Negotiators from Israel and Hamas are making a final push to seal a Gaza ceasefire in Doha, with all sides suggesting an agreement is almost done.

There were reports of a breakthrough on Wednesday, with unnamed Israeli officials cited as saying that Hamas had agreed to the latest draft presented by Qatari, US and Egyptian mediators.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office however swiftly denied the reports. There was also no immediate comment from the Palestinian armed group.

On Tuesday night, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said they were “on the brink” of an agreement and awaiting “final word from Hamas”.

A senior Hamas official later told Reuters news agency it had not delivered its official response to the draft because Israel had yet to submit maps showing how its troops would withdraw from areas of Gaza.

However, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper cited an Israeli source as denying Hamas’s claim about the maps.

The proposed three-phase deal would begin with an initial six-week ceasefire.

A Palestinian official told the BBC that Hamas would release three hostages on the first day of a deal, after which Israel would begin withdrawing troops from populated areas.

More hostage releases would then be staggered over the following weeks, he said, with Israel allowing displaced residents to return in northern areas.

Israel has said it expects 33 hostages to be released in the first phase and that it will free a yet to be determined number of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails in return.

Negotiations for the second phase – which should see the remaining hostages released, a full Israeli troop withdrawal and a “sustainable calm” – would start after two weeks.

Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesman said on Tuesday that there were no major issues were blocking a deal and that he was hopeful the talks would “very soon lead to an agreement”.

However, he also warned that that “the most minor detail” could yet undermine the process.

The Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the group’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

More than 46,700 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry. Most of the 2.3 million population has also been displaced, there is widespread destruction, and there are severe shortages of food, fuel, medicine and shelter due to an struggle to get aid to those in need.

Israel says 94 of the hostages are still being held by Hamas, of whom 34 are presumed dead. In addition, there are four Israelis who were abducted before the war, two of whom are dead.

Relatives of the remaining hostages have urged the Israeli government to do whatever it takes to get a deal over the line and bring all of them home.

“We can’t miss this moment. This is the last moment; we can save them,” said Hadas Kalderon, the wife of Ofer Kalderon, a 54-year-old.

Palestinians also dared to hope that an end to the devastating 15-month war was close.

“We are waiting for the ceasefire and the truce. May God complete it for us in goodness, bless us with peace, and allow us to return to our homes,” said Amal Saleh, 54, told Reuters news agency.

“Even if the schools are bombed, destroyed, and ruined, we just want to know that we are finally living in peace.”

There has been no let-up in the intensity of the war as the negotiations have continued.

The Israeli military said on Wednesday morning that it had carried out strikes on more than 50 targets across the territory in the past day.

Gaza’s health ministry said at least 62 people had been killed over the same period.

Overnight, a strike on a home in the central town in Deir al-Balah killed 11 people, including four children, the Civil Defence agency told AFP news agency.

As she picked through the rubble of the destroyed building, Kifaya Shaqoura said the dead included her uncle and aunt, their children and their grandchildren.

“People are waiting for them to announce a truce. But, unfortunately, we woke up with… the news that they’ve become martyrs. What can we say?”

Another seven people were reportedly killed in a strike on a school being used as a shelter for displaced families to the north in Gaza City.

The Israeli military said it targeted a “terrorist who served in a central position” who was at a school in the city, and that it had also carried out strikes on Hamas operatives in Deir al-Balah and the southern city of Khan Younis.

It added that steps had been taken to mitigate harm to civilians and accused Hamas of exploiting civilian structures for military purposes.

Tears, dismayed cries and shocked faces: that was the reaction among the supporters of South Korea’s suspended president Yoon Suk Yeol outside his home on hearing that he had been arrested.

It was a moment that had been in the making for weeks – ever since the last attempt to arrest Yoon on 3 January had failed after a dramatic standoff.

Yet, when the news of his arrest on came on Wednesday morning, it only seemed to create more uncertainty – and highlight the divide in a country that has already been deeply polarised by Yoon’s short-lived martial law order and impeachment by parliament.

“This country is in crisis,” said one pro-Yoon woman, tears streaming down her face. “I’ve been praying since last night for a stable and peaceful South Korea.”

It’s what both sides say they want but they cannot agree on how to get there.

For the past month, a defiant 64-year-old Yoon was holed up inside his presidential compound in central Seoul, as his supporters and detractors rallied outside. They had turned Yongsan in central Seoul into an epicentre of protest, with tensions often running high.

Hundreds of them had camped out overnight on Tuesday, as the arrest appeared imminent, in temperatures that plummeted to -8C. The only thing they shared was the food trucks keeping them warm with steaming drinks and instant noodles.

Yoon’s supporters jostled with the police officers – numbering 3,000 – who assembled to take him into custody. “Don’t call us stupid far-rights,” one protester shouted, reflecting the frustration in the Yoon camp.

A starkly different scene unfolded on the other side of the street. Opponents of Yoon, who had long called for his arrest, celebrated with chants and cheers.

Their jubilation only made the pro-Yoon camp angrier, with some yelling: “Don’t taunt us – this is not funny.”

The gulf is not restricted to this corner of Yongsan. It has loomed over the whole country for more than a month.

Yoon’s shock announcement of martial law on 3 December almost instantly divided public opinion into two camps.

While some believed his claims the country was under threat, a larger group viewed the move as an opportunistic abuse of power. This sentiment was reflected even within Yoon’s own party, as several of its lawmakers voted to impeach him.

The growing opposition to Yoon’s actions has cast a pall over the nation.

The year-end season in South Korea is usually vibrant. But this year has been noticeably different. The political turmoil – along with the devastating Jeju Air crash on 29 December – has created a subdued and sombre atmosphere.

Yoon himself had largely avoided the public since he was impeached by parliament in mid-December.

He never stepped out of his residence to meet his supporters. On New Year’s Day, he sent them a note, saying he was “closely watching [them] via a YouTube livestream”. He skipped the first hearing of his impeachment trial on 14 January, delaying the proceedings.

Before that he had refused to comply with multiple summonses as part of the criminal investigation on insurrection charges, which led to the arrest warrant.

On Wednesday, he released a video statement saying he would co-operate with the Corruption Investigation Office (CIO) to avoid “bloodshed”, while claiming their arrest warrant was not legally valid.

It was a massive operation, which followed a warning from the CIO that the presidential security team could also be arrested if they tried to block Yoon’s arrest again. Unlike last time, the CIO and police were successful in detaining Yoon, although it still took hours to negotiate.

Once he left the presidential compound, the streets surrounding it began to empty. Protesters dispersed and the police barricades were removed.

Some of Yoon’s supporters moved to the CIO office where he is being questioned. They need another warrant to detain him for more than 48 hours.

While Yoon’s arrest has concluded the security standoff, it has not ended the rift that exists well beyond it in South Korea, which in recent decades has emerged as a leading global economy and beacon of democracy in Asia.

“Arresting the country’s leader does not even make sense,” declared one protester outside the presidential compound.

An opposing voice countered: “Executing the arrest warrant is a necessary step – Yoon attempted to undermine the country’s democracy.”

Yoon himself continues to question whether the CIO has the right to arrest him – his lawyers say no, because insurrection is not a charge of corruption. But the CIO says that the insurrection is a form of abuse of power – a charge that is within their remit to investigate.

What may appear to be a legal debate has veered deep into political territory, with both sides seeking to control the narrative.

The swift impeachment of Yoon’s immediate successor – Prime Minister Han Duck-soo – has already led to allegations that impeachment is being used as a political tool against Yoon’s allies. And Yoon’s impeachment trial getting under way this week has created more uncertainty.

Public attention will be on what statements, if any, Yoon makes while he is detained or under trial.

The fear is that the whatever comes next for Yoon, the polarisation that has come to define South Korean politics is here to stay.

India’s latest diplomatic outreach to Afghanistan’s Taliban government signals a marked shift in how it sees the geopolitical reality in the region.

This comes more than three years after India suffered a major strategic and diplomatic blow when Kabul fell to the Taliban.

Two decades of investment in Afghanistan’s democracy – through military training, scholarships and landmark projects like building its new parliament – were swiftly undone. The collapse also paved the way for greater influence from regional rivals, particularly Pakistan and China, eroding India’s strategic foothold and raising new security concerns.

Yet, last week signalled a shift. India’s top diplomat Vikram Misri met Taliban acting foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi in Dubai – the highest level of engagement since Kabul’s fall. The Taliban government expressed interest in strengthening political and economic ties with India, calling it a “significant regional and economic power”.

Talks reportedly focused on expanding trade and leveraging Iran’s Chabahar port, which India has been developing to bypass Pakistan’s Karachi and Gwadar ports.

How significant is this meeting? Delhi has now given the Taliban leadership the de facto legitimacy it has sought from the international community since its return to power, Michael Kugelman of the Wilson Center, an American think-tank, told me.

“The fact that this treatment is coming from India – a nation that never previously had friendly relations with the Taliban, makes this all the more significant, and also a diplomatic triumph for the Taliban,” he says.

Since the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan, countries have adopted varied approaches toward the regime, balancing diplomatic engagement with concerns over human rights and security. China, for example, has gone far: it has actively engaged with the Taliban government, focusing on security and economic interests, and even has an ambassador in the country.

• Taliban welcomes first new Chinese ambassador since takeover

No country has formally recognised the Taliban government, but up to 40 countries maintain some form of diplomatic or informal relations with it.

That’s why experts like Jayant Prasad, a former Indian ambassador to Afghanistan, are more circumspect about India’s outreach.

For the past three years, he says, India has maintained contact with the Taliban through a foreign service diplomat. India had closed its consulates in Afghanistan during the civil war in the 1990s and reopened them in 2002 after the war ended. “We didn’t want this hiatus to develop [again], so we wanted to engage. It is very simply a step up in relations,” he says.

India has “historical and civilisational ties” with Afghanistan, Foreign Minister S Jaishankar told parliament in 2023. India has invested more than $3bn (£2.46bn) in over 500 projects across Afghanistan, including roads, power lines, dams, hospitals and clinics. It has trained Afghan officers, awarded thousands of scholarships to students and built a new parliament building.

This reflects a lasting geopolitical reality. “Irrespective of the nature of the regime in Kabul – monarchical, communist, or Islamist – there has been a natural warmth between Delhi and Kabul,” The Indian Express newspaper noted.

Mr Kugelman echoes the sentiment. “India has an important legacy as a development and humanitarian aid donor in Afghanistan, which has translated into public goodwill from the Afghan public that Delhi is keen not to lose,” he says.

Interestingly, relations with Delhi appear to be easing amid rising tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan claims the hardline Pakistani Taliban (TTP) operates from sanctuaries in Afghanistan.

Last July, Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif told the BBC that Pakistan would continue attacks on Afghanistan as part of an operation aimed at countering terrorism. Days before talks between India and the Taliban government, Pakistani airstrikes killed dozens in eastern Afghanistan, according to the Afghan government. The Taliban government condemned the strikes as violations of its sovereignty.

This marks a sharp decline in relations since the fall of Kabul in 2021, when a top Pakistani intelligence official was among the first foreign guests to meet the Taliban regime. At the time, many saw Kabul’s fall as a strategic setback for India.

“While Pakistan isn’t the only factor driving India’s intensifying outreach to the Taliban, it’s true that Delhi does get a big win in its evergreen competition with Pakistan by moving closer to a critical long-time Pakistani asset that has now turned on its former patron,” says Mr Kugelman.

There are other reasons driving the outreach. India aims to strengthen connectivity and access Central Asia, which it can’t reach directly by land due to Pakistan’s refusal of transit rights. Experts say Afghanistan is key to this goal. One strategy is collaborating with Iran on the Chabahar port development to improve access to Central Asia via Afghanistan.

“It is easier for Delhi to focus on the Afghanistan component of this plan by engaging more closely with the Taliban leadership, which is fully behind India’s plans as they would help enhance Afghanistan’s own trade and connectivity links,” says Mr Kugelman.

Clearly, India’s recent outreach helps advance its core interests in Taliban-led Afghanistan: preventing terrorism threats to India, deepening connectivity with Iran and Central Asia, maintaining public goodwill through aid, and countering a struggling Pakistan.

What about the downsides?

“The main risk of strengthening ties with the Taliban is the Taliban itself. We’re talking about a violent and brutal actor with close ties to international – including Pakistani – terror groups that has done little to reform itself from what it was in the 1990s,” says Mr Kugelman.

“India may hope that if it keeps the Taliban on side, so to speak, the Taliban will be less likely to undermine India or its interests. And that may be true. But at the end of the day, can you really trust an actor like the Taliban? That will be the unsettling question hovering over India as it continues to cautiously pursue this complex relationship.”

Mr Prasad sees no downsides to India’s current engagement with Afghanistan, despite concerns over the Taliban’s treatment of women. “The Taliban is fully in control. Letting the Taliban stew in its own juice won’t help Afghan people. Some engagement with the international community might pressurise the government to improve its behaviour.”

“Remember, the Taliban is craving for recognition,” says Mr Prasad. “They know that will only happen after internal reforms.” Like bringing women back into public life and restoring their rights to education, work and political participation.

Winds that have fanned wildfires in the US city of Los Angeles are again expected to kick up on Wednesday – after a 25th death from the huge, week-long outbreak was confirmed.

Forecasters have again identified an area of “extreme fire danger”, emphasising the risk level in a region to the north-west of the city centre.

In some mountainous areas, it is possible for winds to reach speeds of 70mph (113km/h), which would be nearly hurricane-force if they are sustained.

The anticipated increase in speeds threatens to spread the remaining four blazes, which firefighters have made further progress in tackling during a few days of calmer conditions.

Wind speeds began a slow and steady climb on Wednesday morning in parts of Los Angeles and Ventura counties. They are expected to peak during the day on Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).

Compared with last week’s conditions, winds are “weaker but still strong”, the NWS cautions.

There are hopes of another drop over the subsequent days – but officials have highlighted the need for rain that would help fire crews in their battle.

“The anticipated winds combined with low humidities and low fuel moistures will keep the fire threat in the LA region critical,” Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said during a news conference on Tuesday.

Areas to the north-west of Los Angeles – including Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks – have been deemed to be particularly dangerous.

• ‘We sing to them’: LA stables turn Noah’s Ark for fire rescue animals
• What’s the latest on the fires, and how did they start?
• What we know about the fire victims

An improvement in conditions is forecast later on Thursday and into Friday, says BBC Weather forecaster Sarah Keith-Lucas.

But no rainfall is forecast for at least the next week – and the Santa Ana winds that have been blamed for stoking the blazes could again develop from Sunday.

The fire chief for the city of Pasadena echoed the need for precipitation.

There had been no “real rain in southern California” for more than 250 days, Chad Augustin told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

His firefighters would spent Wednesday on “standing guard ready to ensure that we hold our containment lines and we don’t burn up any more structures”, Mr Augustin added.

An extreme weather attribution study from climate scientists at ‘Climameter‘ has concluded that the Californian wildfires have been fuelled by meteorological conditions strengthened by human-induced climate change.

The study found that current conditions have been warmer, drier and windier compared with the past, in the areas affected by the fires.

• What’s the link between climate change and the fires?

• Maps and images reveal scale of wildfire devastation
• What are the Santa Ana winds fanning the fires?

The 25th death from the fires was confirmed by the LA County Medical Examiner’s Office. Thirteen other people remain missing.

Most of the victims have died in the Eaton Fire, which has burned more than 14,000 acres to the city’s north, but has now been 35% contained by firefighters.

Further west, the larger Palisades Fire has torched more than 23,000 acres, and is now at 18% containment. Two smaller fires also continue to burn.

Some of the victims of the Eaton Fire have now been allowed to return to their homes, although officials say they have no firm date for repopulation of the Palisades area, an upmarket area ravaged by the fire to which it lent its name.

Tens of thousands of people are therefore still under evacuation orders – where night-time curfews also apply – and thousands of homes have been destroyed in one of the costliest natural disasters in American history.

On Tuesday, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass described the scenes as “unimaginable”, vowing to exercise her executive powers to trigger rapid rebuilding efforts.

Setting out other measures to help locals, another official, the LA County supervisor, said an emergency proclamation would be issued to prevent alleged price-gouging by LA landlords amid the crisis.

The UK’s planned handover of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius should be considered by incoming US President Donald Trump before it goes ahead, Downing Street has said.

Efforts were made to get the treaty signed before President-elect Trump’s inauguration on Monday, the BBC understands, and it had been expected the Mauritian cabinet would approve the proposal on Wednesday.

The UK plans to hand over sovereignty of the cluster of islands in the Indian Ocean, but to maintain a 99-year lease over the joint UK and US military airbase on the largest island, Diego Garcia.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said it was “perfectly reasonable for the US administration to consider the detail” of any agreement.

Shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel said the latest development was “complete humiliation” for the prime minister because Labour had been “desperate to sign off the surrender of the Chagos Islands before President Trump returns to office”.

The deal has drawn criticism from other politicians in the UK as well as the incoming US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who said it poses a “serious threat” to US security by giving the islands to a country allied with China.

Trump has not publicly commented on the deal. However Reform UK leader and Trump ally Nigel Farage told BBC Newsnight last year the agreement would damage Sir Keir’s relations with the US president-elect.

At Prime Minister’s Questions, Sir Keir defended the deal, saying the negotiations started under the last Tory government and insisting it was the best way to safeguard the military base.

Reports had suggested Mauritian Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam would sign off an agreement on Wednesday as he attended a cabinet meeting, but it was later announced his attorney general was travelling to London to continue talks.

The UK took control of the Chagos Islands, or British Indian Ocean Territory, from its then colony, Mauritius, in 1965 and went on to evict its population of more than 1,000 people to make way for the Diego Garcia base.

Mauritius, which won independence from the UK in 1968, has maintained that the islands are its own, and the UN’s highest court has ruled, in an advisory opinion, that the UK’s administration of the territory is “unlawful”.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the prime minister was “negotiating a secret deal to surrender British territory and taxpayers in this country will pay for the humiliation”.

Badenoch said there was “no way we should be giving up British territory in Chagos”, claiming Sir Keir was “rushing a deal which will be disastrous” and it would cost British taxpayers billions of pounds.

The cost of the proposed deal to the UK has not been officially announced.

In response to Badenoch, Sir Keir told PMQs the planned agreement would ensure the military base on Diego Garcia can continue operating effectively.

• What I found on the secretive tropical island they don’t want you to see
• Hundreds protest against Chagos Islands deal
• On secret military island, a mother strives to raise her children normally
• Chagossians criticise lack of say in UK deal to hand over islands

A deal over the Chagos Islands was first announced in October following years of negotiations.

But weeks later, after his election, Mr Ramgoolam said he had reservations about the draft treaty and asked for an independent review.

In a joint statement in October, Mauritius and the UK said the deal would “address wrongs of the past and demonstrate the commitment of both parties to support the welfare of Chagossians”.

The Chagos islanders – some in Mauritius and the Seychelles, but others living in Crawley in Sussex – do not speak with one voice on the fate of their homeland.

Some have criticised the deal, saying they were not consulted in the negotiations.

Under the proposed deal, Mauritius will be able to begin a programme of resettlement on the Chagos Islands, but not on Diego Garcia.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy has previously played down the criticism, saying it is a “very good deal” for “our national security” because it secured the legal basis of the Diego Garcia military base.

A French woman who was conned out of €830,000 (£700,000; $850,000) by scammers posing as actor Brad Pitt has faced a huge wave of mockery, leading French broadcaster TF1 to withdraw a programme about her.

The primetime programme, which aired on Sunday, attracted national attention on interior designer Anne, 53, who thought she was in a relationship with Pitt for a year and a half.

She has since told a popular French YouTube show that she was not “crazy or a moron”: “I just got played, I admit it, and that’s why I came forward, because I am not the only one.”

A representative for Pitt told US outlet Entertainment Weekly that it was “awful that scammers take advantage of fans’ strong connection with celebrities” and that people shouldn’t respond to unsolicited online outreach “especially from actors who have no social media presence.”

• How to spot a deepfake

Hundreds of social media users mocked Anne, who the programme said had lost her life’s savings and tried to take her own life three times since the scam came to light.

Netflix France put out a post on X advertising “four films with Brad Pitt (for real)”, while, in a now-deleted post, Toulouse FC said: “Hi Anne, Brad told us he would be at the stadium on Wednesday… and you?”

The club has since apologised for the post.

On Tuesday, TF1 said it had pulled the segment on Anne after her testimony had sparked “a wave of harassment” – although the programme can still be found online.

In the report, Anne said her ordeal began when she downloaded Instagram in February 2023, when she was still married to a wealthy entrepreneur.

She was immediately contacted by someone who said they were Pitt’s mother, Jane Etta, who told Anne her son “needed a woman just like her”.

Somebody purporting to be Pitt got in touch the next day, which set off alarm bells for Anne. “But as someone who isn’t very used to social media, I didn’t really know what was happening to me,” she said.

At one point, “Brad Pitt” said he tried to send her luxury gifts but that he was unable to pay customs on them as his bank accounts were frozen due to his divorce proceedings with actor Angelina Jolie, prompting Anne to transfer €9000 to the scammers.

“Like a fool, I paid… Every time I doubted him, he managed to dissipate my doubts,” she said.

The requests for money ramped up when the fake Pitt told Anne he needed cash to pay for kidney cancer treatment, sending her multiple AI-generated photos of Brad Pitt in a hospital bed. “I looked those photos up on the internet but couldn’t find them so I thought that meant he had taken those selfies just for me,” she said.

Meanwhile, Anne and her husband divorced, and she was awarded €775,000 – all of which went to the scammers.

“I told myself I was maybe saving a man’s life,” Anne said, who is in cancer remission herself.

Anne’s daughter, now 22, told TF1 she tried to “get her mother to see reason” for over a year but that her mother was too excited. “It hurt to see how naive she was being,” she said.

When images appeared in gossip magazines showing the real Brad Pitt with his new girlfriend Ines de Ramon, awakening suspicions in Anne, the scammers sent her an fake news report in which the AI-generated anchor talked about Pitt’s “exclusive relationship with one special individual… who goes by the name of Anne.”

The video comforted Anne for a short time, but when the real Brad Pitt and Ines de Ramon made their relationship official in June 2024, Anne decided to end things.

After scammers tried to get more money out of her under the guise of “Special FBI Agent John Smith,” Anne contacted the police. An investigation is now under way.

The TF1 programme said the events left Anne broke, and that she has tried to end her life three times.

“Why was I chosen to be hurt this way?,” a tearful Anne said. “These people deserve hell. We need to find those scammers, I beg you – please help me find them.”

But in the YouTube interview on Tuesday Anne hit back at TF1, saying it had left out details on her repeated doubts over whether she was talking to the real Brad Pitt, and added that anyone could’ve fallen for the scam if they were told “words that you never heard from your own husband.”

Anne said she was now living with a friend: “My whole life is a small room with some boxes. That’s all I have left.”

While many online users overwhelmingly mocked Anne, several took her side.

“I understand the comic effect but we’re talking about a woman in her 50s who got conned by deepfakes and AI which your parents and grandparents would be incapable to spot,” one popular post on X read.

An op-ed in newspaper Libération said Anne was a “whistleblower”: “Life today is paved with cybertraps… and AI progress will only worsen this scenario.”

Treasury minister Tulip Siddiq has resigned after growing pressure over an anti-corruption investigation in Bangladesh.

She had referred herself to the prime minister’s standards adviser, Sir Laurie Magnus, after questions about links to her aunt, who was ousted last year as Bangladesh’s prime minister.

Sir Laurie said he had “not identified evidence of improprieties” but it was “regrettable” that Siddiq had not been more alert to the “potential reputational risks” of the ties to her aunt.

Siddiq said continuing in her role would be “a distraction” for the government but insisted she had done nothing wrong.

• Bangladesh issues arrest warrant for ex-leader Sheikh Hasina

• Who is Tulip Siddiq?

Before her resignation was announced, Siddiq had been named in a second investigation in Bangladesh.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has said the prime minister “dithered and delayed to protect” her.

Writing on X, she said: “It was clear at the weekend that the anti-corruption minister’s position was completely untenable. Yet Keir Starmer dithered and delayed to protect his close friend.

“Even now, as Bangladesh files a criminal case against Tulip Siddiq, he expresses ‘sadness’ at her inevitable resignation.

“Weak leadership from a weak prime minister.”

In a letter accepting Siddiq’s resignation, Sir Keir said the “door remains open” for her.

Siddiq, whose role as Economic Secretary to the Treasury included tackling corruption in UK financial markets, was named last month in an investigation into claims her family embezzled up to £3.9bn from infrastructure spending in Bangladesh.

Her aunt is the former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, head of the Awami League, who fled into exile after being deposed last year.

Siddiq, Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate, also came under intense scrutiny over her use of properties in London linked to her aunt’s allies.

The Financial Times reported that one of the properties, a flat in King’s Cross, had been given to her by a person connected with the recently ousted Bangladeshi government.

According to the Mail on Sunday, in 2022 Siddiq had denied the flat was a gift and insisted her parents had bought it for her and had threatened the paper with legal action preventing publication of a story.

Labour sources subsequently told the newspaper the flat had been gifted to Siddiq by a property developer with alleged links to her aunt.

Sir Laurie spent eight days investigating the allegations after Siddiq referred herself to the standards watchdog.

In his letter, Sir Laurie said Siddiq “acknowledges that, over an extended period, she was unaware of the origins of her ownership of her flat in Kings Cross, despite having signed a Land Registry transfer form relating to the gift at the time”.

He said the MP “remained under the impression that her parents had given the flat to her, having purchased it from the previous owner”.

This had led to the public being “inadvertently misled” about the identity of the donor of the flat, added Sir Laurie.

Sir Laurie said this was an “unfortunate misunderstanding” which had led to Siddiq issuing a public correction of “the origins of her ownership after she became a minister”.

In the letter, Sir Laurie said: “A lack of records and lapse of time has meant that, unfortunately, I have not been able to obtain comprehensive comfort in relation to all the UK property-related matters referred to in the media.

“However, I have not identified evidence of improprieties connected with the actions taken by Ms Siddiq and/or her husband in relation to their ownership or occupation of the London properties that have been the subject of press attention.

“Similarly, I have found no suggestion of any unusual financial arrangements relating to Ms Siddiq’s ownership or occupation of the properties in question involving the Awami League (or its affiliated organisations) or the state of Bangladesh.

“In addition, I have found no evidence to suggest that Ms Siddiq’s and/or her husband’s financial assets, as disclosed to me, derive from anything other than legitimate means.”

In Bangladesh, there is an ongoing anti-corruption probe based on a series of allegations made by Bobby Hajjaj, a senior political opponent of Siddiq’s aunt Hasina.

Court documents seen by the BBC show that Hajjaj accused Siddiq of helping her aunt to broker a deal with Russia in 2013 that over-inflated the price of a new nuclear power plant in Bangladesh.

She attended the power plant’s signing ceremony and was pictured with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Sir Laurie said Siddiq had “explained the context” of that visit as “solely for the social purpose of joining family and enjoying the tourist access to the city facilitated as a result of her aunt’s official visit as head of state”.

He said Siddiq had been clear that she had “no involvement in any inter-governmental discussions between Bangladesh and Russia or any form of official role”.

“I accept this at face value,” he said, “but should note that this visit may form part of investigations in Bangladesh.”

Sir Laurie added that Siddiq was a “prominent member of one of the principal families involved in Bangladesh politics” which had “exposed her to allegations of misconduct by association”.

“Given the nature of Ms Siddiq’s ministerial responsibilities… it is regrettable that she was not more alert to the potential reputational risks – both to her and the government – arising from her close family’s association with Bangladesh,” he said.

In a letter responding to Siddiq, Sir Keir said he accepted her resignation “with sadness” and thanked her for her “commitment” during her time as a minister.

He said Sir Laurie had assured him that “he found no breach of the ministerial code and no evidence of financial improprieties on [Siddiq’s] part”.

Sir Keir’s Holborn and St Pancras constituency is next door to Tulip Siddiq’s Hampstead and Highgate seat.

They were both elected MPs for the first time in 2015 and have enjoyed a close working relationship.

Labour MP Emma Reynolds has been appointed the new Economic Secretary to the Treasury to replace Siddiq.

Reynolds first became an MP in 2010, before losing her seat in 2019. She returned to parliament in 2024’s general election after a stint as managing director at a financial and professional services lobbying firm.

Ahead of her resignation, Siddiq had been named in a second investigation in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission filed a “First Information Report”, which the BBC has seen. The document names Tulip Siddiq as part of allegations against Sheikh Hasina and her administration.

The Anti-Corruption Commission alleges that Siddiq assisted her mother, Rehana Siddique, in influencing Hasina to “misuse her power and secure a plot in the highly valuable diplomatic area of East-Purachal New Town”.

The document says that Rehana Siddique “concealed her ownership of properties within the RAJUK area in Dhaka city”.

In relation to Tulip Siddiq, the document says: “Ms. Tulip Rizwana Siddique…used her special powers, to directly influence and assist Ms. Sheikh Hasina, the former Prime Minister of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh…influencing her to misuse her power as the highest official and public servant of the government to breach the trust criminally and, through her, influenced the public servants in charge of the project allocation.”

A spokesperson for Tulip Siddiq said: “No evidence has been presented for these allegations. Tulip Siddiq has not been contacted by anyone on the matter and totally denies the claims.”

After 60 years, Match of the Day is abandoning its sole presenter format and taking on three people who will, in turn, host the show. It is a departure, but it is far from a new strategy in TV.

Match of the Day has, extraordinarily, had just five main presenters in its history – with Gary Lineker being in the hot seat for the past 26 years.

His replacements, who will take over the BBC One football highlights show next season, are all broadcasters rather than sports stars who have taken up broadcasting as a second career.

Lineker and, before him in the 70s and 80s, Jimmy Hill, were examples of former players who were comfortable taking the lead in the studio, but they were more an exception than a rule when it comes to hosting sports programmes.

• New Match of the Day presenters announced

There was speculation that footballer-turned-broadcaster Alex Scott would take over the show – but in the end, the names in the press release are all stalwarts of decades of live broadcasting.

The person who might be less familiar to the BBC TV audience is Kelly Cates. But the daughter of Liverpool legend Kenny Dalglish has 26 years’ experience of live TV and radio on Sky and 5 Live. She knows football and she knows television.

Likewise, Gabby Logan has been presenting for 30 years. And Mark Chapman has 29 years under his belt and is already the face of Match of the Day 2 on Sundays.

By choosing three new hosts, the BBC is following a pattern in TV where a brand or format becomes less associated with a single name.

When Richard Osman decided to leave Pointless, six people were named as his replacements for the daily show (and another eight for the series after that).

Angus Deayton’s presenting role on Have I Got News For You became an ever-changing roster of weekly visitors to the presenting chair.

The One Show may have a core of four main presenters, but the list of people who have over the years done a stint on the green sofa is a long one.

Match of the Day has now been handed over to some very safe hands.

And based on their track records, none of them look likely to attract the sorts of headlines that Lineker has had in recent years.

There is good reason to be careful. At a time when TV ratings have been falling year after year, Match of the Day has been holding steady.

In an era when every Premier League match is televised somewhere and social media is awash with clips of goals as soon as they happen, there was always a question about whether anyone would still want to watch a highlights show.

However, over the past five years, Match of the Day’s audience of just under 3.5 million has remained almost unchanged. Over a season, the BBC says 33 million people will tune in at some time to one of the Match of the Day programmes.

The resilience of Match of the Day has not gone unnoticed, and with the current rights deal due to continue until the 2028/29 season, this is a brand the BBC hopes to grow.

There have been reports that the corporation will use the shake-up as an opportunity to use the MOTD name more widely on its online platforms.

Given that the BBC has struggled to compete in an era of rapidly escalating costs for sports rights, it dearly wants to hang on to an audience that may not consume at lot of the rest of the BBC’s output.

There is also a good reason the Premier League wants the highlights programme to succeed – about half of the league’s domestic TV audience see their football only on the BBC.

It is a shop window that helps keep top flight football central to the national conversation.

Germany’s cabinet has decided to authorise the army to shoot down suspicious drones seen near military sites or other critical infrastructure.

A statement from Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said that, “especially since [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine, we have seen that drones are being used more and more frequently, which poses an increasing challenge for the police and their current technology”.

Russia is suspected of launching a “shadow war” against Western countries supporting Ukraine – a charge it denies.

This has included alleged attempts to blow up international airliners, attack infrastructure – or interfere with democratic elections.

“I can only confirm that Russia planned acts of air terror, not just against Poland but against airlines across the globe,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Wednesday.

He did not give any details, but his statement appeared to be confirmation of a New York Times report that US President Joe Biden had warned Putin over the alleged plans.

In November, Polish prosecutors said a series of parcel fires targeting courier companies in Europe were dry runs by groups aiming to sabotaging flights to the US and Canada.

Tusk was hosting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Warsaw, a day after Nato announced a new mission to increase the surveillance of ships in the Baltic Sea after critical undersea cables were damaged or severed last year.

Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

There have been several instances of unidentified drones flying over military bases recently.

At least 10 such drones had been seen flying above Manching Air Base near the city of Ingolstadt on Sunday evening, German police said.

Last month, there were sightings at Manching and nearby Neuburg an der Donau.

Drones were also spotted at the US air base at Ramstein and at an industrial zone near it in the North Sea.

In her statement, Interior Minister Faeser said “espionage or sabotage are regularly considered as a possible reason”.

Under the current rules, the German Army can only help police to force drones to move away or to land – but also to fire warning shots to make this happen.

Under the new proposals – which still need parliamentary approval – soldiers may shoot a drone down if they think that is the only way to deal with the danger it poses “against the lives of people or against a critical facility”.

In November, Polish prosecutors said that a series of parcel fires targeting courier companies in Poland, Germany and the UK were dry runs aimed at sabotaging flights to the US and Canada.

Western security officials believe that they were part of an orchestrated campaign by Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU.

Russia denies being behind acts of sabotage.

But it is suspected to have been behind other attacks on warehouses and railway networks in EU member states this year, including in Sweden and in the Czech Republic.

Calling people obese is medically “flawed” – and the definition should be split into two, a report from global experts says.

The term “clinical obesity” should be used for patients with a medical condition caused by their weight, while “pre-clinically obese” should be applied to those remaining fat but fit, although at risk of disease.

This is better for patients than relying only on body mass index (BMI) – which measures whether they are a healthy weight for their height – to determine obesity.

More than a billion people are estimated to be living with obesity worldwide and prescription weight-loss drugs are in high demand.

The report, published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal, is supported by more than 50 medical experts around the world.

“Some individuals with obesity can maintain normal organ function and overall health, even long term, whereas others display signs and symptoms of severe illness here and now,” Prof Francesco Rubino, from King’s College London, who chaired the expert group, said.

“Obesity is a spectrum,” he added.

The current, blanket definition means too many people are being diagnosed as obese but not receiving the most appropriate care, the report says.

Natalie, from Crewe, goes to the gym four times a week and has a healthy diet, but is still overweight.

“I would consider myself on the larger side, but I’m fit,” she told the BBC 5 Live phone-in with Nicky Campbell.

“If you look at my BMI I’m obese, but if I speak to my doctor they say that I’m fit, healthy and there’s nothing wrong with me.

“I’m doing everything I can to stay fit and have a long healthy life,” she said.

Richard, from Falmouth, said there is a lot of confusion around BMI.

“When they did my test, it took me to a level of borderline obesity, but my body fat was only 4.9% – the problem is I had a lot of muscle mass,” he says.

In Mike’s opinion, you cannot be fat and fit – he says it is all down to diet.

“All these skinny jabs make me laugh, if you want to lose weight stop eating – it’s easy.”

Currently, in many countries, obesity is defined as having a BMI over 30 – a measurement that estimates body fat based on height and weight.

It is calculated by dividing an adult’s weight in kilograms by their height in metres squared.

For example, if they are 70kg (about 11 stone) and 1.70m (about 5ft 7in):

• square their height in metres: 1.70 x 1.70 = 2.89
• divide their weight in kilograms by this amount: 70 ÷ 2.89 = 24.22
• display the result to one decimal place: 24.2

Find out what your body mass index (BMI) means on the NHS website

But BMI has limitations.

It measures whether someone is carrying too much weight – but not too much fat.

So very muscular people, such as athletes, tend to have a high BMI but not much fat.

The report says BMI is useful on a large scale, to work out the proportion of a population who are a healthy weight, overweight or obese.

But it reveals nothing about an individual patient’s overall health, whether they have heart problems or other illnesses, for example, and fails to distinguish between different types of body fat or measure the more dangerous fat around the waist and organs.

Measuring a patient’s waist or the amount of fat in their body, along with a detailed medical history, can give a much clearer picture than BMI, the report says.

“Obesity is a health risk – the difference is it’s also an illness for some,” Prof Rubino said.

Clinically obese

When obesity is a disease, there will be signs of it affecting organs in the body – through heart disease, breathlessness, type 2 diabetes or joint pain – and a person’s day-to-day activities. Treatment with drugs or surgery is likely.

Pre-clinically obese

When obesity is a risk to health – but not yet causing any illnesses, people should be offered weight-loss advice, counselling and monitoring, to reduce the chances of health problems developing.

Doctors should also pay close attention to a patient’s family history to see if they are at risk of particular diseases.

At a time when drugs that reduce body weight by up to 20% are being prescribed on a large scale, the report says redefining obesity “is all the more relevant” because it “improves the accuracy of diagnosis”.

Access to weight-loss drugs such as Wegovy and Mounjaro is often restricted to patients with a BMI over 30 and a weight-related health condition.

Children’s obesity expert Prof Louise Baur, from the University of Sydney, who contributed to the report, said the new approach would allow adults and children with obesity “to receive more appropriate care”, while reducing the numbers being over-diagnosed and given unnecessary treatment.

The Royal College of Physicians said the report laid a strong foundation “for treating obesity with the same medical rigour and compassion as other chronic illnesses”.

But others worry pressure on health budgets could mean less money for patients in the “pre-obesity” category.

Conclave, a film about a gossipy and scheming group of cardinals who gather in Rome to elect a new Pope, leads this year’s Bafta film award nominations with 12 nods.

It is followed closely by Netflix’s Spanish-language musical Emilia Pérez, which tells the story of a Mexican cartel leader who leaves the world of crime to live a new life as a transgender woman.

The frontrunners in the Bafta acting categories include Cynthia Erivo and Demi Moore for lead actress and Adrien Brody and Timothee Chalamet for lead actor.

But Denzel Washington and Daniel Craig failed to make the shortlist for Gladiator II and Queer respectively.

Hugh Grant’s nomination in the lead actor category for horror film Heretic, and Saoirse Ronan as leading actress for The Outrun, are among some of the surprises.

Jamie Lee Curtis is nominated in the supporting actress category for The Last Showgirl, but the film’s main actress Pamela Anderson, who plays an ageing Las Vegas performer, missed out on a nomination.

The leading films in the Bafta nominations

12 nominations – Conclave

11 – Emilia Pérez

9 – The Brutalist

7 – Anora, Dune: Part Two and Wicked

6 – A Complete Unknown and Kneecap

5 – Nosferatu and The Substance

• Follow live reaction to the Bafta nominations
• See the full list of nominees
• How to watch the Bafta-nominated films

Another film tipped for success in the current awards season is Anora, which has seven Bafta nominations including best film.

It follows the whirlwind romance between a New York sex worker and the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch.

Mikey Madison is nominated as leading actress and is also up for the rising star award, which is voted for by the public.

Her co-star Yura Borisov is nominated for best supporting actor, and director Sean Baker has his first Bafta best director nomination.

Half of those nominated in the best director category are first-time nominees and also include The Brutalist’s Brady Corbet, who won the same award at the Golden Globes.

The film, about a Hungarian architect who is hired by a wealthy American after World War Two, has nine nods in total and is also tipped to be a big contender at the Oscars.

The Substance director Coralie Fargeat is another first-time directing nominee and is the only female nominated in the category.

Demi Moore is nominated for best actress for the film, weeks after winning at the Golden Globes – putting her in a strong position for the Oscars.

Conclave’s Edward Berger is also nominated for best director, and thanked the “wonderful crew” who helped the film earn 12 nominations.

He had found “a team of like-minded people who bond together to strive for the unattainable goal – perfection”, he said.

British actress Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s nomination in the same category for playing an irritable woman struggling with depression in Hard Truths has boosted momentum for her to receive an Oscar nomination.

The Bafta shortlist is often a strong indicator for the Oscars, and last year the winners of the top six categories matched perfectly at the two ceremonies.

Another Oscar-tipped film is A Complete Unknown, which follows Bob Dylan’s rise to fame in the 1960s.

It has six Bafta nominations including best film, with Timothee Chalamet and Edward Norton nominated in acting categories.

Kneepcap, which tells the story of an Irish-speaking hip-hop trio, has also received six nominations including outstanding British film and film not in the English language.

Blockbuster films have faired relatively well in the nominations, with Dune: Part Two and Wicked each receiving seven nods.

Gladiator II has three nominations – but none are in the acting categories, with Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal and Washington all missing out. Director Sir Ridley Scott was also overlooked.

Erivo and Wicked co-star Ariana Grande have their first Bafta nominations – but Wicked missed out on a nomination for best film.

Selena Gomez, Zoe Saldaña and Karla Sofía Gascón have all also received their first Bafta nominations, for Emilia Pérez.

For the first time, children’s and family films have their own dedicated category at the awards.

Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl and The Wild Robot are nominated alongside the adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s Kensuke’s Kingdom, and Flow, about animals who must work together to survive following a flood.

The dialogue-free film was a surprise winner at the Golden Globes in the animated feature category.

The Bafta Film Awards, hosted by David Tennant, will take place on 16 February at London’s Royal Festival Hall.

Read more about this year’s nominated films:

• A Complete Unknown: Critics praise Chalamet’s portrayal of Bob Dylan
• A Real Pain: Succession star praised for emotional film role
• Anora: Mikey Madison praised for breakout role as New York stripper
• The Apprentice: Sebastian Stan says Trump ‘should be grateful’ for controversial film
• Conclave: Critics praise ‘skin-prickling suspense’
• Dune: Part Two: ‘Like no other blockbuster’, say impressed critics
• Emilia Pérez: Selena Gomez ‘shines’ in Oscar-tipped musical
• Gladiator II: Mescal was cast in Gladiator II after ’30-minute Zoom call’
• Hard Truths: Marianne Jean-Baptiste on Oscars buzz for playing ‘difficult’ woman
• Kneecap: West Belfast premiere for ‘fun and serious’ film
• Nosferatu: ‘We’re all considering death all the time’: Willem Dafoe on new vampire film
• The Substance: Demi Moore is over being perfect in new ‘risky and juicy’ horror role
• Wicked: Ariana Grande channelled her loss into Wicked role

When JD Vance, a military veteran with a hardscrabble working-class background and a case of imposter syndrome, entered Yale Law School, he may not have seemed like someone destined to land a heartbeat from the US presidency.

Many of those who know him credit his remarkable success story to the influence of his wife, Usha Vance, whom he met on the Ivy League campus.

By any measure, JD Vance, 40, has had a meteoric rise. In a matter of three years, he has gone from a longshot run for the Senate, to becoming the third youngest vice-president in American history.

At his side every step of the way has been his “spirit guide”, as he calls her – wife, Usha.

At Yale Law School the pair were friends at first. Though they shared a reading group and social circle, their backgrounds could not have been more different.

Usha Vance, the 39-year-old daughter of Indian immigrants, grew up in the San Diego suburbs before attending Yale for both her undergraduate and graduate degrees.

Her husband was raised in Middleton, Ohio, born to a family with roots in the impoverished Appalachians of eastern Kentucky.

Their contrasting upbringings is what attracted them to each other, Charles Tyler, a Yale classmate and friend of the couple, told the BBC.

“They were always this match of very dissimilar people,” he said.

In his bestselling 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, JD Vance recounted how his wife helped him adjust to life at the top law college.

“I have never felt out of place in my entire life,” he wrote. “But I did at Yale.”

The vice-president-elect described one instance in the book where his wife taught him which cutlery to use for which part of a formal meal, to pick the silverware from the outside in.

“Usha was teaching JD about the subtler aspects about being at an elite institution,” Tyler recalls. “Usha was his guide throughout the process.”

Hillbilly Elegy explores Vance’s firsthand experience of the poverty and addiction of a rural underclass, while offering a glimpse into the Vances’ relationship.

When JD Vance was unveiled as Trump’s running-mate in July, he had limited name recognition.

He was the junior senator from Ohio, elected to public office for the first time just two years earlier, after spells as a Marine, lawyer and venture capitalist.

What is more, he was known for making anti-Trump statements – once privately comparing him to Hitler.

His wife, too, appears to have been on a political journey – having once been “appalled” by the role Trump played in the 6 January 2021 riot at the US Capitol, according to a friend who spoke to the Washington Post.

She was a registered member of the rival Democratic Party until about a decade ago. And she counts among her legal roles a job as a corporate litigator at prestigious firm Munger, Tolles & Olson in San Francisco – a firm that describes itself as “radically progressive”.

During her legal career, Usha Vance also worked for conservative judges Chief Justice John Roberts at the Supreme Court and for appeals court judge Brett Kavanaugh, before he was appointed by Trump to the highest court in the land.

“When he goes out and makes a great speech, she advises him, and gives him her opinion, and it’s taken seriously,” according to Jai Chabria, a family friend and a political consultant who spoke to USA Today.

Since her husband became Trump’s running mate, the mother-of-three has adopted a behind-the-scenes role.

Friends say she shuns the limelight in part because of her desire to shield their young children, age seven, four and three. The family lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.

During the campaign cycle, Usha gave public remarks a handful of times, including when she sat for a Fox News interview and to introduce her husband at the party conference.

That speech offered the public perhaps the clearest insight to their marriage.

To millions watching across the US, she described the man she met at law school as “a working-class guy who overcame childhood trauma I could barely fathom”.

According to Vance’s book, she played a huge role in helping him process that trauma, which caused him to sometimes explode in anger.

“It’s not just that I’ve learned to control myself but that Usha has learned how to manage me,” he wrote.

In that Republican National Convention address by Usha Vance, Tyler said, she was most like the friend he still speaks to weekly.

“It feels extremely congruent with the person she is in life,” Tyler said.

From her speech, Americans discovered that JD Vance learned how to cook Indian dishes that accommodate his wife’s vegetarian diet, among other things.

And when the time came to defend her husband, she was ready to do that, too.

Last July, previous comments by JD Vance in which he called some Democratic politicians “childless cat ladies” resurfaced on social media, and it was his wife whose damage control seemed to do most to quell the ensuing uproar.

She described his remarks as a “quip”, reframing them as a reflection on the challenges facing working families in America, and expressing a wish that critics would look at the larger context of what her husband had said.

She acknowledged in the Fox interview that she does not agree with her husband on all political issues, though she said she has never doubted his intention.

“Usha has never been an overly political person,” JJ Snidow, a former Yale Law School classmate of the pair, told the BBC. “What America has come to see of her being a very impressive, reserved person is real – that is who she is.”

But things have not been entirely smooth for the couple since Vance joined the presidential ticket. In August, he hit out at those aiming racist barbs at his wife, telling them: “She’s out of your league.”

Charles Tyler says Usha Vance does not fit tidily into any political box – a description that appears to acknowledge her past affiliations which seem opposed to Trump.

“The reason so many people have difficulty characterising her politics is not because she keeps her cards close to the vest,” he says, “it’s because she doesn’t conform to the kind of ideological tribes that most of us have identified with.”

That will probably serve her well as US second lady, a role that has historically been removed from the cut-and-thrust of Washington’s partisan politics.

But with JD Vance’s star firmly in the ascent, few who know the couple doubt that Usha Vance will continue to serve as his “spirit guide” in the White House and beyond.

For years people have tried – and failed – to uncover details about Bristol’s most famous, yet anonymous, graffiti artist Banksy.

Photos of him and stories of people who have met him are incredibly rare. But now a man who got the secretive artist to work with children at a youth club in the late 1990s has given the BBC an exclusive insight into the man behind the murals, just as he was about to become famous.

Banksy is one of the world’s most famous graffiti artists. His work has sold for millions of pounds and his exhibitions seen by hundreds of thousands of people.

But behind layers of paint, lost in time at a Bristol youth club, there’s a Banksy very few people know about.

On the cusp of international fame, the artist was leaving his mark – not only on the streets of his city, but on young people in Lawrence Weston.

Here, Banksy helped groups of teens in art classes, just as he was about to paint his famous Mild, Mild West mural.

“If you look at the photos, you can see the way he was working with the young people,” said Peter de Boer, the man responsible for getting Banksy in the building.

“They were engaged, having fun and sharing ideas. It was a true collaboration.”

Now all that remains of these unique murals are photographs, capturing the colourful, abstract and lively pieces that stretched across the walls of the youth club. The BBC has been given permission to use these photos on the condition that Banksy remains anonymous.

The artist would return to the club several times to create new works, with a revolving door of excitable 11 to 16 year olds – oblivious to who the artist would eventually become.

It was the late 1990s when Peter, a senior youth worker for the area, was looking for local artists to inspire a generation of children in this part of west Bristol.

His friend had a suggestion – someone who went out ‘tagging’ the city with his brother and was starting to make a name for himself. That person was Banksy.

“I got his phone number, so I used to call him up and ask if he’d come and do some art projects. He was really keen,” Peter said.

This was the same year Banksy did his first large stencil mural in Stokes Croft – Mild Mild West – depicting a teddy bear throwing a Molotov cocktail at three riot police.

Each time Banksy arrived at the youth club, he was greeted by dozens of eager kids.

The purpose-built youth centre from the 1970s had become a real community hub.

“There would literally be hundreds of young people that would come here over a week,” said Peter, who is passionate about the need for youth clubs in society.

“It was always very vibrant.”

Peter recalled the hype building around Banksy’s work in Bristol, but that “nobody thought twice about who he was” when he was running sessions in Lawrence Weston.

He was just another artist sharing his skills with the community, he said.

“The thing that struck me back then was he didn’t really have an ego. He was doing art with them, rather than doing art for them,” he said.

“In the morning, he sat around a table with the children, talking about their ideas.

“Then they would all just muck in and spray these things that were invented.

“It wasn’t more Banksy than the young people, it was definitely a kind of 50/50 thing.”

And how much did it cost to bring in Banksy?

“For the first one [workshop], I think we paid him £50. Probably only covered the cost of the spray paints back then,” Peter said.

“I don’t think he’s ever been in it for the money. It shows what a deep, kind and caring person he is.”

The murals Banksy created with the children were fun and vivid in colour – but with meaning.

Cows looking up as bombs are dropped above them, which Peter believes was a nod to climate anxiety, while another was more obscure – a circus overrun by robots.

But what happened to these murals? They were painted over. Again and again.

“I personally painted over a Banksy. I threw a Banksy stencil away when I was clearing up,” Peter said.

But he is not one to get sentimental about preserving street art.

“I have no regrets at all [covering them up]. Back then, it was much more about working with and engaging young people.

“And it was just another art project back then.”

For Peter, the value of Banky’s time at the club is not monetary, but based on what these murals did for the community.

He wonders if the children remember creating pieces with a man who is now one of the most famous artists in the world.

“I’m very proud he came here,” he said.

“There will be [those who were] young people in the local community who are parents now who worked with Banksy, and they may not know that.”

TikTok will be banned in the US on 19 January – unless the Supreme Court accepts a last ditch legal bid from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, that to do so would be unconstitutional.

But even if the country’s highest judicial authority agrees with the lower courts – and Congress – that the platform is a threat to national security will that actually stop Americans using it?

Will there be ways to bypass the ban – or could president-elect Donald Trump find a way to stop a law he says he opposed to, even if the courts uphold it?

And whatever happens to TikTok, who stands to benefit from the uncertainty clouding its future?

The most likely way the US would ban TikTok is to order app stores, such as the Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store, to make it unavailable for download in that region.

US lawmakers have already told tech firms to be ready to remove the app from their stores if a ban comes into force.

• Why does the US want to ban TikTok?
• Trump urges US Supreme Court to delay TikTok ban

That would mean people could no longer use a legitimate means to access TikTok – though it would also mean people who’ve already got it would still have it on their phones.

Because the app would not be publicly available anymore, new updates could no longer be delivered to users in the US – which would make the app buggier and, eventually, unusable.

Not to mention that many updates are provided to fix security holes in apps, so if TikTok stopped getting updates that could present hackers with millions of devices to target.

Of course, there are ways around such a ban.

There are already many videos circulating on TikTok informing users how to use a VPN (virtual private network) – a way of making it appear as if you are in another region.

The region of app stores can also be changed on most devices, so anyone can theoretically access apps from other countries – though this may cause other problems, not to mention likely breaking terms of service agreements.

It is also possible to install apps downloaded from the internet by modifying a device – which may break copyright law – and comes with its own risks. However the government has also anticipated this so is also proposing to ban “internet hosting services” from giving people access to the app.

So if the ban took this kind of form it seems likely that those who are determined to use TikTok after it comes into effect will be able to do so – but it won’t be the experience they are used to.

There are still other routes available to the government down the road – for example, after India banned TikTok in 2020, it ordered internet providers to block access to the app altogether.

And even if people did use a VPN, there are still ways TikTok could theoretically judge whether a person is based in the US – and then simply present them with a screen saying the app is not available in their country.

It remains to be seen whether TikTok would decide to assist the government in its own ban – but it is being reported by Reuters that it plans to do so.

TikTok’s own lawyer told the Supreme Court that he believes the app will “go dark” in the US unless it rules in its favour.

The complexity of the issue means even the experts are unclear about what happens next.

Professor Milton L. Mueller of the Georgia Institute of Technology – who filed a legal brief in support of TikTok – said a lack of clarity around how far the US could extend its authority to enforce the law makes knowing what technically happens if a ban goes ahead difficult to determine.

But he said what was clear was the impact it would have on users and the internet itself.

“It would totally legitimise the fragmentation of the internet along national or jurisdictional boundaries,” he said.

Trump has been clear he does not want the law to come into force, asking the Supreme Court to delay its implementation while he seeks a “political solution.”

But, should the justices uphold it, Trump does not have the power to overturn the law, which would come into effect the day before he returns to office.

But he could simply tell the Department of Justice not to enforce it.

The government would be effectively telling Apple and Google that they won’t be punished for continuing to allow access to TikTok, meaning the law would remain in place but would essentially be redundant.

Obviously, the firms might be uncomfortable about breaking the law even if they’ve been told it’s fine – as it would be effectively requiring them to take the president’s word for it that they won’t face punishment.

TikTok says it has 170 million users in the US who, on average, spent 51 minutes per day on the app in 2024.

Ban TikTok or make it less usable and that creates a huge opportunity for its big tech rivals says Jasmine Enberg, analyst at Insider Intelligence.

“Meta-owned Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, owned by Google, are the most natural fits for displaced users, creators, and advertisers,” she says.

Facebook could benefit too, though Ms Enberg says, in common with all Meta platforms, the controversial policy changes announced by boss Mark Zuckerberg could potentially lessen its appeal.

Users bring advertisers – so a ban could be a big financial boost to those platforms.

“Chief Marketing Officers who we’ve spoken with confirmed that they will divert their media dollars to Meta and Google if they can no longer advertise on TikTok – this is the same behaviour we saw in India when they banned TikTok in 2020”, said Forrester principal analyst Kelsey Chickering.

Lemon8, which is also owned by ByteDance, would have been an obvious place for people to go following a ban – but the law stipulates it also applies to other apps owned or operated by the firm. This means Lemon8 is probably also going to face being made inaccessible in the US.

Other potential winners include Twitch, which made its name on hosting livestreams – a popular feature on TikTok. Twitch is well known particularly to gamers, though it continues to grow with other content.

Other Chinese-owned platforms, such as Xiaohongshu – known as RedNote among its US users – have seen rapid growth in the US and the UK.

Still, some suggest no existing app can truly replace TikTok, in particular its feature TikTok Shop, which lets users purchase products directly from videos, and makes a lot of money for US creators.

Craig Atkinson, CEO of digital marketing agency Code3, said there was no direct competitor that people could easily switch to – and notes his agency was signing new contracts with clients to build TikTok Shop campaigns as late as December.

Up until now, ByteDance has been resolute that no sale of its prize asset in the US is on the table.

But could that change if it is actually banned – and when a president who prides himself on “the art of the deal” returns to the White House?

Potential buyers continue to line up – with Bloomberg News reporting on Tuesday that the firm was looking at a sale to billionaire Elon Musk, though TikTok has since described this as “pure fiction”.

Trump’s former treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin and billionaire businessman Frank McCourt are among those who have previously expressed an interest in buying it.

Mr McCourt, a former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, said he had secured $20 billion in verbal commitments from a consortium of investors to bid for TikTok.

There is an even more leftfield – and considerably less serious – proposed owner.

The biggest YouTuber in the world MrBeast has claimed he’s now in the running to make a deal after he had billionaires reaching out to him about it.

Though it may seem like a joke, he has a significant financial incentive to try and save the app – MrBeast has more than 100m followers on TikTok.

The area in Gaza which Israel’s military has told people to go to “for their safety” has been hit by 97 strikes since May, BBC Verify analysis has revealed.

The findings come as negotiations for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas appear to be nearing a breakthrough. Mediators in Qatar say talks are in their final stages, raising hopes that an agreement could be reached soon.

The “humanitarian zone” was first established by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in October 2023 to protect civilians and keep them out of harms way.

On 6 May 2024, the IDF significantly expanded the zone to include the cities of Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah.

The area – much of which is a strip of land along the Mediterranean sea – is densely populated and is estimated to have over a million people living there according to international humanitarian organisations. Many people are living in tents, with limited infrastructure and limited access to aid.

Local media reports indicate more than 550 people have been killed in the 97 strikes mapped by BBC Verify.

In a statement to BBC Verify, the IDF said it was targeting Hamas fighters operating in the “humanitarian zone” and accused the group of violating international law while “exploiting” civilians as human shields and launching rockets from the area.

Israel launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the group’s 7 October 2023 attack, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

The conflict has caused widespread damage to infrastructure across Gaza, with satellite images showing areas flattened by Israeli strikes. The Hamas-run health ministry also says more than 46,600 people have been killed within the enclave since the start of the war.

BBC Verify analysis suggests that attacks within the “humanitarian zone” have intensified since May 2024, with at least 22 strikes already recorded so far this month.

We also cannot confirm that all incidents are the result of IDF attacks. Locations of strikes documented by BBC Verify were provided to the IDF but they did not confirm or deny their involvement. Israeli military officials have only publicly acknowledged 28 attacks since 6 May.

Israel historically has not publicly acknowledged every strike it has carried out in Gaza.

Gavin Kelleher, an access manager in Gaza for the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said there were “near daily” strikes within the zone, including from Israeli ships and quadcopters, or small drones.

He added that “heavy fire is recurrent in this area despite its [Israel’s] unilateral ‘humanitarian’ designation.”

“The Israeli military appears keen to maintain the illusion of a Humanitarian Zone that remains a certain size, yet that zone can be subject to ‘evacuation orders’ at any time and be targeted,” Mr Kelleher said.

One resident who lives within the zone, Khaled Abdel Rahman, told the BBC that residents were being subjected to daily bombardments, frequently resulting in injuries and casualties.

“We were displaced to Khan Younis because it was designated as a safe zone, but in fact we find nothing here but insecurity,” Mr Rahman said. “We have been denied the true sense of security, with fear dominating our lives.”

As Israel does not allow foreign reporters access to Gaza – apart from highly controlled, escorted trips with its military – international media, including the BBC, is reliant on imagery gathered by Palestinian journalists and Gaza residents.

To track attacks within the IDF’s “humanitarian area”, BBC Verify monitored Palestinian social media channels and official IDF channels on Instagram, Telegram and X. Reports of strikes that included verified imagery from within the boundaries of the zone were then cross-referenced with local media reports to determine a reported death toll.

It’s important to note that death tolls cannot be verified based solely on videos and social media reports. BBC Verify analysis excluded reports of fatalities where there wasn’t verifiable imagery which confirmed the incident happened within the IDF-defined boundaries of the “humanitarian area”.

BBC Verify reviewed more than 300 videos and photos posted since May in the “humanitarian zone”. While it is not always possible to distinguish between fighters and civilians, the footage shows scores of people, including women and children, being pulled from rubble. Some appeared lifeless, while others were severely burned or had significant limb injuries, alongside collapsed buildings, destroyed tents and burnt-out cars.

Seven of the documented strikes are reported to have killed 20 or more people each, with the most deadly on 13 July resulting in more than 90 deaths, according to the Gaza health ministry, first responders and medics.

The IDF later said Hamas military chief, Mohammed Deif, was among the dead. Deif is accused of being one of the figures responsible for planning the 7 October attacks.

Nine strikes occurred within 100m of buildings belonging to Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, and four within 150m of the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis.

The IDF told BBC Verify the strikes were conducted “against terrorists and terror infrastructures including rocket launchers, weapons warehouse and manufacturing sites, operational apartments, underground infrastructure, operational headquarters, and terrorists hideout.”

They also included links to six of their previously published statements about Hamas fighters operating in the “humanitarian zone”.

Residents in the zone also live under constant uncertainty. Including evacuation notices, the boundary of the “humanitarian area” has changed 20 times – and it has varied in size from around 7 km sq (2.7 sq miles) when it was first introduced to 72 km sq (27.8 sq miles) at its largest.

The IDF said evacuation notices “do not constitute as a reduction of the humanitarian zone. Once the danger has passed, the residents return”. But it’s unclear how residents know it’s safe to return, and the IDF has only twice posted to social media to explicitly say so. BBC Verify did not include strikes inside areas where evacuation notices were issued in our tally.

While Israel’s military has avoided using the term “safe zone”, its statements have led civilians to interpret the “humanitarian zone” as such. IDF evacuation notices include language that tells civilians – like this one which was issued in mid-December – “for your own safety, move immediately west to the humanitarian area”.

It has also described the zone as being “designated for humanitarian aid and shelters as part of the IDF’s consistent efforts to protect the uninvolved population.”

But the UN and international humanitarian organisations operating in Gaza have said there’s no such thing as a “safe zone” that is unilaterally enforced.

Juliette Touma of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, said: “We have said it so so many times. There is no safe zone in Gaza. No place is safe. No-one is safe. No place is spared.”

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

India’s latest diplomatic outreach to Afghanistan’s Taliban government signals a marked shift in how it sees the geopolitical reality in the region.

This comes more than three years after India suffered a major strategic and diplomatic blow when Kabul fell to the Taliban.

Two decades of investment in Afghanistan’s democracy – through military training, scholarships and landmark projects like building its new parliament – were swiftly undone. The collapse also paved the way for greater influence from regional rivals, particularly Pakistan and China, eroding India’s strategic foothold and raising new security concerns.

Yet, last week signalled a shift. India’s top diplomat Vikram Misri met Taliban acting foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi in Dubai – the highest level of engagement since Kabul’s fall. The Taliban government expressed interest in strengthening political and economic ties with India, calling it a “significant regional and economic power”.

Talks reportedly focused on expanding trade and leveraging Iran’s Chabahar port, which India has been developing to bypass Pakistan’s Karachi and Gwadar ports.

How significant is this meeting? Delhi has now given the Taliban leadership the de facto legitimacy it has sought from the international community since its return to power, Michael Kugelman of the Wilson Center, an American think-tank, told me.

“The fact that this treatment is coming from India – a nation that never previously had friendly relations with the Taliban, makes this all the more significant, and also a diplomatic triumph for the Taliban,” he says.

Since the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan, countries have adopted varied approaches toward the regime, balancing diplomatic engagement with concerns over human rights and security. China, for example, has gone far: it has actively engaged with the Taliban government, focusing on security and economic interests, and even has an ambassador in the country.

• Taliban welcomes first new Chinese ambassador since takeover

No country has formally recognised the Taliban government, but up to 40 countries maintain some form of diplomatic or informal relations with it.

That’s why experts like Jayant Prasad, a former Indian ambassador to Afghanistan, are more circumspect about India’s outreach.

For the past three years, he says, India has maintained contact with the Taliban through a foreign service diplomat. India had closed its consulates in Afghanistan during the civil war in the 1990s and reopened them in 2002 after the war ended. “We didn’t want this hiatus to develop [again], so we wanted to engage. It is very simply a step up in relations,” he says.

India has “historical and civilisational ties” with Afghanistan, Foreign Minister S Jaishankar told parliament in 2023. India has invested more than $3bn (£2.46bn) in over 500 projects across Afghanistan, including roads, power lines, dams, hospitals and clinics. It has trained Afghan officers, awarded thousands of scholarships to students and built a new parliament building.

This reflects a lasting geopolitical reality. “Irrespective of the nature of the regime in Kabul – monarchical, communist, or Islamist – there has been a natural warmth between Delhi and Kabul,” The Indian Express newspaper noted.

Mr Kugelman echoes the sentiment. “India has an important legacy as a development and humanitarian aid donor in Afghanistan, which has translated into public goodwill from the Afghan public that Delhi is keen not to lose,” he says.

Interestingly, relations with Delhi appear to be easing amid rising tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan claims the hardline Pakistani Taliban (TTP) operates from sanctuaries in Afghanistan.

Last July, Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif told the BBC that Pakistan would continue attacks on Afghanistan as part of an operation aimed at countering terrorism. Days before talks between India and the Taliban government, Pakistani airstrikes killed dozens in eastern Afghanistan, according to the Afghan government. The Taliban government condemned the strikes as violations of its sovereignty.

This marks a sharp decline in relations since the fall of Kabul in 2021, when a top Pakistani intelligence official was among the first foreign guests to meet the Taliban regime. At the time, many saw Kabul’s fall as a strategic setback for India.

“While Pakistan isn’t the only factor driving India’s intensifying outreach to the Taliban, it’s true that Delhi does get a big win in its evergreen competition with Pakistan by moving closer to a critical long-time Pakistani asset that has now turned on its former patron,” says Mr Kugelman.

There are other reasons driving the outreach. India aims to strengthen connectivity and access Central Asia, which it can’t reach directly by land due to Pakistan’s refusal of transit rights. Experts say Afghanistan is key to this goal. One strategy is collaborating with Iran on the Chabahar port development to improve access to Central Asia via Afghanistan.

“It is easier for Delhi to focus on the Afghanistan component of this plan by engaging more closely with the Taliban leadership, which is fully behind India’s plans as they would help enhance Afghanistan’s own trade and connectivity links,” says Mr Kugelman.

Clearly, India’s recent outreach helps advance its core interests in Taliban-led Afghanistan: preventing terrorism threats to India, deepening connectivity with Iran and Central Asia, maintaining public goodwill through aid, and countering a struggling Pakistan.

What about the downsides?

“The main risk of strengthening ties with the Taliban is the Taliban itself. We’re talking about a violent and brutal actor with close ties to international – including Pakistani – terror groups that has done little to reform itself from what it was in the 1990s,” says Mr Kugelman.

“India may hope that if it keeps the Taliban on side, so to speak, the Taliban will be less likely to undermine India or its interests. And that may be true. But at the end of the day, can you really trust an actor like the Taliban? That will be the unsettling question hovering over India as it continues to cautiously pursue this complex relationship.”

Mr Prasad sees no downsides to India’s current engagement with Afghanistan, despite concerns over the Taliban’s treatment of women. “The Taliban is fully in control. Letting the Taliban stew in its own juice won’t help Afghan people. Some engagement with the international community might pressurise the government to improve its behaviour.”

“Remember, the Taliban is craving for recognition,” says Mr Prasad. “They know that will only happen after internal reforms.” Like bringing women back into public life and restoring their rights to education, work and political participation.

Two lunar landers built by private companies in the US and Japan have left Earth aboard a SpaceX rocket as part of a rideshare to the Moon.

The Falcon 9 took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 01:09 local time (06:09 GMT) on Wednesday, carrying landers belonging to America’s Firefly Aerospace and Japan’s ispace.

The landers will eventually separate once they reach the Moon’s orbit and conduct independent explorations.

They are the latest in a growing number of commercial missions to the Moon.

Firefly’s rover, Blue Ghost, is expected to take about 45 days to reach the Moon, once it has separated from the SpaceX rocket.

It will then drill, collect samples and also take X-ray images of the Earth’s magnetic field to “advance research for future human missions on the Moon and provide insights into how space weather impacts the planet”, according to SpaceX.

Meanwhile, ispace’s Resilence lander will take up to five months to reach the Moon’s surface, where it will deploy a rover for exploration and attempt to scoop up loose surface material known as regolith.

Nasa is backing the endeavour, which, if successful, will be its biggest commercial delivery to the Moon so far.

Intuitive Machines last year became the first commercial outfit to put a lander on the Moon, a feat only previously accomplished by the US, the Soviet Union, China, India and Japan.

Separately, SpaceX is also conducting its seventh orbital flight test of its Starship rocket, which is due to take off from Texas at 16:00 local time (22:00 GMT).

Sandman author Neil Gaiman has denied allegations of sexual misconduct, saying he has “never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever”.

The 64-year-old was accused on Monday of sexual misconduct by eight women, including four who had previously spoken out.

On Tuesday, in a blog post titled Breaking The Silence, Gaiman said he had read the allegations with “horror and dismay”.

He wrote: “I’ve stayed quiet until now, both out of respect for the people who were sharing their stories and out of a desire not to draw even more attention to a lot of misinformation.”

He continued: “I’ve always tried to be a private person, and felt increasingly that social media was the wrong place to talk about important personal matters. I’ve now reached the point where I feel that I should say something.

“As I read through this latest collection of accounts, there are moments I half-recognise and moments I don’t, descriptions of things that happened sitting beside things that emphatically did not happen.

“I’m far from a perfect person, but I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever.”

The fantasy graphic novel and science-fiction writer – whose books Good Omens, American Gods and The Sandman have been adapted for television – was the subject of a New York Magazine cover story on Monday.

The magazine and its website Vulture reported allegations from eight women, four of whom also previously accused Gaiman of sexual assault in July 2024 on a Tortoise Media podcast.

One of the women, who had been babysitting Gaiman’s five-year-old child, alleged that he offered her a bath in his garden before joining her in the tub naked, asking her to sit on his lap, and that he sexually assaulted her.

The British author said he read back text messages from the time of the alleged incidents and felt they were “of two people enjoying entirely consensual sexual relationships”.

“At the time I was in those relationships, they seemed positive and happy on both sides,” he wrote.

He acknowledged that he was “careless with people’s hearts and feelings” and could have “done so much better”, but said he doesn’t “accept there was any abuse”.

The author said he understood that “not everyone will believe me” and added he would be “doing my very best to deserve their trust, as well as the trust of my readers”.

He claimed some of the allegations “simply never happened” while others had been “distorted” to “bear no relationship to reality”, but said he would “take responsibility for any missteps I made”.

A police report accusing Gaiman of a sexual assault was made in January 2023, but the investigation was eventually dropped.

Since the allegations surfaced, several of Gaiman’s film and TV projects have been affected.

Season three of Prime Video’s Good Omens will now comprise one 90-minute episode, with Gaiman no longer involved.

Disney has paused production on its film adaptation of another Gaiman title, The Graveyard Book, while Netflix has cancelled Dead Boy Detectives, although it’s not clear if this was related to the allegations.

Season two of The Sandman is still expected to be released this year on Netflix, however, as well as Prime Video’s series adaptation of Anansi Boys.

Treasury minister Tulip Siddiq has resigned after growing pressure over an anti-corruption investigation in Bangladesh.

She had referred herself to the prime minister’s standards adviser, Sir Laurie Magnus, after questions about links to her aunt, who was ousted last year as Bangladesh’s prime minister.

Sir Laurie said he had “not identified evidence of improprieties” but it was “regrettable” that Siddiq had not been more alert to the “potential reputational risks” of the ties to her aunt.

Siddiq said continuing in her role would be “a distraction” for the government but insisted she had done nothing wrong.

• Bangladesh issues arrest warrant for ex-leader Sheikh Hasina

• Who is Tulip Siddiq?

Before her resignation was announced, Siddiq had been named in a second investigation in Bangladesh.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has said the prime minister “dithered and delayed to protect” her.

Writing on X, she said: “It was clear at the weekend that the anti-corruption minister’s position was completely untenable. Yet Keir Starmer dithered and delayed to protect his close friend.

“Even now, as Bangladesh files a criminal case against Tulip Siddiq, he expresses ‘sadness’ at her inevitable resignation.

“Weak leadership from a weak prime minister.”

In a letter accepting Siddiq’s resignation, Sir Keir said the “door remains open” for her.

Siddiq, whose role as Economic Secretary to the Treasury included tackling corruption in UK financial markets, was named last month in an investigation into claims her family embezzled up to £3.9bn from infrastructure spending in Bangladesh.

Her aunt is the former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, head of the Awami League, who fled into exile after being deposed last year.

Siddiq, Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate, also came under intense scrutiny over her use of properties in London linked to her aunt’s allies.

The Financial Times reported that one of the properties, a flat in King’s Cross, had been given to her by a person connected with the recently ousted Bangladeshi government.

According to the Mail on Sunday, in 2022 Siddiq had denied the flat was a gift and insisted her parents had bought it for her and had threatened the paper with legal action preventing publication of a story.

Labour sources subsequently told the newspaper the flat had been gifted to Siddiq by a property developer with alleged links to her aunt.

Sir Laurie spent eight days investigating the allegations after Siddiq referred herself to the standards watchdog.

In his letter, Sir Laurie said Siddiq “acknowledges that, over an extended period, she was unaware of the origins of her ownership of her flat in Kings Cross, despite having signed a Land Registry transfer form relating to the gift at the time”.

He said the MP “remained under the impression that her parents had given the flat to her, having purchased it from the previous owner”.

This had led to the public being “inadvertently misled” about the identity of the donor of the flat, added Sir Laurie.

Sir Laurie said this was an “unfortunate misunderstanding” which had led to Siddiq issuing a public correction of “the origins of her ownership after she became a minister”.

In the letter, Sir Laurie said: “A lack of records and lapse of time has meant that, unfortunately, I have not been able to obtain comprehensive comfort in relation to all the UK property-related matters referred to in the media.

“However, I have not identified evidence of improprieties connected with the actions taken by Ms Siddiq and/or her husband in relation to their ownership or occupation of the London properties that have been the subject of press attention.

“Similarly, I have found no suggestion of any unusual financial arrangements relating to Ms Siddiq’s ownership or occupation of the properties in question involving the Awami League (or its affiliated organisations) or the state of Bangladesh.

“In addition, I have found no evidence to suggest that Ms Siddiq’s and/or her husband’s financial assets, as disclosed to me, derive from anything other than legitimate means.”

In Bangladesh, there is an ongoing anti-corruption probe based on a series of allegations made by Bobby Hajjaj, a senior political opponent of Siddiq’s aunt Hasina.

Court documents seen by the BBC show that Hajjaj accused Siddiq of helping her aunt to broker a deal with Russia in 2013 that over-inflated the price of a new nuclear power plant in Bangladesh.

She attended the power plant’s signing ceremony and was pictured with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Sir Laurie said Siddiq had “explained the context” of that visit as “solely for the social purpose of joining family and enjoying the tourist access to the city facilitated as a result of her aunt’s official visit as head of state”.

He said Siddiq had been clear that she had “no involvement in any inter-governmental discussions between Bangladesh and Russia or any form of official role”.

“I accept this at face value,” he said, “but should note that this visit may form part of investigations in Bangladesh.”

Sir Laurie added that Siddiq was a “prominent member of one of the principal families involved in Bangladesh politics” which had “exposed her to allegations of misconduct by association”.

“Given the nature of Ms Siddiq’s ministerial responsibilities… it is regrettable that she was not more alert to the potential reputational risks – both to her and the government – arising from her close family’s association with Bangladesh,” he said.

In a letter responding to Siddiq, Sir Keir said he accepted her resignation “with sadness” and thanked her for her “commitment” during her time as a minister.

He said Sir Laurie had assured him that “he found no breach of the ministerial code and no evidence of financial improprieties on [Siddiq’s] part”.

Sir Keir’s Holborn and St Pancras constituency is next door to Tulip Siddiq’s Hampstead and Highgate seat.

They were both elected MPs for the first time in 2015 and have enjoyed a close working relationship.

Labour MP Emma Reynolds has been appointed the new Economic Secretary to the Treasury to replace Siddiq.

Reynolds first became an MP in 2010, before losing her seat in 2019. She returned to parliament in 2024’s general election after a stint as managing director at a financial and professional services lobbying firm.

Ahead of her resignation, Siddiq had been named in a second investigation in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission filed a “First Information Report”, which the BBC has seen. The document names Tulip Siddiq as part of allegations against Sheikh Hasina and her administration.

The Anti-Corruption Commission alleges that Siddiq assisted her mother, Rehana Siddique, in influencing Hasina to “misuse her power and secure a plot in the highly valuable diplomatic area of East-Purachal New Town”.

The document says that Rehana Siddique “concealed her ownership of properties within the RAJUK area in Dhaka city”.

In relation to Tulip Siddiq, the document says: “Ms. Tulip Rizwana Siddique…used her special powers, to directly influence and assist Ms. Sheikh Hasina, the former Prime Minister of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh…influencing her to misuse her power as the highest official and public servant of the government to breach the trust criminally and, through her, influenced the public servants in charge of the project allocation.”

A spokesperson for Tulip Siddiq said: “No evidence has been presented for these allegations. Tulip Siddiq has not been contacted by anyone on the matter and totally denies the claims.”

Survivors of a deadly dive-boat sinking in the Red Sea say they were pressured to sign official witness statements in Arabic – which they couldn’t understand and had been translated from English by an employee of the boat company.

They say the man also tried to get them to sign waivers which stated they did not accuse anyone of “criminal wrongdoing”.

The 11 survivors who have spoken to the BBC have also accused the Egyptian authorities of trying to cover up what happened, saying investigators were determined to blame it on a huge wave.

The Sea Story had been carrying 46 people when it sank in the early hours of 25 November last year – four bodies were recovered and seven people are still missing, including two British divers.

Neither the Egyptian government nor the boat operators – Dive Pro Liveaboard, based in Hurghada – have responded to our questions.

On Tuesday, the BBC revealed multiple accusations from survivors of safety failings on board the vessel. A leading oceanographer who analysed weather data also said it was not plausible that a huge wave had hit the vessel.

Within hours of being brought ashore, survivors say they were subjected to what one described as “an interrogation”, some from their hospital beds, by people they were told were judges.

Those who didn’t need hospital treatment were interviewed at a nearby resort, said other survivors, who reported the same feelings of being pressured.

“We were told we couldn’t leave the room until they’d done everybody’s statements,” says Sarah Martin, an NHS doctor from Lancashire.

The judges were part of an Egyptian investigation into what caused the sinking – though survivors say it was not clear exactly who was leading it.

The survivors say having their initial statements translated into Arabic by an employee of the company that owned the Sea Story was a clear conflict of interest.

Spanish diver Hissora Gonzalez said the man did not initially introduce himself as an employee. “He just said, ‘You have to tell me what happened, and then you have to sign this piece of paper.'”

It was not until later, say several people we spoke to, that the man told them he worked for Dive Pro Liveaboard.

The survivors say that, after being translated by the man, their statements were handed to investigators – something that shocked Lisa Wolf. “A normal judge can’t take a translation from someone that’s obviously totally involved in the process.”

One survivor, who is a Norwegian police investigator, said she had “no clue” what the four pages of Arabic handed back to her actually said. “They could have written anything. I don’t know what I signed,” Frøydis Adamson explained. Under her signature she says she wrote that she had not been able to read the documents.

“We were in such shock and just wanted to go home,” said Hissora.

Representatives of the boat operators, Dive Pro Liveaboard, also repeatedly tried to push people into signing waivers – say survivors – which would have seen them agreeing to the statement: “I do not accuse anyone of any criminal wrongdoing.”

Justin Hodges, an American diver who was also rescued, told us the “release of liability document”, written in English, was handed to him as he was giving his witness statement.

He said he had thought the person he was talking to was “an official”, but at this point learned that he worked for the company.

“He slid in with the authorities,” says Justin. “The fact he tried to get us to release liability at that moment was insane to me.”

At least some of the people we spoke to didn’t sign the document.

Everyone we spoke to said they had not been allowed to keep copies of their statements, but the BBC was told some people had managed to translate the documents with their phones. Many of those told us that key, damning details which they had conveyed verbally were left out of the paperwork.

“Everything about the condition of the life rafts and safety issues on the boat went away,” says Lisa.

Sarah and Hissora reported the same experience. “They just put whatever they wanted,” says Hissora.

Survivors also say the authorities seemed determined to blame the tragedy on a huge wave from the outset.

That is despite many of those rescued saying the waves were not too big to stop them swimming. A leading oceanographer has told the BBC that contemporaneous meteorological data from the nearest airport strongly supports the survivors’ recollections.

Hissora asked if she could eventually see a copy of the investigators’ final report, but says she was told there was no need. “[It’s like] they already knew the cause was a wave,” she says.

When she asked again, Hissora said she was told “the only one responsible for this is the sea”. She believes the authorities had already made up their minds before the investigation had even begun.

Hissora’s concerns are shared by Sarah, who says the judges were also “very eager” that survivors didn’t blame anyone for the accident.

• Trapped in the dark for 35 hours – Red Sea dive-boat survivors tell of terrifying escapes

Multiple survivors say they were told that if they wanted to hold anyone responsible, they had to name an individual and specific crime of which they were accused.

“Just because I couldn’t name the person and the crime, it didn’t mean someone wasn’t to blame,” says Sarah.

A final attempt by Dive Pro Liveaboard to get survivors to sign waivers was made as one group tried to leave for Cairo, says Justin.

Having lost their passports at sea, he says the group was told by a company representative that the documents being presented to them were clearance papers to get through checkpoints.

“But then I get to the bottom and the last sentence is the same release of liability question,” – a repeat of the one he says he was asked to sign when he gave his witness statement.

Justin says he went to alert the others and, when he returned to the man who he believed was trying to mislead him, the papers had “magically disappeared” and been replaced with more official-looking documents.

“My blood was boiling,” he says.

The BBC has not seen the waiver documents or copies of them.

Among the missing are two Britons, Jenny Cawson and Tarig Sinada from Devon.

“They were the kindest, most caring and generous souls,” says Andy Williamson, a friend of the couple.

He says their family has constantly received partial and inaccurate news from the Egyptian government.

For example, after the disaster they say they were told the boat had not been found – despite the fact they saw on TV survivors from the wreck being brought ashore. They are calling for an open investigation.

“It would appear that Egyptian authorities are doing their very best to kind of sweep this under the carpet,” says Andy. “They want to protect their tourism industry.”

In March, a fire on another Dive Pro Liveaboard boat – the Sea Legend – killed a German tourist.

Last year, Maritime Survey International, an independent consultancy, produced a report on the safety of dive boats in the Red Sea. It inspected eight vessels, although not including any operated by Dive Pro Liveaboard, and found none had “a planned maintenance system, safety management system or stability books”, a crucial document for avoiding capsize.

It also found design standards to be “poor with all the vessels lacking watertight bulkheads, doors and hatches”.

It concluded that not a single vessel was safe and the dive boat industry in Egypt “plies its trade largely unregulated”.

On 7 January, a group of 15 survivors, including many of those we spoke to, emailed Egypt’s Chamber of Diving and Water Sports (CDWS), which regulates all diving activities and is linked to the Ministry of Tourism.

They relayed their safety concerns and questioned why Dive Pro Liveaboard was still able to operate. The CDWS managing director replied on 9 January and said there was an ongoing investigation into the case, which was being taken “very seriously”.

He added that “appropriate action” would be taken “against any negligence … that resulted in the compromise of people’s safety”.

The trailers arrived all at once, carrying hundreds of horses fleeing the Eaton and Palisades fires in Los Angeles.

Some horses came solo, others in trailers packed with fellow animals. Many had their owners, but others arrived alone, brought in by their rescuers or animal control. Pigs, donkeys and miniature horses followed.

Within 24 hours, the Los Angeles Equestrian Center had been transformed into a modern-day Noah’s Ark. Over the last week, it has sheltered hundreds of animals from the disaster as part of its official role as one of the city’s large animal shelters.

The facility, tucked in the shadow of Griffith Park, has taken in more than 200 horses, on top of the roughly 500 already living there.

Last Tuesday and Wednesday were “chaos”, said Jennie Nevin, a spokeswoman for the equestrian centre. The facility catalogued every horse that arrived, making sure they could be reunited. Sheltering the animals came at no cost for the owners, thanks to the support of public donations and frequent drop-offs of free hay, feed and other supplies.

Sergio Marcial was one of dozens of people who brought animals here after their own facilities were destroyed or threatened.

A week ago, he and his girlfriend Jenny Bacon raced to help rescue more than 70 animals from the Eaton Dam Stables while battling flames so intense that his face mask caught fire and his eyeglasses shattered and warped.

His efforts landed him in the hospital, his lungs and throat burned after inhaling the torched air.

One week later, Mr Marcial, 29, and Ms Bacon, 30, walked Arthur and Playboy – two miniature horses he helped save that night – around their new home. Here, they were safe from the fires, and they seemed calm and friendly despite everything they had endured.

“It still hurts to swallow,” Mr Marcial said, pointing to a face mask he’s required to wear to prevent infections. “I’d do it all again – no question.”

Most of the sheltered animals’ owners have been identified, and several owners spent Tuesday afternoon walking their horses around the stables.

Dozens of volunteers cared for the other animals staying at the centre. Some had become local celebrities.

Two donkeys, Morris and Mika, frequently poked their heads out of their stables to demand attention. They had fled down the mountain with their owner as the Palisades fire drew near, and were reunited because he had spray-painted his number on to their sides.

“They love for you to sing to them,” said volunteer Lucena Herrera. “We’ve all just been adopting them and taking care of them.”

But a handful of animals still have not been claimed. A miniature horse named Izzy had still not found her owner a week after the fires. The volunteers had collectively adopted her until she could find a new, permanent home.

So many volunteers showed up to help the animals that the staff had to turn some away, Ms Nevin said. Between 50-100 volunteers now raked stalls, fed the animals, fluffed hay and serenaded Morris and Mika when they grew antsy.

Watching owners reunite with their horses was one of the most valuable experiences for volunteers, said London Scott, founder of the local Cali Cowboy Club.

“It’s a really beautiful process to go through,” Ms Scott said, “To be able to see that at first hand, and know that you had a small part in someone having a little peace of mind in a tragic moment in time.”

Those here describe a deep bond to their animals and say the farms that burned down are a place of peace in this bustling metropolitan area.

“They are my safe place,” Catherine Armenta, 42, said. “It’s like a bond, a connection that I don’t really have with anything else on this planet.”

Many of those here don’t know what happens next, where they might take their animals after the chaos of the ongoing fires burning around the Los Angeles region ends.

“I haven’t been able to even process any of this. There’s 40 horses to take care of,” Ms Bacon said. “When everything is said and done, I think we’re all gonna go get margaritas and just have a good cry.”

Winds that have fanned wildfires in the US city of Los Angeles are again expected to kick up on Wednesday – after a 25th death from the huge, week-long outbreak was confirmed.

Forecasters have again identified an area of “extreme fire danger”, emphasising the risk level in a region to the north-west of the city centre.

In some mountainous areas, it is possible for winds to reach speeds of 70mph (113km/h), which would be nearly hurricane-force if they are sustained.

The anticipated increase in speeds threatens to spread the remaining four blazes, which firefighters have made further progress in tackling during a few days of calmer conditions.

Wind speeds began a slow and steady climb on Wednesday morning in parts of Los Angeles and Ventura counties. They are expected to peak during the day on Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).

Compared with last week’s conditions, winds are “weaker but still strong”, the NWS cautions.

There are hopes of another drop over the subsequent days – but officials have highlighted the need for rain that would help fire crews in their battle.

“The anticipated winds combined with low humidities and low fuel moistures will keep the fire threat in the LA region critical,” Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said during a news conference on Tuesday.

Areas to the north-west of Los Angeles – including Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks – have been deemed to be particularly dangerous.

• ‘We sing to them’: LA stables turn Noah’s Ark for fire rescue animals
• What’s the latest on the fires, and how did they start?
• What we know about the fire victims

An improvement in conditions is forecast later on Thursday and into Friday, says BBC Weather forecaster Sarah Keith-Lucas.

But no rainfall is forecast for at least the next week – and the Santa Ana winds that have been blamed for stoking the blazes could again develop from Sunday.

The fire chief for the city of Pasadena echoed the need for precipitation.

There had been no “real rain in southern California” for more than 250 days, Chad Augustin told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

His firefighters would spent Wednesday on “standing guard ready to ensure that we hold our containment lines and we don’t burn up any more structures”, Mr Augustin added.

An extreme weather attribution study from climate scientists at ‘Climameter‘ has concluded that the Californian wildfires have been fuelled by meteorological conditions strengthened by human-induced climate change.

The study found that current conditions have been warmer, drier and windier compared with the past, in the areas affected by the fires.

• What’s the link between climate change and the fires?

• Maps and images reveal scale of wildfire devastation
• What are the Santa Ana winds fanning the fires?

The 25th death from the fires was confirmed by the LA County Medical Examiner’s Office. Thirteen other people remain missing.

Most of the victims have died in the Eaton Fire, which has burned more than 14,000 acres to the city’s north, but has now been 35% contained by firefighters.

Further west, the larger Palisades Fire has torched more than 23,000 acres, and is now at 18% containment. Two smaller fires also continue to burn.

Some of the victims of the Eaton Fire have now been allowed to return to their homes, although officials say they have no firm date for repopulation of the Palisades area, an upmarket area ravaged by the fire to which it lent its name.

Tens of thousands of people are therefore still under evacuation orders – where night-time curfews also apply – and thousands of homes have been destroyed in one of the costliest natural disasters in American history.

On Tuesday, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass described the scenes as “unimaginable”, vowing to exercise her executive powers to trigger rapid rebuilding efforts.

Setting out other measures to help locals, another official, the LA County supervisor, said an emergency proclamation would be issued to prevent alleged price-gouging by LA landlords amid the crisis.

India’s latest diplomatic outreach to Afghanistan’s Taliban government signals a marked shift in how it sees the geopolitical reality in the region.

This comes more than three years after India suffered a major strategic and diplomatic blow when Kabul fell to the Taliban.

Two decades of investment in Afghanistan’s democracy – through military training, scholarships and landmark projects like building its new parliament – were swiftly undone. The collapse also paved the way for greater influence from regional rivals, particularly Pakistan and China, eroding India’s strategic foothold and raising new security concerns.

Yet, last week signalled a shift. India’s top diplomat Vikram Misri met Taliban acting foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi in Dubai – the highest level of engagement since Kabul’s fall. The Taliban government expressed interest in strengthening political and economic ties with India, calling it a “significant regional and economic power”.

Talks reportedly focused on expanding trade and leveraging Iran’s Chabahar port, which India has been developing to bypass Pakistan’s Karachi and Gwadar ports.

How significant is this meeting? Delhi has now given the Taliban leadership the de facto legitimacy it has sought from the international community since its return to power, Michael Kugelman of the Wilson Center, an American think-tank, told me.

“The fact that this treatment is coming from India – a nation that never previously had friendly relations with the Taliban, makes this all the more significant, and also a diplomatic triumph for the Taliban,” he says.

Since the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan, countries have adopted varied approaches toward the regime, balancing diplomatic engagement with concerns over human rights and security. China, for example, has gone far: it has actively engaged with the Taliban government, focusing on security and economic interests, and even has an ambassador in the country.

• Taliban welcomes first new Chinese ambassador since takeover

No country has formally recognised the Taliban government, but up to 40 countries maintain some form of diplomatic or informal relations with it.

That’s why experts like Jayant Prasad, a former Indian ambassador to Afghanistan, are more circumspect about India’s outreach.

For the past three years, he says, India has maintained contact with the Taliban through a foreign service diplomat. India had closed its consulates in Afghanistan during the civil war in the 1990s and reopened them in 2002 after the war ended. “We didn’t want this hiatus to develop [again], so we wanted to engage. It is very simply a step up in relations,” he says.

India has “historical and civilisational ties” with Afghanistan, Foreign Minister S Jaishankar told parliament in 2023. India has invested more than $3bn (£2.46bn) in over 500 projects across Afghanistan, including roads, power lines, dams, hospitals and clinics. It has trained Afghan officers, awarded thousands of scholarships to students and built a new parliament building.

This reflects a lasting geopolitical reality. “Irrespective of the nature of the regime in Kabul – monarchical, communist, or Islamist – there has been a natural warmth between Delhi and Kabul,” The Indian Express newspaper noted.

Mr Kugelman echoes the sentiment. “India has an important legacy as a development and humanitarian aid donor in Afghanistan, which has translated into public goodwill from the Afghan public that Delhi is keen not to lose,” he says.

Interestingly, relations with Delhi appear to be easing amid rising tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan claims the hardline Pakistani Taliban (TTP) operates from sanctuaries in Afghanistan.

Last July, Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif told the BBC that Pakistan would continue attacks on Afghanistan as part of an operation aimed at countering terrorism. Days before talks between India and the Taliban government, Pakistani airstrikes killed dozens in eastern Afghanistan, according to the Afghan government. The Taliban government condemned the strikes as violations of its sovereignty.

This marks a sharp decline in relations since the fall of Kabul in 2021, when a top Pakistani intelligence official was among the first foreign guests to meet the Taliban regime. At the time, many saw Kabul’s fall as a strategic setback for India.

“While Pakistan isn’t the only factor driving India’s intensifying outreach to the Taliban, it’s true that Delhi does get a big win in its evergreen competition with Pakistan by moving closer to a critical long-time Pakistani asset that has now turned on its former patron,” says Mr Kugelman.

There are other reasons driving the outreach. India aims to strengthen connectivity and access Central Asia, which it can’t reach directly by land due to Pakistan’s refusal of transit rights. Experts say Afghanistan is key to this goal. One strategy is collaborating with Iran on the Chabahar port development to improve access to Central Asia via Afghanistan.

“It is easier for Delhi to focus on the Afghanistan component of this plan by engaging more closely with the Taliban leadership, which is fully behind India’s plans as they would help enhance Afghanistan’s own trade and connectivity links,” says Mr Kugelman.

Clearly, India’s recent outreach helps advance its core interests in Taliban-led Afghanistan: preventing terrorism threats to India, deepening connectivity with Iran and Central Asia, maintaining public goodwill through aid, and countering a struggling Pakistan.

What about the downsides?

“The main risk of strengthening ties with the Taliban is the Taliban itself. We’re talking about a violent and brutal actor with close ties to international – including Pakistani – terror groups that has done little to reform itself from what it was in the 1990s,” says Mr Kugelman.

“India may hope that if it keeps the Taliban on side, so to speak, the Taliban will be less likely to undermine India or its interests. And that may be true. But at the end of the day, can you really trust an actor like the Taliban? That will be the unsettling question hovering over India as it continues to cautiously pursue this complex relationship.”

Mr Prasad sees no downsides to India’s current engagement with Afghanistan, despite concerns over the Taliban’s treatment of women. “The Taliban is fully in control. Letting the Taliban stew in its own juice won’t help Afghan people. Some engagement with the international community might pressurise the government to improve its behaviour.”

“Remember, the Taliban is craving for recognition,” says Mr Prasad. “They know that will only happen after internal reforms.” Like bringing women back into public life and restoring their rights to education, work and political participation.

The UK’s planned handover of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius should be considered by incoming US President Donald Trump before it goes ahead, Downing Street has said.

Efforts were made to get the treaty signed before President-elect Trump’s inauguration on Monday, the BBC understands, and it had been expected the Mauritian cabinet would approve the proposal on Wednesday.

The UK plans to hand over sovereignty of the cluster of islands in the Indian Ocean, but to maintain a 99-year lease over the joint UK and US military airbase on the largest island, Diego Garcia.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said it was “perfectly reasonable for the US administration to consider the detail” of any agreement.

Shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel said the latest development was “complete humiliation” for the prime minister because Labour had been “desperate to sign off the surrender of the Chagos Islands before President Trump returns to office”.

The deal has drawn criticism from other politicians in the UK as well as the incoming US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who said it poses a “serious threat” to US security by giving the islands to a country allied with China.

Trump has not publicly commented on the deal. However Reform UK leader and Trump ally Nigel Farage told BBC Newsnight last year the agreement would damage Sir Keir’s relations with the US president-elect.

At Prime Minister’s Questions, Sir Keir defended the deal, saying the negotiations started under the last Tory government and insisting it was the best way to safeguard the military base.

Reports had suggested Mauritian Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam would sign off an agreement on Wednesday as he attended a cabinet meeting, but it was later announced his attorney general was travelling to London to continue talks.

The UK took control of the Chagos Islands, or British Indian Ocean Territory, from its then colony, Mauritius, in 1965 and went on to evict its population of more than 1,000 people to make way for the Diego Garcia base.

Mauritius, which won independence from the UK in 1968, has maintained that the islands are its own, and the UN’s highest court has ruled, in an advisory opinion, that the UK’s administration of the territory is “unlawful”.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the prime minister was “negotiating a secret deal to surrender British territory and taxpayers in this country will pay for the humiliation”.

Badenoch said there was “no way we should be giving up British territory in Chagos”, claiming Sir Keir was “rushing a deal which will be disastrous” and it would cost British taxpayers billions of pounds.

The cost of the proposed deal to the UK has not been officially announced.

In response to Badenoch, Sir Keir told PMQs the planned agreement would ensure the military base on Diego Garcia can continue operating effectively.

• What I found on the secretive tropical island they don’t want you to see
• Hundreds protest against Chagos Islands deal
• On secret military island, a mother strives to raise her children normally
• Chagossians criticise lack of say in UK deal to hand over islands

A deal over the Chagos Islands was first announced in October following years of negotiations.

But weeks later, after his election, Mr Ramgoolam said he had reservations about the draft treaty and asked for an independent review.

In a joint statement in October, Mauritius and the UK said the deal would “address wrongs of the past and demonstrate the commitment of both parties to support the welfare of Chagossians”.

The Chagos islanders – some in Mauritius and the Seychelles, but others living in Crawley in Sussex – do not speak with one voice on the fate of their homeland.

Some have criticised the deal, saying they were not consulted in the negotiations.

Under the proposed deal, Mauritius will be able to begin a programme of resettlement on the Chagos Islands, but not on Diego Garcia.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy has previously played down the criticism, saying it is a “very good deal” for “our national security” because it secured the legal basis of the Diego Garcia military base.

A French woman who was conned out of €830,000 (£700,000; $850,000) by scammers posing as actor Brad Pitt has faced a huge wave of mockery, leading French broadcaster TF1 to withdraw a programme about her.

The primetime programme, which aired on Sunday, attracted national attention on interior designer Anne, 53, who thought she was in a relationship with Pitt for a year and a half.

She has since told a popular French YouTube show that she was not “crazy or a moron”: “I just got played, I admit it, and that’s why I came forward, because I am not the only one.”

A representative for Pitt told US outlet Entertainment Weekly that it was “awful that scammers take advantage of fans’ strong connection with celebrities” and that people shouldn’t respond to unsolicited online outreach “especially from actors who have no social media presence.”

• How to spot a deepfake

Hundreds of social media users mocked Anne, who the programme said had lost her life’s savings and tried to take her own life three times since the scam came to light.

Netflix France put out a post on X advertising “four films with Brad Pitt (for real)”, while, in a now-deleted post, Toulouse FC said: “Hi Anne, Brad told us he would be at the stadium on Wednesday… and you?”

The club has since apologised for the post.

On Tuesday, TF1 said it had pulled the segment on Anne after her testimony had sparked “a wave of harassment” – although the programme can still be found online.

In the report, Anne said her ordeal began when she downloaded Instagram in February 2023, when she was still married to a wealthy entrepreneur.

She was immediately contacted by someone who said they were Pitt’s mother, Jane Etta, who told Anne her son “needed a woman just like her”.

Somebody purporting to be Pitt got in touch the next day, which set off alarm bells for Anne. “But as someone who isn’t very used to social media, I didn’t really know what was happening to me,” she said.

At one point, “Brad Pitt” said he tried to send her luxury gifts but that he was unable to pay customs on them as his bank accounts were frozen due to his divorce proceedings with actor Angelina Jolie, prompting Anne to transfer €9000 to the scammers.

“Like a fool, I paid… Every time I doubted him, he managed to dissipate my doubts,” she said.

The requests for money ramped up when the fake Pitt told Anne he needed cash to pay for kidney cancer treatment, sending her multiple AI-generated photos of Brad Pitt in a hospital bed. “I looked those photos up on the internet but couldn’t find them so I thought that meant he had taken those selfies just for me,” she said.

Meanwhile, Anne and her husband divorced, and she was awarded €775,000 – all of which went to the scammers.

“I told myself I was maybe saving a man’s life,” Anne said, who is in cancer remission herself.

Anne’s daughter, now 22, told TF1 she tried to “get her mother to see reason” for over a year but that her mother was too excited. “It hurt to see how naive she was being,” she said.

When images appeared in gossip magazines showing the real Brad Pitt with his new girlfriend Ines de Ramon, awakening suspicions in Anne, the scammers sent her an fake news report in which the AI-generated anchor talked about Pitt’s “exclusive relationship with one special individual… who goes by the name of Anne.”

The video comforted Anne for a short time, but when the real Brad Pitt and Ines de Ramon made their relationship official in June 2024, Anne decided to end things.

After scammers tried to get more money out of her under the guise of “Special FBI Agent John Smith,” Anne contacted the police. An investigation is now under way.

The TF1 programme said the events left Anne broke, and that she has tried to end her life three times.

“Why was I chosen to be hurt this way?,” a tearful Anne said. “These people deserve hell. We need to find those scammers, I beg you – please help me find them.”

But in the YouTube interview on Tuesday Anne hit back at TF1, saying it had left out details on her repeated doubts over whether she was talking to the real Brad Pitt, and added that anyone could’ve fallen for the scam if they were told “words that you never heard from your own husband.”

Anne said she was now living with a friend: “My whole life is a small room with some boxes. That’s all I have left.”

While many online users overwhelmingly mocked Anne, several took her side.

“I understand the comic effect but we’re talking about a woman in her 50s who got conned by deepfakes and AI which your parents and grandparents would be incapable to spot,” one popular post on X read.

An op-ed in newspaper Libération said Anne was a “whistleblower”: “Life today is paved with cybertraps… and AI progress will only worsen this scenario.”

Yoon Suk Yeol has become South Korea’s first sitting president to be arrested after investigators scaled barricades and cut through barbed wire to take him into custody.

Yoon, 64, is being investigated on charges of insurrection for a failed martial law order on 3 December that plunged the country into turmoil.

He has also been impeached by parliament and suspended – but will only be removed from office if the Constitutional Court upholds the impeachment.

However, Yoon’s dramatic arrest on Wednesday brings to an end a weeks-long standoff between investigators and his presidential security team.

Investigators from the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO) failed to arrest him on 3 January after being locked in a six-hour stand-off with his security detail.

But just before dawn on Wednesday, a much larger team of investigators and police arrived at his residence in central Seoul, armed with ladders to climb over buses blocking its entrance and bolt cutters to remove barbed wire.

Other officers in the arrest team, which numbered around 1,000, scaled walls and hiked up nearby trails to reach the presidential residence.

After several hours, authorities announced that Yoon had been arrested.

In a three-minute video released just before his arrest, the 64-year-old leader said he would co-operate with the investigators, while repeating previous claims that the warrant was not legally valid.

“I decided to appear before the CIO, even though it is an illegal investigation, in order to prevent any unsavoury bloodshed,” he said, adding that he witnessed officials “invade” his home’s security perimeter with fire equipment.

On Wednesday afternoon, investigators said Yoon had remained silent throughout questioning.

Yoon’s lawyers have said his arrest was “illegal” because the CIO, as an anti-corruption agency, has no power to investigate the insurrection allegations against Yoon. They also claim the warrant was issued by the wrong jurisdiction.

The same court later dismissed an injunction filed by President Yoon to invalidate the arrest warrant, which the authorities maintain is lawful.

The opposition Democratic Party’s floor leader, Park Chan-dae, said Wednesday’s arrest showed that “justice in South Korea is alive”.

This arrest “is the first step toward restoring constitutional order, democracy and the rule of law”, he said during a party meeting.

The country is currently being led by Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok as acting president. He was thrust into power after the first acting president, Han Duck-soo, was also impeached by parliament, where the opposition has a sizeable majority.

The clock has started ticking for investigators.

Under the current warrant, they can hold Yoon for up to 48 hours from the point of arrest, after which they need a new warrant to detain him while he continues to be investigated.

If that warrant is granted, they can detain him for up to 20 days before he is brought to trial. Without a new warrant, Yoon must be released.

Late on Wednesday, local media reported Yoon was questioned in the CIO’s office until 21:40 before being taken to Seoul Detention Centre, approximately 5km (3 miles) away in Uiwang, Gyeonggi Province.

Pro-Yoon supporters continued to protest against the arrest outside the CIO’s office.

They had gathered outside his house since before dawn on Wednesday, along with those opposing him.

The anti-Yoon crowd blasted out a “congratulations and celebrations” song when his arrest was announced, cheering and clapping at what they see as a success for law enforcement.

Yoon’s supporters, however, were dismayed. “We are very upset and angry. The rule of law has broken down,” one of them told the BBC.

Meanwhile, reports emerged that a man set himself on fire near the CIO’s office – although it is not known whether the incident is related to Yoon’s arrest.

The contrasting scenes between these two camps on Wednesday reflect deepening polarisation within the country, which has long been marked by stark divisions between conservatives and progressives.

The political saga has also pit two branches of executive power against each other: law enforcement officers armed with a legal arrest warrant and presidential security staff, who say they are duty bound to protect the suspended president.

As the former president faces questioning over the charges, the nation remains gripped by uncertainty, with no clear resolution to the widening political divide.

South Korea has been gripped by political turmoil since Yoon’s stunning but short-lived martial law declaration on 3 December, which saw many MPs climb fences and break barricades to enter the National Assembly to vote down the order.

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

Yoon has been a lame duck president since the opposition won the general election last April by a landslide – his government has been reduced to vetoing bills proposed by the opposition.

An unprecedented few weeks followed, with parliament voting to impeach Yoon, his subsequent suspension and authorities launching a criminal investigation over the attempt.

Several of the country’s top leaders – including former defence minister Kim Yong-hyun, who reportedly suggested the martial law declaration – and Yoon’s political aides have since also resigned.

Tens of thousands of South Koreans have also braved freezing temperatures and taken to the streets in recent weeks, with some showing their support for Yoon and others calling for him to be removed from office.

All this while Yoon has remained holed up in his residence, refusing to comply with multiple summonses to appear for questioning, a defiant stance that led the authorities to arrest him.

Separately, the Constitutional Court has begun a trial to decide if he should be permanently removed from office, with observers saying it could deliver a ruling as early as February. Its next hearing is due to take place on Thursday.

Negotiators from Israel and Hamas are making a final push to seal a Gaza ceasefire in Doha, with all sides suggesting an agreement is almost done.

There were reports of a breakthrough on Wednesday, with unnamed Israeli officials cited as saying that Hamas had agreed to the latest draft presented by Qatari, US and Egyptian mediators.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office however swiftly denied the reports. There was also no immediate comment from the Palestinian armed group.

On Tuesday night, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said they were “on the brink” of an agreement and awaiting “final word from Hamas”.

A senior Hamas official later told Reuters news agency it had not delivered its official response to the draft because Israel had yet to submit maps showing how its troops would withdraw from areas of Gaza.

However, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper cited an Israeli source as denying Hamas’s claim about the maps.

The proposed three-phase deal would begin with an initial six-week ceasefire.

A Palestinian official told the BBC that Hamas would release three hostages on the first day of a deal, after which Israel would begin withdrawing troops from populated areas.

More hostage releases would then be staggered over the following weeks, he said, with Israel allowing displaced residents to return in northern areas.

Israel has said it expects 33 hostages to be released in the first phase and that it will free a yet to be determined number of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails in return.

Negotiations for the second phase – which should see the remaining hostages released, a full Israeli troop withdrawal and a “sustainable calm” – would start after two weeks.

Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesman said on Tuesday that there were no major issues were blocking a deal and that he was hopeful the talks would “very soon lead to an agreement”.

However, he also warned that that “the most minor detail” could yet undermine the process.

The Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the group’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

More than 46,700 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry. Most of the 2.3 million population has also been displaced, there is widespread destruction, and there are severe shortages of food, fuel, medicine and shelter due to an struggle to get aid to those in need.

Israel says 94 of the hostages are still being held by Hamas, of whom 34 are presumed dead. In addition, there are four Israelis who were abducted before the war, two of whom are dead.

Relatives of the remaining hostages have urged the Israeli government to do whatever it takes to get a deal over the line and bring all of them home.

“We can’t miss this moment. This is the last moment; we can save them,” said Hadas Kalderon, the wife of Ofer Kalderon, a 54-year-old.

Palestinians also dared to hope that an end to the devastating 15-month war was close.

“We are waiting for the ceasefire and the truce. May God complete it for us in goodness, bless us with peace, and allow us to return to our homes,” said Amal Saleh, 54, told Reuters news agency.

“Even if the schools are bombed, destroyed, and ruined, we just want to know that we are finally living in peace.”

There has been no let-up in the intensity of the war as the negotiations have continued.

The Israeli military said on Wednesday morning that it had carried out strikes on more than 50 targets across the territory in the past day.

Gaza’s health ministry said at least 62 people had been killed over the same period.

Overnight, a strike on a home in the central town in Deir al-Balah killed 11 people, including four children, the Civil Defence agency told AFP news agency.

As she picked through the rubble of the destroyed building, Kifaya Shaqoura said the dead included her uncle and aunt, their children and their grandchildren.

“People are waiting for them to announce a truce. But, unfortunately, we woke up with… the news that they’ve become martyrs. What can we say?”

Another seven people were reportedly killed in a strike on a school being used as a shelter for displaced families to the north in Gaza City.

The Israeli military said it targeted a “terrorist who served in a central position” who was at a school in the city, and that it had also carried out strikes on Hamas operatives in Deir al-Balah and the southern city of Khan Younis.

It added that steps had been taken to mitigate harm to civilians and accused Hamas of exploiting civilian structures for military purposes.

At least 25 people have died in the Los Angeles fires as two major blazes continue to burn across the sprawling US city.

Firefighters made progress over the weekend in containing the Palisades and Eaton fires but warn that the return of high winds – forecast until Wednesday – could see these two spread again, or fuel new ones.

The fires are already among the most destructive in LA’s history when measured by the number of buildings destroyed. Rebuilding work will cost “tens of billions” of dollars, US President Joe Biden has said.

An area to the north-west of the city centre is described by officials as “particularly dangerous”.

A red flag warning – indicating a high level of fire danger – is in place until 18:00 (02:00 GMT) on Wednesday, with the strongest Santa Ana winds expected on Tuesday.

Nearby, the largest fire is in the Palisades area, and has burnt through more than 23,000 acres. It is still only about 14% contained, despite the efforts of thousands of firefighters.

The blaze is moving east, threatening the exclusive neighbourhood of Brentwood, home to the Getty Center, a world-famous art museum that has evacuated its staff.

• Follow live updates
• What are the Santa Ana winds?
• LA fire victims fear new housing crisis

Another fire, Eaton, is more deadly than Palisades so far – responsible for 16 of the deaths.

The overall destruction is immense, with more than 12,000 structures – homes, outbuildings, sheds, mobile homes and cars – destroyed. Celebrities Mel Gibson and Paris Hilton are among those who have lost their homes.

Tens of thousands of homes are also without power.

The fires could turn out to be the costliest in US history, with damage projected at up to $150bn, according to a preliminary estimate by AccuWeather.

There are three active fires in the wider area, while a smaller fire is nearly contained, say California fire officials:

• Palisades: The first fire to erupt a week ago and the biggest in the region. It has scorched more than 23,000 acres as of Tuesday, including the upmarket Pacific Palisades neighbourhood, and is only 14% contained
• Eaton: Affecting the northern part of LA, blazing through areas such as Altadena. It is the second biggest fire in the area, burning more than 14,000 acres. It is now 33% contained
• Hurst: Located just north of San Fernando, it began burning last Tuesday. It has grown to 799 acres, but is almost fully contained
• Auto: Broke out on Monday. It has reportedly been stopped from moving forwards after spanning 56 acres, according to Ventura County officials

The earlier Kenneth, Archer, Sunset, Lidia, Woodley and Olivas fires have been contained.

Containment describes the progress firefighters make in controlling the spread of flames. It is often listed as a percentage. For example, if a fire is 14% contained, that means fire crews have established barriers around 14% of the fire’s perimeter.

Natural barriers include roads, rivers and oceans. Firefighters can also create barriers using equipment such as bulldozers, hoses and shovels to remove vegetation down to the bare soil, meaning there is nothing for the fire to burn.

A fire being 100% contained doesn’t mean it has been extinguished, but rather that the flames have been fully encircled and the spread has been effectively stopped.

• Maps and images reveal scale of LA wildfire devastation
• What we know about the victims

Detectives continue to investigate the possible causes.

Lightning – the most common source of fires in the US – has been ruled out as a cause for the Palisades and Eaton fires.

There has been no official indication so far that arson or utility lines – the next two biggest culprits in sparking fires – caused any of the conflagrations.

However, in the case of the Eaton fire, legal cases have been filed against the electrical company, Southern California Edison Company (SCE), claiming there is evidence that the blaze – one of the largest – was ignited due to negligence of the firm’s overhead wires.

SCE has vowed to “review the complaint when it is received”, pointing out that “the cause of the fire continues to be under investigation”.

A spokeswoman added that the company “remains committed” to supporting communities affected by the fires.

On Friday, SCE said authorities were investigating whether its infrastructure was involved in the ignition of the separate Hurst fire.

• ‘I have nothing to go back to’: BBC reporter loses home
• How one street went up in flames

California’s very wet years of 2022-23 brought about a huge growth of vegetation, which dried out in the drought of last year, creating abundant kindling.

Conditions have been ripe for wildfires thanks to a combination of an exceptionally dry period – downtown LA has only received 0.16 inches (0.4cm) of rain since October – and powerful offshore gusts known as the Santa Ana winds.

A political row about the city’s preparedness has erupted after it emerged some fire crews’ hoses ran dry.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has called for an independent investigation into the loss of water pressure to hydrants and why the Santa Ynez Reservoir was closed for maintenance and empty when the fire broke out.

“Losing supplies from fire hydrants likely impaired the effort to protect some homes and evacuation corridors,” he wrote.

• Fact-checking criticism of California Democrats over fires

LA Mayor Karen Bass, who was on a previously arranged trip to Ghana when the fires began, has faced intense questions about the region’s preparedness and the water issues. On Saturday, she deflected questions about her handling of the emergency.

Before the fires broke out, the city of LA’s fire chief warned in a memo that budget cuts were hampering the department’s ability to respond to emergencies. But another official, the LA County fire chief, denied his department had been unprepared.

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.

Much of the western United States including California experienced a decades-long drought that ended just two years ago, making the region vulnerable.

“Whiplash” swings between dry and wet periods in recent years created a massive amount of tinder-dry vegetation that was ready to burn.

• Climate ‘whiplash’ linked to raging LA fires

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

“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.

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

• A simple guide to climate change
• Why LA is so hard to evacuate

No one can say when the Los Angeles fires will finally go out. The city is bracing for continued burning and a possible spread amid the latest wind warnings.

The Santa Ana winds that fanned the flames are set to strengthen, with strong gusts on Tuesday before the severity is expected to drop. There are now new red flag warnings for dangerous wind storms.

The other conditions that fed the fire – dry brush and lack of precipitation – continue as well.

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

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TikTok will be banned in the US on 19 January – unless the Supreme Court accepts a last ditch legal bid from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, that to do so would be unconstitutional.

But even if the country’s highest judicial authority agrees with the lower courts – and Congress – that the platform is a threat to national security will that actually stop Americans using it?

Will there be ways to bypass the ban – or could president-elect Donald Trump find a way to stop a law he says he opposed to, even if the courts uphold it?

And whatever happens to TikTok, who stands to benefit from the uncertainty clouding its future?

The most likely way the US would ban TikTok is to order app stores, such as the Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store, to make it unavailable for download in that region.

US lawmakers have already told tech firms to be ready to remove the app from their stores if a ban comes into force.

• Why does the US want to ban TikTok?
• Trump urges US Supreme Court to delay TikTok ban

That would mean people could no longer use a legitimate means to access TikTok – though it would also mean people who’ve already got it would still have it on their phones.

Because the app would not be publicly available anymore, new updates could no longer be delivered to users in the US – which would make the app buggier and, eventually, unusable.

Not to mention that many updates are provided to fix security holes in apps, so if TikTok stopped getting updates that could present hackers with millions of devices to target.

Of course, there are ways around such a ban.

There are already many videos circulating on TikTok informing users how to use a VPN (virtual private network) – a way of making it appear as if you are in another region.

The region of app stores can also be changed on most devices, so anyone can theoretically access apps from other countries – though this may cause other problems, not to mention likely breaking terms of service agreements.

It is also possible to install apps downloaded from the internet by modifying a device – which may break copyright law – and comes with its own risks. However the government has also anticipated this so is also proposing to ban “internet hosting services” from giving people access to the app.

So if the ban took this kind of form it seems likely that those who are determined to use TikTok after it comes into effect will be able to do so – but it won’t be the experience they are used to.

There are still other routes available to the government down the road – for example, after India banned TikTok in 2020, it ordered internet providers to block access to the app altogether.

And even if people did use a VPN, there are still ways TikTok could theoretically judge whether a person is based in the US – and then simply present them with a screen saying the app is not available in their country.

It remains to be seen whether TikTok would decide to assist the government in its own ban – but it is being reported by Reuters that it plans to do so.

TikTok’s own lawyer told the Supreme Court that he believes the app will “go dark” in the US unless it rules in its favour.

The complexity of the issue means even the experts are unclear about what happens next.

Professor Milton L. Mueller of the Georgia Institute of Technology – who filed a legal brief in support of TikTok – said a lack of clarity around how far the US could extend its authority to enforce the law makes knowing what technically happens if a ban goes ahead difficult to determine.

But he said what was clear was the impact it would have on users and the internet itself.

“It would totally legitimise the fragmentation of the internet along national or jurisdictional boundaries,” he said.

Trump has been clear he does not want the law to come into force, asking the Supreme Court to delay its implementation while he seeks a “political solution.”

But, should the justices uphold it, Trump does not have the power to overturn the law, which would come into effect the day before he returns to office.

But he could simply tell the Department of Justice not to enforce it.

The government would be effectively telling Apple and Google that they won’t be punished for continuing to allow access to TikTok, meaning the law would remain in place but would essentially be redundant.

Obviously, the firms might be uncomfortable about breaking the law even if they’ve been told it’s fine – as it would be effectively requiring them to take the president’s word for it that they won’t face punishment.

TikTok says it has 170 million users in the US who, on average, spent 51 minutes per day on the app in 2024.

Ban TikTok or make it less usable and that creates a huge opportunity for its big tech rivals says Jasmine Enberg, analyst at Insider Intelligence.

“Meta-owned Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, owned by Google, are the most natural fits for displaced users, creators, and advertisers,” she says.

Facebook could benefit too, though Ms Enberg says, in common with all Meta platforms, the controversial policy changes announced by boss Mark Zuckerberg could potentially lessen its appeal.

Users bring advertisers – so a ban could be a big financial boost to those platforms.

“Chief Marketing Officers who we’ve spoken with confirmed that they will divert their media dollars to Meta and Google if they can no longer advertise on TikTok – this is the same behaviour we saw in India when they banned TikTok in 2020”, said Forrester principal analyst Kelsey Chickering.

Lemon8, which is also owned by ByteDance, would have been an obvious place for people to go following a ban – but the law stipulates it also applies to other apps owned or operated by the firm. This means Lemon8 is probably also going to face being made inaccessible in the US.

Other potential winners include Twitch, which made its name on hosting livestreams – a popular feature on TikTok. Twitch is well known particularly to gamers, though it continues to grow with other content.

Other Chinese-owned platforms, such as Xiaohongshu – known as RedNote among its US users – have seen rapid growth in the US and the UK.

Still, some suggest no existing app can truly replace TikTok, in particular its feature TikTok Shop, which lets users purchase products directly from videos, and makes a lot of money for US creators.

Craig Atkinson, CEO of digital marketing agency Code3, said there was no direct competitor that people could easily switch to – and notes his agency was signing new contracts with clients to build TikTok Shop campaigns as late as December.

Up until now, ByteDance has been resolute that no sale of its prize asset in the US is on the table.

But could that change if it is actually banned – and when a president who prides himself on “the art of the deal” returns to the White House?

Potential buyers continue to line up – with Bloomberg News reporting on Tuesday that the firm was looking at a sale to billionaire Elon Musk, though TikTok has since described this as “pure fiction”.

Trump’s former treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin and billionaire businessman Frank McCourt are among those who have previously expressed an interest in buying it.

Mr McCourt, a former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, said he had secured $20 billion in verbal commitments from a consortium of investors to bid for TikTok.

There is an even more leftfield – and considerably less serious – proposed owner.

The biggest YouTuber in the world MrBeast has claimed he’s now in the running to make a deal after he had billionaires reaching out to him about it.

Though it may seem like a joke, he has a significant financial incentive to try and save the app – MrBeast has more than 100m followers on TikTok.

Starbucks says it is reversing rules for its cafes in North America that allowed people to use their facilities even if they had not bought anything.

The changes, which are set to come into force from 27 January, are a U-turn from a policy introduced six years ago that allowed people to linger in Starbucks outlets and use their toilets without making a purchase.

The move is part of the “back to Starbucks” strategy – a plan announced by the firm’s new boss as he tries to tackle flagging sales.

Starbucks said there was no change to its policy in the UK, where customers can continue to use the facilities without purchasing anything.

The world’s biggest coffee chain says its new code of conduct – which also addresses harassment and bans smoking and outside alcohol – aims to make its stores more welcoming.

“Implementing a Coffeehouse Code of Conduct… is a practical step that helps us prioritise our paying customers who want to sit and enjoy our cafes,” a Starbucks spokesperson told BBC News.

“These updates are part of a broader set of changes we are making to enhance the cafe experience as we work to get back to Starbucks.”

The company said the new rules would be displayed at every store and staff would be instructed to ask anyone who violates the code of conduct to leave. That includes allowing employees to call the police when necessary.

The change ends a policy Starbucks introduced in 2018 after two black men were arrested at one of the company’s stores in Philadelphia.

The men, one of whom had asked to use the toilet, had said they were waiting for a friend and refused a manager’s request to leave.

The video of the incident went viral, and critics accused the chain of racial profiling and called for a boycott.

Starbucks apologised to the men, agreed a settlement, and to help counter the backlash announced it would welcome people into their cafes, whether or not they were customers.

Starbucks has been trying to boost flagging sales as it grappled with a backlash to price increases and boycotts sparked by the Israel-Gaza war.

Brian Niccol, who previously headed the Mexican food chain Chipotle, was brought into Starbucks last year to help turn the business around.

Mr Niccol has been trying to improve the customer experience at Starbucks’ cafes by revamping its menus and coffee shops.

Other changes set to be introduced later this month include offering one free refill of hot or iced coffee for customers who buy a drink to consume on the premises.

Calling people obese is medically “flawed” – and the definition should be split into two, a report from global experts says.

The term “clinical obesity” should be used for patients with a medical condition caused by their weight, while “pre-clinically obese” should be applied to those remaining fat but fit, although at risk of disease.

This is better for patients than relying only on body mass index (BMI) – which measures whether they are a healthy weight for their height – to determine obesity.

More than a billion people are estimated to be living with obesity worldwide and prescription weight-loss drugs are in high demand.

The report, published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal, is supported by more than 50 medical experts around the world.

“Some individuals with obesity can maintain normal organ function and overall health, even long term, whereas others display signs and symptoms of severe illness here and now,” Prof Francesco Rubino, from King’s College London, who chaired the expert group, said.

“Obesity is a spectrum,” he added.

The current, blanket definition means too many people are being diagnosed as obese but not receiving the most appropriate care, the report says.

Natalie, from Crewe, goes to the gym four times a week and has a healthy diet, but is still overweight.

“I would consider myself on the larger side, but I’m fit,” she told the BBC 5 Live phone-in with Nicky Campbell.

“If you look at my BMI I’m obese, but if I speak to my doctor they say that I’m fit, healthy and there’s nothing wrong with me.

“I’m doing everything I can to stay fit and have a long healthy life,” she said.

Richard, from Falmouth, said there is a lot of confusion around BMI.

“When they did my test, it took me to a level of borderline obesity, but my body fat was only 4.9% – the problem is I had a lot of muscle mass,” he says.

In Mike’s opinion, you cannot be fat and fit – he says it is all down to diet.

“All these skinny jabs make me laugh, if you want to lose weight stop eating – it’s easy.”

Currently, in many countries, obesity is defined as having a BMI over 30 – a measurement that estimates body fat based on height and weight.

It is calculated by dividing an adult’s weight in kilograms by their height in metres squared.

For example, if they are 70kg (about 11 stone) and 1.70m (about 5ft 7in):

• square their height in metres: 1.70 x 1.70 = 2.89
• divide their weight in kilograms by this amount: 70 ÷ 2.89 = 24.22
• display the result to one decimal place: 24.2

Find out what your body mass index (BMI) means on the NHS website

But BMI has limitations.

It measures whether someone is carrying too much weight – but not too much fat.

So very muscular people, such as athletes, tend to have a high BMI but not much fat.

The report says BMI is useful on a large scale, to work out the proportion of a population who are a healthy weight, overweight or obese.

But it reveals nothing about an individual patient’s overall health, whether they have heart problems or other illnesses, for example, and fails to distinguish between different types of body fat or measure the more dangerous fat around the waist and organs.

Measuring a patient’s waist or the amount of fat in their body, along with a detailed medical history, can give a much clearer picture than BMI, the report says.

“Obesity is a health risk – the difference is it’s also an illness for some,” Prof Rubino said.

Clinically obese

When obesity is a disease, there will be signs of it affecting organs in the body – through heart disease, breathlessness, type 2 diabetes or joint pain – and a person’s day-to-day activities. Treatment with drugs or surgery is likely.

Pre-clinically obese

When obesity is a risk to health – but not yet causing any illnesses, people should be offered weight-loss advice, counselling and monitoring, to reduce the chances of health problems developing.

Doctors should also pay close attention to a patient’s family history to see if they are at risk of particular diseases.

At a time when drugs that reduce body weight by up to 20% are being prescribed on a large scale, the report says redefining obesity “is all the more relevant” because it “improves the accuracy of diagnosis”.

Access to weight-loss drugs such as Wegovy and Mounjaro is often restricted to patients with a BMI over 30 and a weight-related health condition.

Children’s obesity expert Prof Louise Baur, from the University of Sydney, who contributed to the report, said the new approach would allow adults and children with obesity “to receive more appropriate care”, while reducing the numbers being over-diagnosed and given unnecessary treatment.

The Royal College of Physicians said the report laid a strong foundation “for treating obesity with the same medical rigour and compassion as other chronic illnesses”.

But others worry pressure on health budgets could mean less money for patients in the “pre-obesity” category.