China Sea, eventually resettling in the USA, Australia or Europe.

The economic hardships of that time threatened the legitimacy of the communist party, and in 1986 it made an abrupt turn, abandoning the attempt to build a socialist system and throwing the doors open to global markets. The new theme of Vietnam’s national story was to catch up, and get rich, any way possible. For many Vietnamese, that meant going abroad.

“Money is God in Vietnam,” says Lan An Hoang. “The meaning of ‘the good life’ is primarily anchored in your ability to accumulate wealth. There is also a strong obligation to help your family, especially in central Vietnam.

“That is why the whole extended family pools resources to finance the migration of one young person because they believe they can send back large sums of money, and facilitate the migration of other people.”

Drive through the flat rice fields of Nghe An, one of Vietnam’s poorer provinces lying south of Hanoi, and where there were once smaller concrete houses, you will now find large, new houses with gilded gates. More are under construction, thanks, in part, to money earned in the West.

The new houses are prominent symbols of success for returnees who have done well overseas.

Vietnam is now enjoying substantial inflows of foreign investment, as it is considered an alternative to China for companies wanting to diversify their supply chains. This investment is even beginning to reach places like Nghe An, too.

Foxconn, a corporate giant that manufactures iPhones, is one of several foreign businesses building factories in Nghe An, offering thousands of new jobs.

But monthly salaries for unskilled workers only reach around £300, even with overtime. That is not enough to rival the enticing stories of the money to be made in the UK, as told by the people smugglers.

The business of organising the travel for those wishing to leave the province is now a very profitable one. Publicly, companies present themselves as either travel agents or brokers for officially-approved overseas labour contracts, but in practice many also offer to smuggle people to the UK via other European countries. They usually paint a rosy picture of life in Britain, and say little about the risks and hardships they will face.

“Brokers” typically charge between £15,000 and £35,000 for the trip to the UK. Hungary is a popular route into the EU because it offers guest-worker visas to Vietnamese passport holders. The higher the price, the easier and faster the journey.

The communist authorities in Vietnam have been urged by the US, the UK and UN agencies to do more to control the smuggling business.

Remittances from abroad earn Vietnam around £13bn a year, and the government has a policy of promoting migration for work, although only through legal channels, mostly to richer Asian countries.

More than 130,000 Vietnamese workers left in 2024 under the official scheme. But the fees for these contracts can be high, and the wages are much lower than they can earn in Britain.

The huge risks of the illicit routes used to reach the UK were brought home in 2019, when 39 Vietnamese people were found dead in Essex, having suffocated while being transported inside a sealed container across the Channel.

Yet this has not noticeably reduced demand for the smugglers’ services. The increased scrutiny of container traffic has, however, pushed them to find alternative Channel crossings, which helps explain the sharp rise in Vietnamese people using small boats.

“The tragedy of the 39 deaths in 2019 is almost forgotten,” says the cousin of one of the victims, Le Van Ha. He left behind a wife, two young children and a large debt from the cost of the journey. His cousin, who does not want to be named, says attitudes in their community have not changed.

“People hardly care anymore. It’s a sad reality, but it is the truth.

“I see the trend of leaving continuing to grow, not diminish. For people here, the success stories still outweigh the risks.”

Three of the victims came from the agricultural province of Quang Binh. The headteacher of a secondary school in the region, who also asked not to be named, says that 80% of his students who graduate soon plan to go overseas.

“Most parents here come from low-income backgrounds,” he explains. “The idea of [encouraging their child to] broaden their knowledge and develop their skills is not the priority.

“For them, sending a child abroad is largely about earning money quickly, and getting it sent back home to improve the family’s living standards.”

In March the UK Home Office started a social media campaign to deter Vietnamese people from illegal migration. Some efforts were also made by the Vietnamese government to alert people to the risks of using people-smugglers. But until there are more appealing economic opportunities in those provinces, it is likely the campaigns will have little impact.

“They cannot run these campaigns just once,” argues Diep Vuong, co-founder of Pacific Links, an anti-trafficking organisation. “It’s a constant investment in education that’s needed.”

She has first-hand experience, leaving Vietnam to the US in 1980 as part of the exodus of Vietnamese boat people.

“In Vietnam, people believe they have to work hard, to do everything for their families. That is like a shackle which they cannot easily escape. But with enough good information put out over the years, they might start to change this attitude.”

But the campaigns are up against a powerful narrative. Those who go overseas and fail – and many do – are often ashamed, and keep quiet about what went wrong. Those who succeed come back to places like Nghe An and flaunt their new-found wealth. As for the tragedy of the 39 people who died in a shipping container, the prevailing view in Nghe An is still that they were just unlucky.

James Lee Williams, better known as drag queen The Vivienne, has died aged 32.

Publicist Simon Jones said the performer, who died over the weekend, was “an incredibly loved, warm-hearted and amazing person”.

The Vivienne starred in musical theatre and TV productions, and won the first series of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK in 2019.

The show paid tribute to the drag star on social media, saying they were “deeply saddened” by the news of the performer’s death.

“She will be dearly missed, but her legacy will live on as a beacon of creativity and authenticity – she embodied what it means to be a true champion”.

“Her talent, humour, and dedication to the art of drag was an inspiration,” the show said in a post on X.

“Our hearts go out to her family and fans during this difficult time.”

The show’s judge Michelle Visage also called the star “a beacon to so many”.

Writing on social media, Visage called the news “heartbreaking”, adding: “My darling The Vivienne, we go back to when I started coming over here to the UK.”

“You were always there, always laughing, always giving, always on point.”

“Your laughter, your wit, your talent, your drag. I loved all of it but I loved your friendship most of all.”

Drag Race UK star Bimini Bon Boulash also reacted to the news, writing on Instagram: “I’m so sorry I’m in total shock”.

Cheryl – who used to go by Cheryl Hole – took part in the same series of Drag Race as The Vivienne. The performer wrote on Instagram: “I will love you forever Viv.”

John Hyland, community partnerships lead at Sahir, a LGBTQ+ and HIV charity in Liverpool, also paid tribute. Drag fans have been donating to Sahir’s latest campaign as a mark of respect for The Vivienne, who posted about the appeal just days before their death.

John said: “It says a lot to Viv’s character that her last social post was about our Pound for Sahir campaign. She just wanted to give back.

“If you look at the response tonight, I think we’re going to be in mourning in this city for a long time. The Vivienne was an amazing character, an amazing influence.”

Natasha Von Spirit, a Liverpool drag queen, said that The Vivienne had put British drag “in the mainstream” and that they would be playing songs in tribute to them throughout the night.

They said: “Whenever she was out on the scene after drag race she was just one of the Liverpool gays.

“I’m going to play all sorts for Viv tonight – definitely Walking in Memphis because before Drag Race she sung that none stop, and definitely a bit of her own music as well.”

Williams was born in Wales, and adopted the drag name because of a love for wearing Vivienne Westwood clothing.

Rydal Penrhos school in Colwyn Bay, where Williams was a former pupil, said it was “deeply shocked and saddened” by the star’s death.

“The Vivienne’s successful career as a performer and artist proved a source of inspiration and joy to so many”, the school said in a statement.

As well as winning Drag Race, The Vivienne came third on the 2023 edition of Dancing On Ice, and performed as the Wicked Witch of the West in a UK and Ireland tour of The Wizard Of Oz musical.

The performer reprised the role in the West End at the Gillian Lynne Theatre last year.

The Vivienne also competed on an all-winners season of the RuPaul franchise in the US in 2022, and starred in BBC Three show The Vivienne Takes On Hollywood in 2020.

In an Instagram post on Boxing Day, The Vivienne put up a series of photos, captioning it: “24′ highlights.”

“What a year it’s been. Here’s to reaching new heights and achieving dreams in 25,” the star wrote, before signing off: “Viv xxx.”

Mr Jones said words announcing The Vivienne’s death were ones he “never ever wanted to write”.

“No one has ever made me laugh in my life as much as Viv did. Their comic genius and quick wit was like no other,” he said.

“I’m so proud and lucky that Viv was such a big part of my life every day for the last 5 years.”

Mr Jones asked for privacy for the star’s family and said no further details would be released at this time.

Fiona Campbell, BBC controller of youth audience, called the news “deeply sad”, adding: “We are fiercely proud of The Vivienne’s achievements, including winning the first ever series of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK.

“Right now our thoughts are with their family and friends, the Drag Race sisterhood and their many fans.”

Ukraine has launched a counter-attack in Russia’s Kursk region, the Russian defence ministry says.

As officials in Ukraine also suggested an operation was under way, Moscow said it had met the attack with artillery and air power.

Ukrainian forces entered Kursk region in August, seizing a chunk of territory. Russian forces have pushed them back in some areas without managing to eject them entirely.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that security guarantees leading to an end to the war would only be effective if the US under Donald Trump provided them.

During a podcast interview with Lex Fridman, Zelensky praised the incoming US president’s influence and suggested Trump had the leverage to at least halt Russia’s ongoing invasion.

Trump pledged during his election campaign to quickly end the war, without giving details.

Zelensky said “Trump and I will come to an agreement and… offer strong security guarantees, together with Europe, and then we can talk to the Russians”.

According to the Russian defence ministry, a Ukrainian assault detachment consisting of two tanks, one military engineering vehicle and 12 armoured fighting vehicles (AFVs) attacked near the village of Berdin around 09:00 (06:00 GMT) on Sunday.

Russian forces hit back, it said, destroying both tanks, the military engineering vehicle and seven armoured fighting vehicles. Fighting continued, it added.

Aerial video of a column of armour moving through snow-covered countryside in daylight and coming under fire, with vehicles taking hits, was published by Russian state news agency Ria.

The BBC was not immediately able to verify the Russian footage or claims.

Speaking earlier, the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, said there “was good news from Kursk Region” and that Russia was “getting what it deserves”.

Ukraine’s top counter-disinformation official Andriy Kovalenko said in a Telegram post on Sunday: “The Russians in Kursk are experiencing great anxiety because they were attacked from several directions and it came as a surprise to them.”

Oner Russian blogger, Yury Podolyaka, suggested the operation might have been diversionary, while another, Alexander Kots, did not rule out that the main attack could be launched somewhere else.

Kyiv’s forces are reportedly suffering from manpower shortages and have been losing ground in the east of Ukraine in recent months, as Russian troops advance.

It comes as the Ukrainian Air Force said Russia launched another drone attack on Ukraine overnight.

It said it had shot down 61 drones over Kyiv, Poltava, Sumy, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Dnipropetrovsk, Zhytomyr, and Khmelnytskyy regions

There were no direct hits, but a few houses were damaged in Kharkiv Region by an intercepted drone, the air force said.

In November, Ukraine reported its troops had engaged in combat with North Korean troops in the Kursk region.

The reported appearance of North Korean soldiers was in response to a surprise attack launched across the border by Ukrainian troops in August, advancing up to 18 miles (30km) into Russian land.

Moscow evacuated almost 200,000 people from areas along the border and President Vladimir Putin condemned the Ukrainian offensive as a “major provocation”.

After a fortnight, Ukraine’s top commander claimed to control more than 1,200 sq km of Russian territory and 93 villages.

Some of that territory has been regained by Russia.

The Arctic recently made headlines after Donald Trump repeated his desire to buy Greenland. Trump cited national security interests, but for many the territory’s vast mineral wealth is the main attraction. Yet economic development elsewhere in the vast polar region has ground to a halt.

Working conditions in the Arctic Ocean are extremely challenging at this time of the year for Norwegian fisherman Sondre Alnes-Bonesmo.

The sun last rose at the end of October, and it is not due to appear in the sky again until the middle of February.

In addition to the endless dark, temperatures can plummet below minus 40C, and storms can bring vast waves.

Mr Alnes-Bonesmo, 30, works two six-hour shifts a day, during five-week tours on a ship called Granit. One of the largest factory trawlers fishing in Arctic waters north of Norway, and off the coast of Greenland, it doesn’t stop for winter.

Unsurprisingly, he prefers the endless daylight of summer. “I do like it when the weather is nice, as we’re not sent crashing into the walls and such, the way we are during storms, when the waves can be fairly big,” he grins in understatement.

Mr Alnes-Bonesmo is a participant in the so-called Arctic “cold rush”.

A play on words with gold rush, it began in earnest around 2008 when a series of reports identified vast mineral and hydrocarbon reserves across the Arctic region. Reserves that, together with large fishing stocks, could continue to become more accessible as climate change reduces ice levels.

This reduction in ice has also increasingly opened up Arctic sea routes, north of the Canadian mainland and Russia.

So much so that, in the decade from 2013 to 2023, the total recorded annual distances sailed by ships in the Arctic Sea more than doubled from 6.1 million to 12.9 million miles.

The hope in the longer term is that cargo ships can travel from Asia to Europe and the east coast of the US, through Arctic waters above Canada and Russia.

But the question Mr Alnes-Bonesmo now asks himself is this – did he arrive too late?

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 much of the planned economic development of the Arctic region ground to a halt as relations between Russia and the West deteriorated.

“Russia had great plans in the Arctic,” says Morten Mejlaender-Larsen, Arctic operation and technology director from Norwegian firm DNV. His company sets rules and standards for the maritime sector.

“They began constructing regional rescue centres complete with ships and helicopters to facilitate both destination shipping for gas, oil and coal projects in Siberia, as well as for shipping along the Northeast Passage [north of Russia].

“[But] since the invasion of Ukraine, international shipping in the Northeast passage has all but stopped, apart from a few Chinese ships,” observes Mr Mejlaender-Larsen.

He adds that Norway has also halted oil and gas exploration in the region. “It’s completely stopped,” he says.

“We don’t expect to see any further developments in the Barents Sea north of Bear Island.” This small Norwegian island is some 400km (250 miles) north of Norway’s mainland.

Norway’s scaled back ambitions in the Arctic have pleased environmentalists who have consistently warned about the impact of drilling for hydrocarbons on both wildlife and the fragile environment of the polar region.

Last month Greenpeace welcomed the decision of the Norwegian government to stop the first round of licencing for deep sea mining in Arctic waters between Norway’s Svalbard and Jan Mayen islands.

Commentators say that while poor relations with Russia is a key reason why Norway is wary of ploughing money into Arctic projects, its interest in the polar region had already cooled.

Helene Tofte, director of international cooperation and climate at the Norwegian Shipowners Association, says that in hindsight the outlook for shipping in the Arctic had been “exaggerated”.

She points out that despite the impact of climate change, the Arctic remains a difficult place in which to operate. “Conditions in the Arctic can be extremely challenging, even when the absence of sea ice allows passage,” she says.

“Large parts of the route are far from emergency response capacities, such as search and rescue, and environmental clean-up resources.

“Increased shipping in this area would require substantial investments in ships, emergency preparedness, infrastructure, and weather forecasting systems, for a route that is unpredictable and has a short operational season. At present, we have no indication that our members view this as commercially interesting.”

Mr Mejlaender-Larsen points to a “belief that thanks to global warming there’ll be summers up there. That’ll never happen. If it’s minus 40C and it gets 3C warmer, it’s still not warm.”

Moreover, Prof Arild Moe, from Norwegian research group Fridtjof Nansen Institute, says the entire cold rush of the Arctic was based on exaggerated assumptions. “The exuberance was excessive,” says the expert on oil and gas exploration in the region.

“What the reports from 2008 referred to weren’t actual reserves, but potential and highly uncertain resources, which would be risky, expensive, and difficult to locate and exploit.”

Regarding Trump’s renewed interest in Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, authorities in Greenland and Denmark were again quick to reply that it was not for sale.

Prof Moe says that Trump’s “crude and undiplomatic statement” shows that the US under Trump eyes both security and economic interests in the island, including its “rich mineral resources”.

The Danish government also responded by announcing a huge increase in defence spending for Greenland.

Elsewhere in the Arctic, Trump is expected to allow increased oil and gas exploration in Alaska, specifically in the resource rich Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

This 19 million acre expanse is the US’s largest wildlife refuge, and back in 2020 Trump authorised drilling in one section of it.

Meanwhile, Canada is continuing to build a deep-water port at Grays Bay, on the north coast of Nunavut, its most northern territory. Grays Bay is approximately in the centre of the so-called Northwest Passage, the Arctic sea route north of the Canadian mainland.

Back on the Granit fishing ship, Mr Alnes-Bonesmo says that, while he has earned good money, fishing quotas continue to go down to try to preserve stocks in Norwegian Arctic waters.

Nevertheless, he is philosophical. “After a few years at sea I’ve grown more scared of the Arctic Ocean, but I’ve also come to respect and value it for all its power and beauty.”

The body of an Indian journalist who had reported on alleged corruption in the country has been found in a septic tank in Chhattisgarh state.

Mukesh Chandrakar, 32, went missing on New Year’s Day and his family registered a complaint with the police.

His body was found on Friday in the compound of a road construction contractor in the Bijapur town area after officers tracked his mobile phone.

Three people have been arrested in connection with his death, reportedly including two of his relatives. A media watchdog has demanded a thorough investigation.

Police in the Bijapur district did not find anything during an initial visit to the compound on 2 January.

“However, after further inspection on 3 January, we discovered Mukesh’s body in the newly floored septic tank near the badminton court,” a senior police officer said, referring to the fact concrete slabs had been placed on top of the tank.

Police said his body showed severe injuries consistent with a blunt-force attack.

Mr Chandrakar, a freelance journalist, had reported widely on alleged corruption in public construction projects.

He also ran a popular YouTube channel, Bastar Junction.

Following his death, the Press Council of India called for a report “on the facts of the case” from the state’s government.

The chief minister of the state described Mr Chandrakar’s death as “heartbreaking”.

In a post on X, he said a special investigation team had been formed to investigate the case.

It has been reported in Indian media that one of those under arrest over the journalist’s death is his cousin.

One of the main suspects – compound owner Suresh Chandrakar, also a relative – is on the run.

Local journalists have held a protest demanding strict action against the alleged perpetrators.

Attacks on journalists reporting on corruption or environmental degradation is not uncommon in India.

In May 2022, Subhash Kumar Mahto, a freelance journalist known for his reporting on people involved in illegal sand mining, was fatally shot in the head by four unidentified men outside his home in Bihar.

Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders has said that an average of three or four journalists are killed in connection with their work in India every year, making it one of the world’s most dangerous countries for the media.

The Golden Globe Awards 2025 are taking place in Los Angeles, with musical Emilia Pérez leading the charge with 10 nominations.

Other films in the running include The Brutalist (seven nominations), Conclave, (six), Anora and The Substance (five each).

Wicked, A Real Pain, Challengers and The Wild Robot have four nominations apiece.

• How to watch the Globe-nominated films
• Golden Globes: The red carpet in pictures
• Nikki Glaser’s best jokes at the Golden Globes

Here is the nomination list in full, which is being updated with the winners in each category throughout the night:

Best film – drama

• WINNER: The Brutalist
• A Complete Unknown
• Conclave
• Dune: Part Two
• Nickel Boys
• September 5

Best film – musical or comedy

• Anora
• Challengers
• Emilia Pérez
• A Real Pain
• The Substance
• Wicked

Best non-English language film

• WINNER: Emilia Pérez
• All We Imagine as Light
• The Girl with the Needle
• I’m Still Here
• The Seed of the Sacred Fig
• Vermiglio

Best animated film

• WINNER: Flow
• Inside Out 2
• Memoir of a Snail
• Moana 2
• Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
• The Wild Robot

Cinematic and box office achievement

• WINNER: Wicked
• Alien: Romulus
• Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
• Deadpool & Wolverine
• Gladiator II
• Inside Out 2
• Twisters
• The Wild Robot

Best actress – drama

• WINNER: Fernanda Torres, I’m Still Here
• Pamela Anderson, The Last Showgirl
• Angelina Jolie, Maria
• Nicole Kidman, Babygirl
• Tilda Swinton, The Room Next Door
• Kate Winslet, Lee

Best actor – drama

• WINNER: Adrien Brody, The Brutalist
• Timothée Chalamet, A Complete Unknown
• Daniel Craig, Queer
• Colman Domingo, Sing Sing
• Ralph Fiennes, Conclave
• Sebastian Stan, The Apprentice

Best actress – musical or comedy

• WINNER: Demi Moore, The Substance
• Amy Adams, Nightbitch
• Cynthia Erivo, Wicked
• Karla Sofía Gascón, Emilia Pérez
• Mikey Madison, Anora
• Zendaya, Challengers

Best actor – musical or comedy

• WINNER: Sebastian Stan, A Different Man
• Jesse Eisenberg, A Real Pain
• Hugh Grant, Heretic
• Gabriel LaBelle, Saturday Night
• Jesse Plemons, Kinds of Kindness
• Glen Powell, Hit Man

Best supporting actress

• WINNER: Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez
• Ariana Grande, Wicked
• Selena Gomez, Emilia Pérez
• Felicity Jones, The Brutalist
• Margaret Qualley, The Substance
• Isabella Rossellini, Conclave

Best supporting actor

• WINNER: Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain
• Yura Borisov, Anora
• Edward Norton, A Complete Unknown
• Guy Pearce, The Brutalist
• Jeremy Strong, The Apprentice
• Denzel Washington, Gladiator II

Best director

• WINNER: Brady Corbet, The Brutalist
• Jacques Audiard, Emilia Pérez
• Sean Baker, Anora
• Edward Berger, Conclave
• Coralie Fargeat, The Substance
• Payal Kapadia, All We Imagine as Light

Best screenplay

• WINNER: Peter Straughan, Conclave
• Jacques Audiard, Emilia Pérez
• Sean Baker, Anora
• Brady Corbet, Mona Fastvold, The Brutalist
• Jesse Eisenberg, A Real Pain
• Coralie Fargeat, The Substance

Best original song

• WINNER: El Mal, Emilia Pérez
• Beautiful That Way, The Last Showgirl
• Compress/Repress, Challengers
• Forbidden Road, Better Man
• Kiss The Sky, The Wild Robot
• Mi Camino, Emilia Pérez

Best original film score

• WINNERS: Challengers
• Conclave
• The Brutalist
• The Wild Robot
• Emilia Pérez
• Dune: Part Two

Best TV series – drama

• WINNER: Shōgun
• The Diplomat
• Mr. and Mrs. Smith
• Squid Game
• Slow Horses
• The Day of the Jackal

Best TV series – comedy or musical

• WINNER: Hacks
• Abbott Elementary
• The Bear
• The Gentlemen
• Nobody Wants This
• Only Murders in the Building

Best limited TV series

• WINNER: Baby Reindeer
• Disclaimer
• Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story
• The Penguin
• Ripley
• True Detective: Night Country

Best TV actress – drama

• WINNER: Anna Sawai, Shōgun
• Kathy Bates, Matlock
• Emma D’Arcy, House of the Dragon
• Maya Erskine, Mr. and Mrs. Smith
• Keira Knightley, Black Doves
• Keri Russell, The Diplomat

Best TV actor – drama

• WINNER: Hiroyuki Sanada, Shōgun
• Donald Glover, Mr. and Mrs. Smith
• Jake Gyllenhaal, Presumed Innocent
• Gary Oldman, Slow Horses
• Eddie Redmayne, The Day of the Jackal
• Billy Bob Thornton, Landman (Paramount+)

Best TV actress – comedy or musical

• WINNER: Jean Smart, Hacks
• Kristen Bell, Nobody Wants This
• Quinta Brunson, Abbott Elementary
• Ayo Edebiri, The Bear
• Selena Gomez, Only Murders in the Building
• Kathryn Hahn, Agatha All Along

Best TV actor – comedy or musical

• WINNER: Jeremy Allen White, The Bear
• Adam Brody, Nobody Wants This
• Ted Danson, A Man on the Inside
• Steve Martin, Only Murders in the Building
• Jason Segel, Shrinking
• Martin Short, Only Murders in the Building

Best TV actress – limited series

• WINNER: Jodie Foster, True Detective: Night Country
• Cate Blanchett, Disclaimer
• Cristin Milioti, The Penguin
• Sofía Vergara, Griselda
• Naomi Watts, Feud: Capote vs. The Swans
• Kate Winslet, The Regime

Best TV actor – limited series

• WINNER: Colin Farrell, The Penguin
• Richard Gadd, Baby Reindeer
• Kevin Kline, Disclaimer
• Cooper Koch, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story
• Ewan McGregor, A Gentleman in Moscow
• Andrew Scott, Ripley

Best supporting actress – TV

• WINNER: Jessica Gunning, Baby Reindeer
• Liza Colón-Zayas, The Bear
• Hannah Einbinder, Hacks
• Dakota Fanning, Ripley
• Allison Janney, The Diplomat
• Kali Reis, True Detective: Night Country

Best supporting actor – TV

• WINNER: Tadanobu Asano, Shōgun
• Javier Bardem, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story
• Harrison Ford, Shrinking
• Jack Lowden, Slow Horses
• Diego Luna, La Maquina
• Ebon Moss-Bachrach, The Bear

Best TV stand-up comedy performance

• WINNER: Ali Wong, Single Lady
• Jamie Foxx, What Had Happened Was
• Nikki Glaser, Someday You’ll Die
• Seth Meyers, Dad Man Walking
• Adam Sandler, Love You
• Ramy Youssef, More Feelings

The perpetrator of a deadly New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans visited the Louisiana city twice in the months before the attack and wore Meta smart glasses as he apparently scoped out the scene and during the incident itself, the FBI has said.

Shamsud-Din Jabbar also travelled to Egypt and Canada in 2023, though it is not yet clear if those trips were linked to the plot, said investigators.

Fourteen people died and at least 35 more were injured as the driver of the pick-up truck targeted revellers in the French Quarter, in an attack that US officials say was inspired by the Islamic State (IS) group.

Here’s what we know so far.

At 03:15 local time on New Year’s Day, Jabbar drove a pick-up truck through crowds gathered on Bourbon Street – known globally as one of the largest places for New Year’s Eve parties – in the heart of New Orleans’ French Quarter.

Wearing a ballistic vest and helmet, the former US Army soldier got out of the car and began firing at police officers, injuring two, investigators said.

He died following the gunfight with three responding officers, the FBI said.

A couple of hours before the attack, Jabbar placed two improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, in two coolers on Bourbon Street. A transmitter that was supposed to detonate the IEDs was found in his vehicle, the FBI said.

But the bombs did not go off because Jabbar did not have access to a detonator, said investigators.

Bomb-making materials were also found at a nearby Airbnb where Jabbar was staying and at his home in Houston, Texas.

He tried to burn down the Airbnb by setting a fire in a hallway, but the flames petered out before firefighters arrived.

The white Ford he was driving was electric and rented from the platform Turo six weeks beforehand.

• ‘No-one deserves this’: Victims’ families seek answers
• Who were the victims?
• Watch: How day of deadly attack unfolded

Lyonel Myrthil, FBI special agent in charge of the New Orleans field office, told a news conference on Sunday that the suspect in the attack had travelled to Cairo, Egypt, in the summer of 2023. A few days later he visited Ontario, Canada.

“Our agents are getting answers to where he went, who he went with and how those trips may or may not tie into his actions here,” Mr Myrthil said.

Jabbar also stayed at a rental home in New Orleans from 30 October last year for a few days and CCTV shows him riding through the French Quarter on a bicycle wearing “Meta glasses” that are capable of recording or livestreaming, said Mr Myrthil.

The perpetrator also visited New Orleans on 10 November, and investigators are still tracking his movements during that trip.

Jabbar also wore a pair of Meta smart glasses while carrying out the attack on New Year’s Day, but he did not activate the livestream function, said officials. The glasses were found on him after his death.

The 42-year-old US Army veteran was brought up in Beaumont, a city in eastern Texas near the Louisiana border.

He was raised Muslim but left the religion for many years and only recently returned to his faith, his brother said.

According to a now-removed LinkedIn profile, Jabbar worked in various roles in the US Army, including in human resources and IT, before he was discharged in 2015.

He was deployed to Afghanistan from February 2009 to January 2010. His most recent address was in Houston.

He studied at Georgia State University from 2015-17, graduating with a degree in computer information systems.

Accountancy firm Deloitte confirmed that Jabbar was hired by the company in 2021 and he reportedly also worked for Ernst & Young.

The suspect had been married three times and had children from two relationships. His first marriage ended in 2012, and his second lasted from 2013-16. He married once again in 2017 before divorcing in 2022.

Court records relating to Jabbar’s most recent divorce point to financial difficulties – with his monthly expenses, including child support, exceeding his income.

Separate documents reveal that his then-wife had accused him of financial mismanagement and had obtained a temporary restraining order against him.

Jabbar also appears to have worked in real estate – holding a licence that expired in 2023. He had a criminal record, relating to traffic offences and theft.

His brother, Abdur Rahem Jabbar, told Houston news outlet KPRC that his family was shocked by the incident and that their hearts go out to the victims.

“We’re all grieving about this,” he said. “This wasn’t the man I knew. This wasn’t the father, the son, that I knew. And also, this isn’t any representation of Islam, or Muslims or the Muslim community.”

During his drive from Houston to New Orleans, Jabbar posted videos online in which he professed his support for IS, authorities said.

In one of the clips Jabbar said he initially intended to harm his family, but decided against it, believing it would not have illustrated the “war between the believers and the disbelievers”.

Jabbar said in the videos that he joined IS before the summer and offered a will and testament, FBI deputy assistant director Christopher Raia said.

But the FBI said it believed Jabbar had acted alone.

“We have not seen any indications of an accomplice in the United States, but we are still looking into potential associates in the US and outside of our borders,” said Mr Raia.

Investigators have so far ruled out any connection between the New Orleans attack and an explosion of a vehicle the same morning outside the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas, which killed the car’s driver and injured seven others.

Since the attack, police have used vehicles and barricades to block traffic at Bourbon and Canal streets, a well-known nightlife and tourist hotspot that is filled with restaurants, bars and clubs with live music.

President Joe Biden is planning to travel to New Orleans with First Lady Jill Biden on Monday to “grieve with the families and community members impacted by the tragic attack”.

The first parade of the Carnival season leading up to Mardi Gras is due to take place on Monday evening.

New Orleans will also host the Super Bowl on 9 February.

The city previously installed retractable steel bollards to restrict vehicle access to Bourbon Street, but the posts stopped working after being littered with Mardi Gras beads and other refuse.

The bollards were not in position on New Year’s Eve, but will be replaced ahead of the Super Bowl, officials said.

Elon Musk has called for Nigel Farage to be replaced as leader of Reform UK, just weeks after reports the multi-billionaire was in talks to donate to the party.

In a post on his social media site X, Musk said Farage “doesn’t have what it takes” to lead the party – but did not explain his reasoning.

Farage suggested this was due to a disagreement over Musk’s support for far-right activist Tommy Robinson.

He said Musk’s comment was “a surprise”, but that he would “never sell out my principles”.

The comment from the tech entrepreneur comes hours after Farage described Musk as a “friend” in an interview on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme.

Musk has been a vocal supporter of Farage and his party, posting on X in December that Britain “absolutely” needs Reform UK.

But this week a rift emerged over Musk’s support for Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who is currently serving an 18-month prison sentence for contempt of court.

Robinson admitted in court to breaching an injunction against repeating claims about a Syrian refugee schoolboy after losing a 2021 libel case.

In a social media post on Sunday in response to Musk’s comment, Farage said: “Elon is a remarkable individual but on this I am afraid I disagree”.

“My view remains that Tommy Robinson is not right for Reform and I never sell out my principles.”

Minutes after Farage made his statement, Musk posted on X: “Free Tommy Robinson now.”

In the interview broadcast earlier on Sunday, Farage called Musk a “hero” who makes Reform UK “look cool”.

But he added that Musk’s support “doesn’t mean I have to agree with every single statement he makes on X”.

Farage said he planned to “have a conversation with (Musk) on a variety of things” – including Robinson – at the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump.

Farage has maintained close ties to Trump, who has given Musk a role in his administration.

The question now is whether Farage’s friendship with the president-elect is affected.

Farage founded Reform UK in 2018, then called the Brexit Party, and returned as the party’s leader before being elected as an MP in 2024.

In December, Farage, along with Reform’s new party treasurer Nick Candy, met Musk at Mar-a-Lago for an hour-long meeting, and began “open negotiations” about a donation to the party.

Musk’s father Errol has suggested the SpaceX and Tesla mogul might even be prepared to become a UK citizen to make a $100m (£80.5 m) donation to Reform UK. Farage later said speculation about the figure was “for the birds”.

As a US citizen, Musk cannot make personal political donations in the UK – but could make one through the British branch of his company X.

For now, at least it seems the rumours of a large donation from Musk to Reform are on ice.

Since his meeting with Farage, Musk has increasingly taken an interest in UK politics – focusing on criticism of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.

Musk has spent the week amplifying calls by Reform UK and the Conservative Party for a national inquiry into grooming gangs.

The calls came after the government turned down a request to conduct an inquiry into historical cases of sexual abuse in Oldham, saying the council should lead it instead.

This prompted Musk to accuse Sir Keir of failing to properly prosecute “rape gangs” while he was director of public prosecutions.

Musk also said Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips “deserves to be in prison” and called her a “rape genocide apologist”.

Asked about Musk’s comments on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Farage said the CEO had used “very tough terms, but that “free speech was back” on X under his ownership.

In 2022, an independent inquiry by Greater Manchester Combined Authority found that vulnerable children were left exposed to sexual exploitation in Oldham because of “serious failings” by the police and council.

The government has rejected the calls for a national inquiry, instead asking Oldham Council to set up its own. The previous Conservative government turned down a similar request in 2022.

Phillips and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said in a letter to the Conservatives that the local authority had already started setting up an inquiry.

The letter also pointed to the 2022 Child Sexual Abuse Inquiry, which investigated abuse in care homes, churches, homes or by grooming gangs.

The report knitted several previous inquiries into grooming gangs together, including in Rotherham, Rochdale and Telford, alongside its own investigations.

Speaking on Sunday, Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the government was prioritising “getting on with” implementing the report’s 20 recommendations to combat child sexual abuse.

He told the BBC that Musk’s criticism of Phillips was a “disgraceful smear” and said “people like Keir Starmer and Jess Phillips have done the hard yards of actually locking up wife beaters, rapists and paedophiles”.

More than 60 million Americans are under winter weather alerts as a huge winter storm is forecast to bring the heaviest snowfall and coldest temperatures in over a decade.

Much of Canada and 30 US states from Kansas to the East Coast are under weather alerts, the National Weather Service (NWS) said. Snowfall of 6-12in (15-30cm) is expected from Ohio to Washington DC.

A state of emergency has been declared in Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Kansas, Arkansas and Missouri. Even parts of normally balmy Florida are expected to experience freezing conditions.

Forecasters say the extreme weather is being caused by the polar vortex, an area of cold air that circulates around the Arctic.

After blanketing the Central Plains, the storm is expected to hit the US East Coast by Sunday evening.

Parts of upstate New York have experienced at least 3ft of snow so far.

• Follow live updates on this story
• How to drive in snow and icy weather

Washington DC is bracing for between 5-9in of snow. The city’s mayor has declared a snow emergency until at least Sunday evening.

Congress is due to meet on Monday afternoon to certify Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election three months ago, but it is unclear if the foul weather could delay some lawmakers returning to the capital from their constituencies.

The Annapolis area near Baltimore, Maryland, could see 8-12in of snow, the NWS predicts.

Blizzard warnings have been issued in Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska.

Parts of northern Missouri have already experienced 14in of sleet and snow, while Kansas has had 10in.

“For locations in this region that receive the highest snow totals, it may be the heaviest snowfall in at least a decade,” the NWS said on Sunday.

AccuWeather forecaster Dan DePodwin said: “This could lead to the coldest January for the US since 2011.”

He added that “temperatures that are well below historical average” could linger for a week. Temperatures 12-25F (7-14C) below normal are forecast.

Severe travel delays are expected. Nearly 1,500 flights into and out of the US have been cancelled and nearly 5,000 more delayed, according to FlightAware.com.

Amtrak has also cancelled numerous train services.

American, Delta, Southwest and United airlines are waiving change fees for passengers because of the potential flight disruptions.

Further north, Canadians are also feeling the effects of the polar vortex.

Much of Canada is under extreme weather alerts this weekend with frigid temperatures spanning the country.

Some areas are also seeing snow squalls – a sudden heavy snowfall accompanied by strong winds.

In the central province of Manitoba, the wind chill could see temperatures plummet to as low as -40C.

Meanwhile, parts of Ontario could see as much as 15in of snow on Sunday.

Conditions on roads have already deteriorated, with crashes involving lorries and cars, as well as a fire engine rolling over near Salina, Kansas.

“Whiteout conditions will make travel extremely hazardous, with impassable roads and a high risk of motorists becoming stranded,” the NWS warned.

Meanwhile, severe thunderstorms capable of producing tornadoes will move east from Arkansas and Louisiana into Mississippi and Alabama on Sunday evening, the NWS said.

Private meteorologist Ryan Maue said: “It’s going to be a mess, a potential disaster. This is something we haven’t seen in quite a while.”

How have you been affected by the storm? Share your experiences by following this link.