Wildfires are raging in several areas of Los Angeles, with high winds and extremely dry conditions fuelling their progress across thousands of acres of land.

Firefighters are so far unable to contain them, with one fire official telling the BBC on Thursday that they were still rapidly expanding.

The largest blaze, in the Pacific Palisades area where many celebrities live, is the most destructive fire in the history of Los Angeles. More than 1,000 buildings have been destroyed.

It’s a rapidly changing situation – these maps and pictures chart how the fires have spread, where they are located and what they look like from space.

More fires broke out on Wednesday, including in the Hollywood Hills area, overlooking Hollywood.

Many of the roads near the fire were blanketed with thick smoke and Hollywood Boulevard, home to the Hollywood Walk of Fame, was gridlocked with traffic as people tried to leave.

Five fires are burning in the Los Angeles area:

• Palisades fire: The largest active fire is burning between Santa Monica and Malibu. Burnt area: more than 20,000 acres. More than 5,300 structures destroyed. At least 30,000 people evacuated.

• Eaton fire: Second largest fire burning north of Pasadena. Burnt area: at least 13,690 acres. Potentially more than 4,000 structures damaged or destroyed. Five deaths reported.

• Hurst fire: To the north east of the city. Burnt area: 850 acres.

• Lidia fire: Reported in the hills north of Los Angeles. Burnt area: 350 acres.

• Sunset fire: Reported in the historic Hollywood Hills area near many famous landmarks, including the Hollywood sign. Burnt area: 50 acres.

Two fires have been contained:

Woodley fire: Small fire reported in local parkland. Burnt area: 30 acres.

Olivas fire: Small fire first reported in Ventura county about 50 miles (80km) east of Los Angeles. Burnt area: 11 acres.

The map above shows how rapidly the Palisades fire spread, intensifying in a matter of hours. At just after 14:00 on Tuesday it covered 772 acres and within four hours it had approximately tripled in size.

It now covers more than 17,000 acres and thousands of people have been forced to evacuate the area, as more than 1,400 firefighters try to tackle the blaze.

The Eaton fire has also grown rapidly from about 1,000 acres on Tuesday to more than 10,000 acres, forcing thousands more people to flee.

As the maps below show, about 20,000 buildings may have been damaged or destroyed already – and many more could be at risk depending on how the fires spread.

• Follow latest updates on the LA wildfires
• What’s the latest on the fires, and what caused them?
• Watch: Smoke billows as thousands evacuate in LA
• Timelapse shows rapid spread of Palisades wildfire
• Watch: Inside a neighbourhood totally lost in inferno
• Pacific Palisades: The celebrity LA area ravaged by wildfire

To give an idea of the size of the Palisades fire, we have superimposed it on to maps of New York and London.

As you can see by 23:00 PST, 8 January, (07:00 GMT, 9 January), it was comparable in size with an area stretching from Clapham to Greenwich in the UK’s capital, or with large areas of lower Manhattan and Queens.

The Palisades fire is not the only one to have a devastating effect on neighbourhoods of Los Angeles.

Theses images show the extent of the destruction caused by the Eaton fire in the neighbourhood of Altadena.

The Jewish Temple in Pasadena was destroyed by the Eaton fire. The Centre’s website says it has been in use since 1941 and has a congregation of more than 400 families.

The death of a teenage boy sparked violent protests in a city in north-west China, the BBC has confirmed through verified video.

In the videos shared on social media, protesters can be seen hurling objects at police and officers beating some demonstrators in Pucheng in Shaanxi province.

Authorities said the teenager fell to his death on 2 January in an accident at his school dormitory. But following his death allegations began spreading on social media that there had been a cover-up.

Protests erupted soon after and lasted several days, before they were apparently quelled earlier this week. The BBC has seen no further evidence of protest in Pucheng since then.

Public demonstrations are not uncommon in China, but authorities have been particularly sensitive about them since the 2022 White Paper protests against Covid policies, which saw rare criticism of the Chinese Communist Party and President Xi Jinping.

State media has been silent on the protests in Pucheng. Any clips or mention of the demonstrations have been largely censored from Chinese social media, as is usually the case for incidents deemed sensitive by authorities.

But several videos have been leaked out of China and posted on X.

The BBC has confirmed these videos were filmed at the Pucheng Vocational Education Centre, and found no earlier versions online prior to the reported outbreak of the protests over the past few days.

When contacted by the BBC, a representative from the publicity department of the Pucheng government denied there had been protests. There was no answer when we rang an official handling media queries.

In a statement released earlier this week, local authorities said that the teenager surnamed Dang was a third-year student at the education centre in Pucheng.

Prior to his death, Dang had been woken up in the night by other students chatting in his dormitory, their statement said. He got into an argument and altercation with a boy, which was resolved by a school official.

Later that night, his body was found by another student at the foot of the dormitory block.

The statement described it as “an accident where a student fell from a height at school”. It added that the police had conducted investigations and an autopsy, and “at present exclude it as a criminal case”.

But allegations have swirled online for days that there was more to the story and that the school and authorities were hiding the truth. One account claimed, without proof, that Dang killed himself after he was bullied by the boy he’d fought with earlier.

Unverified remarks from his family have been circulating, alleging that the injuries on Dang’s body were inconsistent with the authorities’ version of events and that they were not allowed to examine his body for long.

The allegations appeared to have incensed many in Pucheng, sparking protests that drew at least hundreds of people.

Bullying has become a highly sensitive topic in China in recent years, with past cases of student deaths triggering protests. Last month, a Chinese court handed out lengthy jail sentences to two teenagers who murdered a classmate.

There are also videos posted on X on Monday, which the BBC has confirmed were filmed at the Pucheng Vocational Education Centre, showing people mourning the teenager’s death. They placed flowers and offerings at the entrance of the school, and conducted a traditional mourning ritual by throwing pieces of paper from the rooftop of a school building.

Other videos circulating online appear to show demonstrators, many of them young, storming a building and clashing with police while shouting “give us the truth”.

One verified clip shows a school official confronted by shouting protesters who shove him around. Others show destroyed offices in the compound, and protesters pushing down a barricade at the school entrance.

Another show protesters hurling objects such as traffic cones at groups of retreating police; and officers tackling and detaining people while beating them with batons. Some protesters are seen with blood on their heads and faces.

There is little information on what happened next, but reports on social media suggest a much larger police presence in Pucheng in recent days with no more reports of demonstrations.

Authorities have also urged the public not to “create rumours, believe in rumours, or spread rumours”.

A small-time Chinese actor had been missing for two days in Thailand when his girlfriend decided to ask the internet for help.

“We have no choice but to borrow the power of the internet to amplify our voices,” Wang Xing’s girlfriend wrote on the Chinese social media platform Weibo on 5 January.

The plea went viral after it was shared by some of China’s biggest celebrities, including singer Lay Zhang and actor Qin Lan.

Wang, 31, had the country’s attention – as well as that of his government.

On 7 January, Wang was rescued from a scam centre across the border, in Myanmar – news met with a wave of relief.

But the swift yet mysterious rescue has also led to questions about the fate of those who remain trapped inside the scam centres. The case is a grim reminder of the thriving criminal businesses that still entrap hundreds of thousands of people, forcing them in to cybercrime.

Families of Chinese nationals who may be being held in one of these compounds have started a petition urging their government to help them too. The petition document is shared online for anyone to fill in cases of their missing ones. The number of cases has already climbed to more than 600 from the initial 174, and is still increasing.

Wang told the police that there were around 50 Chinese nationals held in the same place as him alone.

“We are desperate to know if the remaining Chinese nationals [who were] with him have been rescued,” reads one top-liked comment on Weibo.

“Other people’s lives are also lives.”

Wang went missing on 3 January in the Thai border city of Mae Sot, which has become a hub for trafficking people into Myanmar.

He had flown to Bangkok for an acting job offered to him on WeChat. The person claimed to represent a major Thai entertainment company, according to Thai police.

The actor later told reporters that he had been on a shoot in Thailand around 2018 and did not suspect this was any different. But he was picked up in a car and taken to Myanmar, where his head was shaved and he was forced to undergo training on how to scam people on phone calls.

His girlfriend wrote on Weibo that she and his brother tried to track him down and get police involved, but “there had been little results”: Chinese police had yet to register a case, while the embassy in Thailand had simply advised Wang’s family to approach the police in Mae Sot.

But as discussions of Wang’s whereabouts grew louder on Chinese social media, authorities began to act. The case was finally registered, and the embassy told the media they had attached great importance to the case.

The next day, Thai and Chinese officials announced that Wang had been rescued.

His first public appearance was alongside Thai police, but he said little, leaving officials to explain what happened.

Details of the rescue itself have been scant. Officials have not even revealed which scam centre he had been in as conflicting versions of the story spread.

One reason could be that withholding more information was part of the deal that led to his release, according to a source who has previously rescued people from scam centres who did not wish to be named.

He told the BBC that these scam centres are keen to avoid attention. That meant releasing Wang was the better option, compared to risking the whole operation because of the attention his disappearance was drawing.

Beijing too wanted to end the discussion about Wang’s case. It wants its citizens to believe it has done enough and that scam centres along its border are no longer an issue.

A joint operation by China and ethnic insurgent groups back in 2023 did seek to shut down scam centres in Myanmar’s Shan State.

But those on the ground — NGOs and independent rescuers—tell the BBC the scams are still growing, with construction expanding into even more remote regions.

These days, the area along the border with Thailand is the main centre for international scams in Myanmar, taking advantage of partnerships with the various armed groups competing for power there.

New scam compounds have been built south of the town of Myawaddy, close to the Thai border, where the worst cases of forced labour and other abuses are now being reported.

This has put huge pressure on Thailand, whose economy relies heavily on tourism, especially from China.

Wang’s case has had some Chinese wondering about how safe it is to travel to Thailand. “It feels like after this Wang Xing incident, there will be fewer people going to South East Asia, including Thailand,” reads a popular Weibo post.

His rescue may well be a success for Thai officials and a win for Beijing, but it has not ended the discussion, or the spotlight on scam compounds.

On Thursday, lines from a recent interview of his were trending on Weibo: “actor Wang Xing claims he could not eat much food in Myanmar and did not have time to use the toilet”.

His brief disappearance has only exposed how common the danger has become: others in the Chinese film industry have since shared their own accounts of being duped by scammers offering them jobs in Thailand.

Thai police are reported to be now investigating the case of another Chinese model disappeared at Thai-Myanmar border, after he was promised work in Thailand.

The China Federation of Radio and Television Association said in a statement Tuesday that “many actors” have gone abroad on fake promises of film shoots, and as a result suffered “serious damage to their personal and financial security”.

“We are very concerned about this,” the statement said.

“Please save [Wang] from danger and bring to life the story of No More Bets,” Wang’s girlfriend urged in her Weibo post – a reference to the protagonists of the 2023 movie being rescued after they were trafficked into scam centres.

Wang – like those in the film – is among a lucky minority.

Hundreds of thousands of victims from China, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore remain stuck in sprawling scam compounds with little hope of rescue.

But ahead of the Lunar New Year, when throngs of Chinese tourists are expected to visit Thailand, the Thai government is eager to emphasise that the country is a safe destination. Thai police also insist that no Thais were involved in Wang’s trafficking.

Wang, freshly freed from his ordeal, has no worries about returning to Thailand, a police officer told reporters on Wednesday.

In fact, he added, Wang has promised to come back.

Indian cricket fans are still reeling from the team’s crushing 1-3 defeat in the five-match Test series against Australia.

Once dominant in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, with historic victories over the mighty Australians over the past decade, the tourists fell short, exposing vulnerabilities in a side long thought invincible.

The series highlighted glaring issues – Indian batters struggled, and Jasprit Bumrah was the lone bowler to trouble Australia.

The loss not only cost India the coveted Border-Gavaskar Trophy but also denied them a spot in the World Test Championship (WTC) final, breaking their streak of back-to-back appearances in 2021 and 2023, where they lost to New Zealand and Australia respectively.

India’s recent form is troubling – they have lost six of their last eight Tests, including a shocking 0-3 home whitewash against New Zealand.

The defeats have raised questions about the team’s depth, the future of key players like captain Rohit Sharma and former skipper Virat Kohli, and their ability to rebuild.

With a team in transition and stalwarts fading, Indian Test cricket faces pressing challenges to sustain its legacy in a rapidly evolving landscape.

India’s next red-ball challenge is a five-Test series in England starting July. England’s conditions, known for dramatic shifts even within a session, will test players’ technique, skills and adaptability to the limit.

India hasn’t won a series in England since 2007, with only two prior victories (1971, 1986), highlighting the daunting task ahead. Adding to the pressure, recent failures against New Zealand and Australia leave selectors grappling with tough decisions on player selection and team combinations for this critical campaign.

The biggest headache for selectors is the form of batting stalwarts Sharma and Kohli after dismal outings in Australia and earlier against New Zealand.

Sharma managed just 31 runs in three Tests in Australia, with his poor form seeing him dropping himself for the final game. Kohli fared slightly better with 190 runs in nine innings, but 100 runs of his total came in one knock. His dismissals followed a pattern – caught in the slips or behind the stumps – pointing to a glaring technical flaw or mental fatigue under pressure.

Since January 2024, Sharma has managed just 619 runs in 16 Tests with one century. Kohli’s numbers are worse over time – averaging 32 in Tests since 2020 with only two centuries.

Once a late-blooming Test opener and blazing match-winner, Sharma now struggles to find his ideal batting position. Meanwhile, Kohli’s surreal decline – after a decade of dominance and swagger- has left cricket’s former titan in an extended slump.

From Sunil Gavaskar to Sachin Tendulkar to Kohli, the baton of Indian batting greatness has passed seamlessly. But a worthy successor to Kohli remains elusive.

KL Rahul has the class but lacks the hunger for consistent big scores. Rishabh Pant is a thrilling maverick, equally capable of winning or losing a match. Shubman Gill, touted as the next Big Thing, has struggled overseas despite his undeniable pedigree and needs careful nurturing.

Punjab’s young left-hander Abhishek Sharma, mentored by Yuvraj Singh, is highly rated, while Nitish Kumar Reddy impressed on debut in Australia with his fearless performances in tough situations.

Yashasvi Jaiswal, India’s top Test run-scorer in Australia this series, has been the standout among young batsmen. With panache, patience, technical assurance, and explosive strokes, he looks poised to become Kohli’s successor as the team’s talisman.

India’s talent pool is brimming across departments. Jasprit Bumrah, with his 32-wicket haul against Australia, has cemented his status as a fast-bowling colossus. Backed by Mohammed Shami, Mohammed Siraj, and a dozen promising quicks, India boasts a formidable pace arsenal for all formats.

That said, Bumrah is a once-in-a-generation talent and needs careful workload management. Overburdening him, as in the Australia series, risks breakdowns that could impede the attack. Shami, after lengthy stints in rehab, also requires careful handling. Together, they form one of modern cricket’s most formidable pace pairs.

With Ravichandran Ashwin’s sudden retirement and Ravindra Jadeja’s lukewarm showing in Australia, India’s spin depth looks thin. However, Washington Sundar has shown promise on home pitches, while young spinners Ravi Bishnoi and Tanush Kotian, who joined the squad mid-series in Australia, are knocking on the doors of Test cricket.

Smarting from recent losses to New Zealand and Australia, the Indian cricket board is moving swiftly to usher in a transition. Selectors have been directed to shortlist potential Test players from the second round of the domestic Ranji Trophy, resuming 23 January.

All players, including Sharma and Kohli, are likely to be asked to play domestic cricket – a move that could help them regain form.

Managing a team in transition poses complex challenges requiring patience, empathy, and clear vision. Knee-jerk reactions or external pressure could worsen the situation instead of providing solutions.

Whether Sharma and Kohli can overcome their crisis remains to be seen, but India’s wealth of talent should lift the current gloom surrounding Indian cricket.

It’s worth recalling that in 2011, after winning the ODI World Cup, India was whitewashed 4-0 in Test series against England and Australia. Cricket seemed to hit rock bottom.

But, within months, a revival led by young talents like Kohli, Sharma, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Jadeja, Ashwin, and others saw India rise to become the world’s top team across formats, holding that position for nearly a decade.

Elon Musk took his endorsement of Germany’s far-right party to the next level on Thursday, hosting a live chat with its frontwoman, Alice Weidel.

The 74-minute conversation ranged across energy policy, German bureaucracy, Adolf Hitler, Mars and the meaning of life.

The world’s richest man unequivocally urged Germans to back Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in forthcoming elections.

It’s the tech billionaire’s latest, controversial foray into European politics.

There’d been a considerable build-up to this discussion as Elon Musk faced accusations of meddling in Germany’s snap election.

But the interview, conducted in English, was arguably as much a chance for the AfD to reach international audiences via Musk’s X platform.

Knowing of his close relationship with Donald Trump, Alice Weidel made sure to express her support for the US president-elect and his team.

She insisted her party was “conservative” and “libertarian” but had been “negatively framed” by mainstream media as extremist.

Sections of the AfD have been officially classed as right-wing extremist by German authorities.

A BBC News investigation last year found connections between some party figures and far-right networks, while one leading light on the party’s hard right, Björn Höcke, was fined last year for using a banned Nazi phrase – though he denied doing so knowingly.

During the conversation, Weidel declared that Hitler had in fact been a “communist”, despite the notable anti-communism of the Nazi leader, who invaded the Soviet Union.

“He wasn’t a conservative,” she said. “He wasn’t a libertarian. He was this communist, socialist guy.”

She also described Hitler as an “antisemitic socialist”.

On other matters, she and Musk chimed – and at times giggled – over Germany’s infamous bureaucracy, its “crazy” abandonment of nuclear power, the need for tax cuts, free speech and “wokeness”.

In a sometimes stilted and, at times, surprising conversation, one surreal moment came when Weidel asked Mr Musk if he believed in God.

The reply – for those who wish to know – was that he’s open to the idea as he seeks to “understand the universe as much as possible”.

Despite all the anticipation that exchange, surely, had not been on many people’s bingo card.

The AfD, which also opposes Berlin’s weapons aid to Ukraine, is polling second in Germany, with a snap federal election scheduled for 23 February.

However, it won’t be able to take power as other parties won’t work with it.

That hasn’t stopped Elon Musk from hailing Weidel as the “leading candidate to run Germany”.

He’s justified his intervention by citing his significant investments in the country – notably a huge Tesla plant just outside Berlin.

And he’s dismissed characterisation of the AfD as far-right while previously labelling the social democratic Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, a “fool”.

Scholz, whose chances of retaining the chancellery look remote, later insisted that he was “staying cool” about Elon Musk’s attacks.

TikTok will appear before the US Supreme Court on Friday in a last-ditch effort to overturn a ban, in a case testing the limits of national security and free speech.

The popular social media platform is challenging a law passed last year ordering the firm to be split from its Chinese owner or be blocked from the US by 19 January.

The US government is arguing that without a sale, TikTok could be used by China as a tool for spying and political manipulation.

But TikTok rejects that claim, arguing it has been unfairly targeted and the measure violates the free speech of its some 170 million American users.

Lower courts have sided with the government, but the case was complicated last month when President-elect Donald Trump weighed in on the dispute and asked for the enforcement of the law to be paused to grant him time to work out a deal.

Analysts have said it was not clear what the Supreme Court will decide, but that reversing the prior ruling – even with a future president’s blessing – would be unusual.

“When you have a real government interest pitted against a real constitutional value, it ends up being a very close case,” said Cardozo School of Law professor Saurabh Vishnubhakat.

“But in such close cases, the government often gets the benefit of the doubt.”

A decision by Supreme Court could be made within days.

Congress passed the law against TikTok last year with support from both the Democratic and Republican parties. The moment marked the culmination of years of concern about the wildly popular platform, which is known for its viral videos and traction among young people.

The legislation does not forbid use of the app, but would require tech giants such as Apple and Google to stop offering it and inhibit updates, which analysts suggest would kill it over time.

TikTok is already banned from government devices in many countries, including in the UK. It faces more complete bans in some countries, including India.

The US argues that TikTok is a “grave” threat because the Chinese government could coerce its owner, ByteDance, to turn over user data or manipulate what it shows users to serve Chinese interests.

Last December, a three-judge appeals court decision upheld the law, noting China’s record of acting through private companies and saying the measure was justified as “part of a broader effort to counter a well-substantiated national security threat posed” by the country.

TikTok has repeatedly denied any potential influence by the Chinese Communist Party and has said the law violates the First Amendment free speech rights of its users.

It has asked the Supreme Court to strike down the law as unconstitutional, or order its enforcement to be halted to enable a review of the legislation, which it said was based on “inaccurate, flawed and hypothetical information”.

Trump is set to take office the day after the law would come into force.

He had called for banning the app in the US during his first term, but changed his tune on the campaign trail.

The brief that Trump’s lawyers filed late last month did not take a position on legal dispute, but said the case presented “unprecedented, novel, and difficult tension between free-speech rights on one side, and foreign policy and national-security concerns on the other”.

Noting his election win, it said Trump “opposes banning TikTok” and “seeks the ability to resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office”.

The filing came less than two weeks after Trump met TikTok’s boss at Mar-a-Lago.

One of the president-elect’s major donors, Jeff Yass of Susequehanna International Group, is a big stakeholder in the company.

However, Trump’s nominee to serve as secretary of state, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, is in favour of banning the platform.

Investors who have expressed interest in buying the TikTok include Trump’s former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and former LA Dodgers owner Frank McCourt.

Attorney Peter Choharis, who is part of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank in Washington, which filed its own brief supporting the US government’s case, said it was hard to predict what the court – which has a conservative majority – would do, noting that several recent court decisions have overturned longstanding precedent.

But he said even if Trump was granted the opportunity to try to work out a deal, he expected a ban eventually.

“I don’t see any president, including future President Trump, being able to resolve this in a way that’s satisfactory for US national security because I don’t think ByteDance will agree to it,” he said.

The prospect of losing TikTok in the US has prompted outcry from many users, some of whom filed their own legal action last year.

In their filing they said the decision that TikTok could be shuttered “because ideas on that platform might persuade Americans of one thing or another – even of something potentially harmful to our democracy – is utterly antithetical to the First Amendment”.

Other groups weighing in on the dispute include the American Civil Liberties Union and Freedom of the Press Foundation, which argued that the US had failed to present “credible evidence of ongoing or imminent harm” caused by the social media app.

Mr Choharis said the government had a right to take measures to defend itself, arguing that the fight was not “about speech” or “content” but about the Chinese government’s role.

“It’s about control and how the Chinese Communist Party specifically, and the Chinese government more generally, pursue strategic aims using many internet firms and especially social media companies – specifically including TikTok,” he said.

Copenhagen’s gloomy January weather matches the mood among Denmark’s politicians and business leaders.

“We take this situation very, very seriously,” said Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen of Donald Trump’s threats to acquire Greenland – and punish Denmark with high tariffs if it stands in the way.

But, he added, the government had “no ambition whatsoever to escalate some war of words.”

Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen downplayed Trump’s own suggestion that the US might use military force to seize Greenland. “I don’t have the fantasy to imagine that it’ll ever get to that,” she told Danish TV.

And Lars Sandahl Sorensen, CEO of Danish Industry, also said there was “every reason to stay calm… no-one has any interest in a trade war.”

But behind the scenes, hastily organised high-level meetings have been taking place in Copenhagen all week, a reflection of the shock caused by Trump’s remarks.

Greenland PM Mute Egede flew in to meet both the prime minister and King Frederik X on Wednesday.

And on Thursday night, party leaders from across the political spectrum gathered for an extraordinary meeting on the crisis with Mette Frederiksen in Denmark’s parliament.

Faced with what many in Denmark are calling Trump’s “provocation,” Frederiksen has broadly attempted to strike a conciliatory tone, repeatedly referring to the US as “Denmark’s closest partner”.

It was “only natural” that the US was preoccupied by the Arctic and Greenland, she added.

Yet she also said that any decision on Greenland’s future should be up to its people alone: “Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders… and it’s the Greenlanders themselves who have to define their future.”

Her cautious approach is twofold.

On the one hand, Frederiksen is keen to avoid escalating the situation. She’s been burned before, in 2019, when Trump cancelled a trip to Denmark after she said his proposal to buy Greenland was “absurd”.

“Back then he only had one more year in office, then things went back to normal,” veteran political journalist Erik Holstein told the BBC . “But maybe this is the new normal.”

But Frederiksen’s comments also speak to the Danish resolve not to meddle in the internal affairs of Greenland – an autonomous territory with its own parliament and whose population is increasingly leaning towards independence.

“She should’ve been much clearer in rejecting the idea,” said opposition MP Rasmus Jarlov.

“This level of disrespect from the coming US president towards very, very loyal allies and friends is record-setting,” he told the BBC, although he admitted Trump’s forcefulness had “surprised everybody.”

The conservative MP believed Frederiksen’s insistence that “only Greenland… can decide and define Greenland’s future” placed too much pressure on the island’s inhabitants. “It would’ve been prudent and clever to stand behind Greenland and just clearly state that Denmark doesn’t want [a US takeover].”

The Greenland question is a delicate one for Denmark, whose prime minister officially apologised only recently for spearheading a 1950s social experiment which saw Inuit children removed from their families to be re-educated as “model Danes”.

Last week, Greenland’s leader said the territory should free itself from “the shackles of colonialism.”

By doing so he tapped into growing nationalist sentiment, fuelled by interest among Greenland’s younger generations in the indigenous culture and history of the Inuit.

Most commentators now expect a successful independence referendum in the near future. While for many it would be seen as a victory, it could also usher in a new set of problems, as 60% of Greenland’s economy is dependent on Denmark.

An independent Greenland “would need to make choices,” said Karsten Honge. The Social Democrat MP now fears his preferred option of a new Commonwealth-style pact “based on equality and democracy” is unlikely to come about.

Sitting in his parliamentary office decorated with poems and drawings depicting scenes of Inuit life, Honge said Greenland would need to decide “how much it values independence”. It could sever ties with Denmark and turn to the US, Honge said, “but if you treasure independence then that doesn’t make sense.”

Opposition MP Jarlov argues that while there is no point in forcing Greenland to be part of Denmark, “it is very close to being an independent country already”.

Its capital Nuuk is self-governed, but relies on Copenhagen for management of currency, foreign relations and defence – as well as substantial subsidies.

“Greenland today has more independence than Denmark has from the EU,” Jarlov added. “So I hope they think things through.”

As Mette Frederiksen has the awkward task of responding firmly while not offending Greenland or the US, the staunchest rebuttal to Trump’s comments so far has come from outside Denmark.

The principle of the inviolability of borders “applies to every country… no matter whether it’s a very small one or a very powerful one,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz warned, while French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said the EU would not let other nations “attack its sovereign borders”.

Their comments gave away the deep concern within the EU about how to handle the upcoming Trump presidency. “This is not just very serious for Greenland and Denmark – it is serious to the whole world and to Europe as a whole,” MP Karsten Honge said.

“Imagine a world – which we may be facing in just a few weeks – where international agreements don’t exist. That would shake everything up, and Denmark would just be a small part of it.”

The Danish trade sector has similarly been engulfed by deep nervousness after Trump said he would “tariff Denmark at a very high level” if it refused to give up Greenland to the US.

A 2024 Danish Industry study showed that Denmark’s GDP would fall by three points if the US imposed 10% tariffs on imports from the EU to the US as part of a global trade war.

Singling out Danish products from the influx of EU goods would be near-impossible for the US, and would almost certainly result in retaliatory measures from the EU. But trade industry professionals are taking few chances, and in Denmark as elsewhere on the continent huge amounts of resources are being spent internally to plan for potential outcomes of Donald Trump’s second term in the White House.

As his inauguration approaches, Danes are preparing as they can to weather the storm. There is guarded hope that the president-elect could soon shift his focus to grievances towards other EU partners, and that the Greenland question could be temporarily shelved.

But the disquiet brought on by Trump’s refusal to rule out military intervention to seize Greenland remains.

Karsten Honge said Denmark would have suffer whatever decision the US takes.

“They just need to send a small battleship to travel down the Greenland coast and send a polite letter to Denmark,” he said, only partly in jest.

“The last sentence would be: well, Denmark, what you gonna do about it?

“That’s the new reality with regards to Trump.”

US aviation giant Boeing has told BBC News it is donating $1m (£812,600) to an inauguration fund for President-elect Donald Trump.

Google has also confirmed that it has made a similar donation as the two firms join a growing list of major American companies contributing to the fund.

The list also includes oil producer Chevron and technology giants Meta, Amazon and Uber.

Trump’s inauguration, marking the start of his second term in the White House, is set to take place on 20 January.

“We are pleased to continue Boeing’s bipartisan tradition of supporting US Presidential Inaugural Committees,” Boeing said.

The company added that it has made similar donations to each of the past three presidential inauguration funds.

Boeing is working to recover from a safety and quality control crisis, as well as dealing with the losses from a strike last year.

The company is also building the next presidential aircraft, known as Air Force One. The two jets are expected to come into service as early as next year.

During his first term as president, Trump forced the plane maker to renegotiate its contract, calling the initial deal too expensive.

Google became the latest big tech firm to donate to the fund, following similar announcements by Meta and Amazon. It also said it will stream the event around the world.

“Google is pleased to support the 2025 inauguration, with a livestream on YouTube and a direct link on our homepage,” said Karan Bhatia, Google’s global head of government affairs and public policy.

Car companies Ford, General Motors and Toyota have also donated a $1m each to the inaugural committee.

In the energy industry, Chevron confirmed that it has made a donation to the fund but declined to say how much.

“Chevron has a long tradition of celebrating democracy by supporting the inaugural committees of both parties. We are proud to be doing so again this year,” said Bill Turene, Chevron’s manager of global media relations.

The US government has succeeded in temporarily blocking the accused mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks from pleading guilty amid a dispute over the terms of a pre-trial agreement.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two co-defendants reached deals last summer to plead guilty to all charges in exchange for not facing a death penalty trial.

In a filing with a federal appeals court, the government argued that it and the American people would be irreparably harmed if the pleas were accepted.

A three-judge panel said they needed more time to consider the case and put the proceedings on hold. They stressed that the delay “should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits” of the case.

It comes after a military judge and appeals panel rejected a previous move by Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin to revoke the agreements, which had been signed by a senior official he appointed.

Almost 3,000 people were killed in the 11 September 2001 attacks, when hijackers seized passenger planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside of Washington. Another plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back.

• Why is US trying to stop ‘9/11 mastermind’ pleading guilty?

The three men have been in US custody for over 20 years and the pre-trial hearings in the case have lasted for more than a decade.

Arguments have focused on whether evidence has been tainted by torture the defendants faced in CIA custody after their arrests.

Mohammed was subjected to simulated drowning, or “waterboarding”, 183 times while held in secret CIA prisons following his arrest in 2003. Other so-called “advanced interrogation techniques” included sleep deprivation and forced nudity.

Families of some of those killed in the 9/11 attacks had criticised the deals for being too lenient or lacking transparency, while others saw them as a way of moving the complex and long-running case forward.

Those who had travelled to the US naval base of Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to watch Mohammed plead guilty were speaking to journalists when news of the delay was announced.

“The US government failed the 9/11 families again. They had the chance to do the right thing and decided not to,” said Tom Resta, whose brother, sister-in-law and their unborn child were killed in the attacks.

The government had argued that going ahead with the deals would mean it was denied the opportunity to “seek capital punishment against three men charged with a heinous act of mass murder that caused the death of thousands of people and shocked the nation and the world”.

“A short delay to allow this Court to weigh the merits of the government’s request in this momentous case will not materially harm the respondents,” it said.

In their response, Mohammed’s team said the agreement offered “the first opportunity for genuine closure” in almost a quarter of a century. It said the plea negotiations, which happened over two years, had “directly involved the White House”.

In its decision on Thursday evening, the federal appeals court said its decision was aimed at giving the judges time to receive a full briefing and hear arguments “on an expedited basis”.

The delay means the matter will now fall to the incoming Trump administration.

The full details of the deals reached with Mohammed and two of his co-defendants have not been released.

In a court hearing in Guantanamo on Wednesday, his legal team confirmed that he had agreed to plead guilty to all charges.

If the deals are upheld and the pleas accepted by the court, the next steps would be appointing a military jury, known as a panel, to hear evidence at a sentencing hearing.

In court on Wednesday, this was described by lawyers as a form of public trial, where survivors and family members of those killed would be given the opportunity to give statements.

Under the agreement, the families would also be able to pose questions to Mohammed, who would be required to “answer their questions fully and truthfully”, lawyers say.

The US Supreme Court has rejected President-elect Donald Trump’s last-minute bid to halt his sentencing on Friday in the criminal hush-money case.

Trump had urged the top court to consider whether he was entitled to an automatic stay of his sentencing, but the justices rejected the application by 5-4.

Trump was found guilty of falsifying records to disguise reimbursements for a $130,000 hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels as legal expenses in 2016.

Justice Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the case, has indicated he will not consider a jail term for Trump.

Reacting on Thursday evening, the president-elect told reporters the case was a “disgrace”, although the Supreme Court decision was a “fair decision, actually.”

“It’s a judge that shouldn’t have been on the case,” he said, apparently referring to Justice Merchan, and adding “they can have fun with their political opponent”.

Two of the Supreme Court’s conservative justices – John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett – joined the three liberals to deny Trump’s request for a delay.

The remaining four judges – Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh – would have allowed Trump’s bid to postpone sentencing.

Alito has been criticised for speaking to Trump just a day before the decision in a phone call when the top judge recommended one of his former law clerks for a job with the incoming president’s administration.

Three lower New York courts had rejected Trump’s delay attempt before the Supreme Court made its final decision on Thursday evening to let the sentencing proceed as scheduled.

The justices denied Trump’s petition because they believed his concerns could be addressed during an appeal.

They also wrote that the burden of attending a sentencing was “insubstantial”.

Trump’s lawyers had also asked the Supreme Court to consider whether presidents-elect had immunity from criminal prosecution.

Manhattan prosecutors had urged the Supreme Court to reject Trump’s petition, arguing there was a “compelling public interest” in holding the sentencing and that there was “no basis for such an intervention”.

Following the jury’s guilty verdict in May 2024, Trump was initially set to be sentenced in July, but his lawyers successfully persuaded Justice Merchan to delay the sentencing on three separate occasions.

Last week, Justice Merchan declared the sentencing would move forward on 10 January, just days before Trump is sworn in again as president.

The days since have seen a volley of appeals and court filings from Trump’s attorneys, trying to stave off the sentencing.

But in swift succession, New York courts rejected the bids. Finally on Wednesday, Trump’s lawyers petitioned the Supreme Court to intervene.

The court should stay the proceedings “to prevent grave injustice and harm to the institution of the Presidency and the operations of the federal government”, they wrote.

Last year, the bench’s 6-3 conservative majority handed Trump a major victory, when they ruled that US presidents had immunity from criminal prosecution for “official acts” undertaken in office.

That decision gutted a federal prosecution against Trump on charges he illegally interfered in the 2020 election outcome, which he denied and pleaded not guilty.

But since his re-election, Trump’s lawyers have tried to persuade a series of judges that those presidential immunity protections should also apply to a president-elect in this Manhattan criminal case.

Manhattan prosecutors argued in their own brief to the Supreme Court that Trump’s “extraordinary immunity claim is unsupported by any decision from any court”.

“It is axiomatic that there is only one President at a time,” the prosecutors wrote.

Separately, a group of former public officials and legal scholars filed an amicus brief – effectively a letter of support – to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to reject Trump’s “attempt to avoid accountability”.

In another legal setback for Trump on Thursday, a federal appeals court in Georgia rejected a bid to block the release of a portion of special counsel Jack Smith’s report into Trump’s alleged plot to prevent the transfer of power to Joe Biden after the 2020 election.

Lawyers for Walt Nauta, a former aide, and former Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos de Oliveira had argued that the release would unfairly prejudice potential future criminal cases against them.

At least five different wildfires are still raging around north west Los Angeles, with the latest one engulfing the iconic Hollywood Hills.

Five people are confirmed dead, with more than 130,000 evacuated in what have become the most destructive wildfires in LA’s history.

California fire chief David Acuna said there was “zero progress” in containing the fires because of high winds and dry conditions.

Photographers have captured dramatic scenes across the city as firefighters continue to work to control the blazes, which first erupted on Tuesday.

Climate change has made the grasses and shrubs that are fuelling the Los Angeles fires more vulnerable to burning, scientists say.

Rapid swings between dry and wet conditions in the region in recent years have created a massive amount of tinder-dry vegetation that is ready to ignite.

Decades of drought in California were followed by extremely heavy rainfall for two years in 2022 and 2023, but that then flipped again to very dry conditions in the autumn and winter of 2024.

Scientists say in a new study that climate change has boosted what they call these “whiplash” conditions globally by 31-66% since the middle of the 20th Century.

The wildfires have spread across parts of the Los Angeles area, leading to at least five deaths, burning down hundreds of buildings, and prompting evacuation orders for more than 179,000 people.

“This whiplash sequence in California has increased fire risk twofold,” said lead author Daniel Swain from UCLA.

“First, by greatly increasing the growth of flammable grass and brush in the months leading up to fire season, and then by drying it out to exceptionally high levels with the extreme dryness and warmth that followed.”

The researchers say that with every degree of warming the atmosphere is able to evaporate, absorb and release 7% more water.

This “expanding atmospheric sponge” as the scientists term it, not only leads to flooding when things are wetter, but it pulls extra moisture out of the plants and soils when the drier conditions set in.

• Follow live: New wildfire sweeps through Hollywood Hills
• What is climate change? A really simple guide
• How climate change worsens heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and floods

Other researchers said the new paper underlined that the fact that the type of whiplash volatility was an important element in driving both floods and fires.

“It’s clear from the devastation caused by the current wildfires in LA that rapid changes in the volatility of precipitation and evaporation can have a large impact,” said Prof Sir Brian Hoskins, Chair of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London.

“It’s also interesting to see the paper’s findings that climate models likely under-estimate the changes seen so far, but even those models suggest a doubling of the volatility for a global temperature warming of 3C – now looking increasingly likely we’ll reach.”

The new study adds to the growing body of evidence that a warmer climate has altered the background conditions to the raging wildfires currently burning around Los Angeles.

Much of the Western US including California experienced a decades-long drought that ended just two years ago.

The resulting wet conditions since then have seen the rapid growth of shrubs, grasses and trees, the perfect fuel for fires.

However, last summer was very hot and was followed by dry autumn and winter season with almost no rain – downtown Los Angeles has only received 0.16 inches of rain since October, more than four inches below average.

Researchers believe that a warming world is increasing the conditions that are conducive to wildland fire, including low relative humidity.

These “fire weather” days are increasing in many parts of the world, with climate change making these conditions more severe and the fire season lasting longer in many parts of the world, scientists have shown.

In California, the situation has been made worse by the topography with fires burning more intensely and moving more rapidly in steep terrain.

This area of California is also dominated by naturally very fire-prone shrub vegetation.

“While fires are common and natural in this region, California has seen some of the most significant increases in the length and extremity of the fire weather season globally in recent decades, driven largely climate change,” said Professor Stefan Doerr, Director of the Centre for Wildfire Research, at Swansea University.

“That said, it is too early to say to what degree climate change has made these specific fires more extreme. This will need to be evaluated in a more detailed attribution analysis.”

Sign up for our Future Earth newsletter to get exclusive insight on the latest climate and environment news from the BBC’s Climate Editor Justin Rowlatt, delivered to your inbox every week. Outside the UK? Sign up to our international newsletter here.

Current and former presidents and vice-presidents gathered at Washington National Cathedral on Thursday for the funeral service of former US President Jimmy Carter, who died at the age of 100 last week.

Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W Bush and Bill Clinton were seated together in the first rows of pews.

Vice-President Kamala Harris, who lost the presidential election to Trump in November, and her predecessors Mike Pence and Al Gore were also among the select group of politicians and members of the public paying their respects to Carter.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – who lost to Trump in the 2016 presidential election – was also seated with her husband.

In his eulogy, Joe Biden repeatedly praised Carter’s “character” and lauded his establishment of a “model post-presidency, by making a powerful difference as a private citizen in America”.

“To make every minute of our time on earth count, that’s the very definition of a good life,” Biden says, encouraging people to study the power of Carter’s example.

The two men had known each other for decades. In his comments, Biden recalled how he was the first senator to endorse Carter’s presidential bid.

Photographers captured Trump and Obama – who have politically clashed for the better part of a decade – smiling and chatting before the service began.

Former and incoming first lady Melania Trump joined her husband for the service but Michelle Obama was not in attendance.

Sources close to former first lady told US media that she had a “scheduling conflict” and was still in Hawaii, where Barack Obama spent much of his childhood and where the Obama family usually spends their Christmas holidays.

Trump and his former vice-president, Mike Pence, shook hands as guests took their seats.

The two men fell out at the end of Trump’s presidency, when Pence presided over the certification of Biden’s presidential win despite pressure from Trump not to do so.

A riotous mob stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 to try and stop the certification, with some calling for Pence’s hanging.

He then ran against Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination and declined to endorse him when he won.

Vice-President-elect JD Vance was also there, as were lawmakers including Georgia Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff and Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders.

The event was also attended by several current and former world leaders and prominent international officials, including Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, the Netherlands’ Princess Mabel of Orange-Nassau and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

At one point, Trudeau appeared to glare at Trump – who was repeatedly referred to him as “Governor Trudeau” in recent weeks and vowed to use “economic force” against Canada.

There was no formality between Trump and Harris, whom he defeated in the 2024 election.

Though seated near each other, the two politicians did not shake hands after entering the church. Trump was spotted staring at Harris as she took her seat.

Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, Harris’s husband, later shook hands with Trump as Harris spoke to Bush.

From the pulpit, speaker after speaker praised Carter’s commitment to public service before and after his time in office.

Steve Ford, son of former president Gerald Ford, read aloud a eulogy his late father wrote about Carter.

The two men had made a pact to speak at each other’s funerals – an oath Carter himself upheld when Ford died in 2007.

“By fate, for a brief season, Jimmy Carter and I were rivals,” President Ford’s eulogy read. But later, “it led to the most enduring of friendships”.

It had all the hallmarks of a cold-blooded, professional assassination.

Next to a well-known temple in Bangkok’s historic royal quarter a man is seen on a security camera video parking his motorbike, removing his helmet, so that his face was clearly visible, and walking calmly across the road.

A few minutes later shots are heard. Another man falls to the ground.

The assassin walks quickly back to his motorbike, appearing to throw something away as he does, and drives off.

The victim was Lim Kimya, a 73-year-old former parliamentarian from the main Cambodian opposition party, the CNRP, which was banned in 2017. He had been hit in the chest by two bullets, according to the Thai police. He had just arrived in Bangkok with his wife on a bus from Cambodia.

A police officer attempted to resuscitate him, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.

“He was courageous, with an independent mind,” Monovithya Kem, daughter of the CNRP leader Kem Sokha, told the BBC.

“No-one but the Cambodian state would have wanted to kill him.”

Lim Kimya had dual Cambodian and French nationality, but chose to stay in Cambodia even after his party was outlawed. The CNRP – Cambodia National Rescue Party – was an amalgamation of two earlier opposition parties, and in 2013 came close to defeating the party of Hun Sen, the self-styled “strongman” who ruled Cambodia for nearly 40 years before handing over to his son Hun Manet in 2023.

After his close call in the 2013 election Hun Sen accused the CNRP of treason, shutting it down and subjecting its members to legal and other forms of harassment. In 2023 Kem Sokha, who had already spent six years under house arrest, was sentenced to 27 years in prison.

High-level political assassinations, though not unknown, are relatively rare in Cambodia; in 2016 a popular critic of Hun Sen, Kem Ley, was gunned down in Phnom Penh and in 2012 environmental activist Chut Wutty was also murdered.

From the security camera video the Thai police have already identified Lim Kimya’s killer as an ex-Thai navy officer, now working as a motorbike taxi driver. Finding him should not be difficult.

Whether the killing is fully investigated, though, is another matter.

In recent years dozens of activists fleeing repression in Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand have been sent back after seeking sanctuary, or in some cases have been killed or disappeared. Human rights groups believe there is an unwritten agreement between the four neighbouring countries to allow each other’s security forces to pursue dissidents over the border.

Last November Thailand sent six Cambodian dissidents, together with a young child, back to Cambodia, where they were immediately jailed. All were recognised by the United Nations as refugees. Earlier in the year Thailand also sent a Vietnamese Montagnard activist back to Vietnam.

In the past Thai anti-monarchy activists have been abducted and disappeared in Laos, it is widely presumed by Thai security forces operating outside their own borders. In 2020 a young Thai activist who had fled to Cambodia, Wanchalerm Satsaksit, was abducted and disappeared, again it is assumed by Thai operatives.

The Cambodian authorities did little to investigate, and announced last year that they had closed the case. It is possible the same will now happen in the case of Lim Kimya.

“Thailand has presided over a de facto ‘swap arrangement’,” says Phil Robertson, director of the Asia Human Rights and Labour Advocates in Thailand.

“Dissidents and refugees are traded for political and economic favours with its neighbouring countries. The growing practice of transnational repression in the Mekong sub-region needs to be stopped in its tracks.”

When the US and UK-educated Hun Manet succeeded his father as Cambodia’s prime minister there was some speculation over whether he might rule with a lighter hand. But opposition figures are still being prosecuted and jailed, and what little space was left for political dissent has been almost completely closed.

From his semi-retirement the figure of Hun Sen still hovers over his son’s administration; he is now calling for a new law to brand anyone trying to replace him as a terrorist.

Thailand, which lobbied hard for, and won, a seat on the UN Human Rights Council this year, will now be under pressure to show that it can bring those behind such a brazen assassination on the streets of its capital to justice.

This week saw Hollywood’s awards season kick off in fine style with the Golden Globes.

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

Quiz compiled by Ben Fell.

Fancy some more? Try last week’s quiz, have a go at something from the archives, or take on the 2024 Quiz of the Year.

Part one: January to March

Part two: April to June

Part three: July to September

Part four: October to December

A surge in cases of the flu-like human metapneumovirus (HMPV) in China has raised fears of another Covid-style pandemic.

Images of hospitals overrun with masked patients have circulated widely on social media, but health experts say HMPV is not like Covid, and point out it has been around for many years.

They say China and other countries are simply experiencing the seasonal increase in HMPV typically seen in winter.

First identified in the Netherlands in 2001, HMPV spreads through direct contact between people, or when someone touches a contaminated surface.

The virus leads to a mild upper respiratory tract infection for most people.

It is usually almost indistinguishable from flu.

Symptoms for most people include a cough, a fever and blocked nose.

The very young, including children under two, are most vulnerable to the virus.

It also poses a greater risk to those with weakened immune systems, including the elderly and those with advanced cancer, according to Hsu Li Yang, an infectious diseases specialist in Singapore.

If infected, a “small but significant proportion” of immunocompromised people can develop more severe disease where the lungs are affected, with wheezing, breathlessness and symptoms of croup.

“Many will require hospital care, with a smaller proportion at risk of dying from the infection,” Dr Hsu said.

Like many respiratory infections, HMPV is most active during late winter and spring.

This is because viruses survive better in the cold, and can pass more easily from one person to another as people spend more time indoors with closed windows.

In northern China, the current HMPV spike coincides with low temperatures that are expected to last until March.

Many other countries in the northern hemisphere – including the US – are also experiencing a growth in rates of HMPV, said Jacqueline Stephens, an epidemiologist at Flinders University in Australia.

“While this is concerning, the increased prevalence is likely the normal seasonal increase seen in winter,” she said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is monitoring rates of flu-like illness across the Northern hemisphere, and said it has not received any reports of unusual outbreak patterns in China or elsewhere.

It said Chinese authorities have confirmed that the health care system is not overwhelmed and there have been no emergency declarations or responses to date.

The incidence of HMPV in the UK has risen steadily since October 2024.

The UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA) does not publish the number of cases recorded.

However its latest data shows the percentage of people testing positive for the disease rose sharply in the third week of December and remained at that higher level the following week.

But the UKHSA says this is completely in line with normal seasonal trends, and the level of the disease being seen in GP surgeries and hospitals is as expected.

Fears of a Covid-style pandemic are overblown, experts say, noting that such events are typically caused by new viruses, which is not the case with HMPV.

The disease is already globally present and has been around for decades. This means people across the world have “some degree of existing immunity due to previous exposure”, Dr Hsu said.

“Almost every child will have at least one infection with HMPV by their fifth birthday and we can expect to go onto to have multiple reinfections throughout life,” said Paul Hunter, a medical professor at University of East Anglia in England.

“I don’t think there are currently any signs of a more serious global issue.”

However, health officials recommend taking sensible precautions to avoid catching HMPV and other respiratory illnesses:

• wearing a mask in crowded places
• avoiding crowds where possible if you are at higher risk of more severe illness
• washing your hands regularly
• disposing of tissues securely

People may also wish to consider getting vaccinated against other respiratory conditions such as the flu.

In the UK, pregnant women and adults aged 75 to 79 are advised to get the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine.

RSV is a common infection that causes coughs and colds, but can sometimes be serious for babies and older adults.

The accused mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks on the US will no longer plead guilty on Friday, after the US government moved to block plea deals reached last year from going ahead.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, often referred to as KSM, was due to deliver his pleas at a war court on the Guantanamo Bay naval base in south-eastern Cuba, where he has been held in a military prison for almost two decades.

Mohammed is Guantanamo’s most notorious detainee and one of the last held at the base.

But a federal appeals court on Thursday evening halted the scheduled proceedings to consider requests from the government to abandon the plea deals for Mohammed and two co-defendants, which it said would cause “irreparable” harm to both it and the public.

A three-judge panel said the delay “should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits”, but was aimed at giving the court time to receive a full briefing and hear arguments “on an expedited basis”.

The delay means that the matter will now fall into the incoming Trump administration.

At a hearing beginning on Friday morning, Mohammed was scheduled to plead guilty to his role in the 11 September 2001 attacks, when hijackers seized passenger planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside of Washington. Another plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back.

Mohammed has been charged with offences including conspiracy and murder, with 2,976 victims listed on the charge sheet.

He has previously said that he planned the “9/11 operation from A-to-Z” – conceiving the idea of training pilots to fly commercial planes into buildings and taking those plans to Osama bin Laden, leader of the militant Islamist group al-Qaeda, in the mid 1990s.

Friday’s hearing was set to happen in a courtroom on the base, where family members of those killed and the press would have been seated in a viewing gallery behind thick glass.

• What happened on 9/11 and who is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

Pre-trial hearings, held at a military court on the naval base, have been going on for more than a decade, complicated by questions over whether torture Mohammed and other defendants faced while in US custody taints the evidence.

Following his arrest in Pakistan in 2003, Mohammed spent three years at secret CIA prisons known as “black sites” where he was subjected to simulated drowning, or “waterboarding”, 183 times, among other so-called “advanced interrogation techniques” that included sleep deprivation and forced nudity.

Karen Greenberg, author of The Least Worst Place: How Guantanamo Became the World’s Most Notorious Prison, says the use of torture has made it “virtually impossible to bring these cases to trial in a way that honors the rule of law and American jurisprudence”.

“It’s apparently impossible to present evidence in these cases without the use of evidence derived from torture. Moreover, the fact that these individuals were tortured adds another level of complexity to the prosecutions,” she says.

The case also falls under the military commissions, which operate under different rules than the traditional US criminal justice system and slow the process down.

The plea deal was struck last summer, following some two years of negotiations.

The full details of the deals reached with Mohammed and two of his co-defendants have not been released.

We do know that a deal means he would not face a death penalty trial.

In a court hearing on Wednesday, his legal team confirmed that he had agreed to plead guilty to all charges. Mohammed did not address the court personally, but engaged with his team as they went over the agreement, making small corrections and changes to wording with the prosecution and the judge.

If the deals are upheld and the pleas are accepted by the court, the next steps would be appointing a military jury, known as a panel, to hear evidence at a sentencing hearing.

In court on Wednesday, this was described by lawyers as a form of public trial, where survivors and family members of those killed would be given the opportunity to give statements.

Under the agreement, the families would also be able to pose questions to Mohammed, who would be required to “answer their questions fully and truthfully”, lawyers say.

Central to the prosecution agreeing to the deals was a guarantee “that we could present all of the evidence that we thought was necessary to establish a historical record of the accused’s involvement in what happened on September 11th,” prosecutor, Clayton G. Trivett Jr., said in court on Wednesday.

Even if the pleas go ahead, it would be many months before these proceedings would begin and a sentence ultimately delivered.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin appointed the senior official who signed the deal. But he was travelling at the time it was signed and was reportedly caught by surprise, according to the New York Times.

Days later, he attempted to revoke it, saying in a memo: “Responsibility for such a decision should rest with me as the superior authority.”

However, both a military judge and a military appeals panel ruled that the deal was valid, and that Mr Austin had acted too late.

In another bid to block the deal, the government this week asked a federal appeals court to intervene.

In a legal filing, it said Mohammed and the two other men were charged with “perpetrating the most egregious criminal act on American soil in modern history” and that enforcing the agreements would “deprive the government and the American people of a public trial as to the respondents’ guilt and the possibility of capital punishment, despite the fact that the Secretary of Defense has lawfully withdrawn those agreements”.

Following the announcement of the deal last summer, Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, then the party’s leader in the chamber, released a statement describing it as “a revolting abdication of the government’s responsibility to defend America and provide justice”.

Some families of those killed in the attacks have also criticised the deal, saying it is too lenient or lacks transparency.

Speaking to the BBC’s Today Programme last summer, Terry Strada, whose husband Tom was killed in the attacks, described the deal as “giving the detainees in Guantanamo Bay what they want”.

Ms Strada, the national chair of the campaign group 9/11 Families United, said: “This is a victory for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other two, it’s a victory for them.”

Other families see the agreements as a path towards convictions in the complex and long-running proceedings and were disappointed by the government’s latest intervention.

Stephan Gerhardt, whose younger brother Ralph was killed in the attacks, had flown to Guantanamo Bay to watch Mohammed plead guilty.

“What is the end goal for the Biden administration? So they get the stay and this drags into the next administration. To what end? Think about the families. Why are you prolonging this saga?” he said.

Mr Gerhardt told the BBC the deals were “not a victory” for the families, but that it was “time to find a way to close this, to convict these men”.

Families on the base were meeting with the press when news of the delay was made public.

“It was supposed to be a time of healing. We’ll board that plane still with that deep sense of pain – there’s just no end to it,” one said.

Mohammed has been held in a military prison in Guantanamo Bay since 2006.

The prison was opened 23 years ago – on 11 January 2002 – during the “war on terror” that followed the 9/11 attacks, as a place to hold terror suspects and “illegal enemy combatants”.

Most of those held here were never charged and the military prison has faced criticism from rights groups and the United Nations over its treatment of detainees. The majority have now been repatriated or resettled in other countries.

The prison currently holds 15 – the smallest number at any point in its history. All but six of them have been charged with or convicted of war crimes.

Indian authorities say they have arrested a Canadian man at Delhi airport for carrying a crocodile skull in his luggage.

The 32-year-old man was at the airport on Monday to catch his flight to Canada when he was first stopped during security check.

“Upon examination, a skull with sharp teeth, resembling the jaw of a baby crocodile, weighing approximately 777g (1.71lb), was discovered wrapped in a cream-colored cloth,” Delhi customs said in a statement on Thursday.

The man was arrested and the skull was handed over to the Department of Forests and Wildlife, they said.

Officials said the possession of crocodile skull violated India’s wildlife protection law and its Customs Act.

An analysis of the skull by the Department of Forests and Wildlife found that it belonged to a species protected under India’s Wildlife Protection Act.

“The texture, tooth pattern, well-developed bony palate, and nostrils confirmed the item as the skull of a baby crocodile,” they said.

A forest official told the Times of India newspaper that the man had allegedly bought the skull from Thailand.

“The man did not possess the mandatory permission required to carry wildlife items,” forest officer Rajesh Tandon said.

The man also told officers he had not hunted or killed the crocodile, the Hindustan Times reports.

Further tests are being carried out to identify the exact sub-species of the animal.

Meanwhile, Delhi customs says a case has been registered against the man and an investigation is under way.

Last year, a 32-year-old Canadian woman was stopped at Delhi airport after she was found to have horns of an unidentified animal in her luggage. The woman told officials she had picked them up during a trek in the northern Ladakh region and decided to take them back as a souvenir.

Actor and comedian Russell Brand has pleaded guilty to speeding.

The 49-year-old was caught driving his Mini at 95mph on the M4 near Slough on 16 June 2024.

He also drove the car at 37mph in a 30mph zone in Shiplake, near his Oxfordshire home, on 23 March, High Wycombe Magistrates’ Court heard.

The former Radio 2 presenter was fined £3,457 and handed eight points on his licence.

Brand, who did not attend the short hearing, was handed three penalty points for the 37mph breach, and five for the 95mph speeding on top of the three points already on his licence – bringing his total to 11.

Drivers who get 12 or more penalty points within a three-year period face a ban.

Brand is currently under investigation by police over allegations of sex crimes made against him by multiple women.

An evidence file has been passed to the Crown Prosecution Service to decide if he should face charges.

It came after a joint investigation by The Sunday Times, The Times, and Channel 4 Dispatches revealed last year that four women had accused him of sexual assaults between 2006 and 2013.

Brand denies the allegations and previously said all his sexual relationships were “absolutely always consensual”.

X

The Prince of Wales has wished his wife, Catherine, a happy birthday, as she turns 43.

“To the most incredible wife and mother. The strength you’ve shown over the last year has been remarkable,” William wrote in a message posted on social media.

“George, Charlotte, Louis and I are so proud of you. Happy Birthday, Catherine. We love you. W.”

The princess has returned to royal duties after having preventative chemotherapy treatment as a result of being diagnosed with cancer last year.

Kensington Palace posted the personal written message from William alongside a previously unseen picture of Catherine taken by photographer Matt Porteous in Windsor last summer.

The black and white picture showed the princess looking relaxed and smiling, wearing jeans, a white shirt and a scarf.

It follows in the couple’s style of informal pictures, without any traditional royal imagery.

The Royal Family also wished her a happy birthday.

The monarchy’s official media account shared a message on X saying: “Happy Birthday to The Princess of Wales!” along with a birthday cake emoji.

The post also had a photo of Catherine collecting flowers from wellwishers while attending church in Sandringham on Christmas Day.

That was the last time the Prince and Princess of Wales were seen together in public.

It is understood that Catherine is celebrating her birthday at home in Windsor, with William and their three children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis.

William has previously described 2024 as probably “the hardest year” of his life, with his father, the King, also diagnosed with cancer.

Last month, the Prince and Princess of Wales issued a Christmas card showing a picture taken from the video released when Catherine announced the end of her chemotherapy.

The emotional video, with its emphasis on family and supporting each other in difficult times, was filmed in Norfolk in August.

It had the message from Catherine that “out of darkness can come light”.

A Swiss national arrested in Iran and accused of spying has died in prison, according to Iranian state media.

The man was being held with another inmate at a prison in the eastern city of Semnan when he “committed suicide” on Thursday, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim News Agency said.

The judiciary-run Mizan News Agency said prison officials immediately took action to save the Swiss citizen’s life, but their efforts were unsuccessful.

Mizan gave no further detail about the man’s identity.

“This morning, a Swiss citizen committed suicide in Semnan prison,” a statement on Mizan’s website, attributed to Mohammad Sadegh Akbari, Semnan’s chief justice, said.

The statement added that he had been “arrested by Iranian security forces for espionage” and the case was “under investigation”.

The Swiss Foreign Affairs Department confirmed the death, adding that its embassy was in contact with Iranian authorities.

In recent years, Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards have arrested dozens of dual nationals and foreigners, mostly on charges related to espionage and security.

Switzerland plays an important intermediary role between Washington and Tehran as it represents American interests in Iran and shares messages between the two countries.

Many black staff members at London’s world-famous Harrods department store would leave the shop floor before Mohamed Al Fayed toured the premises, former employees have told the BBC.

Staff would be given a warning before he appeared, says a former security guard, which was followed by a “beeline of certain people, certain races”, leaving the floor.

“The level of racism was very clear,” said “Henry” (not his real name).

A former member of the store’s HR team, Lisa, told the BBC Al Fayed would “pick on” people negatively and that those “hidden” would also include “overweight” people.

These accounts follow a BBC documentary and podcast broadcast in September which included claims from more than 20 women that Mohamed Al Fayed sexually assaulted or raped them.

Harrods responded to the latest claims about racism by referring us to a previous statement in which it said it was “utterly appalled” by the abuse allegations made against Al Fayed, adding that it was a “very different organisation to the one owned and controlled” by him.

In November, the Met Police said it had launched a new investigation after 90 alleged new victims had come forward.

Henry told BBC Radio 5 Live’s Clare McDonnell that before Al Fayed’s daily walks around the store, there was a five-minute warning announced on guards’ radios.

He said black people, and also other staff who didn’t fit a certain look, would then leave the shop floor, in a “robotic” movement.

“It seemed very much like the protocol that [they] would disappear,” he added.

He said the staff would leave the building via an underground tunnel, connecting the main store to an office across the road. Henry said they would then file back once Al Fayed had gone.

Another former staff member, who wishes to remain anonymous, also told the BBC that many black members of staff went to stock-rooms or “on tea breaks” when Al Fayed was visiting the shop floor. They also said that some women were sent to put on make-up.

Henry said the only staff who stayed on the shop floor were “young, thin, blonde”, although some non-white door guards also remained.

Since the BBC’s investigation was broadcast, we have heard scores of accounts of Al Fayed – who died in 2023 aged 94 – favouring women with these traits.

Lisa confirmed that security would “warn” staff members when Al Fayed was about to arrive – but “not the girls that he would like”.

Those who left the shop floor “were good at their jobs”, she said. “We didn’t want to keep losing staff.”

The BBC has been told that staff were frequently sacked.

Jon Brilliant, who worked in Al Fayed’s private office for 18 months, previously told the BBC that within Harrods there was surveillance, sackings and a culture designed to keep top managers from trusting or communicating with one another.

Henry agreed there was a culture of “paranoia, fear and bullying” while he worked as a security guard there.

During his initial training, he said he had been warned not to invest in a monthly travel pass because “you could be here today and you [could] be gone today”.

Another former member of Harrods HR staff, Anna, said when she worked for the men’s tailored suit division she was told not to employ anyone who was black, because “the customers wouldn’t like it”.

Once, she said, the best candidate was a Caribbean man, who was “head and shoulders above anyone else”.

“I just sat there thinking, ‘What a waste of my time and your time. I cannot employ you because of the colour of your skin.'”

Anna said she recorded that in his recruitment notes, and was reprimanded for doing so.

Lisa said on one occasion, Al Fayed “came right up to my face” and used a racist word to describe the type of people he didn’t want her to hire.

A number of employment tribunals, successfully brought by people claiming racial discrimination, took place during Al Fayed’s ownership of Harrods.

Henry said he didn’t witness any sexual assault when he worked at the store, but there was “hearsay” amongst staff.

“I had lots of people tell me things, I suspected a lot of things, I saw some things, but who am I going to tell?” he said. “You can suspect all you want, but without having some proof… it’s not evidence in court.”

Al Fayed was accused of racism by Vanity Fair in 1995, an allegation he vehemently denied. It sparked a libel lawsuit that the billionaire later agreed to drop, as long as further evidence the magazine had gathered in preparation for a trial was locked away.

Many years after leaving his post, Henry said he still feared reprisals from people in the former chairman’s security team.

“Just a few things I said to you could cost me my life – and if not my life, my livelihood,” he said.

Despite these fears, he said other members of Harrods security staff should come forward to the authorities.

“If they have daughters, they have granddaughters, they have a mother, they should tell [what they know]… but I can assure you those people would keep their mouths shut.”

The statement received from Harrods also said: “These were the actions of an individual who was intent on abusing his power wherever he operated and we condemn them in the strongest terms. We also acknowledge that during this time his victims were failed and for this we sincerely apologise.”

It added: “While we cannot undo the past, we have been determined to do the right thing as an organisation, driven by the values we hold today, while ensuring that such behaviour can never be repeated in the future.”

BBC Action Line here

If you have information about this story that you would like to share please get in touch. Email MAFinvestigation@bbc.co.uk. Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist.

Out-of-control wildfires are ripping across parts of Los Angeles, leading to at least five deaths, burning down hundreds of buildings, and prompting evacuation orders for nearly 180,000 residents across the county.

Despite the efforts of firefighters, the biggest blazes remain totally uncontained – with weather conditions and the underlying impact of climate change expected to continue fanning the flames for days to come.

In Los Angeles County, some 179,000 residents are under evacuation orders – many of them leaving their homes simply carrying whatever belongings they can. Another 200,000 residents are under evacuation warning, meaning they could be required to leave their homes soon.

Police say at least five people have died, with their bodies found near the Eaton fire – but their cause of death is not yet known.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said he expected the death toll to rise, adding that a more thorough investigation needs to be done in the affected areas which, he said, “look like a bomb was dropped in them”.

Looting and theft has risen in some evacuated neighbourhoods, Sheriff Luna said, leading to 20 arrests.

Like the even larger Palisades fire, the Eaton fire remains totally uncontained.

Meanwhile, the Sunset fire that has been menacing the well-known Hollywood Hills area has started to shrink but is not yet contained. Evacuation orders for the Hollywood Hills West area have been lifted.

Over 5,300 structures may have been destroyed – including houses and schools, and businesses on the iconic Sunset Boulevard. A fire ecologist has told the BBC that “entire neighbourhoods… have been wiped out”.

Among the celebrities who have lost their homes are Leighton Meester and Adam Brody, who attended the Golden Globes just days ago, and Paris Hilton.

The insurance industry fears this could prove to be one of the costliest wildfire outbreaks in US history, with insured losses expected above $8bn (£6.5bn) due to the high value of properties in the paths of the blazes.

There is a glimmer of hope for firefighters, as the fire weather outlook for southern California has been downgraded from “extremely critical” to “critical”.

But BBC weather forecaster Sarah Keith-Lucas says there is no rain forecast in the area for at least the next week, meaning conditions remain ripe for fire.

Power has been cut to swathes of the city, and traffic jams have built up. Adding to the disruption, a number of schools and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have been forced to close.

A political row about the city’s preparedness has erupted after it emerged that some firefighters’ hoses ran dry – an issue seized upon by US President-elect Donald Trump.

Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said during a Thursday afternoon press conference that he had not received reports that firefighters ran out of water or experienced low water pressures.

But in neighbouring Pasadena, Fire Chief Chad Augustin said the area experienced a short period of time where pressure was low on a small amount of hydrants. All issues have been resolved, he said.

He attributed the issue to multiple fire engines pulling water at the same time as well as a loss of power lowering pressure.

• Follow live updates
• ‘Where do I go?’ Chaos as people flee flames
• In pictures: Dramatic scenes from west LA
• The celebrities who have lost their homes

There are at least five fires raging in the wider area, according to California fire officials on Thursday:

• Palisades: The first fire to erupt on Tuesday and the biggest fire in the region, which could become the most destructive fire in state history. It has scorched a sizable part of land, covering more than 17,000 acres, including the upscale Pacific Palisades neighbourhood
• Eaton: It has struck the northern part of Los Angeles, blazing through cities such as Altadena. It’s the second biggest fire in the area, burning nearly 14,000 acres
• Hurst: Located just north of San Fernando, it began burning on Tuesday night and has grown to 670 acres, though firefighters have had some limited success in containing it
• Lidia: It broke out on Wednesday afternoon in the mountainous Acton area north of Los Angeles and grew to cover almost 350 acres. Authorities say it has been 60% contained
• Kenneth: This new fire broke out on Thursday on the border of Los Angeles and Ventura counties. It so far covers 50 acres.
• Sunset: It broke out Wednesday evening in Hollywood Hills, growing to about 20 acres in less than an hour. It has now been contained

The earlier Woodley and Olivas fires have also been contained.

• In maps: Thousands of acres on fire
• Watch: Fires reach Hollywood, with fears for iconic sign

Officials have pointed to high winds and drought in the area, which has made vegetation very dry and easy to burn.

For the moment, officials have said the cause of the fires remains unknown and continues to be under investigation.

Some 95% of wildfires in the area are started by humans, according to David Acuna, a battalion chief at the Californian Fire Service, although officials are yet to state how they think the current fires started.

An important factor that has been cited in the spread of the blazes is the Santa Ana winds, which blow from inland towards the coast. With speeds of more than 60mph (97 km/h), these are believed to have fanned the flames.

• What are the Santa Ana winds?

Although strong winds and lack of rain are driving the blazes, experts say climate change is altering the background conditions and increasing the likelihood of such fires.

US government research is unequivocal in linking climate change to larger and more severe wildfires in the western United States.

“Climate change, including increased heat, extended drought, and a thirsty atmosphere, has been a key driver in increasing the risk and extent of wildfires in the western United States,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says.

And following a very warm summer and lack of rain in recent months, California is particularly vulnerable.

Fire season in southern California is generally thought to stretch from May to October – but the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, has pointed out earlier that blazes had become a perennial issue. “There’s no fire season,” he said. “It’s fire year.”

Speaking to the BBC, Mr Acuna said the Palisades Fire represented only the third occasion in the past 30 years that a major fire had broken out in January.

• How climate change is stoking the fires
• A simple guide to climate change

Have you been affected by the fires in California? Get in touch here.

Sign up for our Future Earth newsletter to get exclusive insight on the latest climate and environment news from the BBC’s Climate Editor Justin Rowlatt, delivered to your inbox every week. Outside the UK? Sign up to our international newsletter here.

Copenhagen’s gloomy January weather matches the mood among Denmark’s politicians and business leaders.

“We take this situation very, very seriously,” said Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen of Donald Trump’s threats to acquire Greenland – and punish Denmark with high tariffs if it stands in the way.

But, he added, the government had “no ambition whatsoever to escalate some war of words.”

Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen downplayed Trump’s own suggestion that the US might use military force to seize Greenland. “I don’t have the fantasy to imagine that it’ll ever get to that,” she told Danish TV.

And Lars Sandahl Sorensen, CEO of Danish Industry, also said there was “every reason to stay calm… no-one has any interest in a trade war.”

But behind the scenes, hastily organised high-level meetings have been taking place in Copenhagen all week, a reflection of the shock caused by Trump’s remarks.

Greenland PM Mute Egede flew in to meet both the prime minister and King Frederik X on Wednesday.

And on Thursday night, party leaders from across the political spectrum gathered for an extraordinary meeting on the crisis with Mette Frederiksen in Denmark’s parliament.

Faced with what many in Denmark are calling Trump’s “provocation,” Frederiksen has broadly attempted to strike a conciliatory tone, repeatedly referring to the US as “Denmark’s closest partner”.

It was “only natural” that the US was preoccupied by the Arctic and Greenland, she added.

Yet she also said that any decision on Greenland’s future should be up to its people alone: “Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders… and it’s the Greenlanders themselves who have to define their future.”

Her cautious approach is twofold.

On the one hand, Frederiksen is keen to avoid escalating the situation. She’s been burned before, in 2019, when Trump cancelled a trip to Denmark after she said his proposal to buy Greenland was “absurd”.

“Back then he only had one more year in office, then things went back to normal,” veteran political journalist Erik Holstein told the BBC . “But maybe this is the new normal.”

But Frederiksen’s comments also speak to the Danish resolve not to meddle in the internal affairs of Greenland – an autonomous territory with its own parliament and whose population is increasingly leaning towards independence.

“She should’ve been much clearer in rejecting the idea,” said opposition MP Rasmus Jarlov.

“This level of disrespect from the coming US president towards very, very loyal allies and friends is record-setting,” he told the BBC, although he admitted Trump’s forcefulness had “surprised everybody.”

The conservative MP believed Frederiksen’s insistence that “only Greenland… can decide and define Greenland’s future” placed too much pressure on the island’s inhabitants. “It would’ve been prudent and clever to stand behind Greenland and just clearly state that Denmark doesn’t want [a US takeover].”

The Greenland question is a delicate one for Denmark, whose prime minister officially apologised only recently for spearheading a 1950s social experiment which saw Inuit children removed from their families to be re-educated as “model Danes”.

Last week, Greenland’s leader said the territory should free itself from “the shackles of colonialism.”

By doing so he tapped into growing nationalist sentiment, fuelled by interest among Greenland’s younger generations in the indigenous culture and history of the Inuit.

Most commentators now expect a successful independence referendum in the near future. While for many it would be seen as a victory, it could also usher in a new set of problems, as 60% of Greenland’s economy is dependent on Denmark.

An independent Greenland “would need to make choices,” said Karsten Honge. The Social Democrat MP now fears his preferred option of a new Commonwealth-style pact “based on equality and democracy” is unlikely to come about.

Sitting in his parliamentary office decorated with poems and drawings depicting scenes of Inuit life, Honge said Greenland would need to decide “how much it values independence”. It could sever ties with Denmark and turn to the US, Honge said, “but if you treasure independence then that doesn’t make sense.”

Opposition MP Jarlov argues that while there is no point in forcing Greenland to be part of Denmark, “it is very close to being an independent country already”.

Its capital Nuuk is self-governed, but relies on Copenhagen for management of currency, foreign relations and defence – as well as substantial subsidies.

“Greenland today has more independence than Denmark has from the EU,” Jarlov added. “So I hope they think things through.”

As Mette Frederiksen has the awkward task of responding firmly while not offending Greenland or the US, the staunchest rebuttal to Trump’s comments so far has come from outside Denmark.

The principle of the inviolability of borders “applies to every country… no matter whether it’s a very small one or a very powerful one,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz warned, while French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said the EU would not let other nations “attack its sovereign borders”.

Their comments gave away the deep concern within the EU about how to handle the upcoming Trump presidency. “This is not just very serious for Greenland and Denmark – it is serious to the whole world and to Europe as a whole,” MP Karsten Honge said.

“Imagine a world – which we may be facing in just a few weeks – where international agreements don’t exist. That would shake everything up, and Denmark would just be a small part of it.”

The Danish trade sector has similarly been engulfed by deep nervousness after Trump said he would “tariff Denmark at a very high level” if it refused to give up Greenland to the US.

A 2024 Danish Industry study showed that Denmark’s GDP would fall by three points if the US imposed 10% tariffs on imports from the EU to the US as part of a global trade war.

Singling out Danish products from the influx of EU goods would be near-impossible for the US, and would almost certainly result in retaliatory measures from the EU. But trade industry professionals are taking few chances, and in Denmark as elsewhere on the continent huge amounts of resources are being spent internally to plan for potential outcomes of Donald Trump’s second term in the White House.

As his inauguration approaches, Danes are preparing as they can to weather the storm. There is guarded hope that the president-elect could soon shift his focus to grievances towards other EU partners, and that the Greenland question could be temporarily shelved.

But the disquiet brought on by Trump’s refusal to rule out military intervention to seize Greenland remains.

Karsten Honge said Denmark would have suffer whatever decision the US takes.

“They just need to send a small battleship to travel down the Greenland coast and send a polite letter to Denmark,” he said, only partly in jest.

“The last sentence would be: well, Denmark, what you gonna do about it?

“That’s the new reality with regards to Trump.”

Wildfires are raging in several areas of Los Angeles, with high winds and extremely dry conditions fuelling their progress across thousands of acres of land.

Firefighters are so far unable to contain them, with one fire official telling the BBC on Thursday that they were still rapidly expanding.

The largest blaze, in the Pacific Palisades area where many celebrities live, is the most destructive fire in the history of Los Angeles. More than 1,000 buildings have been destroyed.

It’s a rapidly changing situation – these maps and pictures chart how the fires have spread, where they are located and what they look like from space.

More fires broke out on Wednesday, including in the Hollywood Hills area, overlooking Hollywood.

Many of the roads near the fire were blanketed with thick smoke and Hollywood Boulevard, home to the Hollywood Walk of Fame, was gridlocked with traffic as people tried to leave.

Five fires are burning in the Los Angeles area:

• Palisades fire: The largest active fire is burning between Santa Monica and Malibu. Burnt area: more than 20,000 acres. More than 5,300 structures destroyed. At least 30,000 people evacuated.

• Eaton fire: Second largest fire burning north of Pasadena. Burnt area: at least 13,690 acres. Potentially more than 4,000 structures damaged or destroyed. Five deaths reported.

• Hurst fire: To the north east of the city. Burnt area: 850 acres.

• Lidia fire: Reported in the hills north of Los Angeles. Burnt area: 350 acres.

• Sunset fire: Reported in the historic Hollywood Hills area near many famous landmarks, including the Hollywood sign. Burnt area: 50 acres.

Two fires have been contained:

Woodley fire: Small fire reported in local parkland. Burnt area: 30 acres.

Olivas fire: Small fire first reported in Ventura county about 50 miles (80km) east of Los Angeles. Burnt area: 11 acres.

The map above shows how rapidly the Palisades fire spread, intensifying in a matter of hours. At just after 14:00 on Tuesday it covered 772 acres and within four hours it had approximately tripled in size.

It now covers more than 17,000 acres and thousands of people have been forced to evacuate the area, as more than 1,400 firefighters try to tackle the blaze.

The Eaton fire has also grown rapidly from about 1,000 acres on Tuesday to more than 10,000 acres, forcing thousands more people to flee.

As the maps below show, about 20,000 buildings may have been damaged or destroyed already – and many more could be at risk depending on how the fires spread.

• Follow latest updates on the LA wildfires
• What’s the latest on the fires, and what caused them?
• Watch: Smoke billows as thousands evacuate in LA
• Timelapse shows rapid spread of Palisades wildfire
• Watch: Inside a neighbourhood totally lost in inferno
• Pacific Palisades: The celebrity LA area ravaged by wildfire

To give an idea of the size of the Palisades fire, we have superimposed it on to maps of New York and London.

As you can see by 23:00 PST, 8 January, (07:00 GMT, 9 January), it was comparable in size with an area stretching from Clapham to Greenwich in the UK’s capital, or with large areas of lower Manhattan and Queens.

The Palisades fire is not the only one to have a devastating effect on neighbourhoods of Los Angeles.

Theses images show the extent of the destruction caused by the Eaton fire in the neighbourhood of Altadena.

The Jewish Temple in Pasadena was destroyed by the Eaton fire. The Centre’s website says it has been in use since 1941 and has a congregation of more than 400 families.

The death of a teenage boy sparked violent protests in a city in north-west China, the BBC has confirmed through verified video.

In the videos shared on social media, protesters can be seen hurling objects at police and officers beating some demonstrators in Pucheng in Shaanxi province.

Authorities said the teenager fell to his death on 2 January in an accident at his school dormitory. But following his death allegations began spreading on social media that there had been a cover-up.

Protests erupted soon after and lasted several days, before they were apparently quelled earlier this week. The BBC has seen no further evidence of protest in Pucheng since then.

Public demonstrations are not uncommon in China, but authorities have been particularly sensitive about them since the 2022 White Paper protests against Covid policies, which saw rare criticism of the Chinese Communist Party and President Xi Jinping.

State media has been silent on the protests in Pucheng. Any clips or mention of the demonstrations have been largely censored from Chinese social media, as is usually the case for incidents deemed sensitive by authorities.

But several videos have been leaked out of China and posted on X.

The BBC has confirmed these videos were filmed at the Pucheng Vocational Education Centre, and found no earlier versions online prior to the reported outbreak of the protests over the past few days.

When contacted by the BBC, a representative from the publicity department of the Pucheng government denied there had been protests. There was no answer when we rang an official handling media queries.

In a statement released earlier this week, local authorities said that the teenager surnamed Dang was a third-year student at the education centre in Pucheng.

Prior to his death, Dang had been woken up in the night by other students chatting in his dormitory, their statement said. He got into an argument and altercation with a boy, which was resolved by a school official.

Later that night, his body was found by another student at the foot of the dormitory block.

The statement described it as “an accident where a student fell from a height at school”. It added that the police had conducted investigations and an autopsy, and “at present exclude it as a criminal case”.

But allegations have swirled online for days that there was more to the story and that the school and authorities were hiding the truth. One account claimed, without proof, that Dang killed himself after he was bullied by the boy he’d fought with earlier.

Unverified remarks from his family have been circulating, alleging that the injuries on Dang’s body were inconsistent with the authorities’ version of events and that they were not allowed to examine his body for long.

The allegations appeared to have incensed many in Pucheng, sparking protests that drew at least hundreds of people.

Bullying has become a highly sensitive topic in China in recent years, with past cases of student deaths triggering protests. Last month, a Chinese court handed out lengthy jail sentences to two teenagers who murdered a classmate.

There are also videos posted on X on Monday, which the BBC has confirmed were filmed at the Pucheng Vocational Education Centre, showing people mourning the teenager’s death. They placed flowers and offerings at the entrance of the school, and conducted a traditional mourning ritual by throwing pieces of paper from the rooftop of a school building.

Other videos circulating online appear to show demonstrators, many of them young, storming a building and clashing with police while shouting “give us the truth”.

One verified clip shows a school official confronted by shouting protesters who shove him around. Others show destroyed offices in the compound, and protesters pushing down a barricade at the school entrance.

Another show protesters hurling objects such as traffic cones at groups of retreating police; and officers tackling and detaining people while beating them with batons. Some protesters are seen with blood on their heads and faces.

There is little information on what happened next, but reports on social media suggest a much larger police presence in Pucheng in recent days with no more reports of demonstrations.

Authorities have also urged the public not to “create rumours, believe in rumours, or spread rumours”.

Current and former presidents and vice-presidents gathered at Washington National Cathedral on Thursday for the funeral service of former US President Jimmy Carter, who died at the age of 100 last week.

Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W Bush and Bill Clinton were seated together in the first rows of pews.

Vice-President Kamala Harris, who lost the presidential election to Trump in November, and her predecessors Mike Pence and Al Gore were also among the select group of politicians and members of the public paying their respects to Carter.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – who lost to Trump in the 2016 presidential election – was also seated with her husband.

In his eulogy, Joe Biden repeatedly praised Carter’s “character” and lauded his establishment of a “model post-presidency, by making a powerful difference as a private citizen in America”.

“To make every minute of our time on earth count, that’s the very definition of a good life,” Biden says, encouraging people to study the power of Carter’s example.

The two men had known each other for decades. In his comments, Biden recalled how he was the first senator to endorse Carter’s presidential bid.

Photographers captured Trump and Obama – who have politically clashed for the better part of a decade – smiling and chatting before the service began.

Former and incoming first lady Melania Trump joined her husband for the service but Michelle Obama was not in attendance.

Sources close to former first lady told US media that she had a “scheduling conflict” and was still in Hawaii, where Barack Obama spent much of his childhood and where the Obama family usually spends their Christmas holidays.

Trump and his former vice-president, Mike Pence, shook hands as guests took their seats.

The two men fell out at the end of Trump’s presidency, when Pence presided over the certification of Biden’s presidential win despite pressure from Trump not to do so.

A riotous mob stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 to try and stop the certification, with some calling for Pence’s hanging.

He then ran against Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination and declined to endorse him when he won.

Vice-President-elect JD Vance was also there, as were lawmakers including Georgia Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff and Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders.

The event was also attended by several current and former world leaders and prominent international officials, including Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, the Netherlands’ Princess Mabel of Orange-Nassau and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

At one point, Trudeau appeared to glare at Trump – who was repeatedly referred to him as “Governor Trudeau” in recent weeks and vowed to use “economic force” against Canada.

There was no formality between Trump and Harris, whom he defeated in the 2024 election.

Though seated near each other, the two politicians did not shake hands after entering the church. Trump was spotted staring at Harris as she took her seat.

Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, Harris’s husband, later shook hands with Trump as Harris spoke to Bush.

From the pulpit, speaker after speaker praised Carter’s commitment to public service before and after his time in office.

Steve Ford, son of former president Gerald Ford, read aloud a eulogy his late father wrote about Carter.

The two men had made a pact to speak at each other’s funerals – an oath Carter himself upheld when Ford died in 2007.

“By fate, for a brief season, Jimmy Carter and I were rivals,” President Ford’s eulogy read. But later, “it led to the most enduring of friendships”.

A small-time Chinese actor had been missing for two days in Thailand when his girlfriend decided to ask the internet for help.

“We have no choice but to borrow the power of the internet to amplify our voices,” Wang Xing’s girlfriend wrote on the Chinese social media platform Weibo on 5 January.

The plea went viral after it was shared by some of China’s biggest celebrities, including singer Lay Zhang and actor Qin Lan.

Wang, 31, had the country’s attention – as well as that of his government.

On 7 January, Wang was rescued from a scam centre across the border, in Myanmar – news met with a wave of relief.

But the swift yet mysterious rescue has also led to questions about the fate of those who remain trapped inside the scam centres. The case is a grim reminder of the thriving criminal businesses that still entrap hundreds of thousands of people, forcing them in to cybercrime.

Families of Chinese nationals who may be being held in one of these compounds have started a petition urging their government to help them too. The petition document is shared online for anyone to fill in cases of their missing ones. The number of cases has already climbed to more than 600 from the initial 174, and is still increasing.

Wang told the police that there were around 50 Chinese nationals held in the same place as him alone.

“We are desperate to know if the remaining Chinese nationals [who were] with him have been rescued,” reads one top-liked comment on Weibo.

“Other people’s lives are also lives.”

Wang went missing on 3 January in the Thai border city of Mae Sot, which has become a hub for trafficking people into Myanmar.

He had flown to Bangkok for an acting job offered to him on WeChat. The person claimed to represent a major Thai entertainment company, according to Thai police.

The actor later told reporters that he had been on a shoot in Thailand around 2018 and did not suspect this was any different. But he was picked up in a car and taken to Myanmar, where his head was shaved and he was forced to undergo training on how to scam people on phone calls.

His girlfriend wrote on Weibo that she and his brother tried to track him down and get police involved, but “there had been little results”: Chinese police had yet to register a case, while the embassy in Thailand had simply advised Wang’s family to approach the police in Mae Sot.

But as discussions of Wang’s whereabouts grew louder on Chinese social media, authorities began to act. The case was finally registered, and the embassy told the media they had attached great importance to the case.

The next day, Thai and Chinese officials announced that Wang had been rescued.

His first public appearance was alongside Thai police, but he said little, leaving officials to explain what happened.

Details of the rescue itself have been scant. Officials have not even revealed which scam centre he had been in as conflicting versions of the story spread.

One reason could be that withholding more information was part of the deal that led to his release, according to a source who has previously rescued people from scam centres who did not wish to be named.

He told the BBC that these scam centres are keen to avoid attention. That meant releasing Wang was the better option, compared to risking the whole operation because of the attention his disappearance was drawing.

Beijing too wanted to end the discussion about Wang’s case. It wants its citizens to believe it has done enough and that scam centres along its border are no longer an issue.

A joint operation by China and ethnic insurgent groups back in 2023 did seek to shut down scam centres in Myanmar’s Shan State.

But those on the ground — NGOs and independent rescuers—tell the BBC the scams are still growing, with construction expanding into even more remote regions.

These days, the area along the border with Thailand is the main centre for international scams in Myanmar, taking advantage of partnerships with the various armed groups competing for power there.

New scam compounds have been built south of the town of Myawaddy, close to the Thai border, where the worst cases of forced labour and other abuses are now being reported.

This has put huge pressure on Thailand, whose economy relies heavily on tourism, especially from China.

Wang’s case has had some Chinese wondering about how safe it is to travel to Thailand. “It feels like after this Wang Xing incident, there will be fewer people going to South East Asia, including Thailand,” reads a popular Weibo post.

His rescue may well be a success for Thai officials and a win for Beijing, but it has not ended the discussion, or the spotlight on scam compounds.

On Thursday, lines from a recent interview of his were trending on Weibo: “actor Wang Xing claims he could not eat much food in Myanmar and did not have time to use the toilet”.

His brief disappearance has only exposed how common the danger has become: others in the Chinese film industry have since shared their own accounts of being duped by scammers offering them jobs in Thailand.

Thai police are reported to be now investigating the case of another Chinese model disappeared at Thai-Myanmar border, after he was promised work in Thailand.

The China Federation of Radio and Television Association said in a statement Tuesday that “many actors” have gone abroad on fake promises of film shoots, and as a result suffered “serious damage to their personal and financial security”.

“We are very concerned about this,” the statement said.

“Please save [Wang] from danger and bring to life the story of No More Bets,” Wang’s girlfriend urged in her Weibo post – a reference to the protagonists of the 2023 movie being rescued after they were trafficked into scam centres.

Wang – like those in the film – is among a lucky minority.

Hundreds of thousands of victims from China, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore remain stuck in sprawling scam compounds with little hope of rescue.

But ahead of the Lunar New Year, when throngs of Chinese tourists are expected to visit Thailand, the Thai government is eager to emphasise that the country is a safe destination. Thai police also insist that no Thais were involved in Wang’s trafficking.

Wang, freshly freed from his ordeal, has no worries about returning to Thailand, a police officer told reporters on Wednesday.

In fact, he added, Wang has promised to come back.

The US government has succeeded in temporarily blocking the accused mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks from pleading guilty amid a dispute over the terms of a pre-trial agreement.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two co-defendants reached deals last summer to plead guilty to all charges in exchange for not facing a death penalty trial.

In a filing with a federal appeals court, the government argued that it and the American people would be irreparably harmed if the pleas were accepted.

A three-judge panel said they needed more time to consider the case and put the proceedings on hold. They stressed that the delay “should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits” of the case.

It comes after a military judge and appeals panel rejected a previous move by Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin to revoke the agreements, which had been signed by a senior official he appointed.

Almost 3,000 people were killed in the 11 September 2001 attacks, when hijackers seized passenger planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside of Washington. Another plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back.

• Why is US trying to stop ‘9/11 mastermind’ pleading guilty?

The three men have been in US custody for over 20 years and the pre-trial hearings in the case have lasted for more than a decade.

Arguments have focused on whether evidence has been tainted by torture the defendants faced in CIA custody after their arrests.

Mohammed was subjected to simulated drowning, or “waterboarding”, 183 times while held in secret CIA prisons following his arrest in 2003. Other so-called “advanced interrogation techniques” included sleep deprivation and forced nudity.

Families of some of those killed in the 9/11 attacks had criticised the deals for being too lenient or lacking transparency, while others saw them as a way of moving the complex and long-running case forward.

Those who had travelled to the US naval base of Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to watch Mohammed plead guilty were speaking to journalists when news of the delay was announced.

“The US government failed the 9/11 families again. They had the chance to do the right thing and decided not to,” said Tom Resta, whose brother, sister-in-law and their unborn child were killed in the attacks.

The government had argued that going ahead with the deals would mean it was denied the opportunity to “seek capital punishment against three men charged with a heinous act of mass murder that caused the death of thousands of people and shocked the nation and the world”.

“A short delay to allow this Court to weigh the merits of the government’s request in this momentous case will not materially harm the respondents,” it said.

In their response, Mohammed’s team said the agreement offered “the first opportunity for genuine closure” in almost a quarter of a century. It said the plea negotiations, which happened over two years, had “directly involved the White House”.

In its decision on Thursday evening, the federal appeals court said its decision was aimed at giving the judges time to receive a full briefing and hear arguments “on an expedited basis”.

The delay means the matter will now fall to the incoming Trump administration.

The full details of the deals reached with Mohammed and two of his co-defendants have not been released.

In a court hearing in Guantanamo on Wednesday, his legal team confirmed that he had agreed to plead guilty to all charges.

If the deals are upheld and the pleas accepted by the court, the next steps would be appointing a military jury, known as a panel, to hear evidence at a sentencing hearing.

In court on Wednesday, this was described by lawyers as a form of public trial, where survivors and family members of those killed would be given the opportunity to give statements.

Under the agreement, the families would also be able to pose questions to Mohammed, who would be required to “answer their questions fully and truthfully”, lawyers say.

A judge has thrown out a man’s attempt to sue a council to recover from a rubbish tip a Bitcoin hard drive that is now worth about £598m.

James Howells had argued that his former partner had mistakenly dumped the hard drive containing a Bitcoin wallet in 2013, and he wanted to access the site and recover the cryptocurrency.

But Newport council asked a High Court judge to strike out Mr Howells’ legal action to access the landfill or get £495m in compensation.

Judge Keyser KC said there were no “reasonable grounds” for bringing the claim and “no realistic prospect” of succeeding at a full trial.

Reacting to the decision, Mr Howells said he was “very upset”.

“The case being struck out at the earliest hearing doesn’t even give me the opportunity to explain myself or an opportunity for justice in any shape or form. There was so much more that could have been explained in a full trial and that’s what I was expecting,” he said.

He added he had “been trying to engage with Newport City Council in every way which is humanly possible for the past 12 years” and to now be told he was out of time felt like “a kick in the teeth”.

“It’s not about greed, I’m happy to share the proceeds but nobody in a position of power will have a decent conversation with me,” he said.

“This ruling has taken everything from me and left me with nothing. It’s the great British injustice system striking again.”

During the hearing in December the court heard how Mr Howells had been an early adopter of Bitcoin and had successfully mined the cryptocurrency.

As the value of his missing digital wallet soared, Mr Howells organised a team of experts to attempt to locate, recover and access the hard drive.

He had repeatedly asked permission from the council for access to the site, and had offered it a share of the missing Bitcoin if it was successfully recovered.

Mr Howells successfully “mined” the Bitcoin in 2009 for almost nothing, and says he forgot about it altogether when he threw it out.

The value of the cryptocurrency rose by more than 80% in 2024.

But James Goudie KC, for the council, argued that existing laws meant the hard drive had become its property when it entered the landfill site. It also said that its environmental permits would forbid any attempt to excavate the site to search for the hard drive.

The offer to donate 10% of the Bitcoin to the local community was encouraging the council to “play fast and loose” by “signing up for a share of the action,” said Mr Goudie.

In a written judgement the judge said: “I also consider that the claim would have no realistic prospect of succeeding if it went to trial and that there is no other compelling reason why it should be disposed of at trial.”

The landfill holds more than 1.4m tonnes of waste, but Mr Howells said he had narrowed the hard drive’s location to an area consisting of 100,000 tonnes.

Mr Howells has speculated that, by next year, the Bitcoin on his hard drive could be worth £1bn.

Bitcoin is often described as a cryptocurrency, a virtual currency or a digital currency and is a type of money that is completely virtual – there are no physical coins or notes.

You can use it to buy products and services, but not many shops accept Bitcoin and some countries, including China and Saudi Arabia, have banned it altogether.

The US Supreme Court has rejected President-elect Donald Trump’s last-minute bid to halt his sentencing on Friday in the criminal hush-money case.

Trump had urged the top court to consider whether he was entitled to an automatic stay of his sentencing, but the justices rejected the application by 5-4.

Trump was found guilty of falsifying records to disguise reimbursements for a $130,000 hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels as legal expenses in 2016.

Justice Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the case, has indicated he will not consider a jail term for Trump.

Reacting on Thursday evening, the president-elect told reporters the case was a “disgrace”, although the Supreme Court decision was a “fair decision, actually.”

“It’s a judge that shouldn’t have been on the case,” he said, apparently referring to Justice Merchan, and adding “they can have fun with their political opponent”.

“The pathetic, dying remnants of the Witch Hunts against me will not distract us,” he posted later on his Truth Social platform.

Two of the Supreme Court’s conservative justices – John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett – joined the three liberals to deny Trump’s request for a delay.

The remaining four judges – Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh – would have allowed Trump’s bid to postpone sentencing.

Alito has been criticised for speaking to Trump just a day before the decision in a phone call when the top judge recommended one of his former law clerks for a job with the incoming president’s administration.

Three lower New York courts had rejected Trump’s delay attempt before the Supreme Court made its final decision on Thursday evening to let the sentencing proceed as scheduled.

The justices denied Trump’s petition because they believed his concerns could be addressed during an appeal.

They also wrote that the burden of attending a sentencing was “insubstantial”.

Trump’s lawyers had also asked the Supreme Court to consider whether presidents-elect had immunity from criminal prosecution.

Manhattan prosecutors had urged the Supreme Court to reject Trump’s petition, arguing there was a “compelling public interest” in holding the sentencing and that there was “no basis for such an intervention”.

Following the jury’s guilty verdict in May 2024, Trump was initially set to be sentenced in July, but his lawyers successfully persuaded Justice Merchan to delay the sentencing on three separate occasions.

Last week, Justice Merchan declared the sentencing would move forward on 10 January, just days before Trump is sworn in again as president.

The days since have seen a volley of appeals and court filings from Trump’s attorneys, trying to stave off the sentencing.

But in swift succession, New York courts rejected the bids. Finally on Wednesday, Trump’s lawyers petitioned the Supreme Court to intervene.

The court should stay the proceedings “to prevent grave injustice and harm to the institution of the Presidency and the operations of the federal government”, they wrote.

Last year, the bench’s 6-3 conservative majority handed Trump a major victory, when they ruled that US presidents had immunity from criminal prosecution for “official acts” undertaken in office.

That decision gutted a federal prosecution against Trump on charges he illegally interfered in the 2020 election outcome, which he denied and pleaded not guilty.

But since his re-election, Trump’s lawyers have tried to persuade a series of judges that those presidential immunity protections should also apply to a president-elect in this Manhattan criminal case.

Manhattan prosecutors argued in their own brief to the Supreme Court that Trump’s “extraordinary immunity claim is unsupported by any decision from any court”.

“It is axiomatic that there is only one President at a time,” the prosecutors wrote.

Separately, a group of former public officials and legal scholars filed an amicus brief – effectively a letter of support – to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to reject Trump’s “attempt to avoid accountability”.

In another legal setback for Trump on Thursday, a federal appeals court in Georgia rejected a bid to block the release of a portion of special counsel Jack Smith’s report into Trump’s alleged plot to prevent the transfer of power to Joe Biden after the 2020 election.

Lawyers for Walt Nauta, a former aide, and former Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos de Oliveira had argued that the release would unfairly prejudice potential future criminal cases against them.

US President-elect Donald Trump has repeated his intention to take control of Greenland, the Arctic territory controlled by Denmark.

Why is Trump talking about this – and why now?

Greenland, the world’s largest island, is located in the Arctic.

It is the world’s most sparsely populated territory. About 56,000 people live there, mostly indigenous Inuit people.

About 80% of its territory is covered by ice, meaning most people live on the south-western coast around the capital, Nuuk.

An autonomous territory of Denmark, it is also home to Danish and US military bases.

The economy is mainly based on fishing. Large subsidies from the Danish government account for about a fifth of GDP.

In recent years, there has been increased interest in Greenland’s natural resources, including mining for rare earth minerals, uranium and iron. These may become more accessible as global warming leads to some of the ice covering Greenland to melt.

Located geographically within North America, Greenland has been controlled by Denmark – nearly 3,000km (1,860 miles) away – for about 300 years.

The island was governed as a colony until the mid-20th Century. For much of this time, it remained isolated and poor.

In 1953, it was made part of the Kingdom of Denmark and Greenlanders became Danish citizens.

In 1979, a referendum on home rule gave Greenland control of most policies within the territory, with Denmark retaining control over foreign affairs and defence.

The US has long maintained a security interest in Greenland. After Nazi Germany occupied mainland Denmark during World War II, the US invaded Greenland, establishing military and radio stations across the territory.

After the war, US forces remained in Greenland. Pituffik Space Base, formerly known as Thule Air Base, has been operated by the US ever since.

In 1951, a defence agreement with Denmark granted the US a significant role in the defence of the territory, including the right to build and maintain military bases.

“If Russia were to send missiles towards the US, the shortest route for nuclear weapons would be via the North Pole and Greenland,” said Marc Jacobsen, an associate professor at the Royal Danish Defence College.

“That’s why the Pituffik Space Base is immensely important in defending the US.”

China and Russia have begun building up their Arctic military capabilities in recent years, according to an Arctic Institute paper. The paper called for the US to further develop its presence in the Arctic to counter its rivals.

On Wednesday, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said Denmark was open to discussions with the US, adding that Washington had “legitimate” interests in the region.

“We see a Russia that is arming itself. We see a China that is also starting to take an interest,” Rasmussen said.

Trump is also likely interested in the mining potential across Greenland’s vast landmass, Mr Jacobsen added.

“Today, of special interest are the rare earth minerals, which have not yet been mined but are in the southern part of Greenland. These are immensely important in all kinds of technologies, from cell phones to wind turbines.”

Trump has claimed that control of Greenland is essential to US national and economic security.

Though the president-elect’s rhetoric may seen unusual, for over a century a succession of US presidents have tried to gain control of Greenland.

“The US has tried a few times to push the Danes out of Greenland and take it over as part of the US, or at least to have full security tutelage of Greenland,” said Lukas Wahden, the author of 66° North, a newsletter on Arctic security.

In 1867, after buying Alaska from Russia, US Secretary of State William H Seward led negotiations to buy Greenland from Denmark, but failed to reach any agreement.

In 1946, the US offered to pay $100m (equivalent to $1.2bn; £970m today) for the territory, judging that it was vital for national security, but the Danish government refused.

Trump also tried to buy Greenland during his first term. Both Denmark and the Greenlandic government rejected the 2019 proposal, saying: “Greenland is not for sale.”

Kuno Fencker, a member of the Inatsisartut, the Greenlandic parliament, said on Wednesday that he didn’t see Trump’s comments as a threat.

Fencker, who supports Greenlandic independence, told the BBC that a sovereign Greenland could choose to co-operate with the US on defence.

But when Trump first raised the idea of buying Greenland in 2019, many locals told the BBC they were opposed to the proposal.

“This is a very dangerous idea,” said Dines Mikaelsen, a tour operator who was born and raised in Tasiilaq, east Greenland.

“He’s treating us like a good he can purchase,” said Aleqa Hammond, Greenland’s first female prime minister.

“He’s not even talking to Greenland – he’s talking to Denmark about buying Greenland.”