Under growing pressure from his own party, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced he will step down and end his nine-year stretch as leader.

Trudeau said he would stay on in office until his Liberal Party can choose a new leader, and that parliament would be prorogued – or suspended – until 24 March.

“This country deserves a real choice in the next election and it has become clear to me that if I’m having to fight internal battles, I cannot be the best option in that election,” he said during a press conference Monday.

Trudeau’s personal unpopularity with Canadians had become an increasing drag on his party’s fortunes in advance of federal elections later this year.

“Last night, over dinner, I told my kids about the decision that I’m sharing with you today,” he told the news conference in Ottawa.

“I intend to resign as party leader, as prime minister, after the party selects its next leader through a robust nationwide competitive process,” he said.

The president of the Liberal Party, Sachit Mehra, said a meeting of the party’s board of directors would be held this week to begin the process of selecting a new leader.

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In a statement, he added: “Liberals across the country are immensely grateful to Justin Trudeau for more than a decade of leadership to our Party and the country.”

“As Prime Minister, his vision delivered transformational progress for Canadians,” he said, citing programmes his government has implemented like the Canada Child Benefit and the establishment of dental care and pharmacare coverage for some medication.

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre said “nothing has changed” following Trudeau’s resignation.

“Every Liberal MP and Leadership contender supported EVERYTHING Trudeau did for 9 years, and now they want to trick voters by swapping in another Liberal face to keep ripping off Canadians for another 4 years, just like Justin,” Poilievre wrote on X.

Trudeau, 53, had faced growing calls to quit from inside his Liberal Party, which ramped up in December when deputy prime minister and long-time ally Chrystia Freeland abruptly resigned.

In a public resignation letter, Freeland cited US President-elect Donald Trump’s threats of tariffs on Canadian goods, and accused Trudeau of not doing enough to address the “grave challenge” posed by Trump’s proposals.

Trump has promised to impose a tax of 25% on imported Canadian goods – which economists have warned would significantly hurt Canada’s economy – unless the country takes steps to increase security on its shared border.

Trudeau said Monday that he had hoped Freeland would have continued as deputy prime minister, “but she chose otherwise”.

Canada has since announced that it will implement sweeping new security measures along the country’s US border in response to the threat.

In an online post, Trump claimed that pressure over tariffs led to Trudeau’s resignation and repeated his jibe that Canada should become “the 51st State”.

“If Canada merged with the U.S., there would be no Tariffs, taxes would go way down, and they would be TOTALLY SECURE from the threat of the Russian and Chinese Ships that are constantly surrounding them,” he wrote.

Since 2019, the Liberal Party has governed as a minority party.

Following Freeland’s resignation, Trudeau lost the backing of parties that had previously helped keep the Liberals in power – the left-leaning New Democrats, who had a support agreement with the Liberals, and the Quebec nationalist party, Bloc Quebecois.

The largest opposition party, the Conservatives, have maintained a significant two-digit lead over the Liberals in polls for months – suggesting that if a general election were held today, the Liberals could be in for a significant defeat.

Liberals will now choose a new leader to take the party into the next election, which must be held on or before 20 October.

A senior government official told the BBC that the race is an open contest, and that the Prime Minister’s Office will fully stay out of the process, leaving it to Liberal Party members to decide their future.

Speaking to reporters, the Bloc Quebecois leader Yves-François Blanchet suggested that an early election be called once the Liberals choose their new leader.

Trudeau is the son of Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who dominated the country’s politics in the 1970s and ’80s.

The younger Trudeau became prime minister after the Liberal Party won a sweeping majority in 2015 amid a promise to usher in a new, progressive era of “Sunny Ways”.

His record includes a commitment to gender equality in his cabinet, which continues to be 50% women; progress on reconciliation with Indigenous people in Canada; bringing in a national carbon tax; implementing a tax-free child benefit for families; and legalising recreational cannabis.

Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak praised Trudeau’s track record on indigenous issues following his resignation, saying in a statement that he “has taken meaningful steps to address issues that matter to First Nations”.

“While much work remains, these actions have laid a foundation for future governments to build upon.”

Clouds began to hang over Trudeau’s government in recent years, which weathered a series of often self-inflicted scandals, including a controversy over a deal with a Canadian firm facing corruption charges and photos that emerged of the prime minister wearing brownface makeup.

Vaccine mandates and other restrictions were also met with fierce backlash by some Canadians, leading to the Freedom Convoy truck protests in early 2022. Trudeau eventually used unprecedented emergency powers to remove the protesters.

As Canada began to emerge from the pandemic, housing and food prices skyrocketed, and his government pulled back on ambitious immigration targets as public services began to show strain.

By late 2024, Trudeau’s approval rating was at its lowest – just 22% of Canadians saying they thought he was doing a good job, according to one polling tracker.

In Ottawa, a small group of protestors danced outside Parliament Hill in celebration of his resignation.

One passer-by, however, said he thinks things were fine under Trudeau’s watch.

“I’m a carpenter,” Hames Gamarra, who is from British Columbia, told the BBC. “I mind my own business, I get my wages, I pay the bills. It’s been OK.”

Another Canadian, Marise Cassivi, said it feels like the end of an era. Asked if she feels any hints of sadness, she replied: “No.”

“It’s the right thing.”

Just before New Year, 21-year-old Shatha al-Sabbagh was out buying chocolate for her family’s children from a shop in Jenin, in the occupied West Bank.

The “fearless” journalism student – who wanted to shed light on the suffering of the Palestinians – was with her mother, two young nephews and another relative.

“She was laughing and saying we’ll be up all night tonight,” her mother recalls.

Then she was shot in the head.

For Shatha’s mother Umm al-Motassem, the pain is still raw. She stops to take a breath.

“Shatha’s eyes were wide open. It looked like she was staring at me while lying on her back with blood gushing from her head.

“I started screaming, ‘Stop shooting! My daughter is dead. My daughter is dead.'”

But the shooting lasted for around 10 minutes. Shatha died in a pool of her own blood.

Shatha’s family holds the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) security forces fully responsible for her killing, saying their area is controlled by the PA.

“It couldn’t have been anyone other than PA… because they have such a heavy presence in our neighbourhood – no-one else could come or go,” she told the BBC.

But the PA blames “outlaws” – the term they use for members of the Jenin Battalion, made up of fighters from armed groups including Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Hamas.

The PA exercises limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

It launched a major security operation in the refugee camp in Jenin last month targeting the armed groups based there, which they see as a challenge to their authority. Nearly four weeks on, it continues.

The Jenin Battalion is accused of blowing up a car in the camp and carrying out other “illegal activities”.

“We have confiscated large numbers of weapons and explosive materials,” says the PA’s Brig Gen Anwar Rajab.

“The aim is to clear the camp from the explosive devices that have been planted in different streets and alleyways… These outlaws have crossed all red lines and have spread chaos.”

Gen Rajab also accuses Iran of backing and funding the armed groups in the camp.

The Jenin Battalion denies links to Iran. In a recent video posted on social media, spokesman Nour al-Bitar said the PA was trying to “demonise” them and “tarnish their image”, adding that fighters would not give up their weapons.

“To the PA and President Mahmoud Abbas, why has it come to this?” he asked, holding shrapnel from what he claimed was a rocket-propelled grenade fired at the camp by security forces.

The PA, led by President Abbas, was already unpopular among Palestinians dissatisfied by its rejection of armed struggle and its security co-ordination with Israel.

This anger intensified with the PA’s crackdown on the armed groups in the camp, which has been unprecedented in its ferocity and length.

Israel sees those groups as terrorists, but many Jenin locals consider them to be a form of resistance to the occupation.

“These ‘outlaws’ that the PA is referring to – these are the young men who stand up for us when the Israeli army raids our camp,” says Umm al-Motassem.

At least 14 people have been killed in the crackdown, including a 14-year-old, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

Now many Jenin locals say they fear the PA as much as they fear Israel’s military raids. Shatha al-Sabbagh’s death has only renewed their contempt.

Before she was killed, Shatha shared several posts on social media showing the destruction from the PA operation in Jenin – as well as Israeli raids on the camp last year.

Other posts showed pictures of armed young men who were killed in the fighting, including her brother.

Her killing was condemned by Hamas, which identified her brother as a slain member of the group’s armed wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades.

The group described her “murder… in cold blood” as part of an “oppressive policy targeting the Jenin camp, which has become a symbol of steadfastness and resistance”.

Mustafa Barghouti, who leads the political party Palestinian National Initiative, sees the fighting in Jenin as a consequence of the divisions between the main Palestinian factions – Fatah, which makes up most of the PA, and Hamas, which has governed Gaza since 2007.

“The last thing Palestinians need is to see Palestinians shooting each other while Israel crushes everyone,” he says.

Inside the camp, residents say daily life has ground to a halt.

Water and electricity supplies have been cut off and families suffer from a lack of food, bitterly cold weather and relentless gun battles.

Locals who spoke to us asked for their names to be changed, saying they feared reprisals by the PA.

“Things are dire here. We can’t move freely in the camp,” says Mohamed.

“All the bakeries, the restaurants and shops are closed. The restaurant I work in opens for a day and closes for 10. When it is open, no-one comes.

“We need milk for the children, we need bread. Some people can’t open their doors because of the continuous shooting.”

The UN humanitarian agency, the OCHA, has called for an investigation into what it describes as human rights violations by the PA forces.

Gen Rajab said some of the “outlaws” who had “hijacked” the Jenin camp had been arrested and that others with pending cases would be brought to justice.

But Mohamed describes the PA’s operation – with innocent people caught in the crossfire – as “collective punishment”.

“If they want to go after outlaws, that doesn’t mean they should punish the whole camp. We want our lives back.”

Even going out to get food or water is a risk, says 20-year-old Sadaf.

“When we go out, we say our final prayers. We prepare ourselves mentally that we may not come back.

“It’s very cold. We’ve taken down the doors in our home to use as firewood just to keep warm.”

The BBC has heard similar accounts from four residents in the camp.

My conversation with Sadaf is interrupted by the sound of gunfire. It is unclear where it is from or who is firing. It starts and stops several times.

“Warning shots maybe,” she suggests, adding it happens sometimes when PA forces are changing shifts.

Sadaf continues describing the camp, with “rubbish filling the streets and almost going into homes”. More gunfire can be heard.

Sadaf’s mother joins the call. “Listen to this… Can anyone sleep with this sound in the background?

“We sleep in shifts now. We’re so scared they might raid our homes. We’re as scared of this operation as we are when the Israeli soldiers are here.”

People say security forces have deliberately hit electricity grids and generators, leaving the camp in a blackout.

The PA again blames “outlaws” – and insists it has brought in workers to fix the grid.

The armed groups want to “use the people’s suffering to pressure the PA to stop the operation”, says Gen Rajab. He says the security operation will continue until its objectives are met.

Gen Rajab says the PA’s goal is to establish control over the Jenin camp and ensure safety and stability.

He believes stripping the armed groups of control would take away Israel’s excuse to attack the camp.

In late August, the Israeli army conducted a major nine-day “counter-terrorism” operation in Jenin city and the camp, which resulted in severe destruction.

At least 36 Palestinians were killed – 21 from Jenin governorate – according to the Palestinian health ministry.

Analysts say that the PA is trying to reassert its authority in the West Bank and show the US it is capable of taking a role in the future governance of Gaza.

“What would be the harm in that?” says Gen Rajab.

“Gaza is part of the Palestinian state. Gaza and the West Bank are not separate entities. There’s no Palestinian state without Gaza. The president [Mahmoud Abbas] has said that and that is our strategy.”

But Barghouti says this approach is an “illusion”. “All you need is to listen to what [Benjamin] Netanyahu says,” he adds.

Under the Israeli prime minister’s vision for a post-war Gaza, Israel would control security indefinitely, and Palestinians with “no links to groups hostile to Israel” – so none of the existing major Palestinian political parties – would run the territory.

But the US, Israel’s major ally, wants the PA to govern Gaza after the war. Netanyahu has previously ruled out a post-war role for the internationally backed PA.

For the residents of Jenin camp, there has been no let-up in the violence and loss.

“The PA say they’re here for our safety. Where’s the safety when my daughter was killed? Where’s the safety with the non-stop shooting?” Umm al-Motassem cries.

“They can go after the ‘outlaws’ but why did my daughter have to die? Justice will be served when I know who killed my daughter,” she says.

Rising pop star Myles Smith can still remember the first time he felt famous.

“This might sound trivial,” says the singer, “but I was playing a concert where I asked the audience, ‘Does anyone have cookies?’

“And within about 10 minutes, the whole dressing room was full of cookies.

“It was the best thing ever.”

Since that gig, the 26-year-old’s career has only grown bigger.

Last year, he scored his first major hit with Stargazing, a feel-good foot-stomper that became the biggest-selling British single of 2024, and even featured on Barack Obama’s end of year playlist.

Now, he’s been voted into fourth place on BBC Radio 1’s Sound of 2025, marking him out as one of the year’s most promising new talents.

And in March, he’ll receive the Brit Awards’ Rising Star prize – following in the footsteps of Sam Fender, Adele and Rag ‘N’ Bone Man.

Smith confesses he learned about the accolade while in the grip of a ferocious hangover.

“The night before, I’d tried to go drink-for-drink with some people who were a lot more experienced than me, and we actually had to call a doctor to my Airbnb,” he cringes.

“Finding out I’d got a Brit Award brought me back to life more than any vitamin C ever could.”

It was, he says “the most LA I’ve ever felt”.

It’s certainly a long way from his upbringing in Luton.

Born to a working class British-Jamaican family, he was a bright and happy kid, who grew up singing along to his mum’s Motown records.

His first true musical discovery was Coldplay’s Yellow (“it resonated with me, even though I didn’t understand a word of it”) but Luton’s social and cultural diversity meant he was exposed to hundreds of different genres.

“I went through a lot of stages,” he says. “I was a huge Green Day fan at one point. I even went through a bit of a Screamo phase.”

Before long, he was writing his own songs – initially by dreaming up melodies and lyrics to instrumentals he’d found on YouTube, then creating originals on a guitar he’d been given for his ninth birthday.

“I remember writing this song called Dream Girl, when I was 11,” he says.

“It was about a girl at school, and it was bloody awful – but I sang it at school assembly anyway.

“Terrible decision. She realised it was about her and avoided me every day after that.”

Undeterred, he started playing at open mic nights around the city – covering artists like Ed Sheeran and Marcus Mumford while fine-tuning his distinctive folk-pop style.

For a long time, however, music was a side hustle. After completing a sociology degree in 2019, Smith set up his own business, specialising in management and strategic development, and was turning a healthy profit by the time he was 23.

“I was quite comfortable,” he says. “But I understood quite early on that just because I’m good at something, it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m passionate about it.”

He ploughed his earnings into studio sessions, recording an eight-track album called Scars in 2020. But it wasn’t until his haunting cover of The Neighbourhood’s Sweater Weather went viral in 2022 that he felt confident enough to pack in his day job.

“Money has never been the way I measure my success, but it was definitely scary,” he says.

“It started off very much like plunging into an ice bath and feeling the shock. Like, ‘OK, this is real. I don’t have a consistent salary coming in, and I don’t have the security of knowing how long this is going to take.’

“But it was a matter of switching mentality – so I wasn’t looking at what securities I had lost, but what opportunities I’d gained.”

Any apprehension was short-lived.

With a growing online fanbase, he started interspersing TikTok cover versions with snippets of originals.

The one that made everyone pay attention was Solo – whose devious wordplay was so obviously memorable (““) you couldn’t quite believe no-one had thought of it before.

Released independently in 2023, it earned Smith his first UK chart hit and, subsequently, a deal with RCA Records.

But he continued to build his audience organically, gigging constantly while posting on TikTok and YouTube.

He’s got an interesting take on social media. While artists like Halsey and Florence Welch have expressed frustration at record label pressure to create viral videos, Smith calls TikTok a “meritocratic system” that rewards the effort you put in.

“There’s a difference between the chase for virality and building an audience,” he reasons.

“If your objective is to go viral, then you’re always going to be fighting a losing battle. But if your objective is to establish a community and a place where your music belongs, it becomes a lot more rewarding.”

When he’s not sharing music, there’s a thoughtful tone to his social posts. In one recent note, he addressed people who said his music had “saved their lives”.

“I need you to know, it wasn’t my music, it was you,” he wrote. “I know this because I’ve been where you are. I’ve clung to songs in the dark searching for something – anything – that made me feel like I could keep going.

“But music didn’t save me. What saved me was the smallest part of me that chose to stay, even when it hurt.

“My songs might walk beside you, but it’s your strength that carries you forward.”

That empathy is baked into Smith’s lyrics. His most affecting songs, such as River and Wait For You, are covenants of support for a friend who’s drowning in their troubles.

His breakout hit, Stargazing, is also about a moment of human connection – looking into the cosmos and realising “the person we fall in love with has been there our whole life”.

He’s previously claimed the track was inspired by a sunset in Malibu, but it turns out that that’s a little white lie.

Smith actually came up with the folky, clap-along chorus and its central lyric (““) while eating tacos and salsa with his co-writers, Peter Fenn and Jesse Fink, early last year.

They were so inspired that they demo’d the song in just 15 minutes – just as the sun was setting over Malibu.

“Somehow, that moment gave the lyric a meaning,” says the singer. “It was an afterthought, but it was a very beneficial afterthought.”

He started posting snippets of the song online almost immediately, and “from the very first post, the reaction was explosive”.

There was only one problem: they hadn’t finished the verses.

For a month, they frantically traded voice notes and Zoom calls, pulling the song into focus in time for a May release. Since then, it’s been streamed more than 600 million times.

“It’s quite wild,” says the singer. “It’s still getting played, seven or eight months down the line, which is awesome.”

Smith ended 2024 with a clutch of honours – from his first Brit Award, to being named BBC Introducing’s Artist Of The Year – and the release of his new EP, …A Minute.

At the start of 2025, he’s juggling writing sessions for his debut album with a hectic touring schedule that sees him playing 36 shows in 60 days in 16 countries. But if that sounds daunting, he’s prepared.

“It’s a lot, for sure, but I used to stand on the edge of my sofa and pretend I was at Glastonbury. So being able to tour, at whatever scale, is just such a privilege that it doesn’t feel like hard work.”

What’s more, he’s guaranteed to get free cookies.

Donald Trump Jr is planning to visit Greenland, two weeks after his father repeated his desire for the US to take control of the autonomous Danish territory.

The US president-elect’s son plans to record video footage for a podcast during the one-day private visit, US media report.

Donald Trump reignited controversy in December when he said “ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity” for US national security.

He had previously expressed an interest in buying the Arctic island during his first term as president. Trump was rebuffed by Greenland’s leaders on both occasions.

“We are not for sale and we will not be for sale,” the island’s Prime Minister, Mute Egede, said in December. “Greenland belongs to the people of Greenland.”

President-elect Trump confirmed his son’s trip on his Truth Social social media platform on Monday.

He said Don Jr and “various representatives” would travel to Greenland “to visit some of the most magnificent areas and sights”.

Trump added that Greenland and its people “will benefit tremendously if, and when, it becomes part of our nation”.

“We will protect it, and cherish it, from a very vicious outside world,” he said. “Make Greenland great again!”

The president-elect’s post also included a video featuring an unnamed Greenlander- wearing a red Make America Great Again hat – telling Trump to buy Greenland and free it from “being colonised” by Denmark.

The identity of the man in the clip is unclear.

Greenland lies on the shortest route from North America to Europe, making it strategically important for the US. It is also home to a large American space facility.

The president-elect’s eldest son played a key role during the 2024 US election campaign, frequently appearing at rallies and in the media.

But he will not be travelling to Greenland on behalf of his father’s incoming administration, according to the Danish foreign ministry.

“We have noted the planned visit of Donald Trump Jr to Greenland. As it is not an official American visit, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark has no further comment to the visit,” the ministry told BBC News.

• Greenland profile

Hours after President-elect Trump’s latest intervention, the Danish government announced a huge boost in defence spending for Greenland. Danish Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen described the announcement’s timing as an “irony of fate”.

On Monday Denmark’s King Frederik X changed the royal coat of arms to more prominently feature representations of Greenland and the Faroe Islands.

Some have seen this as a rebuke to Trump, but it could also prove controversial with Greenland’s separatist movement.

King Frederik used his New Year’s address to say the Kingdom of Denmark was united “all the way to Greenland”, adding “we belong together”.

But Greenland’s prime minister used his own New Year’s speech to push for independence from Denmark, saying the island must break free from “the shackles of colonialism”.

Trump is not the first US president to suggest buying Greenland. The idea was first mooted by the country’s 17th president, Andrew Johnson, during the 1860s.

Separately in recent weeks, Trump has threatened to reassert control over the Panama Canal, one of the world’s most important waterways. He has accused Panama of charging excessive fees for access to it.

Panama’s president responded by saying “every square metre” of the canal and surrounding area belonged to his country.

At least five people have died in a winter storm that has seized a swathe of the US in its icy grip, leading to mass school closures, travel chaos and power cuts.

Seven US states declared emergencies: Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky and Arkansas.

More than 2,300 flights have been cancelled, with nearly 9,000 delays also reported owing to the extreme weather caused by the polar vortex of icy cold air that usually circles the North Pole.

Over 200,000 people had no power on Monday night across states in the storm’s path, according to Poweroutage.us. Snow and sleet is forecast to continue in much of the north-eastern US on Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).

While the precipitation will then dissipate, cold Arctic air is expected to keep conditions icy across a chunk of the country for several more weeks.

In Washington DC – where lawmakers met on Monday to certify Donald Trump’s win in November’s election – about 5-9in (13-23cm) of snow fell, with up to a foot recorded in parts of nearby Maryland and Virginia.

• Updates: Major winter storm brings heavy snow and travel disruption

In front of the Washington Monument, hundreds of local residents gathered at a local park for a snowball fight, a now 15-year-old tradition.

“Just having fun,” one local man told the BBC. “Never done a snowball fight before.”

Former US Olympic skier Clare Egan was found cross-country skiing on the National Mall, the central thoroughfare of the US capital city.

She told the Associated Press she had thought “my skiing days were maybe behind me”, after moving to the city.

Washington DC’s weather emergency is declared until the early hours of Tuesday as a result of the system, which was named Winter Storm Blair by the Weather Channel.

Children who had been due to go back to classes on Monday after the winter holiday break were instead enjoying a snow day as school districts closed from Maryland to Kansas.

In other parts of the US, the winter storm brought with it dangerous road conditions.

In Missouri, the state’s highway patrol said at least 365 people had crashed on Sunday, leaving dozens injured and at least one dead.

In nearby Kansas, one of the worst-hit states, local news reported that two people were killed in a car crash during the storm.

In Houston, Texas, a person was found dead from cold weather in front of a bus stop on Monday morning, authorities said.

In Virginia, where 300 car crashes were reported between midnight and Monday morning, authorities warned local residents to avoid driving in large parts of the state.

At least one motorist was killed, according to local media reports.

Matthew Cappucci, a senior meteorologist at the weather app MyRadar, told the BBC that Kansas City had seen the heaviest snow in 32 years.

Some areas near the Ohio River turned to “skating rinks” in the frigid temperatures, he added.

“The ploughs are getting stuck, the police are getting stuck, everybody’s getting stuck – stay home,” he said.

North Korea has claimed it fired a new intermediate-range ballistic missile tipped with a hypersonic warhead which “will reliably contain any rivals in the Pacific region”.

The launch on Monday – Pyongyang’s first in two months – came as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Seoul for talks with some of South Korea’s key leaders.

Hypersonic weapons are more difficult to track and shoot down, as they are able to travel at more than five times the speed of sound.

North Korea is claiming their missile flew 12 times the speed of sound, for about 1,500km.

South Korea’s military earlier said the missile flew 1,100km before falling into the sea, adding that it “strongly condemns” this “clear act of provocation”.

North Korea has previously test-fired hypersonic missiles. Pictures published by KCNA showed that Monday’s missile resembled one that was launched in April last year, but Pyongyang claims the recent one features a new “flight and guidance control system” and a new engine made of carbon fibre.

The country’s leader Kim Jong Un said Monday’s launch “clearly showed the rivals what we are doing and that we are fully ready to use even any means to defend our legitimate interests”, state news agency KCNA said on Tuesday.

Ankit Panda, a nuclear weapons specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the launch of a new weapon is “unsurprising”.

“We’ve known that North Korea has been working with composite materials for use in missiles for a number of years now.

“The appeal of these materials is to broadly improve the performance and reliability of the payload… Better materials can increase the odds of their survival to the target,” he told the BBC.

Earlier on Monday, Blinken met acting president Choi Sang-mok, where he described the alliance between Washington and Seoul as a “cornerstone of peace and stability on the Korean peninsula”.

South Korea’s military says it has strengthened surveillance for the North’s future missile launches and is “closely sharing information” on the launch with the US and Japan.

The launch took place amid political chaos in South Korea, which has embroiled the country for weeks after suspended President Yoon Suk Yeol’s short-lived martial law attempt in December.

Yoon, who was stripped of his presidential powers after lawmakers voted to impeach him, now faces arrest. The constitutional court is also deliberating whether he should be removed from office.

Pyongyang previously mocked Yoon’s shock martial law declaration as an “insane act” and, with no suggestion of irony, accused Yoon of “brazenly brandishing blades and guns of fascist dictatorship at his own people”.

North Korea is widely regarded as one of the world’s most repressive totalitarian states. Its leader Kim Jong Un and his family have ruled the hermit nation for decades as a dictatorial dynasty, developing and promoting a cult of personality.

The last time Pyongyang fired missiles was in November, a day before the US presidential election, when it launched at least seven short-range ballistic missiles off its east coast.

Earlier that week, the US had flown a long-range bomber during trilateral military drills with South Korea and Japan in a show of power, drawing condemnation from Kim’s sister Kim Yo Jong.

The US has added several Chinese technology companies, including gaming and social media giant Tencent and battery maker CATL, to a list of businesses it says work with China’s military.

The list serves as a warning to American companies and organisations about the risks of doing business with Chinese entities.

While inclusion does not mean an immediate ban, it can add pressure on the US Treasury Department to sanction the firms.

Tencent and CATL have denied involvement with the Chinese military, while Beijing said the decision amounted to “unreasonable suppression of Chinese companies”.

The Department of Defense’s (DOD) list of Chinese military companies, which is formally known as the Section 1260H list, is updated annually and now includes 134 firms.

It is part of Washington’s approach to counteracting what it sees as Beijing’s efforts to increase its military power by using technology from Chinese firms, universities and research programmes.

In response to the latest announcement Tencent, which owns the messaging app WeChat, said its inclusion on the list was “clearly a mistake.”

“We are not a military company or supplier. Unlike sanctions or export controls, this listing has no impact on our business,” it said in a statement to Reuters news agency.

CATL also called the designation a mistake and said it “is not engaged in any military related activities.”

“The US’s practices violate the market competition principles and international economic and trade rules that it has always advocated, and undermine the confidence of foreign companies in investing and operating in the United States,” said Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington.

The Pentagon had come under pressure from US lawmakers to add some of the firms, including CATL, to the list.

This pressure came as US car making giant Ford said it would invest $2bn (£1.6bn) to build a battery plant in Michigan. It has said it plans to license technology from CATL.

Ford did not immediately respond to a BBC request for comment.

The announcement comes as relations between the world’s two biggest economies remain strained.

Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump, who has previously taken a tough stance against Beijing, is due to return to the White House this month.

The Pentagon was sued last last year by drone maker DJI and Lidar-maker Hesai Technologies over their inclusion on the list. They both remain on the updated list.

South Korea’s suspended president Yoon Suk Yeol remains defiant in his newly-fortified residence, as investigators seek to extend the arrest warrant over his short-lived martial law order.

The current warrant – which was due to expire at midnight local time (15:00 GMT) – was issued after Yoon ignored multiple summonses to appear for questioning on insurrection and abuse of power charges.

Anti-corruption investigators tried to carry out the arrest on Friday – only to call it off after a six-hour standoff with the presidential security service at Yoon’s residence.

Yoon’s security team have since installed barbed wire and barricaded the compound with buses.

Investigators told the BBC they had asked the police to execute the warrant, in the hope their efforts carry more weight.

But police refused, saying it was legally controversial and its execution should be left to anti-corruption investigators.

Public anger has spiralled in recent weeks, as thousands of protesters braved heavy snow over the weekend, both in support of and against Yoon.

South Korea has been in crisis for the past month, ever since Yoon tried to impose martial law citing a threat from the North and “anti-state forces”. The fallout continues as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visits Seoul, seeking to stabilise ties ahead of a Donald Trump presidency.

Yoon’s lawyers have claimed that the warrant for his arrest was “illegal” as the anti-corruption investigators leading the criminal case against their client did not have the authority to oversee a case as serious as insurrection.

The presidential security service (PSS) has cited this as a reason for blocking Yoon’s arrest – along with the fact that Yoon remains a sitting president until the constitutional court rules on his impeachment.

“For the PSS, whose primary mission is the absolute safety of the president, to comply with the execution of an arrest warrant amidst ongoing legal disputes would be tantamount to abandoning its duty,” security service chief Park Jong-joon said on Sunday.

Mr Park denied accusations that his team was serving as a “private militia” for Yoon.

Yoon’s lawyers, who on Monday filed complaints against investigators over the arrest attempt, said Yoon has been “practically detained in his residence”.

They also filed an injunction against the warrant, which was rejected by the court, and then said they were considering appealing against the decision.

Meanwhile, acting president Choi Sang-mok has resisted the opposition’s calls to sack key security officials obstructing the arrest.

The BBC understands that opposition lawmakers had asked investigators to try arresting Yoon again, but “more firmly and with sufficient means”.

Investigators could also apply for a new detention warrant, which has to be approved by a judge. That would allow Yoon to be detained for up to 20 days, while an arrest warrant only allows him to be held for 48 hours.

But without a change to either the situation or their approach, it seems unlikely investigators or police will be able to make the arrest.

As seen last Friday, they may again be blocked by the presidential security service which formed a “human wall” to protect Yoon. He himself has vowed to “fight to the end”, dividing public opinion and spurring on his supporters, who have been demonstrating for days outside his home.

The tense standoff has also raised urgent questions about the robustness and effectiveness of South Korea’s political and legal institutions.

The situation also has consequences beyond domestic politics.

Up until last month, the Biden administration had sung Yoon’s praises, delighted by his willingness to work with Washington to tackle the security threats posed by North Korea and China. The US put a lot of effort into helping South Korea repair its strained relations with Japan, so the three countries could address these issues together.

Mr Blinken’s visit to Seoul, where he met the acting president as well South Korea’s foreign minister, therefore comes at a difficult time for these two allies.

Yoon did not tell the US about his plans to impose martial law, meaning Washington did not have the chance to dissuade him and was unprepared for the chaos that ensued.

Blinken will not want to be drawn on the current political situation. He will instead want to focus on preserving the trilateral co-operation between Seoul, Washington and Tokyo beyond President Biden’s tenure.

Speaking during a joint press conference on Monday, Blinken said the US had “full confidence” in South Korea’s institutions, and reaffirmed the US government’s “unwavering support for the Korean people as they work tirelessly to uphold those institutions”.

“Over the past four decades Korea has written one of the most powerful, inspiring democratic stories in the world,” Blinken said.

“Korea’s democracy has been tested in recent weeks – just as American democracy has faced challenges throughout our history. But you are responding by demonstrating your democratic resilience.”

But it’s hard to disentangle the domestic and geopolitical situations. South Korea could be months away from electing a new president, and that leader may well want to break with Yoon’s foreign policies.

Trump, who enters the White House in a fortnight, will also pursue his own agenda.

A “panic-stricken” elephant killed a Spanish woman while she was bathing the animal at an elephant centre in Thailand, local police said.

Blanca Ojanguren García, 22, was washing the elephant at the Koh Yao Elephant Care Centre last Friday when she was gored to death by the animal.

Experts told Spanish language newspaper Clarín that the elephant could have been stressed by having to interact with tourists outside its natural habitat.

García, who was a law and international relations student at Spain’s University of Navarra, was living in Taiwan as part of a student exchange programme.

She was visiting Thailand with her boyfriend, who witnessed the attack.

Spain’s foreign minister, Jose Manuel Albares, said the Spanish consulate in Bangkok was assisting García’s family.

BBC News has contacted the elephant care centre for comment.

Bathing elephants is a popular activity among tourists in Thailand, which is home to more than 4,000 wild elephants and has a similar number kept in captivity, according to the Department of National Parks.

The Koh Yao centre offers “elephant care” packages which let tourists make food for and feed the animals, as well as shower and walk with them. These packages cost between 1,900 baht ($55; £44) and 2,900 baht.

Animal activists have previously criticised elephant bathing activities, noting that they disrupt natural grooming behaviours and expose the animals to unnecessary stress and potential injury.

World Animal Protection, an international charity, has for years urged countries including Thailand to stop breeding elephants in captivity.

More than six in 10 elephants used for tourism in Asia are living in “severely inadequate” conditions, the charity said.

“These intelligent and socially intricate animals, with a capacity for complex thoughts and emotions, endure profound suffering in captivity, as their natural social structures cannot be replicated artificially,” the charity said.

Orthodox Christians around the world have been celebrating Christmas by attending church services.

While the majority of the Christian world celebrate Christmas Day on 25 December, for many of the world’s 200 million Orthodox Christians, the birth of Jesus Christ is marked on 7 January.

This is because they follow the Julian calendar, unlike Christian denominations which follow the Gregorian calendar.

Apple has said it will update, rather than pause, a new artificial intelligence (AI) feature that has generated inaccurate news alerts on its latest iPhones.

The company, in its first acknowledgement of the concerns, on Monday said it was working on a software change to “further clarify” when the notifications are summaries that have been generated by the Apple Intelligence system.

The tech giant is facing calls to pull the technology after its flawed performance.

The BBC complained last month after an AI-generated summary of its headline falsely told some readers that Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, had shot himself.

On Friday, Apple’s AI inaccurately summarised BBC app notifications to claim that Luke Littler had won the PDC World Darts Championship hours before it began – and that the Spanish tennis star Rafael Nadal had come out as gay.

This marks the first time Apple has formally responded to the concerns voiced by the BBC about the errors, which appear as if they are coming from within the organisation’s app.

“These AI summarisations by Apple do not reflect – and in some cases completely contradict – the original BBC content,” the BBC said on Monday.

“It is critical that Apple urgently addresses these issues as the accuracy of our news is essential in maintaining trust.”

• What is AI and how does it work?
• A simple guide to help you understand AI

Apple said its update would arrive “in the coming weeks”.

It has previously said its notification summaries – which group together and rewrite previews of multiple recent app notifications into a single alert on user’s lock screens – aim to allow users to “scan for key details”.

“Apple Intelligence features are in beta and we are continuously making improvements with the help of user feedback,” the company said in a statement on Monday, adding that receiving the summaries is optional.

“A software update in the coming weeks will further clarify when the text being displayed is summarization provided by Apple Intelligence. We encourage users to report a concern if they view an unexpected notification summary.”

The feature, along with others released as part of its broader suite of AI tools was rolled out in the UK in December. It is only available on its iPhone 16 models, iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max handsets running iOS 18.1 and above, as well as on some iPads and Macs.

Several instances of the technology appearing to interpret messages in a highly blunt, literal way have gone viral on social media.

In November, a ProPublica journalist highlighted erroneous Apple AI summaries of alerts from the New York Times app suggesting it had reported that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been arrested.

The BBC has not been able to independently verify the screenshots, and the New York Times declined to comment.

Reporters Without Borders, an organisation representing the rights and interests of journalists, called on Apple to disable the feature in December.

It said the attribution of a false headline about Mr Mangione to the BBC showed “generative AI services are still too immature to produce reliable information for the public”.

Apple is not alone in having rolled out generative AI tools that can create text, images and more content when prompted by users – but with varying results.

Google’s AI overviews feature, which provides a written summary of information from results at the top of its search engine in response to user queries, faced criticism last year for producing some erratic responses.

At the time a Google spokesperson said that these were ‘isolated examples’ and that the feature was generally working well.

McDonald’s workers have said they are still facing sexual abuse and harassment, a year after the boss promised to clean up behaviour at the fast-food chain.

One 19-year-old worker, Matt, told the BBC some of his colleagues were scared of going into work, and that managers would “touch up” other members of staff.

Since the BBC’s original investigation into the company, the UK equality watchdog has heard 300 reported incidents of harassment. It now plans to intervene again.

A McDonald’s spokesperson said the company had undertaken “extensive work” over the past year to ensure it has industry-leading practices in place to keep its workers safe.

The UK boss of McDonald’s has been summoned on Tuesday to answer MPs’ questions for a second time, including over claims of sexual abuse.

• A worker quit her job in the West Midlands at the end of 2023, after she says managers inappropriately touched her and customers sexually harassed her. When she raised it, she says she was told to “suck it up”.
• A 16-year-old current employee based in the West Midlands says he was bullied, shouted at and sworn at by managers.
• A female worker, 20, says a male manager sent her topless pictures. She left her McDonald’s branch in the East of England in August.

These claims all relate to events after November 2023, when the boss of McDonald’s UK, Alistair Macrow first appeared in front of parliament’s Business and Trade Committee.

Mr Macrow told MPs then that the firm was taking action to improve working conditions, after the BBC uncovered widespread concerns over the treatment of staff.

However, one current and two former workers from different parts of the country, claim that the restaurant audits that were promised, were stage-managed by the branches.

More than 700 current and former junior employees are now taking legal action against the firm, accusing it of failing to protect them.

Matt said he quit his McDonald’s branch in the Midlands last year because of what he calls a “toxic” work environment.

He said he was bullied for having a learning disability and an eye condition.

“And then it was stuff you noticed, managers and staff being racist to other staff. Managers trying to touch other staff up,” he said.

He said some staff members felt scared to go into work, because they feared something “horrible” happening.

Matt said the work culture had not changed by the time he left in May.

Alan, not his real name, said he has been repeatedly subjected to “degrading and humiliating” verbal abuse by his colleagues at a McDonald’s branch in southwest Scotland.

“It’s just homophobic slurs a lot, sometimes to my face, sometimes behind my back,” the 19-year-old said.

• McDonald’s workers speak out over sexual abuse claims
• McDonald’s abuse claims personally shocking – boss
• MeToo hasn’t helped McDonald’s teenage workers

When he reported the problem to a senior manager, he says he was told it was “just a bit of banter”.

Alan has worked in other fast-food restaurants where he said homophobia was taken more seriously.

“It just seems like McDonald’s don’t care as much,” he said.

Claire, not her real name, who worked at a branch in the Midlands until May 2023, says a shift manager asked her for sex in return for extra shifts, which she refused. She was 17, he was in his 30s.

“You don’t expect that to happen,” she said. “It was totally inappropriate.”

Like most McDonald’s workers, Claire was employed on a zero-hours contract

McDonald’s outlets are run as franchises, so local managers are responsible for employing the staff for their restaurants. Across the UK, 89% of their workers are on zero-hours contracts.

McDonald’s says workers can choose to switch to minimum guaranteed hours. But we have spoken to 50 workers across the country who say they were not given that choice.

Some workers told the BBC the insecure hours leads to an imbalance of power. Others, however, said zero-hours contracts worked well for them.

Claire says she felt “dependent” on her managers for work. “I was always asking for more shifts, as I needed more money,” she said.

• McDonald’s faces up to two sex abuse claims a week

A McDonald’s spokesperson said that in 2018, it offered all employees the choice of a flexible or guaranteed hours contract, and that every staff room should still display information on how to request one.

“Additionally, after four weeks in role, every new employee has a formal conversation with management – in which managers check that employees are aware of the option of a guaranteed hours contract,” the company said.

The company said it did not recognise the incident where a manager asked for sex in return for shifts. “If provided with sufficient information we would ensure a full investigation is carried out, and appropriate action taken if necessary,” the company said.

Most McDonald’s staff are aged between 16 and 25. For many, it is their first job.

Even senior managers are often young.

Elliott, not his real name, was in charge of a store in the South of England by his early twenties. He left last February.

“If I had a sister, or if I had a daughter, I wouldn’t want them working in McDonald’s,” he said.

When the McDonald’s boss spoke to MPs in 2023 he said the company had stopped a practice of moving managers around so they could avoid disciplinary action.

But Elliott says that days after Mr Macrow gave evidence, a manager was moved to his store to avoid being disciplined, following allegations they had sent sexually explicit messages to female colleagues who were 16-18 years old.

• What counts as sexual harassment at work?
• McDonald’s told to shut franchises over abuse claims
• McDonald’s abused workers told to come forward

Following the BBC investigation, McDonald’s brought in outside consultants, Price Waterhouse Cooper (PwC), to audit their restaurants and check on the wellbeing of their staff. But Elliott says the franchise he worked for “rigged” its inspection in February.

“They were meeting the best employees, hand-plucked from different stores,” he said. “The people that can be coached on the correct answers.”

According to Elliot the audit gave the restaurant a 100% rating. Yet, he told us, two months before the audit, a manager working there had been accused of performing a Nazi salute to a Jewish employee. He said PwC was not told of this allegation.

“I think I am a bit traumatised by it,” he said. “And I think I’ll continue to have bad memories of my employment for the rest of my life.”

PwC said that while it doesn’t comment on individual clients, its site visits are “subject to a stringent set of processes” and are refined as required.

A McDonald’s spokesperson said PwC’s independent site visits “play a crucial role” in assessing each restaurant against specific criteria and ensuring standards are met.

“In the few instances where our expectations have not been met, we have taken prompt corrective action,” the spokesperson said.

“The assessment procedures are under constant review by PwC and were refined early in the programme to ensure that employee interviews – which form part of the assessment – are selected randomly by independent assessors, further safeguarding the integrity of the process.”

The BBC first began investigating working conditions at McDonald’s in February 2023, after the company signed a legally binding agreement with the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), in which it pledged to protect its staff from sexual harassment.

After our investigation was published in July 2023, McDonald’s apologised and set up a new unit to deal with complaints.

The EHRC also set up a dedicated hotline for abuse claims.

More than 160 people approached the BBC with allegations after our initial investigation, while 300 incidents were reported to the EHRC.

Now, the watchdog says it is taking stronger action against the fast-food chain.

In a new statement provided exclusively to the BBC, the EHRC said: “We are actively working with McDonalds to update our ongoing legal agreement in light of serious allegations raised by our work with the company, and the BBC investigation.”

Its action plan will involve strengthening the existing measures – which included providing more training and conducting a survey of workers – as well as announcing new steps, the BBC understands.

McDonald’s said the agreement with the EHRC was signed “with the intention that it continues to evolve to ensure the robust measures we have in place are aligned with any updated guidance”.

Separately, law firm Leigh Day said it had been instructed to start legal action against McDonald’s by hundreds of staff and former staff, with more than 450 restaurants implicated in the claims.

• Listen: McDonald’s – a toxic place for teenagers?

A McDonald’s spokesperson said: “Ensuring the 168,000 people that work in McDonald’s restaurants are safe is the most important responsibility for both us and our franchisees, and we have undertaken extensive work over the last year to ensure we have industry-leading practices in place to support this priority.

“Any incident of misconduct and harassment is unacceptable and subject to rapid and thorough investigation and action.”

The company said: “Our relentless focus on eliminating all forms of harassment at McDonald’s is led by a newly created team and informed by the experience and guidance of external experts.”

It said it had rolled out company-wide programmes to improve safeguarding, drive awareness and enhance training, and in addition to the four existing channels, it had introduced an additional way for employees to speak up, confidentially, at any time, allowing employees to “instantly raise issues digitally”, and which was “specifically designed to ensure they feel empowered to speak up”.

It also said its new investigations unit was “dedicated to rooting out any behaviour that falls below the high standards” it demands of its workers.

“We are confident that we are taking significant and important steps to tackle the unacceptable behaviours facing every organisation,” the spokesperson added.

It said its latest anonymous employee survey showed that 92% of its franchisees’ people are now comfortable speaking up, and 93% believe management will act.

“However, we know that we must be constantly vigilant, and we will challenge and confront any behaviour that falls below those standards,” it said.

• Report it: The charity Victim Support suggests telling your manager, HR representative or trade union
• Keep a record: Include dates, times and details of any incidents. Save any relevant emails.
• Get help: Victim Support operates a free and confidential 24/7 helpline and live chat service. Call 0808 16 89 111 or use the live chat at: victimsupport.org.uk/live-chat.
• Call the police: If sexual harassment escalates into violence, threats or sexual assault, report this to the police by calling 101. If you are in danger, call 999.

Eleven Yemeni detainees have been moved from the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay to Oman.

The move has left 15 detainees in the prison in Cuba – the smallest number at any point in its history.

In a statement, the Department of Defense thanked Oman for supporting US efforts “focused on responsibly reducing the detainee population and ultimately closing” the facility.

None of the men captured after the 9/11 terror attacks had been charged with any crimes in their more than two decades in detention.

The transfer, which reportedly happened in the early hours on Monday, comes days before the accused mastermind of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, is scheduled to plead guilty, following a deal with federal officials to avoid the death penalty.

Monday’s transfer of the Yemeni detainees is the largest to a single country at one time under President Joe Biden.

Efforts to resettle the group in Oman began years ago, but the US has said that Yemen, which is locked in a civil war, was too unstable for repatriation.

Those transferred from Guantanamo include Moath al-Alwi, who was cleared for release in 2022 and had become known for building model boats with objects found at the prison, and Shaqawi al Hajj, who went on repeated hunger strikes to protest his detention.

The men were cleared for transfer by federal national security review panels, which determined that doing so was “consistent with the national security interests of the United States”, the Defense Department said.

The transfer came less than a week after Ridah Bin Saleh al-Yazidi, one of the prison’s original detainees in January 2002, was repatriated to Tunisia.

The Defense Department said three of the 15 remaining detainees also are eligible for transfer.

The military prison is part of a US naval base complex in southeastern Cuba. It was established by the Bush administration in 2002, following the 9/11 attacks, to hold suspects captured in counter-terrorism operations. At its peak, it held about 800 detainees.

Controversy has centred around the treatment of detainees and how long they were held without being charged.

As president, Barack Obama pledged to close the prison during his terms. He said the prison is contrary to US values, undermining the nation’s standing in the world – a standing based on support for the rule of law.

Obama, who left office in 2017, also argued that its existence harms partnerships with countries needed to help the US fight terrorism and that it helps fuel the recruitment of jihadists.

But while in office, Obama faced opposition in Congress to shuttering the prison – some of it due to questions about what would happen to the existing prison population. He transferred or ordered the release of more than 100 detainees to other countries.

US Congress has not allowed the transfer of detainees to US states and has blocked their transfer to certain countries, including those with ongoing conflicts like Yemen.

Efforts to lower the prison’s population and close it halted under Donald Trump who signed an executive order to keep it open during his first term. Trump said efforts to release detainees or close the facility made the US look weak on terrorism.

Since taking office in 2021, President Joe Biden has worked to remove more detainees from the facility in hopes of shuttering it – though that appears unlikely before Trump takes office later this month.

Not even AI can predict the future (yet), nevertheless two of our tech editors have taken a look ahead to what they think will be big in 2025.

As 2022 drew to a close the outlook was bleak for the cryptocurrency business.

One of its best know firms, FTX, had collapsed with $8bn (£6.3bn) of customer funds unaccounted for.

In March of 2024, the company’s co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried received a 25-year jail sentence for defrauding customers and investors.

The scandal rattled confidence in the whole sector.

It seemed that cryptocurrencies would remain a niche product, with an enthusiastic but relatively limited following.

• What is cryptocurrency?

But just a few months later and the industry was fizzing with optimism again. Behind the enthusiasm – the success of Donald Trump in the 5 November presidential election.

The feeling was that he would be more favourable to the cryptocurrency sector and, so far, that seems to be the case.

In early December, Trump said he would nominate former Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) commissioner Paul Atkins to take up the top chairman role at the Wall Street regulator.

Mr Atkins is seen as being far more pro-cryptocurrency than outgoing head, Gary Gensler.

That announcement helped the value of one bitcoin, the biggest of the numerous cryptocurrencies, surge through $100,000.

“With Trump winning you can imagine in 2025 you’ll get proactive regulation. You’ll get removal of some negative regulation, which will then allow banks and other institutions into the space,” says Geoffrey Kendrick, global head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered.

In particular, Mr Kendrick points to a piece of guidance issued by the SEC called SAB 121. Since taking effect in 2022 it has made it difficult for banks and other financial firms to provide cryptocurrency services.

Such a move might help Trump to fulfil his promise made in July to make the US the cryptocurrency capital of the world.

If he makes good on that pledge it would be a remarkable turnaround from 2021 when Trump described Bitcoin as a “scam”.

As AI tools move into our phones – Apple, Google and Samsung have all launched services that can edit photos, translate languages and carry out web searches – we are at the start of an era in which AI becomes an intrinsic part of our digital lives and increasingly helpful on a personal level.

That’s if we allow it, because it does require a bit of a leap of faith.

Let’s take diary management as an example. An AI tool efficiently can manage your diary for you, if you allow it to access it. But how far should this go?

In order to be truly useful, does that mean it also needs to know who you would rather avoid meeting, or relationships you want to keep secret, and from whom?

Do you want it to provide you with summaries of counselling sessions, or medical appointments?

It’s deeply personal information, and potentially both hugely embarrassing and extremely valuable if some glitch meant it was shared. Do you trust the big tech firms with that kind of data?

Microsoft is pushing hard at this particular door. It got into trouble in 2024 for demoing a tool called Recall, which took snapshots of laptop desktops every few seconds, in order to help users locate content they’d seen but couldn’t remember where.

It has now made a number of changes to the product – which was never launched – but stands by it.

“I think we’re moving to a fundamentally new age where there will be ever present, persistent, very capable co-pilot companions in your everyday life,” the firm’s head of AI, Mustafa Suleyman told me recently.

Despite the challenges, Ben Wood, chief analyst at technology research company CCS Insight, expects that more personalised AI services will emerge in 2025.

“The output will be continuously updated by drawing on evolving data sources, such as emails, messages, documents and social media interactions.

“This will allow the AI service to be tuned specifically to a person’s communication style, needs and preferences,” he says.

But Mr Wood accepts that letting AI loose on your personal information will be a big step.

“Trust will be essential,” says Mr Wood.

The more money pours into AI, then the more datacentres will need building.

Training and running AI requires a lot of computing power, and works best with the latest computer chips and servers.

Over the next five years as much as $1tn could be invested in datacentres by the biggest data users, including Google, Microsoft and Meta, according to CCS Insight.

In Europe alone, between 2024 and 2028, data centre capacity is expected to grow by an average of 9% annually, according to property services company Savills.

But those new facilities are unlikely to be built in the current datacentre hubs like London, Frankfurt, and Amsterdam.

High property prices in those cities – Savills says that in London land prices can be as much as £17m per acre – plus tight electricity supply means developers will be looking elsewhere.

In the UK cities like Cambridge, Manchester and Birmingham could well be home to the next wave of datacentre construction.

Elsewhere, Prague, Genoa, Munich, Dusseldorf and Milan are likely to be considered in Europe.

At the heart of some of those new datacentres will be the latest computer chip from Nvidia, the company that dominates the market for chips used for AI.

Unveiled in March 2024, the Blackwell chip is expected to start shipping in significant number in 2025.

The new chip should allow tech firms to train AI four times faster and see AI operate 30 times faster than current computer chips, according to Vivek Arya, senior semiconductors analyst, at Bank of America Securities.

Nvidia’s biggest customers, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Coreweave are likely to get the tech first, according to reports.

But other customers might struggle to get their hands on the super chip, with “supply constrained in 2025”, according to Mr Arya.

A 70-year-old farmer leader in India has been on hunger strike for more than 40 days in a bid to push the federal government to accept demands of protesting farmers.

Doctors say that Jagjit Singh Dallewal’s health has deteriorated and that he is “unable to speak”, but he and his supporters have refused medical aid so far.

Last month, India’s Supreme Court had ordered the government of Punjab state – where Dallewal is from – to shift him to a hospital. The court has been hearing a clutch of petitions related to the issue.

Dallewal’s hunger strike is part of a protest that began in February last year when thousands of farmers gathered at the border between Punjab and Haryana states. Their demands include assured prices on certain crops, loan waivers and compensation for the families of farmers who died during earlier protests.

Since then, they have made some attempts to march to the capital Delhi but have been stopped at the border by security forces.

This isn’t the first time India’s farmers have held a massive protest to highlight their issues.

In 2020, they protested for months at Delhi’s borders demanding the repeal of three farm laws introduced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.

The government claimed that the laws would reform the sale of agricultural produce and benefit the community, but farmers argued that they would be opened up to exploitation.

The laws were eventually repealed but protesting farmers have said that the government has not fulfilled the rest of their demands made in 2020.

Dallewal is from Punjab, which relies massively on agriculture for employment but has been seeing a steady decline in farm incomes, leading to debt, suicides and migration.

He is the leader of a farmers’ group that is loosely allied with Samyukta Kisan Morcha, a coalition of dozens of unions that co-ordinated the protests in 2020.

He earlier led protests against land acquisition in Punjab and demanded compensation for farmers who died by suicide. In 2018, he led a convoy of tractors towards Delhi to demand the implementation of the recommendations of a 2004 government panel which had suggested remunerative prices for farmers’ produce and a farm debt waiver.

In November, before Dallewal started his current hunger strike, he was taken to a hospital by the state police for a check-up. But he returned to the protest site within days, claiming he was detained at the hospital.

In a letter to Modi, he has written that he is prepared to “sacrifice his life” to stop the deaths of farmers.

In terms of demands, not much has changed from earlier protests. The farmers are pushing for their unfulfilled demands to be met, including a legal guarantee for the minimum support prices, a loan debt waiver, pensions for both farmers and agricultural labourers, no increase in electricity tariffs, the reinstatement of a land acquisition law, and compensation for families of farmers who died during previous protests.

But analysts say there seems to be a change in the way Modi’s government is responding to this round of protests.

During the protests in 2020, the federal government had held multiple rounds of talks with the farmers. Top officials, including India’s then agriculture and food ministers, were part of the negotiations.

Last February, when the farmers announced their intention to march to Delhi, key federal ministers held two rounds of talks with their leaders but failed to achieve a breakthrough.

But since then, the federal government seems to have distanced itself from the protests. Last week, when Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan was asked by reporters if he would invite protesting farmers for talks, he said the government would follow any directives given by the top court.

Experts believe that the government is being cautious this time around to prevent a repeat of what happened in 2020. In October that year, a key meeting between the then agriculture secretary and farmers’ unions backfired badly, and catalysed the year-long protest that followed.

In September, the Supreme Court ordered that a committee be set up to look into the farmers’ demands.

The committee submitted an interim report in November, which documented the acute crisis faced by India’s farmers. Among other things, the report noted the abysmally low wages farmers earn and the massive debts they are reeling under.

It also said that more than 400,000 farmers and farm workers had died by suicide since 1995, when India’s National Crime Record Bureau began collecting the data.

The committee also put forward solutions including offering farmers direct income support.

The panel is reportedly in the process of reviewing solutions to boost farm income. It was scheduled to hold talks with various farmers’ unions in January.

But some groups have refused to meet them, claiming that the negotiations were not helping them and that the committee should work on providing a safe space to hold protests.

US lawmakers will gather on Monday for a joint session of Congress to certify Donald Trump’s presidential election win – a procedure that happens every four years after the vote and two weeks before the president’s inauguration.

Last time, the routine went awry when a group of Trump’s supporters rioted at the Capitol to try to stop the formal vote-counting and overturn his defeat in the 2020 election.

This year’s certification will bring Trump a step closer to returning to the White House, after the Republican won the 2024 contest against Democratic Vice-President Kamala Harris.

Because of her role as leader of the Senate, Harris will oversee the certification.

Federal law states that Congress must gather on 6 January to certify the election results.

Members open sealed certificates from America’s 50 states, each of which contains a record of that state’s electoral votes.

The results are read out loud and an official count is tallied.

The president of the Senate – currently Harris – presides over the joint session of Congress. She will formally declare the winner of the presidential election.

• What is the US electoral college, and how does it work?

Routine turned to violence on 6 January 2021: the last time a joint session of Congress was held to certify election results.

After Trump made unfounded assertions that the 2020 election was stolen from him, hundreds of rioters smashed through barricades to try to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s win.

Trump urged Mike Pence, who was then vice-president, to have “courage” and allow states to “correct their votes”.

After the mob filled – and then emptied – the halls of the US Capitol building, members of Congress returned and certified the election, and Pence rejected Trump’s request. Several deaths were blamed on the day’s violence.

In the years since, Trump and many of his supporters have maintained his baseless claims about the 2020 election. He has vowed to pardon some of those convicted of offences over the riot when he returns to the presidency.

While there is some lingering anxiety in Washington DC, this year’s certification is expected to go off without a hitch, and Harris has not disputed the results.

This will not be the first time that a defeated election candidate has had to oversee the certification process.

In 2021, Pence oversaw the certification of the Biden-Harris victory, and in 2001, then-Vice-President Al Gore oversaw the certification of President George W Bush.

• Harris to certify Trump’s US election win

Short answer: yes. But it does not happen very often.

Members of Congress are allowed to object after a state’s certificate is read out. But in order for the presiding officer to hear the objection, it needs to be in writing and signed by one-fifth of the members of the House (the lower chamber) and one-fifth of the Senate (the upper chamber). Previously, an objection only needed to be raised by one member from each chamber.

The new policy came about in 2022, in an attempt to make objections more difficult. If an objection does meet the new requirements, the joint session would be suspended for the House and Senate to consider the objection separately. Both chambers would have to reach a majority vote for the objection to be sustained.

Challenges to electoral votes in Arizona and Pennsylvania were rejected by both the House and the Senate in 2021.

Once the certification is complete, there is only one step left in the process before Trump is officially president again: the inauguration.

On 20 January, the Trump family, former presidents and members of the public will gather on the west front of the Capitol for the official swearing in of the 47th president.

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 licensing 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.”

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 Anh 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.

Exactly 10 years after the jihadist gun-attack that killed most of its editorial staff, France’s Charlie Hebdo has put out a special issue to show its cause is still kicking.

Things changed for France on 7 January 2015, marking in bloodshed the end of all wilful naivety about the threat of militant Islamism.

Brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi burst into a meeting at the Paris office of the satirical weekly, murdering its star cartoonists Cabu, Wolinski, Charb and Tignous.

Overall, 12 people were killed by the brothers, including a Muslim policeman on duty outside. Two days later they were cornered and shot dead by police at a sign-making business near Charles-de-Gaulle airport.

That same day saw Amedy Coulibaly – a one-time prison associate of Cherif – kill four Jews in a synchronised hostage-taking at a supermarket in eastern Paris. Coulibaly – who was then shot dead by police – had killed a policewoman the day before.

A decade on, Charlie Hebdo continues to bring out a weekly edition and has a circulation (print and online combined) of around 50,000.

It does so from an office whose whereabouts are kept secret, and with staff who are protected by bodyguards.

But in an editorial in Tuesday’s memorial edition, the paper’s main shareholder said its spirit of ribald anti-religious irreverence was still very much alive.

“The desire to laugh will never disappear,” said Laurent Saurisseau – also known as Riss – a cartoonist who survived the 7 January attack with a bullet in the shoulder.

“Satire has one virtue that has got us through these tragic years – optimism. If people want to laugh, it is because they want to live.

“Laughter, irony and caricature are all manifestations of optimism,” he wrote.

• Charlie Hebdo attack: Three days of terror
• Charlie Hebdo and its place in French journalism
• French terror attacks: Victim obituaries
• Paris attacks: ‘I am not Charlie’

Also in the 32-page special are the 40 winning entries in a cartoon competition on the theme of “Laughing at God”.

One contains the image of a cartoonist asking himself: “Is it okay to draw a picture of a man drawing a picture of a man drawing a picture of Muhammed?”

The Charlie Hebdo and Hypercacher attacks appear now as the overture to a grim and deadly period in modern France, during which – for a time – fear of jihadist terrorism became part of daily life.

In November 2015, there followed gun attacks at the Bataclan theatre and nearby bars in Paris. In the following July, 86 people were killed on the promenade in Nice.

Some 300 French people have died in Islamist attacks in the last decade.

Today the frequency has fallen sharply, and the defeat of the Islamic State group means there is no longer a support base in the Middle East.

But the killer individual, self-radicalised over the Internet, remains a constant threat in France as elsewhere.

The original pretext for the Charlie Hebdo murders – caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad – are now strictly off-limits to publications everywhere.

In 2020, a French teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded outside his school by a jihadist after he showed one of the Charlie cartoons in a discussion over freedom of speech.

And this week the trial opens in Paris of a Pakistani man who – a short time before Paty’s murder – seriously injured two people with a butcher’s cleaver at the Paris offices he thought were still being used by Charlie-Hebdo (in fact they had long since moved).

So as with every anniversary since 2015, the question once again being asked in France is: what – if anything – has changed? And what – if anything – survives of the great outpouring of international support, whose clarion call in the days after the murders was Je suis Charlie?

That was when a march of two million people through the centre of Paris was joined by heads of state and government from countries all over the world at the invitation of then President François Hollande.

Today, pessimists say the battle is over and lost. The chances of a humorous newspaper ever taking up the cudgel against Islam – in the way that Charlie Hebdo used regularly and scabrously to do against Christianity and Judaism – are zero.

Worse, for these people, is that parts of the political left in France are also now clearly distancing themselves from Charlie Hebdo, accusing it of becoming overly anti-Islam and adopting positions from the far-right.

Jean-Luc Melenchon, who leads the France Unbowed party, has accused the weekly of being a “bag-carrier for (right-wing magazine) Valeurs Actuels”, and the Greens’ Sandrine Rousseau said Charlie Hebdo was “misogynistic and at times racist”.

This has in turn led to accusations aimed at the far-left that it has betrayed the free-speech spirit of Je suis Charlie in order to curry electoral support among French Muslims.

But speaking in the run-up to the anniversary, Riss – who counted the dead among his greatest friends and says he does not go through a day without reliving the moment of the attack – refused to renounce hope.

“I think [the Charlie spirit] is anchored more deeply in society than one might think. When you talk to people, you can see it’s very much alive. It’s a mistake to think it’s all disappeared.

“It is part of our collective memory.”

Rudy Giuliani, a former New York City mayor and lawyer to Donald Trump, has been held in contempt of court for failing to pay damages as part of a defamation lawsuit.

A judge found that Giuliani defamed two Georgia election workers over false claims they tampered with votes during the 2020 presidential election. He was ordered to pay $148m (£116m).

The first transfer of $11m was originally scheduled to take place in October, as a down payment to poll workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea Moss.

Giuliani argued that he had largely complied with the judgement, but a New York City judge ruled Monday that he “wilfully violated an unambiguous order of the court”.

Lawyers for the women have said they have received only a fraction of the assets.

Freeman and Moss filed a lawsuit against Giuliani in 2021, accusing him of destroying their reputations and arguing that his statements led to a torrent of abuse.

The long-time ally of President-elect Donald Trump had made repeated false claims that a surveillance video of the pair showed evidence of ballot tampering. He claimed they were passing USB drives back and forth, when in fact they were passing a box of mints.

He later conceded he made defamatory statements, and a jury ordered him to pay $73m in compensation and $75m as punishment.

Giuliani filed for bankruptcy shortly after the decision, but the case was dismissed, leaving Trump’s former lawyer without protection from creditors.

A judge later ordered him to turn over his Manhattan apartment, more than two dozen watches, a jersey signed by former New York Yankees centre fielder Joe DiMaggio, and other valuables to the two Georgia election workers as part of the defamation penalty.

During a two-day hearing, Giuliani said the whereabouts of some of the items, such as the DiMaggio jersey, are unknown.

US District Judge Lewis Liman said he would decide on punishment at a later date.

Giuliani faces a further court hearing over whether his Yankees World Series rings and his Florida home should be handed over to help pay his debt to the election workers.

He has also been indicted in Georgia and Arizona on criminal charges related to attempts to overthrow the result of the 2020 election.

Giuliani, a Republican, was first elected mayor of New York City in 1993 and was in charge at the time of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. In 2008 he ran for president, and later became a Trump advisor.

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has gone on trial in Paris, accused of taking millions of euros of illicit funds from the late Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi to finance his 2007 election campaign.

In exchange, the prosecution alleges Sarkozy promised to help Gaddafi combat his reputation as a pariah with Western countries.

Sarkozy, 69, was the president of France from 2007 to 2012.

He has always denied the charges, saying they were brought against him by people with motivations to bring him down.

The investigation was opened in 2013, two years after Saif al-Islam, son of the then-Libyan leader, first accused Sarkozy of taking millions of his father’s money for campaign funding.

The following year, Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine – who for a long time acted as a middleman between France and the Middle East – said he had written proof that Sarkozy’s campaign bid was “abundantly” financed by Tripoli, and that the €50m (£43m) worth of payments continued after he became president.

Twelve other people – accused of devising the pact with Gaddafi – are standing trial along Sarkozy. They all deny the charges.

Sarkozy’s wife, Italian-born former supermodel and singer Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, was charged last year with hiding evidence linked to the Gaddafi case and associating with wrongdoers to commit fraud, both of which she denies.

Since losing his re-election bid in 2012, Sarkozy has been targeted by several criminal investigations.

He also appealed against a February 2024 ruling which found him guilty of overspending on his 2012 re-election campaign, then hiring a PR firm to cover it up. He was handed a one-year sentence, of which six months were suspended.

In 2021, he was found guilty of trying to bribe a judge in 2014 and became the first former French president to get a custodial sentence. In December, the Paris appeals court ruled that he could serve his time at home wearing a tag instead of going to jail.

Sarkozy was not wearing the tag as he arrived in court in Paris on Monday morning.

However, that is only because the details of that sentence have yet to be worked out.

It is likely that in the course of this three-month trial over the so-called Libya connection, the former president will appear wearing the device.

The trial is set to continue until 10 April. If found guilty, Sarkozy faces up to 10 years in prison.

One of America’s most-wanted fugitives, who was arrested in rural Wales after 21 years on the run, has had his UK bank accounts frozen by a court.

Daniel Andreas San Diego, 46, appeared before Llandudno Magistrates’ Court on a video link from HMP Belmarsh in London on Monday.

Police sought a 12-month account freezing order for money held in accounts, pending further inquiries.

A police financial investigator said the three accounts, with balances totalling more than £20,000, were in the name of Danny Webb, now identified as Mr San Diego.

District judge Gwyn Jones granted the police application for an account freezing order.

Mr San Diego is in custody, awaiting extradition to the United States.

He was arrested in November by the National Crime Agency and North Wales Police at a house in Maenan, near Llanrwst, Conwy, where he was believed to have lived under a false identity for a number of years.

Mr San Diego was wanted by the FBI for allegedly bombing two office buildings in San Francisco in 2003.

The FBI described him as an “animal rights extremist”.

Three Israelis have been killed and eight wounded in a Palestinian shooting attack on a bus and two cars in the north of the occupied West Bank, the Israeli military and paramedics say.

The dead were identified as two women in their 70s and a 35-year-old police officer. The driver of the bus was seriously wounded.

The Israeli military said “terrorists” opened fire at the vehicles near the village of al-Funduq, located on Highway 55, and then fled the scene.

Israeli media cited military officials as saying at least two Palestinian gunmen carried out the attack and that security forces were pursuing them, setting up roadblocks and encircling several towns in the area.

Magen David Adom paramedic Avichai Ben Tzurya described it as “a very serious attack spread across the road involving multiple vehicles”.

“We conducted quick searches and identified two females and a male in private cars without a pulse, suffering from severe gunshot wounds. We had no choice but to pronounce them dead at the scene,” he said in a statement.

“Inside the bus, we treated victims of gunshots and shattered glass injuries, including the bus driver – who was conscious and suffering from gunshot wounds – as well as additional victims in mild to moderate condition.”

The wounded were evacuated to two hospitals in central Israel.

Later, Israeli media identified the women who were killed as 70-year-old Aliza Reiss and 73-year-old Rachel Cohen.

They were both residents of the West Bank settlement of Kedumim, which is 3km (2 miles) north-east of al-Funduq on Highway 55, and were reportedly travelling in the same car when it came under fire.

Israel’s police force named the dead man as Master Sergeant Elad Yaakov Winkelstein, a police investigator from Kibbutz Ein Hanatziv in northern Israel who worked in the settlement of Ariel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to bring to justice what he called the “abhorrent murderers” along with anyone who aided them.

“No-one will get away,” he wrote on X.

Defence Minister Israel Katz said he had told the Israeli military to “act forcefully in every location” linked to the attackers, and vowed that Israel would “not tolerate a Gaza-like reality” in the West Bank.

There was no immediate claim from Palestinian armed groups, although Hamas praised the attack as a “heroic response against [Israel’s] continued crimes”, including the war in Gaza.

Hundreds of Palestinians and dozens of Israelis have been killed in a surge in violence in the West Bank since the start of the war, which was triggered by Hamas’s deadly attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023.

On Sunday, the Palestinian health ministry said that two Palestinians – a 17-year-old boy and a 40-year-old man – were killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank.

The teenager was shot dead during an Israeli raid in Askar refugee camp near the city of Nablus, which is 10km (6 miles) east of al-Funduq, it said.

The Israeli military said its troops fired on people who had hurled explosives at them in the Nablus area, according to Reuters news agency. It added that “a hit was identified” and that the incident was under review.

The man was killed in the town of Meithalun, 21km north-east of al-Funduq, where the Israeli military said Border Police officers killed an armed suspect during a wider operation in which 19 other people were arrested.

The prime minister has attacked politicians and activists “spreading lies and misinformation” over grooming gangs.

It comes after multi-billionaire Elon Musk accused Sir Keir Starmer of being “complicit in the rape of Britain” during his tenure as director of public prosecutions (DPP) between 2008 and 2013, for failing to tackle grooming gangs.

Alongside Musk’s comments, senior Conservatives and Reform UK MPs have also spent the week calling for a national inquiry into child sexual exploitation.

But Sir Keir accused opposition MPs of “jumping on a bandwagon” and “amplifying what the far-right is saying” to gain attention.

Sir Keir said Labour was addressing child sexual abuse after Conservative inaction “for 14 long years”.

Online debate around grooming gangs had now “crossed a line”, resulting in threats against MPs, including Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips, he said.

“We have seen this playbook many times – whipping up of intimidation and of threats of violence, hoping that the media will amplify it,” Sir Keir said.

“Those who are spreading lies and misinformation as far and as wide as possible are not interested in victims, they’re interested in themselves,” he added.

Debate around grooming gangs was reignited this week after it was reported that 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.

The decision was taken in October, but first reported by GB News on 1 January.

Conservative Leader Kemi Badenoch accused Sir Keir of using “smear tactics from 20 years ago” against those calling for a national inquiry.

“That such a huge scandal could occur should prompt soul-searching not ranting that those of us who care about it are ‘the far-right’,” Badenoch said.

Reporters were briefed Sir Keir planned a bold defence of his record and his government – and his comments were the most impassioned he has been in his time as prime minister.

Describing child sexual exploitation as “utterly sickening”, Sir Keir defended his record in office as DPP, saying he tackled the issue “head on”.

“I changed the system because I could see some of the things that were going wrong,” he told reporters.

While DPP, Sir Keir introduced a special prosecutor for child abuse and sexual exploitation to oversee convictions; changed the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) guidance to encourage police to investigate suspects in complex sexual abuse cases and brought in court reforms aimed at making the process less traumatic for victims.

Sir Keir said he also reopened cases, brought the first prosecution of an “Asian grooming gang” in Rochdale and called for mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse.

“When I left office, we had the highest number of child sexual abuse cases being prosecuted on record,” Sir Keir said.

“The victims here suffered terrible abuse,” he said, “and then they weren’t listened to.”

Phillips had also “done a thousand times more” to protect victims of child sexual abuse than those attacking her can “even dreamt about”, he said.

Sir Keir did not name any of those he thought were spreading lies in the debate, but his comments followed a series of questions about interventions by Musk.

Over the past week, the tech-entrepreneur has attacked the Labour government over grooming gangs – using his platform on his social media site X to accuse Phillips of being a “rape genocide apologist”, and calling for her and Sir Keir to be jailed.

Musk’s push to oust the PM could spark diplomatic trouble for Labour.

Alongside being one of the richest men in the world, Musk is also a key adviser for US President-elect Donald Trump.

Musk responded to Sir Keir’s comments, calling him “utterly despicable”.

In a series of posts on social media, Musk continued to attack Labour figures and the prime minister by name.

He also condemned what he saw as Sir Keir’s description of demands for a national inquiry into grooming gangs as far-right activism – calling it “an insane thing to say”.

After supporting Trump’s successful campaign in the US election, Musk has recently shifted his attention to British and European politics – largely supporting insurgent right-wing movements.

In the UK he has backed Reform UK, despite recently falling out with its leader Nigel Farage, and has come out in support of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) ahead of a snap legislative election in the country next month.

Musk has also called for far-right activist Tommy Robinson to be released from jail.

Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is currently serving an 18-month prison sentence for contempt of court, after admitting he breached an injunction against repeating claims about a Syrian refugee schoolboy.

Sir Keir accused those “cheerleading” Robinson of not being interested in justice and said he would not tolerate discussion and debate on lies.

“Once we lose the anchor that truth matters, in the robust debate that we must have, then we’re on a very slippery slope,” he said.

The Liberal Democrats urged the government to “summon the US ambassador” to address Musk’s comments, given his role in the next White House administration.

Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey said: “People have had enough of Elon Musk interfering with our country’s democracy when he clearly knows nothing about Britain.”

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

Sir Keir admitted many of the victims had been “let down by perverse ideas about community relations or by the idea that institutions must be protected above all else and they have not been listened to and they have not been heard.”

A Rotherham inquiry uncovered the sexual abuse of 1,400 children over 16 years, mainly by British Pakistani men.

In Telford, up to 1,000 girls faced abuse over 40 years, with some cases overlooked due to “nervousness about race” as most suspects were men of south Asian heritage.

The Conservatives and Reform UK have been calling for a statutory inquiry into grooming gangs.

Last week Badenoch said: “Trials have taken place all over the country in recent years but no one in authority has joined the dots. 2025 must be the year that the victims start to get justice.”

But Sir Keir dismissed the calls, arguing the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) by Professor Alexis Jay, which concluded in October 2022, had been “comprehensive”.

While he agreed that “no stone should be left unturned” to end child sexual abuse, Sir Keir insisted that “action” is now needed, not another review.

The government has previously said it wants to implement Prof Jay’s recommendations, and on Monday evening Home Secretary Yvette Cooper set out action she would be taking on three of the report’s proposals.

She told MPs a recommendation for those working with children to face mandatory requirements to report abuse would be enacted via an amendment to the upcoming Crime and Policing Bill this spring.

Cooper also said grooming would become an aggravating factor in the sentencing of abuse cases, and promised an “overhaul” of the information and evidence gathered on child sexual abuse and exploitation.

Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp reiterated his party’s call for a full national public inquiry into sexual abuse of children by grooming gangs.

He added that calling for a new inquiry was “not far-right” and that “smearing people who raise those issues is exactly how this ended up being covered up in the first place”.

Five young Kenyan men – including a popular cartoonist – who went missing just before the Christmas holidays have been found alive, family members and rights groups say.

Kenya has been gripped by a wave of disappearances, with the state-funded rights group saying that over 80 people have been abducted in the last six months.

The abductions generally target government critics and are widely believed to be the work of security agents, although the authorities have not admitted responsibility.

They began in June last year during nationwide anti-tax protests, but increased in December, when AI-generated photos of the president in a coffin were widely shared.

The youth-led protests forced President William Ruto to withdraw a series of planned tax rises and shook his government, leaving his authority badly undermined.

Kibet Bull, known for his silhouette cartoon memes critical of the president, announced his release on Monday afternoon on X to much fanfare.

He told his 105,000 followers that he had been dropped off in the town of Luanda, nearly 370 km (229 miles) from the capital, Nairobi, where he was last seen in December.

Kibet Bull said straight after he was released he went to a disco.

His mother told the BBC she “rejoiced” after she heard the news that her son had returned.

“I gave him a call and we talked, we didn’t talk much, the moment he told me ‘I am Kibet’ and I heard his voice, I screamed, I celebrated until he hung up,” she said.

• Kenya protesters traumatised by abductions – lawyer
• Ruto’s humbling shows power of African youth

The others released on Monday include 24-year-old student Billy Mwangi in Embu, in the central Mount Kenya region.

Local MP Gitonga Mukunji told journalists that Mr Mwangi “was whipped and beaten while in a dark room. He is traumatised.”

Mr Mwangi’s father said his son was not able to discuss what he had gone through adding that he had been taken to hospital.

“He came home around eight in the morning. He walked by himself – his mother and I saw him. We thank everyone who has prayed and supported him,” he told the Daily Nation news site.

Last week, Mr Mwangi’s father broke down in court as he pleaded for his son to be released.

A relative of 22-year-old Peter Muteti, who was seized in Nairobi, on 21 December, told the BBC on Monday that he had been reunited with the family but was disoriented and unable to speak about the ordeal.

Amnesty International Kenya welcomed the releases and urged “the State to free all abductees and hold those responsible accountable”.

Two weeks ago the police denied responsibility for the abductions carried out by men in plain clothes across the country, some of which were captured on CCTV.

Rights groups and other Kenyans have linked the abductions to a shadowy intelligence and counter-terrorism unit of the security forces.

Amid the public uproar, President Ruto said last month: “We are going to stop the abductions so that our youth can live peacefully and have discipline”, while urging parents to take care of their children.

Until now, no-one had been freed since he spoke on 27 December, with activists planning protests on Monday to push the government to act.

On Monday the police released an update acknowledging the freeing of the men, saying they were already in contact with one of the abductees, Bernard Kavuli, who had presented himself at a police station.

The police said investigations into all cases of missing people were under way.

One other man – Ronny Kiplangat – has also been released, his family told local media.

Mr Kavuli, a content creator, was seized on the outskirts of Nairobi in December, while Mr Kiplangat is the brother of Kibet Bull.

Two others were seized after posting AI-generated images of the president.

At least 24 people are still missing.

The Law Society of Kenya has filed a legal case against the state, demanding the immediate and unconditional release of seven individuals abducted last month, including those who have now been released.

The situation continues to stoke fear across the country, with parents worried about the safety of their children and activists vowing to maintain pressure until all missing persons are accounted for.

• How a Ugandan opposition leader disappeared in Kenya and ended up in military court
• How Kenya’s evangelical president has fallen out with churches
• ‘I can’t sleep’: What an athlete’s murder tells us about women’s safety in Kenya
• ‘We live in fear’ – forced expulsions taint Kenya’s safe haven image

Under growing pressure from his own party, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced he will step down and end his nine-year stretch as leader.

Trudeau said he would stay on in office until his Liberal Party can choose a new leader, and that parliament would be prorogued – or suspended – until 24 March.

“This country deserves a real choice in the next election and it has become clear to me that if I’m having to fight internal battles, I cannot be the best option in that election,” he said during a press conference Monday.

Trudeau’s personal unpopularity with Canadians had become an increasing drag on his party’s fortunes in advance of federal elections later this year.

“Last night, over dinner, I told my kids about the decision that I’m sharing with you today,” he told the news conference in Ottawa.

“I intend to resign as party leader, as prime minister, after the party selects its next leader through a robust nationwide competitive process,” he said.

The president of the Liberal Party, Sachit Mehra, said a meeting of the party’s board of directors would be held this week to begin the process of selecting a new leader.

Who might replace Trudeau as Liberal Party leader?

Why the Trudeau era has come to an end now

What happens next for Canada?

In a statement, he added: “Liberals across the country are immensely grateful to Justin Trudeau for more than a decade of leadership to our Party and the country.”

“As Prime Minister, his vision delivered transformational progress for Canadians,” he said, citing programmes his government has implemented like the Canada Child Benefit and the establishment of dental care and pharmacare coverage for some medication.

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre said “nothing has changed” following Trudeau’s resignation.

“Every Liberal MP and Leadership contender supported EVERYTHING Trudeau did for 9 years, and now they want to trick voters by swapping in another Liberal face to keep ripping off Canadians for another 4 years, just like Justin,” Poilievre wrote on X.

Trudeau, 53, had faced growing calls to quit from inside his Liberal Party, which ramped up in December when deputy prime minister and long-time ally Chrystia Freeland abruptly resigned.

In a public resignation letter, Freeland cited US President-elect Donald Trump’s threats of tariffs on Canadian goods, and accused Trudeau of not doing enough to address the “grave challenge” posed by Trump’s proposals.

Trump has promised to impose a tax of 25% on imported Canadian goods – which economists have warned would significantly hurt Canada’s economy – unless the country takes steps to increase security on its shared border.

Trudeau said Monday that he had hoped Freeland would have continued as deputy prime minister, “but she chose otherwise”.

Canada has since announced that it will implement sweeping new security measures along the country’s US border in response to the threat.

In an online post, Trump claimed that pressure over tariffs led to Trudeau’s resignation and repeated his jibe that Canada should become “the 51st State”.

“If Canada merged with the U.S., there would be no Tariffs, taxes would go way down, and they would be TOTALLY SECURE from the threat of the Russian and Chinese Ships that are constantly surrounding them,” he wrote.

Since 2019, the Liberal Party has governed as a minority party.

Following Freeland’s resignation, Trudeau lost the backing of parties that had previously helped keep the Liberals in power – the left-leaning New Democrats, who had a support agreement with the Liberals, and the Quebec nationalist party, Bloc Quebecois.

The largest opposition party, the Conservatives, have maintained a significant two-digit lead over the Liberals in polls for months – suggesting that if a general election were held today, the Liberals could be in for a significant defeat.

Liberals will now choose a new leader to take the party into the next election, which must be held on or before 20 October.

A senior government official told the BBC that the race is an open contest, and that the Prime Minister’s Office will fully stay out of the process, leaving it to Liberal Party members to decide their future.

Speaking to reporters, the Bloc Quebecois leader Yves-François Blanchet suggested that an early election be called once the Liberals choose their new leader.

Trudeau is the son of Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who dominated the country’s politics in the 1970s and ’80s.

The younger Trudeau became prime minister after the Liberal Party won a sweeping majority in 2015 amid a promise to usher in a new, progressive era of “Sunny Ways”.

His record includes a commitment to gender equality in his cabinet, which continues to be 50% women; progress on reconciliation with Indigenous people in Canada; bringing in a national carbon tax; implementing a tax-free child benefit for families; and legalising recreational cannabis.

Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak praised Trudeau’s track record on indigenous issues following his resignation, saying in a statement that he “has taken meaningful steps to address issues that matter to First Nations”.

“While much work remains, these actions have laid a foundation for future governments to build upon.”

Clouds began to hang over Trudeau’s government in recent years, which weathered a series of often self-inflicted scandals, including a controversy over a deal with a Canadian firm facing corruption charges and photos that emerged of the prime minister wearing brownface makeup.

Vaccine mandates and other restrictions were also met with fierce backlash by some Canadians, leading to the Freedom Convoy truck protests in early 2022. Trudeau eventually used unprecedented emergency powers to remove the protesters.

As Canada began to emerge from the pandemic, housing and food prices skyrocketed, and his government pulled back on ambitious immigration targets as public services began to show strain.

By late 2024, Trudeau’s approval rating was at its lowest – just 22% of Canadians saying they thought he was doing a good job, according to one polling tracker.

In Ottawa, a small group of protestors danced outside Parliament Hill in celebration of his resignation.

One passer-by, however, said he thinks things were fine under Trudeau’s watch.

“I’m a carpenter,” Hames Gamarra, who is from British Columbia, told the BBC. “I mind my own business, I get my wages, I pay the bills. It’s been OK.”

Another Canadian, Marise Cassivi, said it feels like the end of an era. Asked if she feels any hints of sadness, she replied: “No.”

“It’s the right thing.”

For months now, Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been asked variations of the same question: “Will you step down?”

But though he vowed to stay on as Liberal Party leader – despite deepening frustrations amongst voters and a political rival surging in the polls – even the self-described “fighter” could not withstand the growing chorus of members of his own party calling for him to resign.

“This country deserves a real choice in the next election, and it has become clear to me that if I’m having to fight internal battles, I cannot be the best option in that election,” Trudeau conceded on Monday, announcing his resignation in front of Rideau Cottage, his official residence for most of the last decade.

He will stay on as prime minister until a new Liberal Party leader is chosen, at a date yet to be set by the party.

Trudeau asked for parliament to be prorogued – or suspended – until 24 March to give time for the party to find a new leader.

• Who might replace Trudeau as Liberal Party leader?

Trudeau swept to power nearly a decade ago, heralded as the fresh face of progressive politics.

In 2015, swayed by his youthful charisma and a hopeful political message, voters catapulted the Liberals from a third-place party to holding a majority of seats in parliament – unprecedented in Canadian political history.

Now, he remains the only leader left standing among peers when he came into office, from Barack Obama to Angela Merkel, Shinzo Abe and David Cameron, and at 53 years old, is currently the longest-serving leader in the G7.

But in the years since his ascent to the global stage, and over two general elections, Trudeau and his brand have become a drag on the party’s fortunes.

Paul Wells, a Canadian political journalist and the author of Justin Trudeau on the Ropes, recently told the BBC he believes Trudeau will be remembered “as a consequential” prime minister, notably for providing genuine leadership on issues like indigenous reconciliation and, to some extent, climate policy.

But he is also one “who felt increasingly out of touch with public opinion and was increasingly unable to adjust to changing times”.

On Monday, Trudeau was quick to tout what he was proud of accomplishing in office, including navigating the tumultuous Covid pandemic, renegotiating a free trade deal with the last Trump administration, and implementing a child benefit widely seen as helping alleviate poverty.

But a series of ethics scandals early on began to take the sheen off the new government – he was found to have violated federal conflict of interest rules in the handling of a corruption inquiry – the SNC-Lavalin affair – and for luxury trips to the Bahamas.

In 2020, he faced scrutiny for picking a charity with ties to his family to manage a major government programme.

In a general election in 2019, his party was reduced to a minority status, meaning the Liberals had to rely on the support of other parties to stay in power.

A snap election in 2021 did not improve their fortunes.

More recently, Trudeau faced headwinds from cost of living increases and inflation that have contributed to election upsets around the world.

There was also frustration in the country over what was seen as struggles to deliver on big promises – an agenda that was “overfilled, overstuffed”, said Mr Wells – and his handling of issues like immigration.

Late last year, the Liberals backtracked on ambitious immigration targets over concerns the issue was mismanaged, significantly cutting back on the number of newcomers allowed in Canada.

He also sometimes handed his opponents easy political wins, including when it came to light that he had worn black and brown face before holding office.

• Justin Trudeau’s resignation speech in full
• What happens next for Canada?

After more than nine years in power, he is among Canada’s longest serving prime ministers, and there is a general sense of fatigue and frustration with his government.

So the writing was on the wall.

A series of political blows made it clear Trudeau’s days were numbered.

Over the summer, voters rejected Liberal candidates in a handful of special elections in once-safe Liberal seats, leading to the beginning of internal party unrest.

He had become an increasingly polarising figure for the electorate – with Trudeau saying on Monday “it’s time for a reset” and for the “temperature to come down” in Canadian politics.

Andrew Perez, a principal at Perez Strategies, said it will be a challenge now for the Liberals to distance themselves from the Trudeau brand.

“That was a major aspect of their success – but that worked until it didn’t,” the Liberal strategist told the BBC.

Public opinion polls for the Liberals had reached new depths in recent weeks, and attempts to change course with cabinet shuffles and tax breaks failed to make a dent.

A survey conducted over the holidays by the Angus Reid Institute suggested the lowest level of support for the party in their tracking, dating back to 2014.

Polls suggest the Conservatives – led by Pierre Poilievre, a 45-year-old career politician with a talent for a sharp campaign catchphrase – would win an election handily if it were held today.

The next election must be held by October, although both Poilievre and Jagmeet Singh, leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party, have said they will seek to send Canadians to the polls as soon as parliament is back in March.

The political instability comes as the country faces a number of challenges – not least the vow by US President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office on 20 January, to impose of 25% tariffs on Canadian goods.

Yet still, up until the very end, Trudeau seemed determined to hang on, citing his desire to face Poilievre – his ideological opposite – in the polls.

But the shock resignation of Trudeau’s key deputy, former Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, in mid-December – where she cited his perceived failure to not take Trump’s threats seriously – proved to be the final straw.

Members of his own party began to make it publicly clear they no longer supported his leadership.

And with that, the last domino fell.

Just before New Year, 21-year-old Shatha al-Sabbagh was out buying chocolate for her family’s children from a shop in Jenin, in the occupied West Bank.

The “fearless” journalism student – who wanted to shed light on the suffering of the Palestinians – was with her mother, two young nephews and another relative.

“She was laughing and saying we’ll be up all night tonight,” her mother recalls.

Then she was shot in the head.

For Shatha’s mother Umm al-Motassem, the pain is still raw. She stops to take a breath.

“Shatha’s eyes were wide open. It looked like she was staring at me while lying on her back with blood gushing from her head.

“I started screaming, ‘Stop shooting! My daughter is dead. My daughter is dead.'”

But the shooting lasted for around 10 minutes. Shatha died in a pool of her own blood.

Shatha’s family holds the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) security forces fully responsible for her killing, saying their area is controlled by the PA.

“It couldn’t have been anyone other than PA… because they have such a heavy presence in our neighbourhood – no-one else could come or go,” she told the BBC.

But the PA blames “outlaws” – the term they use for members of the Jenin Battalion, made up of fighters from armed groups including Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Hamas.

The PA exercises limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

It launched a major security operation in the refugee camp in Jenin last month targeting the armed groups based there, which they see as a challenge to their authority. Nearly four weeks on, it continues.

The Jenin Battalion is accused of blowing up a car in the camp and carrying out other “illegal activities”.

“We have confiscated large numbers of weapons and explosive materials,” says the PA’s Brig Gen Anwar Rajab.

“The aim is to clear the camp from the explosive devices that have been planted in different streets and alleyways… These outlaws have crossed all red lines and have spread chaos.”

Gen Rajab also accuses Iran of backing and funding the armed groups in the camp.

The Jenin Battalion denies links to Iran. In a recent video posted on social media, spokesman Nour al-Bitar said the PA was trying to “demonise” them and “tarnish their image”, adding that fighters would not give up their weapons.

“To the PA and President Mahmoud Abbas, why has it come to this?” he asked, holding shrapnel from what he claimed was a rocket-propelled grenade fired at the camp by security forces.

The PA, led by President Abbas, was already unpopular among Palestinians dissatisfied by its rejection of armed struggle and its security co-ordination with Israel.

This anger intensified with the PA’s crackdown on the armed groups in the camp, which has been unprecedented in its ferocity and length.

Israel sees those groups as terrorists, but many Jenin locals consider them to be a form of resistance to the occupation.

“These ‘outlaws’ that the PA is referring to – these are the young men who stand up for us when the Israeli army raids our camp,” says Umm al-Motassem.

At least 14 people have been killed in the crackdown, including a 14-year-old, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

Now many Jenin locals say they fear the PA as much as they fear Israel’s military raids. Shatha al-Sabbagh’s death has only renewed their contempt.

Before she was killed, Shatha shared several posts on social media showing the destruction from the PA operation in Jenin – as well as Israeli raids on the camp last year.

Other posts showed pictures of armed young men who were killed in the fighting, including her brother.

Her killing was condemned by Hamas, which identified her brother as a slain member of the group’s armed wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades.

The group described her “murder… in cold blood” as part of an “oppressive policy targeting the Jenin camp, which has become a symbol of steadfastness and resistance”.

Mustafa Barghouti, who leads the political party Palestinian National Initiative, sees the fighting in Jenin as a consequence of the divisions between the main Palestinian factions – Fatah, which makes up most of the PA, and Hamas, which has governed Gaza since 2007.

“The last thing Palestinians need is to see Palestinians shooting each other while Israel crushes everyone,” he says.

Inside the camp, residents say daily life has ground to a halt.

Water and electricity supplies have been cut off and families suffer from a lack of food, bitterly cold weather and relentless gun battles.

Locals who spoke to us asked for their names to be changed, saying they feared reprisals by the PA.

“Things are dire here. We can’t move freely in the camp,” says Mohamed.

“All the bakeries, the restaurants and shops are closed. The restaurant I work in opens for a day and closes for 10. When it is open, no-one comes.

“We need milk for the children, we need bread. Some people can’t open their doors because of the continuous shooting.”

The UN humanitarian agency, the OCHA, has called for an investigation into what it describes as human rights violations by the PA forces.

Gen Rajab said some of the “outlaws” who had “hijacked” the Jenin camp had been arrested and that others with pending cases would be brought to justice.

But Mohamed describes the PA’s operation – with innocent people caught in the crossfire – as “collective punishment”.

“If they want to go after outlaws, that doesn’t mean they should punish the whole camp. We want our lives back.”

Even going out to get food or water is a risk, says 20-year-old Sadaf.

“When we go out, we say our final prayers. We prepare ourselves mentally that we may not come back.

“It’s very cold. We’ve taken down the doors in our home to use as firewood just to keep warm.”

The BBC has heard similar accounts from four residents in the camp.

My conversation with Sadaf is interrupted by the sound of gunfire. It is unclear where it is from or who is firing. It starts and stops several times.

“Warning shots maybe,” she suggests, adding it happens sometimes when PA forces are changing shifts.

Sadaf continues describing the camp, with “rubbish filling the streets and almost going into homes”. More gunfire can be heard.

Sadaf’s mother joins the call. “Listen to this… Can anyone sleep with this sound in the background?

“We sleep in shifts now. We’re so scared they might raid our homes. We’re as scared of this operation as we are when the Israeli soldiers are here.”

People say security forces have deliberately hit electricity grids and generators, leaving the camp in a blackout.

The PA again blames “outlaws” – and insists it has brought in workers to fix the grid.

The armed groups want to “use the people’s suffering to pressure the PA to stop the operation”, says Gen Rajab. He says the security operation will continue until its objectives are met.

Gen Rajab says the PA’s goal is to establish control over the Jenin camp and ensure safety and stability.

He believes stripping the armed groups of control would take away Israel’s excuse to attack the camp.

In late August, the Israeli army conducted a major nine-day “counter-terrorism” operation in Jenin city and the camp, which resulted in severe destruction.

At least 36 Palestinians were killed – 21 from Jenin governorate – according to the Palestinian health ministry.

Analysts say that the PA is trying to reassert its authority in the West Bank and show the US it is capable of taking a role in the future governance of Gaza.

“What would be the harm in that?” says Gen Rajab.

“Gaza is part of the Palestinian state. Gaza and the West Bank are not separate entities. There’s no Palestinian state without Gaza. The president [Mahmoud Abbas] has said that and that is our strategy.”

But Barghouti says this approach is an “illusion”. “All you need is to listen to what [Benjamin] Netanyahu says,” he adds.

Under the Israeli prime minister’s vision for a post-war Gaza, Israel would control security indefinitely, and Palestinians with “no links to groups hostile to Israel” – so none of the existing major Palestinian political parties – would run the territory.

But the US, Israel’s major ally, wants the PA to govern Gaza after the war. Netanyahu has previously ruled out a post-war role for the internationally backed PA.

For the residents of Jenin camp, there has been no let-up in the violence and loss.

“The PA say they’re here for our safety. Where’s the safety when my daughter was killed? Where’s the safety with the non-stop shooting?” Umm al-Motassem cries.

“They can go after the ‘outlaws’ but why did my daughter have to die? Justice will be served when I know who killed my daughter,” she says.

Donald Trump Jr is planning to visit Greenland, two weeks after his father repeated his desire for the US to take control of the autonomous Danish territory.

The US president-elect’s son plans to record video footage for a podcast during the one-day private visit, US media report.

Donald Trump reignited controversy in December when he said “ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity” for US national security.

He had previously expressed an interest in buying the Arctic island during his first term as president. Trump was rebuffed by Greenland’s leaders on both occasions.

“We are not for sale and we will not be for sale,” the island’s Prime Minister, Mute Egede, said in December. “Greenland belongs to the people of Greenland.”

President-elect Trump confirmed his son’s trip on his Truth Social social media platform on Monday.

He said Don Jr and “various representatives” would travel to Greenland “to visit some of the most magnificent areas and sights”.

Trump added that Greenland and its people “will benefit tremendously if, and when, it becomes part of our nation”.

“We will protect it, and cherish it, from a very vicious outside world,” he said. “Make Greenland great again!”

The president-elect’s post also included a video featuring an unnamed Greenlander- wearing a red Make America Great Again hat – telling Trump to buy Greenland and free it from “being colonised” by Denmark.

The identity of the man in the clip is unclear.

Greenland lies on the shortest route from North America to Europe, making it strategically important for the US. It is also home to a large American space facility.

The president-elect’s eldest son played a key role during the 2024 US election campaign, frequently appearing at rallies and in the media.

But he will not be travelling to Greenland on behalf of his father’s incoming administration, according to the Danish foreign ministry.

“We have noted the planned visit of Donald Trump Jr to Greenland. As it is not an official American visit, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark has no further comment to the visit,” the ministry told BBC News.

• Greenland profile

Hours after President-elect Trump’s latest intervention, the Danish government announced a huge boost in defence spending for Greenland. Danish Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen described the announcement’s timing as an “irony of fate”.

On Monday Denmark’s King Frederik X changed the royal coat of arms to more prominently feature representations of Greenland and the Faroe Islands.

Some have seen this as a rebuke to Trump, but it could also prove controversial with Greenland’s separatist movement.

King Frederik used his New Year’s address to say the Kingdom of Denmark was united “all the way to Greenland”, adding “we belong together”.

But Greenland’s prime minister used his own New Year’s speech to push for independence from Denmark, saying the island must break free from “the shackles of colonialism”.

Trump is not the first US president to suggest buying Greenland. The idea was first mooted by the country’s 17th president, Andrew Johnson, during the 1860s.

Separately in recent weeks, Trump has threatened to reassert control over the Panama Canal, one of the world’s most important waterways. He has accused Panama of charging excessive fees for access to it.

Panama’s president responded by saying “every square metre” of the canal and surrounding area belonged to his country.

A “panic-stricken” elephant killed a Spanish woman while she was bathing the animal at an elephant centre in Thailand, local police said.

Blanca Ojanguren García, 22, was washing the elephant at the Koh Yao Elephant Care Centre last Friday when she was gored to death by the animal.

Experts told Spanish language newspaper Clarín that the elephant could have been stressed by having to interact with tourists outside its natural habitat.

García, who was a law and international relations student at Spain’s University of Navarra, was living in Taiwan as part of a student exchange programme.

She was visiting Thailand with her boyfriend, who witnessed the attack.

Spain’s foreign minister, Jose Manuel Albares, said the Spanish consulate in Bangkok was assisting García’s family.

BBC News has contacted the elephant care centre for comment.

Bathing elephants is a popular activity among tourists in Thailand, which is home to more than 4,000 wild elephants and has a similar number kept in captivity, according to the Department of National Parks.

The Koh Yao centre offers “elephant care” packages which let tourists make food for and feed the animals, as well as shower and walk with them. These packages cost between 1,900 baht ($55; £44) and 2,900 baht.

Animal activists have previously criticised elephant bathing activities, noting that they disrupt natural grooming behaviours and expose the animals to unnecessary stress and potential injury.

World Animal Protection, an international charity, has for years urged countries including Thailand to stop breeding elephants in captivity.

More than six in 10 elephants used for tourism in Asia are living in “severely inadequate” conditions, the charity said.

“These intelligent and socially intricate animals, with a capacity for complex thoughts and emotions, endure profound suffering in captivity, as their natural social structures cannot be replicated artificially,” the charity said.

The US has added several Chinese technology companies, including gaming and social media giant Tencent and battery maker CATL, to a list of businesses it says work with China’s military.

The list serves as a warning to American companies and organisations about the risks of doing business with Chinese entities.

While inclusion does not mean an immediate ban, it can add pressure on the US Treasury Department to sanction the firms.

Tencent and CATL have denied involvement with the Chinese military, while Beijing said the decision amounted to “unreasonable suppression of Chinese companies”.

The Department of Defense’s (DOD) list of Chinese military companies, which is formally known as the Section 1260H list, is updated annually and now includes 134 firms.

It is part of Washington’s approach to counteracting what it sees as Beijing’s efforts to increase its military power by using technology from Chinese firms, universities and research programmes.

In response to the latest announcement Tencent, which owns the messaging app WeChat, said its inclusion on the list was “clearly a mistake.”

“We are not a military company or supplier. Unlike sanctions or export controls, this listing has no impact on our business,” it said in a statement to Reuters news agency.

CATL also called the designation a mistake and said it “is not engaged in any military related activities.”

“The US’s practices violate the market competition principles and international economic and trade rules that it has always advocated, and undermine the confidence of foreign companies in investing and operating in the United States,” said Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington.

The Pentagon had come under pressure from US lawmakers to add some of the firms, including CATL, to the list.

This pressure came as US car making giant Ford said it would invest $2bn (£1.6bn) to build a battery plant in Michigan. It has said it plans to license technology from CATL.

Ford did not immediately respond to a BBC request for comment.

The announcement comes as relations between the world’s two biggest economies remain strained.

Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump, who has previously taken a tough stance against Beijing, is due to return to the White House this month.

The Pentagon was sued last last year by drone maker DJI and Lidar-maker Hesai Technologies over their inclusion on the list. They both remain on the updated list.

North Korea has claimed it fired a new intermediate-range ballistic missile tipped with a hypersonic warhead which “will reliably contain any rivals in the Pacific region”.

The launch on Monday – Pyongyang’s first in two months – came as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Seoul for talks with some of South Korea’s key leaders.

Hypersonic weapons are more difficult to track and shoot down, as they are able to travel at more than five times the speed of sound.

North Korea is claiming their missile flew 12 times the speed of sound, for about 1,500km.

South Korea’s military earlier said the missile flew 1,100km before falling into the sea, adding that it “strongly condemns” this “clear act of provocation”.

North Korea has previously test-fired hypersonic missiles. Pictures published by KCNA showed that Monday’s missile resembled one that was launched in April last year, but Pyongyang claims the recent one features a new “flight and guidance control system” and a new engine made of carbon fibre.

The country’s leader Kim Jong Un said Monday’s launch “clearly showed the rivals what we are doing and that we are fully ready to use even any means to defend our legitimate interests”, state news agency KCNA said on Tuesday.

Ankit Panda, a nuclear weapons specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the launch of a new weapon is “unsurprising”.

“We’ve known that North Korea has been working with composite materials for use in missiles for a number of years now.

“The appeal of these materials is to broadly improve the performance and reliability of the payload… Better materials can increase the odds of their survival to the target,” he told the BBC.

Earlier on Monday, Blinken met acting president Choi Sang-mok, where he described the alliance between Washington and Seoul as a “cornerstone of peace and stability on the Korean peninsula”.

South Korea’s military says it has strengthened surveillance for the North’s future missile launches and is “closely sharing information” on the launch with the US and Japan.

The launch took place amid political chaos in South Korea, which has embroiled the country for weeks after suspended President Yoon Suk Yeol’s short-lived martial law attempt in December.

Yoon, who was stripped of his presidential powers after lawmakers voted to impeach him, now faces arrest. The constitutional court is also deliberating whether he should be removed from office.

Pyongyang previously mocked Yoon’s shock martial law declaration as an “insane act” and, with no suggestion of irony, accused Yoon of “brazenly brandishing blades and guns of fascist dictatorship at his own people”.

North Korea is widely regarded as one of the world’s most repressive totalitarian states. Its leader Kim Jong Un and his family have ruled the hermit nation for decades as a dictatorial dynasty, developing and promoting a cult of personality.

The last time Pyongyang fired missiles was in November, a day before the US presidential election, when it launched at least seven short-range ballistic missiles off its east coast.

Earlier that week, the US had flown a long-range bomber during trilateral military drills with South Korea and Japan in a show of power, drawing condemnation from Kim’s sister Kim Yo Jong.

Apple has said it will update, rather than pause, a new artificial intelligence (AI) feature that has generated inaccurate news alerts on its latest iPhones.

The company, in its first acknowledgement of the concerns, on Monday said it was working on a software change to “further clarify” when the notifications are summaries that have been generated by the Apple Intelligence system.

The tech giant is facing calls to pull the technology after its flawed performance.

The BBC complained last month after an AI-generated summary of its headline falsely told some readers that Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, had shot himself.

On Friday, Apple’s AI inaccurately summarised BBC app notifications to claim that Luke Littler had won the PDC World Darts Championship hours before it began – and that the Spanish tennis star Rafael Nadal had come out as gay.

This marks the first time Apple has formally responded to the concerns voiced by the BBC about the errors, which appear as if they are coming from within the organisation’s app.

“These AI summarisations by Apple do not reflect – and in some cases completely contradict – the original BBC content,” the BBC said on Monday.

“It is critical that Apple urgently addresses these issues as the accuracy of our news is essential in maintaining trust.”

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Apple said its update would arrive “in the coming weeks”.

It has previously said its notification summaries – which group together and rewrite previews of multiple recent app notifications into a single alert on user’s lock screens – aim to allow users to “scan for key details”.

“Apple Intelligence features are in beta and we are continuously making improvements with the help of user feedback,” the company said in a statement on Monday, adding that receiving the summaries is optional.

“A software update in the coming weeks will further clarify when the text being displayed is summarization provided by Apple Intelligence. We encourage users to report a concern if they view an unexpected notification summary.”

The feature, along with others released as part of its broader suite of AI tools was rolled out in the UK in December. It is only available on its iPhone 16 models, iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max handsets running iOS 18.1 and above, as well as on some iPads and Macs.

Several instances of the technology appearing to interpret messages in a highly blunt, literal way have gone viral on social media.

In November, a ProPublica journalist highlighted erroneous Apple AI summaries of alerts from the New York Times app suggesting it had reported that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been arrested.

The BBC has not been able to independently verify the screenshots, and the New York Times declined to comment.

Reporters Without Borders, an organisation representing the rights and interests of journalists, called on Apple to disable the feature in December.

It said the attribution of a false headline about Mr Mangione to the BBC showed “generative AI services are still too immature to produce reliable information for the public”.

Apple is not alone in having rolled out generative AI tools that can create text, images and more content when prompted by users – but with varying results.

Google’s AI overviews feature, which provides a written summary of information from results at the top of its search engine in response to user queries, faced criticism last year for producing some erratic responses.

At the time a Google spokesperson said that these were ‘isolated examples’ and that the feature was generally working well.

At least five people have died in a winter storm that has seized a swathe of the US in its icy grip, leading to mass school closures, travel chaos and power cuts.

Seven US states declared emergencies: Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky and Arkansas.

More than 2,300 flights have been cancelled, with nearly 9,000 delays also reported owing to the extreme weather caused by the polar vortex of icy cold air that usually circles the North Pole.

Over 200,000 people had no power on Monday night across states in the storm’s path, according to Poweroutage.us. Snow and sleet is forecast to continue in much of the north-eastern US on Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).

While the precipitation will then dissipate, cold Arctic air is expected to keep conditions icy across a chunk of the country for several more weeks.

In Washington DC – where lawmakers met on Monday to certify Donald Trump’s win in November’s election – about 5-9in (13-23cm) of snow fell, with up to a foot recorded in parts of nearby Maryland and Virginia.

• Updates: Major winter storm brings heavy snow and travel disruption

In front of the Washington Monument, hundreds of local residents gathered at a local park for a snowball fight, a now 15-year-old tradition.

“Just having fun,” one local man told the BBC. “Never done a snowball fight before.”

Former US Olympic skier Clare Egan was found cross-country skiing on the National Mall, the central thoroughfare of the US capital city.

She told the Associated Press she had thought “my skiing days were maybe behind me”, after moving to the city.

Washington DC’s weather emergency is declared until the early hours of Tuesday as a result of the system, which was named Winter Storm Blair by the Weather Channel.

Children who had been due to go back to classes on Monday after the winter holiday break were instead enjoying a snow day as school districts closed from Maryland to Kansas.

In other parts of the US, the winter storm brought with it dangerous road conditions.

In Missouri, the state’s highway patrol said at least 365 people had crashed on Sunday, leaving dozens injured and at least one dead.

In nearby Kansas, one of the worst-hit states, local news reported that two people were killed in a car crash during the storm.

In Houston, Texas, a person was found dead from cold weather in front of a bus stop on Monday morning, authorities said.

In Virginia, where 300 car crashes were reported between midnight and Monday morning, authorities warned local residents to avoid driving in large parts of the state.

At least one motorist was killed, according to local media reports.

Matthew Cappucci, a senior meteorologist at the weather app MyRadar, told the BBC that Kansas City had seen the heaviest snow in 32 years.

Some areas near the Ohio River turned to “skating rinks” in the frigid temperatures, he added.

“The ploughs are getting stuck, the police are getting stuck, everybody’s getting stuck – stay home,” he said.

Major incidents have been declared and dozens of people rescued in Lincolnshire and Leicestershire as heavy rains caused severe flooding in the Midlands on Monday.

Firefighters in Leicestershire received hundreds of calls on Monday, and rescued 59 people, while in Lincolnshire 50 children were taken to safety after their school was cut off by floodwater.

Meanwhile, police in North Yorkshire found the body of a man in floodwaters in Beal, close to Eggborough and Knottingley.

Almost 200 flood warnings have been issued in parts of England including a new severe warning introduced in Leicestershire on Monday evening indicating “large-scale evacuation is needed”.

The severe warning for the River Soar covers caravan parks near Barrow upon Soar and means there is a danger to life.

Meanwhile, yellow weather warnings for snow and ice have been issued in Northern Ireland, parts of Scotland and Wales and areas of northwest and southwest England until Tuesday morning.

Travel disruption caused by the cold and wet weather has affected much of the UK on Monday, with roads, railways and airports all affected.

In Leicestershire, crews helped evacuate residents from flooded homes and came to the aid of drivers trapped in their cars.

Leicestershire County Council told the BBC it had been called to 160 flood-related incidents in the county so far.

In Lincolnshire, the school children had to be driven to safety by volunteer drivers in 4×4 vehicles after roads leading to Edenham Primary School, near Bourne, were flooded following heavy rainfall.

A further 16 people were rescued from properties in Billingborough, near Bourne, and were being temporarily housed in a village hall on Monday night.

Meanwhile, police in North Yorkshire say the man whose body was recovered from a flooded area in Beal is believed to have entered the water on Saturday or Sunday.

Police said the man has been formally identified, but efforts to trace his next of kin were ongoing. There are currently no suspicious circumstances surrounding the discovery, they added.

• Major incident as 59 people rescued from floods in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland
• Fifty children rescued in Lincolnshire as major incident declared
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• Homes flooded in north Wales village after brook breaches banks
• Snow forces several schools to shut in the north east of England
• Overnight travel disruption expected across parts of west of England

As of Monday evening, there were 184 flood warnings, meaning flooding is expected, and 301 flood alerts, meaning flooding is possible, in place across England.

In Wales, one flood warning and 12 flood alerts are in place.

A Met Office warning for snow and ice across large parts of Scotland came into force at 16:00 and will last until midday on Tuesday.

In Northern Ireland, a yellow alert for snow and ice warning will be in place until 11:00 on Tuesday.

A yellow alert for snow and ice across Wales and parts of northwest and southwest England took effect at 17:00 on Monday, lasting until 10:00 on Tuesday.

In Ireland, tens of thousands of homes and businesses are without water and electricity. The cold weather has also led to the closure of schools and some transport disruption.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said his thoughts were with all those affected by the flooding and thanked “responders working hard to keep communities safe”.

In the Commons, environment minister Emma Hardy told MPs flooding was “a personal priority” for her, adding that the Environment Agency was particularly concerned about Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire and Nottinghamshire.

Warning of further localised flooding to come over the next 24 to 36 hours, she pledged to overhaul the government’s approach to funding flood defences “to ensure the challenges facing businesses and rural and coastal communities are taken into account when delivering flood protection.”

The coldest temperature of the UK winter so far was recorded on Sunday night, when the mercury hit -13.3C (8F) in Loch Glascarnoch in Scotland.

On Monday morning, snowy conditions forced schools across north-east Scotland and northern England to close on the first day back after the Christmas holidays.

Power had to be restored to thousands of homes and businesses in the north-east of England following outages caused by the cold snap, according to network operator Northern Powergrid.

Roads across the UK were impacted by the weather. Extensive flooding in Gloucester forced the M5 to close on Monday morning. The M25 in Surrey also closed after a lorry toppled over and blocked the carriageway.

Railway lines across the UK were affected by flooding, while Manchester Airport was again forced to shut two runways after heavy snow.

Tonight the weather will feel quieter, as the area of low pressure which brought snow and rain this morning has cleared eastwards.

There will be a widespread frost with temperatures dropping widely below freezing and the risk of ice almost everywhere.

There will be further wintry showers blowing in on a north-westerly wind through the evening and overnight period.

In northern and western Scotland, wintry showers with accumulations of 5-10cm over 200m are expected.

There will be further sporadic wintry showers in the same sort of areas tomorrow but for many it will be very cold and dry with some sunshine.

There is a separate warning in place for possible snow across southern counties of England on Wednesday, lasting from 09:00 until midnight which could produce as much as 2-5cm of snow.

The world has warmed by more than 1C since the pre-industrial era. UK winters are changing as a result.

While the climate continues to warm overall we will still see short-term extremes of both hot and cold weather – but cold extremes are likely to become fewer and further between.

Climate change will bring us more rain. A warmer atmosphere is able to hold more moisture so more intense rainfall is expected to become an increasing feature of UK winters, along with a higher risk of flooding.