Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says his country is ready to resume the war against Hamas should talks for a second phase of the ceasefire fail.

In a televised speech just hours before it was due to start on Sunday, Netanyahu stressed that the ceasefire was “temporary” and Israel reserved the right to resume strikes in Gaza – and had the backing of US President-elect Donald Trump to do so.

Netanyahu also outlined what he called the success of Israel’s military campaign over the last 15 months – including the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

“We changed the face of the Middle East,” Netanyahu said, before adding that Hamas was now “completely alone”.

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The ceasefire is due to come into force at 08:30 local time (06:30 GMT).

Prior to Saturday’s speech, Netanyahu said Israel would not implement the deal until it received the list of hostages to be released by Hamas.

“Israel will not tolerate violations of the agreement,” he said.

A longer list of the 33 hostages due to be freed by Hamas has already been published by Israeli media but not confirmed by officials.

But Israeli authorities say they have yet to receive the names of the three hostages due to be released on Sunday.

Meanwhile Israel has continued air strikes on what they say are Hamas and Islamic Jihad sites in Gaza – more than 120 people have been killed since the deal was announced on Wednesday, Hamas officials say.

Over the next few weeks, the 33 hostages are set to be released in exchange for 1,890 Palestinian prisoners. Under terms of the agreement, Israel will also begin pulling back its forces from Gaza.

The location at which the first hostages will be handed over is unclear. A senior Israeli military official said three reception points had been prepared near the border in northern, central, and southern Gaza.

Previously, a source close to Hamas told the AFP news agency that the first three hostages to be released would be women.

Talks about the terms of the second phase of the ceasefire are set to start on Day 16 of the first phase and will focus on achieving “a permanent end to the war”.

Details of the second phase of the deal are still uncertain but the expectation is that remaining hostages, including men, would be freed at this stage as more Palestinian prisoners detained in Israeli prisons are released.

There would also be a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. It is also understood that Hamas police – who will be unarmed unless absolutely necessary – will manage the return of hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians to northern Gaza

The third and final stage will involve the reconstruction of Gaza – something which could take many years – and the return of any remaining hostages’ bodies.

On Friday night, Israel’s government approved the ceasefire and hostage release deal after hours of discussions.

Two far-right cabinet ministers voted against it, including national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

The drawn-out structure of the agreement is also causing anxiety and division among the families of the hostages. Some fear relatives will be abandoned in Gaza after the first phase is done.

On Saturday evening, thousands of protesters gathered in Tel Aviv to demand the government ensures the release of further hostages by abiding by the first phase of the ceasefire.

Gal Alkalay, a member of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, told Reuters news agency: “We could have saved the lives of 200 soldiers and more than 10 hostages.” She added that people had died unnecessarily because the government “couldn’t take a decision and waited for Trump”.

Earlier on Saturday, several people were wounded in a stabbing attack near a restaurant In Tel Aviv, Israeli police said. The attacker was reportedly shot and killed at the scene by a civilian.

The suspect came to Tel Aviv “illegally” from Tulkarm in the occupied West Bank, Israeli media said.

There has been no respite for Palestinians on the ground in Gaza since the ceasefire deal was announced on Wednesday night.

The Palestinian health ministry said 123 people – including dozens of women and children – have been killed in strikes since then.

On Saturday, Gaza’s Hamas-run civil defence rescue agency said at least five members of one family were killed when a strike hit their tent in Khan Yunis, in southern Gaza, AFP reports.

Since Thursday afternoon, the Israeli military said it had struck 100 Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters who were among several “terror targets” hit across Gaza, according to the Reuters news agency.

The Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy Hamas – which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US and others – in response to an unprecedented cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage.

Around 46,899 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 a struggle to get aid to those in need.

TikTok has gone offline in the US, hours before a new law banning the platform was due to come into effect.

A message appearing on the app for US users said a law banning TikTok had been enacted, meaning “you can’t use TikTok for now”.

“We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office,” it read.

It comes after the social media platform warned it would “go dark” on Sunday unless the outgoing Biden administration gave assurances the ban will not be enforced.

President-elect Donald Trump earlier said he will “most likely” give TikTok a 90-day reprieve from a ban once he takes office on Monday.

Users reported that the app had also been removed from Google’s US App Store and TikTok.com was not showing videos.

The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a law banning the app in the US unless its China-based parent company, ByteDance, sold the platform by 19 January, which it has not done.

The law, passed in April last year, required ByteDance to sell the US version of the platform to a neutral party to avert an outright ban.

TikTok challenged the law, arguing that it violates free speech protections for its 170 million users in the country.

Dr Mustafa Ali Abdulrahman Ibo and his colleagues bravely perform surgery under increasing bombardment in the last remaining hospital in el-Fasher, a city that has been under siege for the last nine months in Sudan’s western Darfur region.

Over the last month the hospital has recorded 28 deaths and more than 50 injuries among its staff and patients because of intense shelling. This is the highest number of casualties recorded in a month since the siege began.

“Recent continuous attacks targeting Saudi Hospital have intensified dramatically, it has become part of our daily lives,” Dr Ibo, a Darfuri who has lived in el-Fasher since 2011, told the BBC.

He said the most frightening day had been when a team of medics were performing an emergency caesarean as the shelling began – a near-death experience for them all.

”The first one hit the hospital’s perimeter wall… [then] another shell hit the maternity operating room, the debris damaged the electrical generator, cutting off the power and plunging us into complete darkness,” he said.

The surgical team had no option but to use the torches on their phones to finish the two-hour operation.

Part of the building had collapsed and the room was full of dust with shrapnel scattered all over the place.

Dr Khatab Mohammed, who had been leading the surgery, described the dangers.

“The situation was dire, the environment was no longer sterile,” the 29-year-old medic told the BBC.

“After ensuring our safety and the patient’s safety from shrapnel, we cleaned her and changed our surgical gowns since our clothes were full of dust and we continued the surgery,” he said, adding that the patient could have died from complications.

After successfully delivering the baby, the doctors moved mother and new-born to another room to recover and then gathered to take a group photo.

It was a testament to their survival, but Dr Mohammed added: “I thought it might be our last photo, believing that another shell would hit the same spot and we would all die.”

They went on to perform two more life-saving emergency operations that day.

These doctors – most of whom are graduates of the University of el-Fasher – have stayed put since Sudan’s civil war erupted in April 2023.

The conflict has pitted the army against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and has caused the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis, forcing more than 12 million people from their homes.

The two rivals had been allies – coming to power together in a coup – but fell out over an internationally backed plan to move towards civilian rule.

A year into the conflict, the siege of el-Fasher began. It is the only city still under army control in Darfur, where the RSF has been accused of carrying out ethnic cleansing against non-Arab communities.

The RSF began attacking el-Fasher from three sides and cut off supply routes. In a report issued last month, the UN Human Rights Office said the fighting had left more that 780 civilians dead and more than 1,140 injured – many of them casualties of crossfire.

The fighting has forced all other hospitals in el-Fasher to shut.

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South Hospital, which was supported by medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), was the main health facility in the city dealing with war casualties.

It was near the frontline and was stormed in June by RSF fighters, who also looted medicine and equipment and assaulted staff.

Saudi Hospital, which is run by the Ministry of Health and funded by non-governmental organisations, the UN and MSF, specialises in obstetrics and gynaecology but is now providing all medical services – it is the only place in North Darfur state with surgical capacity.

Amid shortages of medical supplies, equipment and personnel, Saudi Hospital is facing ”a heart-breaking situation that violates all humanitarian and international laws and values”, its medical director, 28-year-old Mudathir Ibrahim Suleiman, told the BBC.

He recalled how terrifying it was during recent bombings: “Pregnant women, children and staff were in shock and paralysis, some people were injured and had to be pulled out the rubble.

“All the current conditions push us to consider stopping our work, but women and children have no other place to save their lives except this hospital,” he said.

“The staff at the hospital are doing the impossible to save lives.”

All normal aspects of life have completely disappeared from el-Fasher, especially in the northern and eastern parts. The university, for example, operates via online learning, with exam centres established in safer cities like Kassala in eastern Sudan.

With widespread hunger and insecurity, the city has also emptied. About half the population have sought refuge in the nearby Zamzam camp, where an estimated 500,000 people now live in famine conditions.

Saudi Hospital also serves the camp, with MSF running ambulances to bring in emergency cases.

But these have also recently started coming under attack, including an incident earlier this month when a gunman shot at a “clearly marked ambulance with the MSF logo and flag”.

“We are horrified by this deadly attack on a humanitarian crew carrying out life-saving medical work where it’s desperately needed,” MSF’s Michel Olivier Lacharité said in a statement.

Dr Ibo admitted it was his colleagues – there are 35 doctors and 60 nurses at Saudi Hospital – who kept him going.

”We lose people every day, and offices and rooms are destroyed, but thanks to the determination of the young staff, we continue to persevere.

”We draw our resilience from the people of el-Fasher – we are its children and graduates of the University of el-Fasher.”

Aid agencies are warning that one of the worst maternal and child health emergencies is unfolding in Darfur, where some areas are also being targeted in air strikes by the military.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has called for a halt to attacks on health facilities and adherence to international humanitarian laws.

“The sanctity of health must be respected even in war,” WHO Sudan communications officer Loza Mesfin Tesfaye told the BBC.

Dr Mohammed, who is originally from Sudan’s White Nile State but came to el-Fasher to study medicine in 2014, also pays homage to his team, who have ignored many opportunities to flee.

“Our souls refused to abandon the people of this city – especially given the catastrophic conditions we witness daily.”

All the medics, who communicated via chats and voice notes on WhatsApp, sounded focused.

”We are determined to continue saving lives, from wherever we can, even underground or under the shade of a tree, we pray for the war to end and for peace to prevail,” said Dr Ibo.

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• BBC hears of horror and hunger in rare visit to Darfur massacre town

A looming TikTok ban has connected Chinese and American citizens like never before, as they swap jokes and memes in what one user described as a “historic moment”.

It’s all unfolding on a popular Chinese social media app called RedNote, or Xiaohongshu (literally translates as Little Red Book), which doesn’t have the usual internet firewall that separates China from the rest of the world.

It has been drawing self-professed US “TikTok refugees” seeking a new home on the internet – despite the fact that their own government is seeking a TikTok ban because of national security concerns.

Americans now find themselves in direct contact with 300 million Mandarin speakers in China and elsewhere – while in the real world, Beijing is bracing for a tumultuous Trump presidency that could strain its fragile ties with Washington.

At the heart of the US ban is the fear that China is using TikTok to spy on Americans.

The app has faced accusations that user data is ending up in the hands of the Chinese government – because of a Beijing law that requires local companies to “support, assist and cooperate with the state intelligence work”. TikTok denies this has ever happened, or that it would happen.

But the possibility doesn’t seem to worry some US users – 700,000 new users have signed on to RedNote in the last two days, making it the most downloaded free app in the US App store.

“The reason that our government is telling us that they are banning TikTok is because they’re insisting that it’s owned by you guys, the Chinese people, government, whatever,” said one new RedNote user, Definitelynotchippy.

She goes on to explain why she is on RedNote: “A lot of us are smarter than that though so we decided to piss off our government and download an actual Chinese app. We call that trolling, so in short we’re here to spite our government and to learn about China and hang out with you guys.”

TikTok, although owned by Chinese company ByteDance, is headquartered in Singapore and says it is run independently. In fact, China’s version of TikTok is another app called Douyin. RedNote, on the other hand, is a Chinese company based in Shanghai and among the few social media apps available both in China and outside.

So Washington’s fears over TikTok would extend to RedNote as well.

That’s why American users on RedNote are referring to themselves as “Chinese spies” – continuing a TikTok trend where people have been bidding farewell to their “personal Chinese spy” who has allegedly been surveilling them over the years.

RedNote is now full of posts where ex-TikTok users are in search of a replacement. One post says: “I’m looking for my Chinese spy. I miss you. Please help me find him.”

And Chinese users have answered: “I’m here!”

The honest, funny conversations on RedNote may not be what Chinese President Xi Jinping had in mind when he spoke about “strengthening people-to-people cultural exchanges” between China and the US.

But that is certainly what is happening as excited Chinese users welcome curious Americans to the app.

“You don’t even need to travel abroad, you can just talk to foreigners here,” said one Chinese RedNote user in a video that has received more than 6,000 likes.

“But it’s honestly insane, no-one would have expected that we could meet like this one day, openly communicate like this.”

Food, streaming shows and jobs have been the most popular topics: “Is life in America similar to how it looks on [the US TV show] Friends?”

Other Chinese users demanded a “tax” for using the platform – cat photos.

“Cat tax from California,” reads one post in response. “Here’s my offering – the shorthair is a boy named Bob and the calico is a girl named Marley.”

Still others are using the platform to ask Americans for help with their English homework.

One post reads: “Dear TikTok refugees, could you please tell me the answer to question 53? Is the answer T (true) or F (false)?”

Help came quickly: some 500 people have since answered.

The flood of new American users appears to have caught RedNote off guard – reports say the company is hiring English moderators.

And others are trying to cash in on RedNote’s new-found US stardom as well: language-learning app Duolingo put out a graph showing a 216% jump in its user base, compared to this time last year.

RedNote’s rising popularity is not guaranteed to last though.

There is no reason to assume it won’t face blowback for the same reasons as TikTok: concerns that it could be used by China to spy on Americans.

It’s unclear how long Beijing would be open to such unfettered exchanges – control of the internet is key to its repressive regime.

The irony of the situation was flagged by one Chinese user, who posted: “Don’t we have a (fire)wall? How come so many foreigners can enter, when clearly I can’t leave?”

Typically, Chinese internet users have been unable to directly interact with foreigners. Global platforms like Twitter and Instagram and search engines like Google are blocked in China, though people use VPNs to circumvent these restrictions. Sensitive topics – from history to dissent – or anything seen as critical of China’s government and ruling Communist party is swiftly censored.

It’s unclear how much RedNote is censored – it’s largely used by younger and middle-aged women in China, where they share images and videos. It’s not like Weibo, another Chinese app, where discussions and airing of grievances is far more common, leading to posts often being taken down.

But a handful of new RedNote users say they have already received reports that their posts have violated guidelines, including one who asked in a post if the app was “LGBT friendly”.

Another said they had asked “What [sic] Chinese think about gay people?” and received a similar notification, that they had violated “public moral order” guidelines.

And Chinese users keep reminding Americans on the app “not to mention sensitive topics, such as politics, religion and drugs”.

One Chinese user also advised them to stick to the “One China policy”, the diplomatic pillar of the US-China relationship – according to which the US recognises and has formal ties with China rather than Taiwan, the self-governed island Beijing claims as its own.

The US government has not commented on RedNote so far, and neither has Beijing.

But Chinese state media seems upbeat about it, with Global Times even interviewing a US user who said she would “love to interact with Chinese users”.

RedNote’s American fate is anyone’s guess – but for now, at least online, the US-China rivalry is taking a break. Thanks to cat pictures.

A court in India has convicted a man of the rape and murder of a trainee doctor – a crime that sparked nationwide outrage.

Sanjay Roy, a hospital volunteer worker, was found guilty over the attack, which happened in August last year at a hospital in Kolkata city in West Bengal state.

The incident caused shockwaves across the country, leading to widespread protests and concerns over the safety of healthcare workers in India, especially women.

Judge Anirban Das said the sentence, which will be announced on Monday, would range from life in prison to the death penalty. Roy has maintained his innocence and said previously that he was being framed.

The victim’s mother told the AFP news agency that people would lose faith in India’s legal system if Roy was not handed the death penalty.

The body of the 31-year-old doctor, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was found on 9 August 2024 at at the busy, state-run RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata.

After a gruelling 36-hour shift, she had gone to sleep in the hospital’s seminar hall. Her half-naked, severely injured, body was later discovered near a podium by a colleague.

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The post-mortem examination found the victim had been strangled and had injuries showing she fought back.

According to the charge sheet filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which the BBC has seen, Roy went to the hospital in a drunken state and found the female doctor sleeping alone.

He was arrested a day after the crime.

The case was initially being investigated by the Kolkata police but later the court handed over the probe to the CBI after state officials were accused of mishandling it.

For weeks after the incident, doctors and medical students across India held protests and rallies demanding justice and better security for doctors.

One such protest, the “Reclaim the Night” march, saw tens of thousands of women walk through the streets at night in Kolkata and other cities on 14 August, the eve of India’s Independence Day.

In December, the victim’s parents petitioned the Calcutta High Court for a fresh investigation, expressing a lack of faith in the CBI’s investigation.

They argued that Roy alone could not have committed the crime and stated they would be satisfied only when all those involved were brought to justice. The high court has said it will consider the plea only if the Supreme Court – which is monitoring the case – directs it to do so.

The incident raised concerns about rising cases of violence against health workers in India – many of whom face physical abuse by angry patients or their relatives.

A 2017 survey by the Indian Medical Association found that over 75% of doctors in India have experienced some form of violence. The survey also revealed that nearly 63% of doctors fear potential violence while treating patients.

Meanwhile, sexual violence against women remains a widespread problem in India. More than 31,000 rapes were reported in India in 2022, according to data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).

Many rape cases in India go unreported, mostly due to social stigma around sexual violence and a lack of trust in the police and judicial system. Activists say this often results in the victim being shamed instead of the perpetrator, especially in rural areas.

In 2012, the rape and murder of a medical student by a group of men in India’s capital Delhi drew global attention and triggered similar, wider protests.

The public anger prompted authorities to amend rape laws in 2013. The changes broadened the definition of the crime, set strict punishments for sexual assault and lowered the age at which a person can be tried from 18 to 16.

The Israeli and Hamas negotiators never came face to face – but by the end, just one floor separated them.

Ceasefire talks via middlemen from Qatar, Egypt and the US had been dragging on for several months, at times without hope. Now the key players were all inside one building in Doha and the pace was frantic.

A deal was close but things had gone wrong before: one source described a last-minute push to stop the agreement breaking down while a podium was being set up so the Qatari prime minister could announce it.

“Literally, negotiations were up until 10 minutes before the press conference. So that’s how things were stitched up at the last minute,” the source familiar with the talks said.

The BBC has spoken to a number of officials on all sides of the negotiations to piece together how the final fraught days of the secretive process unfolded.

The deal did not come out of the blue.

The overall framework of the agreement reached on 15 January was broadly the same as the proposal set out by President Joe Biden during a White House address last May. It uses the same three-phase approach and will see a ceasefire, Israeli hostages released in return for Palestinian prisoners, and the Israeli military’s gradual withdrawal from Gaza.

But sources familiar with the discussions agreed the dynamics of the talks shifted decisively in mid-December and the pace changed.

Hamas, already reeling from Israel’s killing of its leader Yahya Sinwar in Gaza two months earlier, had become increasingly isolated. Its Lebanon-based ally Hezbollah had been decimated and had agreed to a truce with Israel. Bashar al-Assad’s Iran-backed government in Syria had also been swept away.

The view in Washington is that Hamas was forced to abandon the idea that “the cavalry was coming to save it”, as one US official put it.

“It is hard to overstate how fundamentally the equation changed and what that [did] for Hamas’s calculus,” says a senior Biden administration official familiar with the talks.

An Israeli official who wished to remain anonymous said Hamas was “not in a rush” to strike a deal and had been “dictating” rather than negotiating. They said that changed after the death of Sinwar and Israeli operations against Hamas’s allies in the region.

On top of that, the official said, there was “momentum created by both US administrations” – the Biden White House and the incoming Trump team.

“We could not achieve a deal like this until conditions had changed,” the official added.

On 12 December, Biden’s negotiating team visited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Middle East envoy Brett McGurk and CIA director Bill Burns were all in attendance.

A US official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the meeting lasted “multiple hours” and focused on the “new regional equation” and “how we catapult from the Lebanon ceasefire into another round of intensive discussions” on Gaza.

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There was also another piece on the chessboard by this stage: Donald Trump.

On 16 December, weeks after Trump’s victory, the BBC spoke to a Hamas official who was unusually optimistic about the ceasefire efforts, suggesting they seemed to be more serious.

The official – who had taken part in every set of talks since November 2023 – appeared reassured by the fact that an adviser to the incoming US president had sent a message to mediators indicating Trump wanted an agreement before his inauguration.

Trump had also warned of “all hell to pay” if Hamas did not agree to release the hostages – but the Palestinian official was bullish.

“This time, the pressure will not be limited to Hamas, as was customary under the Biden administration,” the official said. “There will also be pressure on Netanyahu. He is the one obstructing the deal, and Trump seems to understand that very well.”

However, that same official’s prediction that a deal could be done by Christmas proved to be optimistic.

During December, the process remained beset by problems. Israel publicly ruled out releasing certain high-profile prisoners, while the White House accused Hamas of throwing up roadblocks over the hostage releases.

A Biden administration official said: “Hamas [was] refusing to agree – and this was a breakdown at that point – to the list of hostages that would be released in phase one of the deal.

“That’s just so fundamental. This is a hostage release deal. Unless you agree to the list of hostages who will come out, there’s not going to be a deal.”

The same official said Hamas made “completely untrue” claims about not knowing the location of the hostages, and added: “We held the line and basically left the table until Hamas agreed to the hostage list.”

An anonymous Israeli official said Hamas had sought to conceal the number of living hostages and “tried to dictate that they would send us only dead bodies”.

For its part, Hamas claimed Israel unexpectedly added 11 names to the list of hostages it wanted to be released in the first phase. Hamas considered them reserve soldiers, and therefore not eligible to be released alongside the women, injured and elderly hostages due to be released in phase one.

The door was left open to Qatari and Egyptian mediators to continue their efforts and on 3 January, there was an apparent breakthrough when Hamas proposed the release of 110 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences in return.

There were by now well-established terms of reference for such trades. For each hostage Hamas was to release, Israel would have to provide what had become known in the nomenclature of the draft deal as a “key” – meaning an agreed number or even specific identities of Palestinian prisoners.

A US official said: “There’s an equation for how many Palestinian prisoners come out. So for female soldiers, for example, there’s a key. And for elderly males, there’s a key. And for women civilians, there’s a key. And this has all been worked out and the prisoners have been named, hundreds and hundreds of prisoners on the list.”

The exchange file in the negotiations – Palestinian prisoners for hostages held by Hamas – became known as “the keys”.

During this phase of the talks, Hamas also relented on two long-standing demands: the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza in the first phase and a formal Israeli commitment to a total ceasefire.

Sensing a breakthrough, the Egyptian mediator urgently dispatched Major General Ahmed Abdel Khaleq – who oversees the Palestinian portfolio in Egyptian intelligence – to Doha. After meeting with Hamas representatives, he secured confirmation the group would make what a senior Hamas official described as “painful concessions.”

But on 6 January, according to a Palestinian official, Israel rejected the offer put forward by Hamas on the 11 hostages. Hamas responded by sending the BBC and other media outlets a list featuring the names and ages of 34 Israeli hostages. Two days later, the body of one of those on that list – Yosef AlZayadni – was found inside Gaza.

The list included reserve soldiers, which indicated Hamas was willing to release them in the first phase.

This appeared to be an attempt to embarrass Netanyahu and rally hostage families in Israel and around the world to pressure him into accepting the deal.

It was also an indication Hamas had not walked away.

Meetings stretching into the small hours of Doha’s hot evenings became common during the final stretch of the negotiations.

In the last month, they had developed into so-called “proximity talks”, with both sides in the same two-storey building, according to multiple accounts from officials familiar with the details.

A senior US official said Hamas’s delegation was on the first floor and Israel’s on the floor above. Mediators ran pieces of paper between them. Maps of Israeli troop withdrawal proposals and details about hostages or prisoners drafted for release were shuttled back and forth.

“That takes an enormous amount of work and, I have to say, all of that was not fully nailed down, really, until just the [final] hours,” said the official.

Inside the building, the delegations met separately with senior figures from Qatar and Egypt. Among those closely involved in the details was Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.

Two crucial areas were worked on in the final phases of the talks: the lists for release of hostages held by Hamas and Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, and the positions for Israeli troop withdrawals from populated areas in Gaza during phase one.

By 9 January, the pressure had escalated. Trump’s envoy, Biden’s envoy, and the Egyptian intelligence chief convened in Doha for a serious eight-hour negotiation session.

A senior Egyptian official told the BBC: “We are at the closest point to reaching an agreement.”

Agreement had been reached on 90% of the outstanding issues, but further talks were required.

Steve Witkoff, Trump’s recently appointed Middle East envoy, was dispatched to Tel Aviv to meet Netanyahu. Though not yet officially in post, the New York property tycoon had become more and more involved in the talks, which Trump was taking a keen interest in.

He was about to be sent on an assignment that proved to be pivotal.

When Trump’s man in the Middle East arrived in Israel on 11 January, it was the sabbath.

Witkoff was asked to wait until the sabbath had ended before he met Netanyahu but, in a breach of custom, the envoy refused and demanded to meet the prime minister immediately.

Netanyahu appears to have come under serious strong-arming during the meeting and the intervention from the Trump camp to get the Israeli government to set aside its final reservations seems to have been critical.

The meeting was reportedly fractious and the message to Netanyahu from the incoming president was clear: Trump wants a deal – now get it done.

Commenting on those talks, an Israeli official who asked to remain anonymous said it was a “very important meeting”.

When Witkoff returned to Doha, he remained in the room with the talks, spending time with Biden’s envoy Mr McGurk, in what two US officials called a “near unprecedented” transition effort in American diplomacy.

This week, Hamas official Bassem Naim told Al Arabiya he “couldn’t imagine that [the deal] could be possible without the pressure of the incoming administration led by President Trump” – and specifically cited Witkoff’s presence at the talks.

By now, the fact a deal could be imminent was out in the open and public expectation was building – not least among the families of those being held hostage and Palestinians displaced inside Gaza.

The final 72 hours of talks involved a constant back and forth over the finer points of how the deal would be implemented, according to one account.

One source close to the negotiations described the hammering out of “arrangements and logistics” for how the hostages would be released in Gaza and for the withdrawal movements of Israeli troops.

On 12 January, a senior Palestinian official familiar with the negotiations said “all the officials are here in the same building”, adding: “Tonight is decisive. We are only a few steps away from an agreement.”

That meeting lasted six hours – but, like so many times before, an impasse was reached.

This time the disagreement that arose was over the mechanism for the return of displaced individuals from southern Gaza to the north.

Israel wanted to search returnees and their vehicles to ensure no militants or military equipment were being transported – which Hamas refused to accept.

Mediators proposed that Qatari and Egyptian technical teams conduct the searches instead. Both sides agreed and one of the final remaining stalemates was resolved.

On 15 January shortly after 18:00, a Hamas negotiator wrote in a message to the BBC: “Everything is finished.”

The podium was being readied.

A deal which once looked impossible had taken shape.

Thousands of mostly female demonstrators took to the streets of Washington DC on Saturday to rally against President-elect Donald Trump two days ahead of his inauguration.

The People’s March – previously known as the Women’s March – has taken place every year since 2017.

A coalition of groups organised the movement with the stated aim of confronting “Trumpism”, according to its website. Smaller protests against Trump were held in New York City and on the other side of the country in Seattle.

The rallies coincide with Trump’s arrival to the nation’s capital for a series of weekend events in the lead-up to his swearing-in ceremony on Monday.

Saturday’s People’s March in Washington DC drew smaller numbers than its predecessors.

Organisers had expected 50,000 people. About 5,000 turned up.

The protesters gathered at three parks before marching to the Lincoln Memorial for the rally.

The groups behind the march are described on its website as holding “intersecting identities” and having “varied issue-based interests” with different causes such as climate change, immigration and women’s rights.

Organisers said they aimed to confront Trump by “drawing on past successes and effective strategies against autocrats”.

A small group of Trump supporters were at the Washington Monument on Saturday. Noticing the men in red Make America Great Again hats, one People’s March leader with a megaphone approached chanting: “No Trump, no KKK.”

One of the men, Timothy Wallis, told the Associated Press news agency his friends had just bought the Trump hats from a street vendor.

Mr Wallis, 58, of Pocatello, Idaho, said the People’s March protesters had “every right” to demonstrate, though he said he was confused by the rancour.

“It’s sad where we’re at as a country,” he said.

The first iteration of the People’s March came together after Trump defeated Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Women called for a protest the day after Trump’s first inauguration and hundreds of thousands responded.

The movement spread beyond the nation’s capital with millions of women across the US carrying signs railing against the Republican president and sporting pink knit “pussy hats” – a reference to a leaked tape in which Trump had bragged about grabbing women’s genitals.

The Women’s March remained a key part of the so-called resistance to Trump’s agenda in the years that followed.

But none of the subsequent marches have been on the same scale.

Trump, meanwhile, arrived in Washington DC later on Saturday to begin his inaugural festivities with a private event featuring fireworks at his golf club in the Virginia suburbs.

Women who gathered in Washington to join the People’s March told the BBC they had a variety of motivations.

One protester, Brooke, said she wanted to show her support for abortion access.

“I’m really not happy with the way our country’s voted,” she said. “I’m really sad that our country’s leaned towards a president that’s already failed us once and that we did not nominate a female candidate.”

Another woman, Kayla, said it’s a mix of emotions that brought her out to the streets of the nation’s capital.

“Honestly, I’m just mad, I’m sad, I’m overwhelmed,” she said.

Susie came in from the San Francisco area to demonstrate with her sister, Anne, who lives nearby. They both attended the Women’s March after Trump’s first inauguration and came back in their “pussy hats”.

Susie recalled the crowds of people in 2017. She said she hoped people would still take to the streets against Trump’s policies.

“This time the stakes are higher,” she said. “Trump has been emboldened. He’s got the billionaire class and the tech class bowing down.”

Anne also said she recognised the protesters are “out of touch” with a lot of America. Trump won all seven swing states and the popular vote last November.

But she added: “We’re still here, and we will resist.”

Donald Trump has said he will “most likely” give TikTok a 90-day reprieve from a ban that is due to take effect on Sunday, on the eve of his swearing-in as the 47th US president.

Trump told NBC News an announcement on the matter would probably come on Monday once he takes office.

It comes after the social media platform warned it would “go dark” on Sunday unless the outgoing Biden administration gave assurances the ban will not be enforced.

The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a law banning the app in the US unless its China-based parent company, ByteDance, sells the platform by 19 January. ByteDance has refused to seek a buyer.

“The 90-day extension is something that will be most likely done, because it’s appropriate. You know, it’s appropriate. We have to look at it carefully. It’s a very big situation,” Trump said in a phone interview with NBC News.

He made similarly remarks hours later to ABC News.

“Well, I have the right as you know, I’m the one who is going to be calling the shots,” he told ABC. “Most likely, I’ll extend for 90 days – you have the extension for 90 days as you probably know. I’ll do that until we figure something out.”

TikTok said late on Friday that the White House and the Department of Justice had “failed to provide the necessary clarity and assurance to the service providers that are integral to maintaining TikTok’s availability”.

But White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Saturday that TikTok’s warning it was about to go dark was “a stunt”.

“We see no reason for TikTok or other companies to take actions in the next few days before the Trump administration takes office on Monday,” she said.

“We have laid out our position clearly and straightforwardly: actions to implement this law will fall to the next administration. So TikTok and other companies should take up any concerns with them.”

Trump said on Friday he had spoken to China’s President Xi Jinping and discussed TikTok, among other issues.

TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew is expected to be among tech executives at Trump’s inauguration on Monday.

US national security officials have warned that Chinese spies could use the app’s data to track American federal employees and contractors, which TikTok has denied.

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On Friday, the Chinese embassy in Washington DC accused the US of unfairly suppressing TikTok: “China will take all necessary measures to resolutely safeguard its legitimate rights and interests,” a spokesperson said.

The platform is wildly popular among the 170 million users it says it has in the US. It has also proved a valuable tool for American political campaigns to reach younger voters.

Trump previously backed a TikTok ban, but has more recently professed a “warm spot” for the app, touting the billions of views he says his videos attracted on the platform during last year’s presidential campaign.

Under the law passed last April, the US version of the app would be removed from app stores and web-hosting services in the coming days.

Content creators and small businesses dependent on the app for revenue told the BBC their lives would be changed inordinately if it is shut down.

“Indirectly, TikTok was the majority of my income because all brands want their stuff to be promoted on the app,” Nicole Bloomgarden, a fashion designer and artist who uses TikTok, told the BBC.

TikTok did not respond to a BBC inquiry about what it means by potentially “going dark” in the US.

One possible outcome is what happened in India when the platform fell foul of the authorities there.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi moved to switch off dozens of Chinese-owned apps, including TikTok, in 2020 after a deadly altercation with Chinese forces along contested borderlands.

Two weeks later, India’s 200 million users of TikTok were no longer able to log in after internet providers there were directed to block access to the app.

App stores run by Google and Apple also stopped offering TikTok, which did not legally challenge India’s ban.

Since the ban, short-form platforms from competitors have largely filled the void with TikTok copycats Meta-owned Instagram Reels and Google-owned YouTube Shorts.

Meta is widely viewed as the net winner from India’s TikTok ban.

Three people have been killed in a Russian air strike on Kyiv overnight, Ukrainian officials have said.

Residents in the city first heard two loud explosions and only then the wail of the air raid siren, around 06:00 (04:00 GMT). The missiles had already hit by the time the ballistic threat warning was issued, urging residents to head for shelter.

The main destruction occurred in the central Shevchenkivskyi district, where there is now a deep crater in the road outside a business centre.

A military factory in the neighbourhood has been targeted repeatedly by Russia, but the damage we saw was to civilian buildings. An official said a couple had been killed on the street inside their vehicle.

Officials earlier reported four people had died in the attack.

The metro station, nearby restaurants and businesses are also very badly damaged, and emergency workers are removing the burned wreckage of cars from the scene.

Already damaged in previous attacks on this area, the business centre’s tall glass tower and main building are now a shell after being hit by either a second missile or very large fragment. It was empty when the missile struck.

Beside the main crater, a Ukrainian forensics expert examined fragments of missile collected into a heap of twisted grey metal on the pavement.

Andriy Kulchytskyy, the head of the Military Research Laboratory of the Kyiv Institute of Scientific Expertise, told the BBC the crater was from a direct hit with an Iskander-M ballistic missile, based on markings on the missile fragments.

“This specific site shows one impact,” he explained. “There are additional strikes, and we have collected debris. Here, the missile directly hit the road.”

Mr Kulchytskyy said the projectile landed before the warning sirens sounded because ballistic missiles travel so quickly that the sirens cannot react in time.

Beside the road, a cake shop has had its front blown off, covering pastries and pies in shattered glass.

A dental clinic next door has been destroyed in the blast. Inside, staff are trying to recover what’s still intact among the wreckage.

One woman was removing baubles from a plastic Christmas tree that was still standing.

“It’s happened before,” she told the BBC, “but never as badly as this”.

Asked how she felt, she shrugged: “We got used to it. It’s the third year of war.“

“There were three explosions in a row, then a big fire glow in the sky – and the building shook. It was very loud,” a young man called Oleksandr said while exiting a nearby block of flats.

“I woke up immediately – I even felt the wall shaking. When the third strike came, it was pretty scary.”

On Saturday morning, the main road has been cordoned off – but a few hours after the strike the neighbouring streets nearby are already busy with traffic. Old ladies are selling chickens and gherkins outside the market, and there are joggers and people walking their dogs.

But a pensioner passing by told us she was terrified.

“I didn’t know where to run, because you normally go to the metro for shelter – but it was on fire.”

It is the second fatal attack on Kyiv this month, following a strike on the city on New Year’s Day that left two people dead.

Meanwhile, in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, local authorities say 10 people were wounded in a Russian strike on Saturday. One woman is said to be in a serious condition.

These strikes are the latest in the war that began following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

They follow several Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory earlier in the week.

The latest strikes take place just days before the imminent inauguration of Donald Trump in the US, with many Ukrainians concerned by Trump’s pledge to reduce US military and financial aid to the embattled country.

The president-elect had claimed during the campaign that he would end the conflict on the first day of his presidency, though he has since said that he may need six months.

In recent days, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has reiterated the country’s dependence on US support as Russian air strikes and fighting on the front line continue.

A statue of the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro has been reinstalled in the centre of Peru’s capital Lima, more than 20 years after it was removed.

The sculpture was unveiled during a ceremony marking the 490th anniversary of the city’s founding.

Pizarro founded Lima in 1535 after defeating the Inca Empire and claiming their lands for the Spanish crown.

Indigenous leaders say he was a mass murderer who destroyed their culture, while those who supported the statue’s return said Peru should not erase its history.

The monument, which shows Pizarro on horseback with his sword drawn, was created by the American sculptor Charles Rumsey and offered by his widow to commemorate the city’s fourth centenary in 1935.

In 2003, it was moved to a park next to train tracks outside the city centre following calls for its removal.

Luis Bogdanovich, who was in charge of restoring the historic centre, told local media the statue had become damaged by the constant passing of trains, which caused it to crack.

Rafael López Aliaga, Lima’s mayor, and Isabel Díaz Ayuso, president of the Community of Madrid, presented the bronze statue on Saturday alongside Mr Bogdanovich and several descendants of Pizarro in Lima’s main square, Plaza de Armas.

Díaz Ayuso said the ceremony was commemorating “not only the birth of a city, but also the beginning of a historic encounter that forever transformed the world”, the Spanish daily El Pais reported.

Dozens of Peruvians held a demonstration nearby opposing its return, according to the AFP news agency.

“This is an offence, an offence to all the indigenous peoples of Peru, Latin America and the world,” one person said.

A chairlift accident at a ski resort in Spain has left 10 people injured, including two women in intensive care.

The Astún resort in the Spanish Pyrenees, where the incident happened, was closed as rescue services attended the scene.

A pulley failure appears to have caused a cable to slacken and some chairs to drop to the ground, throwing skiers into the snow.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said he was “shocked” by the news of the incident.

Initial reports said 30 people had been hurt, but local media later reported that 17 needed medical attention.

Ambulances and helicopters took some of the injured to hospital. Two women, both aged 18, are in intensive care, El Pais newspaper says.

According the state broadcaster TVE a pulley at one end of the chairlift came loose and part of the structure supporting it collapsed, causing a cable to lose tension and several seats to fall.

Dozens of people left hanging on the 15m-high (50ft) chairlift were helped down.

Jaime Pelegri, who was on the lift, told the BBC that a cable lost tension before the chairs on his side of the structure fell.

“It was very scary, but very fast,” he said – adding that ambulances and helicopters arrived at the scene within 15 minutes.

Previously in a post on X: “Luckily we are fine but there are injured people, we have seen several stretchers coming down.”

Images on social media appear to show one of the chairlift’s flywheels off its upright. The cause of the incident is not yet known.

Regional President Jorge Azcón and Spain’s Minister of the Interior Roberto Bermúdez de Castro went to the scene.

Azcón wrote on X: “All the necessary services of the [government] are working to assist the affected and injured people.”

PM Pedro Sánchez said he had spoken with Azcón to offer the “full support” of the government.

A telephone line has been set up for the families of those affected.

The Astún resort, which is popular with Spanish skiers, is located in the Aragon region of the Pyrenees mountains, near the border with France.

Did you witness this at Astún? Get in touch here.

A tanker has exploded after crashing in Nigeria, killing 77 people who had rushed to collect fuel from the scene, authorities say.

The tanker overturned and spilled its contents in the Suleja area of North Central Niger state on Saturday.

It exploded moments after people began scooping up fuel, killing dozens and leaving 25 others injured, including rescuers, officials said.

Fuel tanker explosions and accidents are common in the country – often caused by the poor state of roads and badly maintained vehicles.

Those injured in Saturday’s explosion are being treated in nearby hospitals, the emergency management agency said.

Nigeria has seen a number of similar incidents in recent months.

Two weeks ago, a fuel tanker involved in a crash exploded in the oil-rich Delta state, killing at least five people, and at least 153 people died in an explosion while trying to collect leaking petrol in October.

Fuel prices have increased by more than 400% in the last 18 months following bold economic policies by Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, including the removal of long-standing fuel subsidies.

The changes have put millions of people into poverty, with many forced to turn to desperate measures for survival.

The government has said its policies are aimed at strengthening the economy.

Analysts have suggested it is “just matter of time” until the US ban on TikTok spreads to allied countries and beyond – as long as the Trump administration presses ahead with it.

The app will be banned in America from Sunday after US lawmakers ruled it was a national security risk because of owner ByteDance’s ties to the Chinese government – ties it denies.

Incoming President Trump has indicated though that he is opposed to the ban and will find a way to reverse it.

If the US ban goes ahead, experts point to the previous ousting of Chinese and Russian tech companies on national security grounds as a potential blueprint for how the TikTok ban might spread around the world.

“There are big parallels between TikTok and what happened with China’s Huawei and Russia’s Kaspersky that indicates it’s just a matter of time until a creeping ban takes affect,” says Emily Taylor, Editor of the Cyber Policy Journal.

In both cases these companies were accused by the US of being a threat to national security – but no smoking gun was ever revealed by cyber security authorities.

The same has happened with TikTok.

Under President Trump, Kaspersky’s flagship antivirus software product was banned from civil and military computers in the US after accusations arose in 2017 that it was used by the Kremlin in a hacking incident that was never proven.

The UK followed almost immediately and one by one other allies fell into line with restrictions, warnings or bans.

It took years but eventually a countrywide ban took effect last year in the US but it was all but redundant by then. Kaspersky closed its US operations followed by its UK offices saying there is no viable business there.

The company has always argued that the US government based its decision on the “geopolitical climate and theoretical concerns” rather than independently verifying risk.

According to research from Bitsight Kaspersky’s decline in usage after the ban was pronounced, not just in the US but in at least 25 other countries too, even those with no overt public policy to ban the software.

Almost the exact same thing happened with Chinese telecoms giant Huawei.

The US accused Huawei and other Chinese tech firms of being too close to the Chinese government. It argued that the company’s popular 5G kit should not be used to build telecoms in case it could be used to spy on or degrade communications.

A former Huawei UK member of staff said that once the US decided to ban, block or restrict Huawei it became almost inevitable that allies would follow.

“The UK and others spoke about independently coming to their own conclusions over security but the US was unrelenting in its lobbying behind closed doors. They warned about the national security risks which were never backed up by evidence,” said the former insider, who didn’t want to be named.

Intense US lobbying of allies on security issues is something often seen in many aspects of cyber policy.

It usually starts with countries in the Five Eyes Alliance.

The close-knit intelligence sharing arrangement is between five English-speaking democracies: the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

So far, all members have banned TikTok from government devices and some have issued public warnings too. Canada has ordered an end to TikTok’s Canadian operations citing national security concerns.

The Five Eyes knock-on effect can be considerable and restrictions have already spread with the app banned on devices of government employees, civil servants or military personnel in countries including Austria, Belgium, Estonia, France, The Netherlands, Norway and Taiwan.

Ciaran Martin, who was head of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre during the bans on Huawei and Kaspersky, agrees that generally when the US makes a national security or strategic decision about a company, the UK and allies eventually follow suit.

However, as with everything else to do with TikTok, he says there is a huge caveat in the form of the incoming Trump administration.

“What we don’t yet know is whether TikTok will be the exception as Trump has said he is opposed to the ban so will he order allies to replicate a ban? We don’t yet know.”

Trump’s position on TikTok has changed dramatically since his first presidency when he tried to get it banned. Since then he has become a supporter after his re-election campaign gained support through TikTok videos.

Emily Taylor agrees that this unknown factor might make TikTok different to Huawei and Kaspersky.

“It depends on how much pressure the administration is willing to exert”, she told the BBC.

“If their foreign policy agenda is packed then forcing other allies to follow the ban might fall down the list and allow countries to wait it out”.

At the moment, there are “no plans” for a TikTok ban in the UK, a government spokesperson said on Saturday. “We engage with all major social media companies to understand their plans for ensuring the security of UK data and to ensure they meet the high data protection and cyber security standards we expect.”

Another aspect to consider about TikTok’s future post-US ban is whether or not the app can continue to thrive without a US customer base.

Any app that loses 170m users would suffer but US users in particular are valuable for creators, advertisers and direct spending in TikTok Shop.

If the rest of the West follows it will reduce the money flowing into the company and curtail development of new features, further entrenching the dominance of US platforms like Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and Snapchat.

TikTok is already banned in Pakistan, Afghanistan and India too – a massive market. It has no presence in China because of its sister app Douyin.

Kaspersky and Huawei both managed to weather their storms by relying on home-grown customer bases and by pivoting to regions like Africa and the Middle East.

So it might be possible for TikTok to build its user bases here. But if the US ban creeps around the world then the app will likely never be as big as it currently is and may well wither and die a slow death whilst US incumbents further entrench their dominance.

Emily Morris, 21, from Swindon spends around £20 a month at Chinese fast-fashion giant Shein, turning to it whenever she needs a new party or holiday outfit.

“You can almost always find what you’re looking for, even if the quality is bad”, she says.

Like millions in the UK and the US, she buys from the online shop mostly because of how affordable it is.

The firm has faced scrutiny over how it treats workers, with a BBC investigation highlighting 75-hour weeks for workers in contravention of Chinese labour laws, but it is unlikely shoppers will be put off buying their clothes there.

Emily has considered stopping buying from Shein due to its labour practices, but says everywhere else “is way too expensive”.

“I’m happy to talk about the fact I shop at Shein because I know I’m not the only one,” she adds.

The numbers show she’s right, with Shein transforming from a little-known company just a few years ago into one of the world’s biggest clothing firms.

Global sales are estimated to have reached $36.9bn (£30.2bn) last year, according to GlobalData.

Shein is a private company and does not report its global results.

But profits in the UK doubled in 2023 to more than £24m, according to a Companies House filing.

Shein stocks thousands of different clothing lines, dwarfing rival fast fashion brands such as H&M and Zara.

It sells many clothes for below £10, and turns around new designs quickly.

The firm has been gearing up for for a stock market flotation in the UK, putting it under scrutiny over both its working practices and its environmental impact.

Last year, Shein itself found child labour in its supply chain after tightening scrutiny of suppliers.

It has also faced allegations that it uses cotton produced using forced labour, and last week declined to tell MPs whether it used such cotton.

Shein was contacted for comment.

In response to the BBC investigation into worker conditions it said it is “committed to ensuring the fair and dignified treatment of all workers within our supply chain” and is investing tens of millions of dollars in strengthening governance and compliance.

“We strive to set the highest standards for pay and we require that all supply chain partners adhere to our code of conduct,” it said.

Workers get paid about one to two yuan for making a tee-shirt – which is the equivalent of between 11p and 22p.

Sarah Johnson, the founder of consultancy Flourish Retail, a former head of buying and merchandising for Asos China, said the firm could pay suppliers more, which would give them more leeway to pay workers.

The supplier “doesn’t get paid an awful lot of the final price” of the garment.

When it comes to workers, “you could raise their pay and it would make a minimal amount of difference to the garment price,” she said.

An alternative would be for the firm to make less profit, she added.

Sophie Wills, from Birmingham, said she had previously bought clothes from the retailer due to their affordability.

“Times are hard,” Sophie says, adding she probably couldn’t afford higher end clothes at the moment.

However, she says saving up and “making investments in stuff that is probably higher quality would be a good way to go”.

Thando Sibenke says she regularly shops at Shein.

“My whole outfit’s from Shein right now,” she says, adding she likes the price, convenience, and variety.

However, Thando says she plans to do more research in the future on how the clothes she buys are made.

Georgina, 24, from London, says she is “embarrassed” that she has shopped at Shein – and has now stopped.

“Since reading up on it, the negatives massively outweigh the positives and even when seeing Shein clothing in charity shops, I don’t feel comfortable buying it.”

Fashion designer and academic Shazia Saleem said that people in Generation Z – those born between about 1995 to 2010 – often say in surveys that sustainability and ethics are important to them, but that doesn’t necessarily come through in their buying choices.

Young people can feel pressure to buy new outfits to keep up appearances on social media, and they don’t have much disposable cash, so will probably continue to buy fast fashion, she said.

She added that although people should make informed buying decisions, it should be down to the government to strengthen existing UK trading standards rules to make sure companies are selling sustainable and ethically-sound products.

Louise Deglise-Favre, senior apparel analyst at GlobalData, also said she expected affordability to continue to outweigh ethical concerns for Shein shoppers.

Younger customers tend to not have much disposable income due to being in school or low paying jobs, she said.

Shein releases thousands of new products daily, which can encourage shoppers to buy too much – but it’s also a response to “the desire from consumers to constantly update their wardrobes with the latest trends”, she adds.

Civilians in Gaza are waiting anxiously for a pause in 15 relentless months of war, after Israel’s cabinet approved a temporary ceasefire and hostage release deal with Hamas.

Israel has pounded the strip with air strikes, killing at least 113 people since the deal was first agreed in principle on Wednesday night, according to the Hamas-run civil defence agency in Gaza.

The deal, finalised on Friday afternoon, is due to come into effect on Sunday, leaving a little over 24 hours more for the people of Gaza to hang on for respite.

“Time is moving slower than ever,” said Dr Abdallah Shabir, 27, an emergency doctor at the Baptist Hospital in Gaza City. “Any moment you can lose your life,” he said. “Sitting at home, walking in the street – there is no warning.”

Dr Shabir was on shift at the hospital on Wednesday night when the news of the ceasefire agreement came through. There was a brief moment of joy, he said, but less than an hour separated the announcement from the beginning of a wave of air strikes that sent a flood of dead and wounded to the Baptist.

Every member of staff was summoned. “It was as bad as we have ever seen,” Dr Shabir said, in a phone call from the hospital. “Severe injuries, severe burns. Many dead, of course.”

Among the dead brought in on Thursday was a colleague, Hala Abu Ahmed, a 27-year-old specialist in internal medicine who two colleagues at the Baptist described as a devoted and promising young doctor and a kind person.

She had worked tirelessly and under extreme pressure for 15 months, since the war began, said Dr Ahmad Eliwah, the chief of the emergency department, and been killed after the ceasefire was agreed.

Among the millions of displaced in the strip, many were waiting on Friday for the moment they could return home for the first time since the war began. Many will find a bombed out wasteland in place of their home.

“My house is completely destroyed, the building is gone,” said Sabreen Doshan, 45, who owned a street kiosk and lived in a residential block in Gaza City.

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Doshan had lost 17 members of her wider family since the war began, she said. She was poised to set out from Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, where she has been living in a tent, for the ruins of her home.

“Even if I have to put my tent on rubble it will be OK, because I will be home,” she said. “Nowhere can satisfy me now apart from home.”

The destruction of the Gaza Strip is immense. According to a recent analysis by the United Nations Satellite Centre, 69% of all structures and 68% of roads have been destroyed or damaged, as of December. About 46,700 people have been killed, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Israel set out to destroy Hamas in Gaza in October 2023, after the group attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.

For Gazans, the joy of the long-awaited ceasefire has been tempered by the scale of the death and destruction. “By God, it is a mixed feeling,” said Wael Muhammad, a freelance journalist living in a refugee camp in central Gaza.

“From one moment to another, from joy to pain,” he said. “I am happy that the torrent of blood will stop, but we are living in misery.”

On Friday afternoon, the ceasefire deal was making its way through the Israeli political system for final approval. It paves the way for an initial group of three hostages to come out as early as Sunday, in exchange for some 95 Palestinian prisoners.

But the exchange, which will play out over the next six weeks, is fraught with the possibility of collapse.

“The biggest challenge is whether the ceasefire is going to be successfully implemented,” said Juliette Touma, communications director for the UN refugee agency UNRWA.

“If it is, the challenge ahead remains absolutely huge. The vast majority of shelters are overcrowded. Many are simply living out in the open, or in makeshift structures. They lack basic needs like warm clothes. I would not call these living conditions, they are not conditions fit for human beings.”

In Gaza on Friday, some were focused on Sunday, and whether they would make it to that respite without the deal falling apart.

“We are afraid of any change, any movement,” said Khalil Nateel, 30, whose house in Jabalia in the very north of the Gaza Strip was destroyed early on in the war.

“The news is on,” Nateel said, from a shelter in central Gaza. “We are watching and waiting.”

Some of the world’s biggest companies started from humble beginnings, but Games Workshop’s early days were less glamourous than most.

“We ended up having to live in a van,” says Sir Ian Livingstone.

He launched the brand – best known for its Warhammer games – with co-founder Steve Jackson back in 1975.

Sir Ian tells BBC News the pair asked a bank manager for £10,000 to kickstart their business.

They would go on to create popular miniature figures that players around the world collect, paint and battle in complex tabletop clashes.

But it was a rocky start.

“He looked at us rather like a dog watching television, no understanding of what we were talking about, and asked us to leave,” he says.

The pair ended up working out of a small room in the back of an estate agent’s office, and joined a local squash club to access the showers.

“We had no aspirations of it being anything large at all,” says Sir Ian.

“We were following the passion of being gamers wanting to be involved in some sort of fledgling games business.”

That passion has bloomed since then, and Games Workshop is more successful than it’s ever been, recently entering the list of the UK’s top 100 companies.

It made £126.8m ($154.4m) profit in the second half of 2024, selling its products worldwide.

Miniatures were only part of the equation and a good chunk of its profits came from licensing – allowing its products to be adapted into video games, films and TV series.

Academic Dr Hailey Austin, from Abertay University’s department of games and arts, tells BBC News the company’s always been good at expanding into new areas.

“They’re willing to try new things,” she says.

“They’ve always been pushing the boundaries, going into miniatures, paints as well as books, magazines and even digitising their games.”

Games Workshop believes it’s sitting on “some of the best underexploited intellectual property globally” and has the potential to go further.

The company recently finalised a lucrative deal with Amazon to create Warhammer TV series and films, and lent its name to one of 2024’s best-selling video games.

Space Marine II – based on the hulking galactic soldiers from the sci-fi-inspired Warhammer 40,000 (40K) series – was a surprise runaway success, selling 4.5 million copies in its first month.

Games Workshop boss Kevin Rountree told investors Space Marine II had created “excitement” for its miniatures, and that store staff had told him they’d seen more people coming into the company’s high street stores as a result.

The power of TV and games to give fans more ways to engage with their favourite hobbies is something more companies are leaning into.

Last year, video game adaptation Fallout sent the 10-year-old title flying up the bestseller charts.

Warhammer fans say they noticed a similar effect too.

Katie Foad was first drawn to Warhammer through painting its detailed miniature figurines, but says her interest deepened when she played the 40K-inspired strategy video game Dawn of War.

That led her to the Games Workshop community and she’s now part of Tabletop Tactics – a YouTube channel dedicated to all things Warhammer.

She joined in 2021, when Games Workshop – like other indoor hobbies – was experiencing a boost off the back of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Katie says the channel saw a spike in new subscribers after Space Marine II was launched last year – and videos featuring characters and creatures from the game were especially popular.

“We’re definitely seeing way more of an interest coming in because of the popularity of Space Marine II,” she says.

Warhammer’s also had another boost from inside the entertainment industry – Superman himself, Henry Cavill.

The actor has been described as the “world’s coolest nerd” thanks to his very public interest in video gaming and Warhammer.

Katie thinks this has helped to expose new people to the hobby, and also encouraged them to be more open about their interest in it.

“For those people that were already into Warhammer, they’ve looked at him being so proud about it and gone: ‘Oh, this is something that is cool’,” says Katie.

“‘I can talk to people about it. I can encourage other people to get into the hobby’.

“And I think people that were already into it are now excited to share it.”

Cavill was a key part of the deal with Amazon and is due to executive produce and star in its Games Workshop adaptations.

Adapting the Warhammer universe and its vast tomes of lore – background information about the different races and characters within it – can be a challenge.

It’s something Clive Standen, who plays the lead role of Lieutenant Demetrian Titus in Space Marine II, knows well.

Standen tells BBC Newsbeat his early recording sessions involved negotiating with Games Workshop representatives to inject depth and emotion into his traditionally stoic ultramarine character.

“We have to find small nuances just to get the audience behind him,” says Standen.

“Otherwise, it’s going to be very cold out there.”

In the end, Standen says, they found a “common ground”, and his performance in the game has put him in the running for a Bafta Games Award.

He also voiced Titus in a Space Marine II-themed episode of Secret Level (the Prime Video anthology based on popular video games).

Amazon claims it was the biggest debut for an animated series on its streaming service.

Standen believes streamer’s deep pockets mean it is the right place to do justice to further Warhammer shows.

But he warns it will take a lot of work.

“You’ve got to do a fine balance between pleasing the fans and giving them something that they’ve personally invested in, and also pleasing the mainstream fans,” he says.

“Because if you don’t get enough viewers, it won’t get commissioned for a season two.”

Games Workshop has said it will be some time before its adaptations hit the screen, and cautioned that hits are not guaranteed in the volatile and unpredictable video games business.

Katie thinks the “massive universe” propping up Games Workshop means it will continue to be successful.

But she says she’s excited to see how future works based on Warhammer are received.

“There’s so much to it that I think it’s always going to be successful,” she says.

“But depending on how this Amazon show goes, if that really reaches a wider audience, I think it could go huge.

“It could be Marvel.”

Sir Ian, who sold Games Workshop in 1991 for £10m, says he’ll also be watching with interest.

“Standing now, almost like proud parents watching this great British success story kind of conquer the world and become one of the premier games IPs of all time, you can’t help but feel a great sense of pride,” he says.

“And hopefully that will long continue.”

China is sending Vice-President Han Zheng to US President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday – the first time a senior Chinese leader will witness a US president being sworn in.

Trump had invited Chinese President Xi Jinping, among other leaders – a break with tradition given foreign leaders traditionally do not attend US presidential inaugurations.

China has said it wants to work with the new US government to “find the right way for the two countries to get along with each other in the new era”.

But Beijing is also preparing for a Trump presidency that is expected to include new tariffs on Chinese-made imports and more combative rhetoric – Marco Rubio, the nominee for Secretary of State, has described China as “the largest, most advanced adversary America has ever faced”.

As president, Xi has never attended an inauguration or coronation ceremony, choosing instead to send a representative on his behalf. The Chinese ambassador to the US attended the last two presidential inaugurations, in 2017 and 2021.

Beijing has sent vice-presidents to such ceremonies elsewhere, though – Han attended Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s inauguration in October 2023. And his predecessor, Wang Qishan, was present for the inauguration of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr in 2022 and Brazil’s President Lula da Silva in 2023.

Xi’s decision to send Han to the US is a sign that he “wants to get Trump into deal-making mode, but [he] does not want to be a supporting actor in the Trump show on January 20,” says Neil Thomas, a fellow in Chinese politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

Other foreign leaders that have been invited to the inauguration include Argentinian President Javier Milei and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

Trump’s spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told US media that the invitation to Xi was an “example of Trump creating an open dialogue with leaders of countries that are not just our allies but our adversaries and our competitors”.

It also could be an attempt by Trump to show the world “he has the ability to influence Xi’s decision-making and they have a special relationship”, says Yun Sun, the director of the China program at the Stimson Center in Washington.

Earlier reports suggested that some Trump advisers wanted Cai Qi to attend. Widely seen as Xi’s right-hand man, 66-year-old Cai sits on the Communist Party’s seven-man Politburo Standing Committee, China’s equivalent of a cabinet.

The Financial Times quoted an unnamed insider saying that Trump would be “unhappy” if the Chinese envoy in attendance was “only at the level of Han or [Foreign Minister] Wang Yi”. The BBC has been unable to verify these claims.

But as vice-president, 70-year-old Han occupies a “very senior role in the Chinese state system” and the decision to send him “accords courtesy to Trump”, says Chong Ja-Ian, a non-resident scholar at Carnegie China.

Han, who was appointed vice-president in March 2023, is known as “number eight” – the most senior leader after the seven men in the Politburo Standing Committee.

Han too had been a member until October 2022, when Xi began a historic third term in power and appointed his most trusted deputies to the top jobs.

Prior to that Han spent most of his political career in Shanghai, where he was born. In 2007, he served as Xi’s aide when the latter was the party secretary in Shanghai, before later assuming the post himself in 2012.

Foreign affairs has been a key focus for him in his stint as vice-president. He led a group to promote the Belt and Road initiative – a key Chinese trade and infrastructure project – and headed a steering committee on the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.

But the fact that Han no longer sits on the Politburo Standing Committee may have been a key consideration in Beijing’s decision to send him.

“Should US-China relations take a turn for the worse from the party’s perspective, Xi and the party will be able to show that they maintained some distance from Trump,” Prof Chong said.

And it also helps that Han is not considered a part of Xi’s inner circle, according to Mr Thomas.

“Xi trusts Han enough to undertake this mission but Han is not a key ally and could be safely blamed if it goes embarrassingly wrong.”

It’s 1000 CE – the heart of the Middle Ages.

Europe is in flux. The powerful nations we know today – like Norman-ruled England and the fragmented territories that will go on to become France – do not yet exist. Towering Gothic cathedrals have yet to rise. Aside from the distant and prosperous city of Constantinople, few great urban centres dominate the landscape.

Yet that year, on the other side of the globe, an emperor from southern India was preparing to build the world’s most colossal temple.

Completed just 10 years later, it was 216ft (66m) tall, assembled from 130,000 tonnes of granite: second only to Egypt’s pyramids in height. At its heart was a 12ft tall emblem of the Hindu god Shiva, sheathed in gold encrusted with rubies and pearls.

In its lamplit hall were 60 bronze sculptures, adorned with thousands of pearls gathered from the conquered island of Lanka. In its treasuries were several tonnes of gold and silver coins, as well as necklaces, jewels, trumpets and drums torn from defeated kings across India’s southern peninsula, making the emperor the richest man of the era.

He was called Raja-Raja, King of Kings, and he belonged to one of the most astonishing dynasties of the medieval world: the Cholas.

His family transformed how the medieval world worked – yet they are largely unknown outside India.

Prior to the 11th Century, the Cholas had been one of the many squabbling powers that dotted the Kaveri floodplain, the great body of silt that flows through India’s present-day state of Tamil Nadu.

But what set the Cholas apart was their endless capacity for innovation. By the standards of the medieval world, Chola queens were also remarkably prominent, serving as the dynasty’s public face.

Travelling to Tamil villages and rebuilding small, old mud-brick shrines in gleaming stone, the Chola dowager Sembiyan Mahadevi – Rajaraja’s great-aunt – effectively “rebranded” the family as the foremost devotees of Shiva, winning them a popular following.

Sembiyan prayed to Nataraja, a hitherto little-known form of Hindu god Shiva as the King of Dance, and all her temples featured him prominently.

The trend caught on. Today, Nataraja is one of the most recognisable symbols of Hinduism. But to the medieval Indian mind, Nataraja was really a symbol of the Cholas.

The emperor, Rajaraja Chola, shared his great-aunt’s taste for public relations and devotion – with one significant difference.

Rajaraja was also a conqueror. In the 990s, he led his armies over the Western Ghats, the range of hills that shelter India’s west coast, and burned the ships of his enemies while they were at port.

Next, exploiting internal turmoil on the island of Lanka, he established a Chola outpost there, becoming the first mainland Indian king to set up a lasting presence on the island. At last, he broke into the rugged Deccan Plateau – the Germany to the Tamil coast’s Italy – and seized a portion of it for himself.

The loot of conquest was lavished on his great imperial temple, known today as the Brihadishvara.

In addition to its precious treasures, the great temple received 5,000 tonnes of rice annually, from conquered territory across southern India (you’d need a fleet of twelve Airbus A380s to carry that much rice today).

This allowed the Brihadishvara to function as a mega-ministry of public works and welfare, an instrument of the Chola state, intended to channel Rajaraja’s vast fortunes into new irrigation systems, expanding cultivation, and vast new herds of sheep and buffalo. Few states in the world could have conceived of economic control at such scale and depth.

The Cholas were as important to the Indian Ocean as the Mongols were to inner Eurasia.

Rajaraja Chola’s successor, Rajendra, built alliances with Tamil merchant corporations: a partnership between traders and government power that foreshadowed the East India Company – a powerful British trading corporation that later ruled large parts of India – that was to come more than 700 years later.

In 1026, Rajendra put his troops on merchants’ ships and sacked Kedah, a Malay city that dominated the global trade in precious woods and spices.

While some Indian nationalists have proclaimed this to be a Chola “conquest” or “colonisation” in Southeast Asia, archaeology suggests a stranger picture: the Cholas didn’t seem to have a navy of their own, but under them, a wave of Tamil diaspora merchants spread across the Bay of Bengal.

By the late 11th Century, these merchants ran independent ports in northern Sumatra. A century later, they were deep in present-day Myanmar and Thailand, and worked as tax collectors in Java.

In the 13th Century, in Mongol-ruled China under the descendants of Kublai Khan, Tamil merchants ran successful businesses in the port of Quanzhou, and even erected a temple to Shiva on the coast of the East China Sea. It was no coincidence that, under the British Raj in the 19th Century, Tamils made up the largest chunk of Indian administrators and workers in Southeast Asia.

Conquests and global connections made Chola-ruled south India a cultural and economic behemoth, the nexus of planetary trade networks.

Chola aristocrats invested war-loot into a wave of new temples, which sourced fine goods from a truly global economy linking the farthest shores of Europe and Asia. Copper and tin for their bronzes came from Egypt, perhaps even Spain. Camphor and sandalwood for the gods were sourced from Sumatra and Borneo.

Tamil temples grew into vast complexes and public spaces, surrounded by markets and endowed with rice estates. In the Chola capital region on the Kaveri, corresponding to the present-day city of Kumbakonam, a constellation of a dozen temple-towns supported populations of tens of thousands, possibly outclassing most cities in Europe at the time.

These Chola cities were astonishingly multicultural and multireligious: Chinese Buddhists rubbed shoulders with Tunisian Jews, Bengali tantric masters traded with Lankan Muslims.

Today, the state of Tamil Nadu is one of India’s most urbanised. Many of the state’s towns grew around Chola-period shrines and markets.

These developments in urbanism and architecture were paralleled in art and literature.

Medieval Tamil metalwork, produced for Chola-period temples, is perhaps the finest ever made by human hand, the artists rivalling Michelangelo or Donatello for their appreciation of the human figure. To praise Chola kings and adore the gods, Tamil poets developed notions of sainthood, history and even magical realism. The Chola period was what you’d get if the Renaissance had happened in south India 300 years before its time.

It is not a coincidence that Chola bronzes – especially Nataraja bronzes – can be found in most major Western museum collections. Scattered across the world, they are the remnants of a period of brilliant political innovations, of maritime expeditions that connected the globe; of titanic shrines and fabulous wealth; of merchants, rulers and artists who shaped the planet we live in today.

Anirudh Kanisetti is an Indian writer and author, most recently of

Unless there is a sudden and staggering plot twist, Prince Harry’s legal battle against British tabloids for allegedly unlawfully intruding into his life reaches its most important moment on Tuesday when his claims against The Sun and the long-closed News of the World, come to trial.

The plot twist would be a settlement of his mammoth case against their parent, News Group Newspapers [NGN], the British press arm of the media empire founded by Rupert Murdoch.

Is it likely? You would get better odds on Harry and Megan announcing a weekly lifestyle column for The Sun on Sunday.

This will be the first time that News Group Newspapers has had to defend itself against allegations that its journalists and executives across the whole organisation were involved in or knew about unlawful newsgathering techniques.

If it were to lose, and lose badly, a finding from the court of corporate-level wrongdoing would be in stark contrast to a longstanding defence that phone hacking was limited to bad apples in one now-closed title.

The prince’s allegations of tabloid wrongdoing date back to 1996. Harry and his brother Prince William first became aware they may have been targeted in 2006.

Back then, texting was still in its infancy and everybody left voicemails – and some tabloid journalists realised it was rather easy to listen in.

Clive Goodman, a News of the World journalist, and Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator, were arrested, and later jailed, for intercepting voicemails on phones belonging to the princes’ aides.

Prince Harry says as the scandal deepened, he held on for NGN to settle Royal Family claims under a “secret agreement” to avoid embarrassment in court. NGN’s lawyers have said this is “Alice in Wonderland stuff” – and the court has ruled it hasn’t seen evidence of such a backroom deal.

All these years on, the Duke of Sussex seems in no mood to give up on what has become a crusade against tabloid journalism. And so his case is going ahead – and what happens over the next two months may define both the prince’s legacy and the future of a British journalism institution.

NGN long ago apologised for unlawful practices at the News of the World and closed it down in 2011. It denies similar claims against The Sun – and the duke’s wider allegation of a corporate-wide cover-up.

It has settled cases brought by some 1,300 claimants, to the tune of around £1bn including legal costs.

That means it has seen off potential trials from people who say the newspapers ran stories that could have only been written with access to private or confidential sources of information that could not have been publicly known.

Those settlements left just two claimants – one of them Prince Harry.

When he launched his claim, he alleged that more than 200 articles published by NGN between 1996 and 2011 contained information gathered by illegal means. The trial will look at a sample of around 30 stories in detail.

Some of those will cover ground trodden in his successful Mirror Group case in 2023 and, just like in that case, he will give evidence in person.

There will be hours of analysis of how the Sun got scoops such as “Emotional Harry rang Chelsy at midnight” – a story it ran almost ten years ago to the day about his then girlfriend, Chelsy Davy.

There will be further separate allegations from the second claimant, Lord (Tom) Watson. The former Labour MP says his phone was targeted around the time he was investigating the Murdoch newspapers at the height of the scandal almost 15 years ago.

Mr Justice Fancourt will decide if any of the NGN articles were the product of unlawful information gathering, such as information tricked or “blagged” out of phone companies by private investigators.

In Prince Harry’s case, he will not rule on whether there was any phone hacking because Prince Harry ran out of legal time to bring those allegations to trial.

None of this is going to be simple in court.

The judge had repeatedly expressed his frustration, referring to the two sides as entrenched well-resourced armies refusing to give any ground to each other.

And at no stage has Prince Harry looked like he was going to settle, despite the enormous financial hit he faces by not doing so.

If a claimant turns down an offer of settlement and is later awarded less in damages by a judge, they have to pay the legal costs of both sides.

Prince Harry has been very open about the hit he will take and why he was pressing ahead.

“The goal is accountability. It’s really that simple,” he told an audience at a New York Times event in December.

News Group has, in simple terms, three lines of defence. It will firstly argue that Harry has run out of time to bring allegations of unlawful information gathering.

This saw off his mobile phone hacking claim.

Secondly, its lawyers will test, article-by-article, the duke’s claims that the information in them came from dodgy sources.

Thirdly, News Group has lined up witnesses to rebut Prince Harry and Lord Watson’s broader allegation that the top brass knew what was going on and were party to the mass destruction of purportedly incriminating records in 2011.

While the celebrity focus will inevitably be on the prince when he goes into the witness box, that third allegation of a cover up is the most important element of this trial.

While the hit to Prince Harry’s wallet will be big, the damage to NGN’s reputation – and that of its executives – would be greater still if the court finds they were involved.

The executives the claimants will accuse of wrongdoing include the current CEO, Rebekah Brooks. She was found not guilty of conspiracy to hack voicemails in the seismic 2014 trial that ended with the jailing of Andy Coulson, her former colleague, News of the World editor and David Cameron’s communications chief.

Another is Will Lewis. He played a key role in managing the hacking crisis in 2011. He is now the CEO of the Washington Post – an appointment that has been opposed by many at the newspaper because of this association.

They and others deny wrongdoing.

Will they be giving evidence? A spokesperson for NGN said: “Both claimants allege unlawful destruction of emails by News International between 2010-2011. This allegation is wrong, unsustainable, and is strongly denied. NGN will be calling a number of witnesses including technologists, lawyers and senior staff to defeat the claim.”

Exactly what evidence Prince Harry brings to prove this claim – and what NGN says in defence – may define the entire battle.

Tuesday really is the beginning of the end. And someone is going to lose – and lose big.

It is 40 years since the bloodied bodies of three soldiers were found in a heap next to a reservoir in Scotland’s Pentland Hills.

A farmer came across the scene on 17 January 1985, after following a trail of blood in the snow from a crashed Land Rover he discovered with the engine still running.

With the IRA bombings at their height, the soldiers from Midlothian’s Glencorse Barracks were initially thought to be the victims of a terrorist attack.

But Tom Walker, then a police inspector who was one of the first on the scene, said the evidence quickly led them to a fellow soldier.

He has spoken to BBC Scotland News about his memories of the triple murder on the 40th anniversary of the so-called Glencorse Massacre.

The men were discovered beside a small derelict house at Loganlea reservoir, about 10 miles south of Edinburgh.

Staff Sgt Terrance Hosker, 39, and Pte John Thomson, 25, were in uniform. They were found alongside retired Major David Cunningham, 56.

“When I got there at the back of the house and at the bottom of the stairs were three dead bodies all lying on top of each other in a crumpled heap,” Mr Walker told BBC Scotland News.

“There was blood and cartridge cases lying around on the snow at the bottom of the stairs.”

He said they were shocked as it looked like a terrorist attack, which would have been the first of its kind in Scotland.

But very quickly the evidence pointed to Andrew Walker, a long-serving corporal instructor from The Royal Scots, who was 30 at the time.

Walker had been desperate for money. He knew that Thursday was pay day for the junior soldiers training at Glencorse Barracks, and they got paid in cash.

Every Thursday “regular as clockwork” a Land Rover and a crew of three soldiers would make the trip to the bank in nearby Penicuik.

No special security arrangements were made and the escort was unarmed.

Walker took a Sterling sub machine gun from the armoury and loaded it with ammunition he kept as spare.

Then, concealing the short barrelled weapon under his army coat, he flagged down the payroll Land Rover and asked for a lift back to the barracks.

Being known to the payroll crew, they allowed him to jump into the back of the vehicle.

He had planned to shoot all three of them deep in the Pentland Hills but as he hijacked them at gunpoint there was a scuffle in the back of the vehicle and Staff Sgt Hosker was shot.

Walker then also killed Maj Cunningham.

Next he forced Pte Thomson to take a detour into the Pentland Hills at Flotterstone and up to Loganlea reservoir.

There he made the young soldier help him drag the bodies to the back of the cottage.

However, if Pte Thomson thought his help would earn him mercy he was wrong.

Walker would leave no witnesses – Pte Thomson was executed, with a bullet in the head.

“This is a soldier shooting his brothers in arms. It’s diabolical, it really is,” said Mr Wood.

And all for just £19,000 – enough to buy two cars at the time.

Walker had been deep in debt and he had thought he could make it look like an IRA terrorist attack and robbery.

But his plan went wrong when his getaway vehicle skidded on the slippery path on his way out of the Pentland Hills to the main road – getting stuck in an icy ditch.

“He had probably planned to dump the Land Rover, clean the gun and quickly return to barracks before he was missed,” Mr Wood said.

“As it was, his plan and timescales were in tatters. He was now on foot with a bloodied uniform, an inconvenient gun he had to return, and a bag of cash he had to hide.

“Being skilled in the art of concealment he probably hid out for a while before making off across the snowy landscape.”

When it was safe he made his way back to barracks but by that time his movements were under scrutiny.

Shootings were uncommon in the east of Scotland, multiple shootings rarer still.

This was no ordinary crime, Mr Wood said.

“On the face of it, the crimes bore some of the hallmarks of a terrorist attack.

“The Provisional IRA were active on the mainland of Britain, they favoured military targets, and were always looking for funds.

“They weren’t averse to a bit of robbery in pursuit of their cause.”

However, there were problems with the terrorist theory.

“First the Provisional IRA had never carried out an attack in Scotland – seeing the Scots as Gaelic cousins they had privately declared Scotland ‘out of bounds’.

“Secondly, it was the habit of the IRA to claim responsibility for their attacks, so as to enhance their reputations as well as spreading terror.”

No-one had claimed responsibility.

Col Clive Fairweather, the commanding officer at Glencorse Barracks, worked with police officers investigating the murders.

An experienced military man, he had been second in command of the SAS operation that stormed the Iranian Embassy in London in 1980.

“No-one knew the Army or its soldiers better than Col Fairweather, and he quickly spotted the bullet cases in the back of the bloodied Land Rover,” Mr Woods said.

“He knew the type well, they were all 9mm parabellum cases, a calibre not usually favoured by terrorists but in common usage by the British Army for all its small arms, pistols and Sterling sub machine guns.”

The Det Ch Supt and Col Fairweather were beginning to suspect the robbery was an “inside job”.

A witness had also come forward to say they had seen four men in the Land Rover outside the bank – and three had been in uniform.

“It was a significant piece of information,” said Mr Wood.

There was also one gun that had been taken out of the armoury and replaced by Walker in the logs that day which matched with a bullet lodged in Staff Sgt Hosker’s shoulder.

“Each rifle barrel is different in minute detail and leaves distinct striation marks on the soft lead of a bullet head as it passes down the barrel,” Mr Woods said.

“The firing pins of individual weapons also leave distinctive marks on the detonator caps of bullet casings.

“It was best and conclusive evidence.”

Walker returned the gun before going absent without leave for three days.

He eventually returned to the barracks and attempted to bluster it out, denying all knowledge, and suggesting it had been the IRA that had been responsible but he was detained.

Shortly afterwards he was arrested when ballistic results arrived back from the lab.

Walker denied his crimes but a jury in the High Court in Edinburgh found him guilty of the murders.

Judge Lord Grieve recommended he serve at least 30 years in prison because of his “callous disregard for human life”. This was reduced to 27 years on appeal.

In 2011 Walker was released from prison on compassionate grounds, two years after a stroke left him severely disabled.

He died from a respiratory infection and suspected cancer in a care home in Wishaw, North Lanarkshire, in 2021 at the age of 67.

“Andrew Walker was a cold-hearted killer who set out to rob in the certain knowledge that to escape he would have to kill his three comrades in arms,” said Mr Wood.

“I suspect he was involved in some pretty brutal stuff in Northern Ireland because what he did was a cold-hearted execution.”

He doesn’t think Walker was mentally ill, he was “just a wicked guy”.

“He had absolutely no empathy for human suffering and that’s what makes me wonder what he had been exposed to early in his Army service.”

His planning of the crime was simple and audacious but poorly thought through, he added.

Mr Woods said, like many criminals, his plan of attack was much better planned than his plan of escape.

“As a military man he should have known that no plan survives contact with reality, yet when the first thing went wrong he had no back up plan,” he said.

“The simple act of skidding on an icy road derailed his brutal enterprise.”

Raids to detain and deport migrants living in the US without permission are set to begin on the first full day of President-elect Donald Trump’s new administration, sources have told the BBC’s US partner CBS.

The operations – threatened by Trump’s “border tsar” Tom Homan – could begin in Chicago, a city with a large migrant population, as early as Tuesday.

Trump has vowed to oversee the largest deportation programme in US history, and Homan has said criminals and gang members will be prioritised in such raids.

In an interview with Fox News this week, the border tsar promised a “big raid” across the country. He has previously said Chicago will be “ground zero” for the mass deportations.

Homan expanded on the administration’s plans on Fox News on Saturday, saying the deportations will not be “raids”, but “targeted enforcement operations”.

He described these efforts as “well planned”.

“When ICE goes out, they’re going to know exactly who they’re looking for and pretty much where they’ll find them,” Homan said.

He said he expects deportation flights to leave the first week of Trump’s presidency and anticipates daily lawsuits for deportation efforts from organisations like the American Civil Liberties Union.

“I’m sure we’ll be sued, but bring it,” he said.

Trump, a Republican, also promised mass deportations ahead of his first presidential term back in 2017, though he ended up removing about half the number of immigrants that President Barack Obama, a Democrat, did in his first four years.

The 47th president is coming into office with widespread support for his border policies. A New York Times and Ipsos poll published on Saturday found 55% of Americans either strongly or somewhat support such mass deportations.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency deports illegal migrants all the time.

However, the operation to be launched after Trump’s inauguration on Monday is expected to target so-called “sanctuary” cities that limit co-operation with federal immigration officials, two sources familiar with the plans told CBS.

According to CBS, ICE officials in the Chicago area recently asked agents to join this week’s planned raids without notifying heads of the agency in Washington DC

New York, Los Angeles, Denver and Miami are also due to be targeted with raids, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing unnamed sources familiar with the plans.

Some reports suggest that Trump could do away with a longstanding policy that has made churches off-limits for ICE arrests.

At a church in a mostly Latino neighbourhood of Chicago, worshippers shared their concerns with the BBC.

“I’m scared, but I can’t imagine what people without papers are feeling,” said D Camacho, a 21-year-old legal immigrant from Mexico who was in the congregation at Lincoln United Methodist Church in the Pilsen area last Sunday.

Reverend Emma Lozano said: “If someone with five children gets taken, who will take the children in? Will they go to social services? Will the family be divided?”

The rules under Democratic President Joe Biden were that ICE was generally to prioritise the arrest of illegal migrants who were serious criminals, had crossed the border recently or posed a national security threat.

While Trump’s team has signalled that it will begin with migrants who had committed crimes, all illegal migrants – including those who have lived and worked in the US for many years and have no criminal history – may be more likely to be arrested and deported.

Immigration raids at construction sites where undocumented migrants are often employed are also expected to resume, after being discontinued by the Biden administration, according to CBS.

However, the operation could pose difficulties for officials – with limited custody space to hold detainees.

At the same time, the Laken Riley Act – named after a college student who was murdered last year in Georgia by a Venezuelan illegal migrant who was previously arrested for shoplifting – is expected to be passed by Congress next week.

The proposed legislation will require the federal government to detain migrants living in the US illegally who are suspected of criminal activity.

In a remote village in western Nepal, thousands of miles from Israel, Mahananda Joshi was sitting restlessly at home on Thursday, his phone in his hand.

The phone is never far from his hand now. And never on silent. He is waiting for news of his son, Bipin Joshi, a 23-year-old Nepalese agriculture student who was kidnapped by Hamas and taken to Gaza.

Any time the phone rings, Mahananda, a local schoolteacher, thinks it might bring news of Bipin, or even – his deepest hope – his son’s voice on the line.

“Sadly, it is always someone else,” Mahananda said.

Bipin was one of dozens of foreign workers kidnapped alongside Israelis when Hamas attacked on 7 October 2023.

Twenty-four were subsequently released – 23 from Thailand and one from the Philippines – but Bipin and nine others remained.

It was never clear why.

• Follow live updates on this story
• Dozens killed as Israeli strikes continue ahead of ceasefire
• What we know about the agreement
• Analysis: Long-overdue deal may end killings but not the conflict
• History of the Israel-Gaza war explained

The last time Bipin’s mother Padma spoke to him was 6 October, she said, the day before he was kidnapped.

He assured her he was eating well, and showed off the clothes he was wearing.

The next time the family saw him was on video footage taken from the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, shown to them by Israeli officials, who asked them to identify him.

It was the confirmation that he had been taken alive.

The BBC now understands that Bipin is believed to still be alive, but Nepal’s ambassador to Israel, Dhan Prasad Pandit, said he had “no concrete information” yet about Bipin’s condition or whereabouts.

Mahananda, Bipin’s mother Padma and 18-year-old sister Puspa live in a small white, one-storey home in the village of Bispuri Mahendranagar, close to the border with India.

As of Thursday, they had not heard anything from officials, they said, only the headlines announcing a ceasefire agreement.

The news had given them all renewed hope.

“I feel like he will message me today or tomorrow saying mummy, I am free now and I will return home immediately,” Padma said.

But the Joshi family’s relief, if it comes, will not be that fast.

Along with the nine other foreign workers who remain hostages, Bipin is not expected to be released in the first phase of the ceasefire, which will prioritise the release of elderly men, women and children.

The fear for the family is that, while they wait, everything can change.

“Everything could fall apart,” Padma said, with tears in her eyes.

The family’s ordeal began on the day of the attack.

Bipin was one of several Nepalese students in Kibbutzim in southern Israel that day, and Mahananda, a teacher at a local school, got a call from one of them to say that Bipin had been kidnapped.

At that point, Mahananda did not know anything of Hamas’s attack nor the situation unfolding in Israel, and he struggled to make sense of what he was hearing.

He would later learn that 10 Nepalese students had been killed in the attack, and that one – his son – appeared to have been taken hostage.

That feeling of disconnection has persisted for 15 agonising months, Mahananda and Padma said on Thursday.

Every hostage family’s pain has been great, but for some of those far away from Israel there has been an added sense of isolation.

“It has been a very lonely experience,” Mahananda said.

Mr Pandit, Nepal’s ambassador to Israel, told the BBC that he had been in regular contact with the family and visited the village.

Mahananda painted a slightly different picture, saying that early on in the war the family did receive many visits from officials, but as it dragged on they were increasingly left alone.

“Since the new ceasefire agreement, no-one has come to see us or communicated with us at all,” he said.

“Everything we know comes from the news.”

A spokesperson for the office of the Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, who has been working with hostage families over the past 15 months, said that it treated all hostages the same, either Israeli or from abroad, and was working diligently to get them all freed.

For some of the families, the ceasefire news brings hope that their 15-month ordeal is coming to a close and they will see their loved ones again within weeks.

For others, like the Joshis, any hope must be tempered.

The longer they have to wait, the more likely the ceasefire deal could fall apart.

At home in Bispuri Mahendranagar on Thursday, Bipin’s sister Puspa was holding a photo of her brother as she spoke.

Tears filled her eyes when she talked about him coming home. She was confident he would.

“And when I see him again, I’m going to hug him,” she said. “And cry.”

It’s 1000 CE – the heart of the Middle Ages.

Europe is in flux. The powerful nations we know today – like Norman-ruled England and the fragmented territories that will go on to become France – do not yet exist. Towering Gothic cathedrals have yet to rise. Aside from the distant and prosperous city of Constantinople, few great urban centres dominate the landscape.

Yet that year, on the other side of the globe, an emperor from southern India was preparing to build the world’s most colossal temple.

Completed just 10 years later, it was 216ft (66m) tall, assembled from 130,000 tonnes of granite: second only to Egypt’s pyramids in height. At its heart was a 12ft tall emblem of the Hindu god Shiva, sheathed in gold encrusted with rubies and pearls.

In its lamplit hall were 60 bronze sculptures, adorned with thousands of pearls gathered from the conquered island of Lanka. In its treasuries were several tonnes of gold and silver coins, as well as necklaces, jewels, trumpets and drums torn from defeated kings across India’s southern peninsula, making the emperor the richest man of the era.

He was called Raja-Raja, King of Kings, and he belonged to one of the most astonishing dynasties of the medieval world: the Cholas.

His family transformed how the medieval world worked – yet they are largely unknown outside India.

Prior to the 11th Century, the Cholas had been one of the many squabbling powers that dotted the Kaveri floodplain, the great body of silt that flows through India’s present-day state of Tamil Nadu.

But what set the Cholas apart was their endless capacity for innovation. By the standards of the medieval world, Chola queens were also remarkably prominent, serving as the dynasty’s public face.

Travelling to Tamil villages and rebuilding small, old mud-brick shrines in gleaming stone, the Chola dowager Sembiyan Mahadevi – Rajaraja’s great-aunt – effectively “rebranded” the family as the foremost devotees of Shiva, winning them a popular following.

Sembiyan prayed to Nataraja, a hitherto little-known form of Hindu god Shiva as the King of Dance, and all her temples featured him prominently.

The trend caught on. Today, Nataraja is one of the most recognisable symbols of Hinduism. But to the medieval Indian mind, Nataraja was really a symbol of the Cholas.

The emperor, Rajaraja Chola, shared his great-aunt’s taste for public relations and devotion – with one significant difference.

Rajaraja was also a conqueror. In the 990s, he led his armies over the Western Ghats, the range of hills that shelter India’s west coast, and burned the ships of his enemies while they were at port.

Next, exploiting internal turmoil on the island of Lanka, he established a Chola outpost there, becoming the first mainland Indian king to set up a lasting presence on the island. At last, he broke into the rugged Deccan Plateau – the Germany to the Tamil coast’s Italy – and seized a portion of it for himself.

The loot of conquest was lavished on his great imperial temple, known today as the Brihadishvara.

In addition to its precious treasures, the great temple received 5,000 tonnes of rice annually, from conquered territory across southern India (you’d need a fleet of twelve Airbus A380s to carry that much rice today).

This allowed the Brihadishvara to function as a mega-ministry of public works and welfare, an instrument of the Chola state, intended to channel Rajaraja’s vast fortunes into new irrigation systems, expanding cultivation, and vast new herds of sheep and buffalo. Few states in the world could have conceived of economic control at such scale and depth.

The Cholas were as important to the Indian Ocean as the Mongols were to inner Eurasia.

Rajaraja Chola’s successor, Rajendra, built alliances with Tamil merchant corporations: a partnership between traders and government power that foreshadowed the East India Company – a powerful British trading corporation that later ruled large parts of India – that was to come more than 700 years later.

In 1026, Rajendra put his troops on merchants’ ships and sacked Kedah, a Malay city that dominated the global trade in precious woods and spices.

While some Indian nationalists have proclaimed this to be a Chola “conquest” or “colonisation” in Southeast Asia, archaeology suggests a stranger picture: the Cholas didn’t seem to have a navy of their own, but under them, a wave of Tamil diaspora merchants spread across the Bay of Bengal.

By the late 11th Century, these merchants ran independent ports in northern Sumatra. A century later, they were deep in present-day Myanmar and Thailand, and worked as tax collectors in Java.

In the 13th Century, in Mongol-ruled China under the descendants of Kublai Khan, Tamil merchants ran successful businesses in the port of Quanzhou, and even erected a temple to Shiva on the coast of the East China Sea. It was no coincidence that, under the British Raj in the 19th Century, Tamils made up the largest chunk of Indian administrators and workers in Southeast Asia.

Conquests and global connections made Chola-ruled south India a cultural and economic behemoth, the nexus of planetary trade networks.

Chola aristocrats invested war-loot into a wave of new temples, which sourced fine goods from a truly global economy linking the farthest shores of Europe and Asia. Copper and tin for their bronzes came from Egypt, perhaps even Spain. Camphor and sandalwood for the gods were sourced from Sumatra and Borneo.

Tamil temples grew into vast complexes and public spaces, surrounded by markets and endowed with rice estates. In the Chola capital region on the Kaveri, corresponding to the present-day city of Kumbakonam, a constellation of a dozen temple-towns supported populations of tens of thousands, possibly outclassing most cities in Europe at the time.

These Chola cities were astonishingly multicultural and multireligious: Chinese Buddhists rubbed shoulders with Tunisian Jews, Bengali tantric masters traded with Lankan Muslims.

Today, the state of Tamil Nadu is one of India’s most urbanised. Many of the state’s towns grew around Chola-period shrines and markets.

These developments in urbanism and architecture were paralleled in art and literature.

Medieval Tamil metalwork, produced for Chola-period temples, is perhaps the finest ever made by human hand, the artists rivalling Michelangelo or Donatello for their appreciation of the human figure. To praise Chola kings and adore the gods, Tamil poets developed notions of sainthood, history and even magical realism. The Chola period was what you’d get if the Renaissance had happened in south India 300 years before its time.

It is not a coincidence that Chola bronzes – especially Nataraja bronzes – can be found in most major Western museum collections. Scattered across the world, they are the remnants of a period of brilliant political innovations, of maritime expeditions that connected the globe; of titanic shrines and fabulous wealth; of merchants, rulers and artists who shaped the planet we live in today.

Anirudh Kanisetti is an Indian writer and author, most recently of

Scientists who recently discovered that metal lumps on the dark seabed make oxygen, have announced plans to study the deepest parts of Earth’s oceans in order to understand the strange phenomenon.

Their mission could “change the way we look at the possibility of life on other planets too,” the researchers say.

The initial discovery confounded marine scientists. It was previously accepted that oxygen could only be produced in sunlight by plants – in a process called photosynthesis.

If oxygen – a vital component of life – is made in the dark by metal lumps, the researchers believe that process could be happening on other planets, creating oxygen-rich environments where life could thrive.

Lead researcher Prof Andrew Sweetman explained: “We are already in conversation with experts at Nasa who believe dark oxygen could reshape our understanding of how life might be sustained on other planets without direct sunlight.

“We want to go out there and figure out what exactly is going on.”

The initial discovery triggered a global scientific row – there was criticism of the findings from some scientists and from deep sea mining companies that plan to harvest the precious metals in the seabed nodules.

If oxygen is produced at these extreme depths, in total darkness, that calls into question what life could survive and thrive on the seafloor, and what impact mining activities could have on that marine life.

That means that seabed mining companies and environmental organisations – some of which claimed that the findings provided evidence that seafloor mining plans should be halted – will be watching this new investigation closely.

The plan is to work at sites where the seabed is more than 10km (6.2 miles) deep, using remotely-operated submersible equipment.

“We have instruments that can go to the deepest parts of the ocean,” explained Prof Sweetman. “We’re pretty confident we’ll find it happening elsewhere, so we’ll start probing what’s causing it.”

Some of those experiments, in collaboration with scientists at Nasa, will aim to understand whether the same process could allow microscopic life to thrive beneath oceans that are on other planets and moons.

“If there’s oxygen,” said Prof Sweetman, “there could be microbial life taking advantage of that.”

The initial, biologically baffling findings were published last year in the journal Nature Geoscience. They came from several expeditions to an area of the deep sea between Hawaii and Mexico, where Prof Sweetman and his colleagues sent sensors to the seabed – at about 5km (3.1 miles) depth.

That area is part of a vast swathe of seafloor that is covered with the naturally occurring metal nodules, which form when dissolved metals in seawater collect on fragments of shell – or other debris. It’s a process that takes millions of years.

Sensors that the team deployed repeatedly showed oxygen levels going up.

“I just ignored it, Prof Sweetman told BBC News at the time, “because I’d been taught that you only get oxygen through photosynthesis”.

Eventually, he and his colleagues stopped ignoring their readings and set out instead to understand what was going on. Experiments in their lab – with nodules that the team collected submerged in beakers of seawater – led the scientists to conclude that the metallic lumps were making oxygen out of seawater. The nodules, they found, generated electric currents that could split (or electrolyse) molecules of seawater into hydrogen and oxygen.

Then came the backlash, in the form of rebuttals – posted online – from scientists and from seabed mining companies.

One of the critics, Michael Clarke from the Metals Company, a Canadian deep sea mining company, told BBC News that the criticism was focused on a “lack of scientific rigour in the experimental design and data collection”. Basically, he and other critics claimed there was no oxygen production – just bubbles that the equipment produced during sample collection.

“We’ve ruled out that possibility,” Prof Sweetman responded. “But these [new] experiments will provide the proof.”

This might seem a niche, technical argument, but several multi-billion pound mining companies are already exploring the possibility of harvesting tonnes of these metals from the seafloor.

The natural deposits they are targeting contain metals vital for making batteries, and demand for those metals is increasing rapidly as many economies move from fossil fuels to, for example, electric vehicles.

The race to extract those resources has caused concern among environmental groups and researchers. More than 900 marine scientists from 44 countries have signed a petition highlighting the environmental risks and calling for a pause on mining activity.

Talking about his team’s latest research mission at a press conference on Friday, Prof Sweetman said: “Before we do anything, we need to – as best as possible – understand the [deep sea] ecosystem.

“I think the right decision is to hold off before we decide if this is the right thing to do as a a global society.”

Serious. Ominous. A “message picture”.

Those are some of the descriptions of Donald Trump’s newest official portrait, captured by his chief photographer, Daniel Torok. In the photo, the president-elect wears a stern expression, eyebrow cocked.

“The official portrait of the president is the most printed, most seen image of the president, ever,” former White House photographer Eric Draper told the BBC.

He worked for George W Bush throughout his eight-year presidency, taking both of his official portraits.

Mr Draper’s first impression of Trump’s image was that it was “heavily manipulated” with both studio lighting and retouching after the shoot.

The photo appeared to use “monster” lighting, he added, to dramatically illuminate the president-elect from below and make his eyes pop.

The lighting setup gives the image an “ominous” look often seen in horror films, said Eliska Sky, a portrait photographer with the London Institute of Photography. She compared the portrayal of Trump to a boxer before a fight.

The lighting “suggests seriousness and intent”, according to Paul Duerinckx, a senior documentary photography lecturer at the Swansea College of Art.

This image is striking, he added, because the light source in most photos comes from above, like the sun or ceiling lights, and flipping the source in this photo “tends to really have an effect on us”.

Many on social media compared the photo to Donald Trump’s ‘mug shot’, taken in Fulton County Jail in Georgia after he was charged with attempting to overturn his 2020 election loss – a charge Trump denies.

Photography YouTuber Jared Polin said that he discussed the portrait with Mr Torok and was told the mug shot did provide inspiration.

“The mug shot photo was one of the most searched images, maybe ever,” Polin claims Mr Torok said. Mr Torok did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.

The mug shot, taken in 2023, became part of US culture, adorning everything from coffee cups to T-shirts.

The style of Trump’s new portrait is a departure from the look of his 2017 image, and that of past presidents, including George W Bush.

“You definitely make photos to please the client, and in this case, I think this is the type of image they wanted to portray,” Mr Draper told the BBC.

He recalled sitting down with then-President Bush and first lady Laura Bush to pore over a selection of images before they picked their favourite.

“The idea was to have it look like nice, pleasant lighting, have it look like a professional portrait, with a nice expression because these photos are going to be welcoming people as they walk into their post office,” he said.

Andrew Parsons is a political photographer who worked for four British prime ministers from David Cameron to Liz Truss, as well as Boris Johnson for 13 years.

“It’s a message picture, I’m delivering you a message,” he said of Trump’s photo. “It’s not like a candid laugh, it’s a stern, hard, look straight down the barrel of the lens.”

By contrast, Mr Parsons said the 2017 iteration was a “Donald Trump businessman picture”.

It’s difficult to overstate the importance of political images like Trump’s, he said. “A picture can make or break a political campaign.”

A new portrait of the Duchess of Edinburgh has been released to celebrate her 60th birthday.

In the picture, taken by London-based fashion photographer Christina Ebenezer earlier this month, Sophie looks relaxed and happy as she perches in a window seat at her Surrey home.

Buckingham Palace said Sophie was interested in Ebenezer’s style of photography and to support a rising female photographer.

She will mark her birthday on Monday privately at home with the Duke of Edinburgh.

The photo, taken at Bagshot Park, shows the duchess wearing a black turtleneck jumper and a pleated cream skirt.

Sophie’s public profile has grown in recent years, having been hailed as a dependable figure in a slimmed-down working monarchy following the departures of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and Prince Andrew, as well as the King and Princess of Wales’s health troubles.

She became the first member of the royal family to visit Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian invasion, travelling to Kyiv to meet President Volodymyr Zelensky and First Lady Olena Zelenska last April.

They discussed how to support survivors of conflict-related sexual violence.

The Palace said that as the duchess turns 60, she has a renewed sense of commitment to her gender equality work and looked forward to further championing the issue in the future.

Ebenezer, born in Lagos, Nigeria, before moving to London at the age of four, has previously been recognised as a Forbes 30 Under 30 arts and culture leader and a British Fashion Council New Wave Creative.

Two of her portraits – of British actresses Michaela Coel and Letitia Wright – were unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery last year.

US President-elect Donald Trump has launched his own cryptocurrency, which quickly soared in market capitalisation to several billion dollars.

His release of the meme coin, $Trump, comes as he prepares to take office on Monday as 47th president of the US.

The venture was co-ordinated by CIC Digital LLC – an affiliate of the Trump Organization – which has previously sold Trump-branded shoes and fragrances.

Meme coins are used to build popularity for a viral internet trend or movement, but they lack intrinsic value and are extremely volatile investments.

By Saturday afternoon, hours after its launch, the market capitalisation for $Trump reached nearly $5.5bn (£4.5bn), according to CoinMarketCap.com.

CIC Digital LLC and Fight Fight Fight LLC, a company formed in Delaware earlier this month, own 80% of the tokens. It is unclear how much money Trump might make from the venture.

“My NEW Official Trump Meme is HERE! It’s time to celebrate everything we stand for: WINNING!” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social as he announced the meme coin on Friday night.

Some 200m of the digital tokens have been issued and another 800m will be released in the next three years, the coin’s website said.

“This Trump Meme celebrates a leader who doesn’t back down, no matter the odds,” the website said.

• Thousands protest in Washington against Trump

It included a disclaimer noting the coin is “not intended to be, or the subject of” an investment opportunity or a security and was “not political and has nothing to do with” any political campaign, political office or government agency.

Critics accused Trump of cashing in on the presidency.

“Trump owning 80 percent and timing launch hours before inauguration is predatory and many will likely get hurt by it,” Nick Tomaino, a crypto venture capitalist, said in a social media post.

Such digital tokens are notorious for speculators using hype to pump up the value before selling at the top of the market, leaving latecomers to count their losses as the price crashes.

Cryptocurrency investors are hoping the Trump administration will boost the industry.

President Joe Biden’s regulators cited concerns about fraud and money laundering as they cracked down on crypto companies by suing exchanges.

Trump was previously skittish about cryptocurrency, but at a Bitcoin conference in Nashville last year he said America would be “the crypto capital of the planet” once he returned to Washington.

His sons Erik and Donald Jr announced their own crypto venture last year.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says his country is ready to resume the war against Hamas should talks for a second phase of the ceasefire fail.

In a televised speech just hours before it was due to start on Sunday, Netanyahu stressed that the ceasefire was “temporary” and Israel reserved the right to resume strikes in Gaza – and had the backing of US President-elect Donald Trump to do so.

Netanyahu also outlined what he called the success of Israel’s military campaign over the last 15 months – including the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

“We changed the face of the Middle East,” Netanyahu said, before adding that Hamas was now “completely alone”.

• Stories of the hostages taken by Hamas from Israel
• Key events that led to Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal in Gaza
• How historic Gaza deal was sealed with 10 minutes to spare
• On board aid convoy on its way to offer hope for Gaza

The ceasefire is due to come into force at 08:30 local time (06:30 GMT).

Prior to Saturday’s speech, Netanyahu said Israel would not implement the deal until it received the list of hostages to be released by Hamas.

“Israel will not tolerate violations of the agreement,” he said.

A longer list of the 33 hostages due to be freed by Hamas has already been published by Israeli media but not confirmed by officials.

But Israeli authorities say they have yet to receive the names of the three hostages due to be released on Sunday.

Meanwhile Israel has continued air strikes on what they say are Hamas and Islamic Jihad sites in Gaza – more than 120 people have been killed since the deal was announced on Wednesday, Hamas officials say.

Over the next few weeks, the 33 hostages are set to be released in exchange for 1,890 Palestinian prisoners. Under terms of the agreement, Israel will also begin pulling back its forces from Gaza.

The location at which the first hostages will be handed over is unclear. A senior Israeli military official said three reception points had been prepared near the border in northern, central, and southern Gaza.

Previously, a source close to Hamas told the AFP news agency that the first three hostages to be released would be women.

Talks about the terms of the second phase of the ceasefire are set to start on Day 16 of the first phase and will focus on achieving “a permanent end to the war”.

Details of the second phase of the deal are still uncertain but the expectation is that remaining hostages, including men, would be freed at this stage as more Palestinian prisoners detained in Israeli prisons are released.

There would also be a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. It is also understood that Hamas police – who will be unarmed unless absolutely necessary – will manage the return of hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians to northern Gaza

The third and final stage will involve the reconstruction of Gaza – something which could take many years – and the return of any remaining hostages’ bodies.

On Friday night, Israel’s government approved the ceasefire and hostage release deal after hours of discussions.

Two far-right cabinet ministers voted against it, including national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

The drawn-out structure of the agreement is also causing anxiety and division among the families of the hostages. Some fear relatives will be abandoned in Gaza after the first phase is done.

On Saturday evening, thousands of protesters gathered in Tel Aviv to demand the government ensures the release of further hostages by abiding by the first phase of the ceasefire.

Gal Alkalay, a member of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, told Reuters news agency: “We could have saved the lives of 200 soldiers and more than 10 hostages.” She added that people had died unnecessarily because the government “couldn’t take a decision and waited for Trump”.

Earlier on Saturday, several people were wounded in a stabbing attack near a restaurant In Tel Aviv, Israeli police said. The attacker was reportedly shot and killed at the scene by a civilian.

The suspect came to Tel Aviv “illegally” from Tulkarm in the occupied West Bank, Israeli media said.

There has been no respite for Palestinians on the ground in Gaza since the ceasefire deal was announced on Wednesday night.

The Palestinian health ministry said 123 people – including dozens of women and children – have been killed in strikes since then.

On Saturday, Gaza’s Hamas-run civil defence rescue agency said at least five members of one family were killed when a strike hit their tent in Khan Yunis, in southern Gaza, AFP reports.

Since Thursday afternoon, the Israeli military said it had struck 100 Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters who were among several “terror targets” hit across Gaza, according to the Reuters news agency.

The Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy Hamas – which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US and others – in response to an unprecedented cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage.

Around 46,899 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 a struggle to get aid to those in need.

Thousands of mostly female demonstrators took to the streets of Washington DC on Saturday to rally against President-elect Donald Trump two days ahead of his inauguration.

The People’s March – previously known as the Women’s March – has taken place every year since 2017.

A coalition of groups organised the movement with the stated aim of confronting “Trumpism”, according to its website. Smaller protests against Trump were held in New York City and on the other side of the country in Seattle.

The rallies coincide with Trump’s arrival to the nation’s capital for a series of weekend events in the lead-up to his swearing-in ceremony on Monday.

Saturday’s People’s March in Washington DC drew smaller numbers than its predecessors.

Organisers had expected 50,000 people. About 5,000 turned up.

The protesters gathered at three parks before marching to the Lincoln Memorial for the rally.

The groups behind the march are described on its website as holding “intersecting identities” and having “varied issue-based interests” with different causes such as climate change, immigration and women’s rights.

Organisers said they aimed to confront Trump by “drawing on past successes and effective strategies against autocrats”.

A small group of Trump supporters were at the Washington Monument on Saturday. Noticing the men in red Make America Great Again hats, one People’s March leader with a megaphone approached chanting: “No Trump, no KKK.”

One of the men, Timothy Wallis, told the Associated Press news agency his friends had just bought the Trump hats from a street vendor.

Mr Wallis, 58, of Pocatello, Idaho, said the People’s March protesters had “every right” to demonstrate, though he said he was confused by the rancour.

“It’s sad where we’re at as a country,” he said.

The first iteration of the People’s March came together after Trump defeated Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Women called for a protest the day after Trump’s first inauguration and hundreds of thousands responded.

The movement spread beyond the nation’s capital with millions of women across the US carrying signs railing against the Republican president and sporting pink knit “pussy hats” – a reference to a leaked tape in which Trump had bragged about grabbing women’s genitals.

The Women’s March remained a key part of the so-called resistance to Trump’s agenda in the years that followed.

But none of the subsequent marches have been on the same scale.

Trump, meanwhile, arrived in Washington DC later on Saturday to begin his inaugural festivities with a private event featuring fireworks at his golf club in the Virginia suburbs.

Women who gathered in Washington to join the People’s March told the BBC they had a variety of motivations.

One protester, Brooke, said she wanted to show her support for abortion access.

“I’m really not happy with the way our country’s voted,” she said. “I’m really sad that our country’s leaned towards a president that’s already failed us once and that we did not nominate a female candidate.”

Another woman, Kayla, said it’s a mix of emotions that brought her out to the streets of the nation’s capital.

“Honestly, I’m just mad, I’m sad, I’m overwhelmed,” she said.

Susie came in from the San Francisco area to demonstrate with her sister, Anne, who lives nearby. They both attended the Women’s March after Trump’s first inauguration and came back in their “pussy hats”.

Susie recalled the crowds of people in 2017. She said she hoped people would still take to the streets against Trump’s policies.

“This time the stakes are higher,” she said. “Trump has been emboldened. He’s got the billionaire class and the tech class bowing down.”

Anne also said she recognised the protesters are “out of touch” with a lot of America. Trump won all seven swing states and the popular vote last November.

But she added: “We’re still here, and we will resist.”

Donald Trump has said he will “most likely” give TikTok a 90-day reprieve from a ban that is due to take effect on Sunday, on the eve of his swearing-in as the 47th US president.

Trump told NBC News an announcement on the matter would probably come on Monday once he takes office.

It comes after the social media platform warned it would “go dark” on Sunday unless the outgoing Biden administration gave assurances the ban will not be enforced.

The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a law banning the app in the US unless its China-based parent company, ByteDance, sells the platform by 19 January. ByteDance has refused to seek a buyer.

“The 90-day extension is something that will be most likely done, because it’s appropriate. You know, it’s appropriate. We have to look at it carefully. It’s a very big situation,” Trump said in a phone interview with NBC News.

He made similarly remarks hours later to ABC News.

“Well, I have the right as you know, I’m the one who is going to be calling the shots,” he told ABC. “Most likely, I’ll extend for 90 days – you have the extension for 90 days as you probably know. I’ll do that until we figure something out.”

TikTok said late on Friday that the White House and the Department of Justice had “failed to provide the necessary clarity and assurance to the service providers that are integral to maintaining TikTok’s availability”.

But White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Saturday that TikTok’s warning it was about to go dark was “a stunt”.

“We see no reason for TikTok or other companies to take actions in the next few days before the Trump administration takes office on Monday,” she said.

“We have laid out our position clearly and straightforwardly: actions to implement this law will fall to the next administration. So TikTok and other companies should take up any concerns with them.”

Trump said on Friday he had spoken to China’s President Xi Jinping and discussed TikTok, among other issues.

TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew is expected to be among tech executives at Trump’s inauguration on Monday.

US national security officials have warned that Chinese spies could use the app’s data to track American federal employees and contractors, which TikTok has denied.

• Is TikTok banned in the US? What to know after Supreme Court decision
• TikTok creators mourn app where ‘overnight’ success is possible
• Americans and Chinese share jokes on ‘alternative TikTok’ as US ban looms

On Friday, the Chinese embassy in Washington DC accused the US of unfairly suppressing TikTok: “China will take all necessary measures to resolutely safeguard its legitimate rights and interests,” a spokesperson said.

The platform is wildly popular among the 170 million users it says it has in the US. It has also proved a valuable tool for American political campaigns to reach younger voters.

Trump previously backed a TikTok ban, but has more recently professed a “warm spot” for the app, touting the billions of views he says his videos attracted on the platform during last year’s presidential campaign.

Under the law passed last April, the US version of the app would be removed from app stores and web-hosting services in the coming days.

Content creators and small businesses dependent on the app for revenue told the BBC their lives would be changed inordinately if it is shut down.

“Indirectly, TikTok was the majority of my income because all brands want their stuff to be promoted on the app,” Nicole Bloomgarden, a fashion designer and artist who uses TikTok, told the BBC.

TikTok did not respond to a BBC inquiry about what it means by potentially “going dark” in the US.

One possible outcome is what happened in India when the platform fell foul of the authorities there.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi moved to switch off dozens of Chinese-owned apps, including TikTok, in 2020 after a deadly altercation with Chinese forces along contested borderlands.

Two weeks later, India’s 200 million users of TikTok were no longer able to log in after internet providers there were directed to block access to the app.

App stores run by Google and Apple also stopped offering TikTok, which did not legally challenge India’s ban.

Since the ban, short-form platforms from competitors have largely filled the void with TikTok copycats Meta-owned Instagram Reels and Google-owned YouTube Shorts.

Meta is widely viewed as the net winner from India’s TikTok ban.

The Israeli and Hamas negotiators never came face to face – but by the end, just one floor separated them.

Ceasefire talks via middlemen from Qatar, Egypt and the US had been dragging on for several months, at times without hope. Now the key players were all inside one building in Doha and the pace was frantic.

A deal was close but things had gone wrong before: one source described a last-minute push to stop the agreement breaking down while a podium was being set up so the Qatari prime minister could announce it.

“Literally, negotiations were up until 10 minutes before the press conference. So that’s how things were stitched up at the last minute,” the source familiar with the talks said.

The BBC has spoken to a number of officials on all sides of the negotiations to piece together how the final fraught days of the secretive process unfolded.

The deal did not come out of the blue.

The overall framework of the agreement reached on 15 January was broadly the same as the proposal set out by President Joe Biden during a White House address last May. It uses the same three-phase approach and will see a ceasefire, Israeli hostages released in return for Palestinian prisoners, and the Israeli military’s gradual withdrawal from Gaza.

But sources familiar with the discussions agreed the dynamics of the talks shifted decisively in mid-December and the pace changed.

Hamas, already reeling from Israel’s killing of its leader Yahya Sinwar in Gaza two months earlier, had become increasingly isolated. Its Lebanon-based ally Hezbollah had been decimated and had agreed to a truce with Israel. Bashar al-Assad’s Iran-backed government in Syria had also been swept away.

The view in Washington is that Hamas was forced to abandon the idea that “the cavalry was coming to save it”, as one US official put it.

“It is hard to overstate how fundamentally the equation changed and what that [did] for Hamas’s calculus,” says a senior Biden administration official familiar with the talks.

An Israeli official who wished to remain anonymous said Hamas was “not in a rush” to strike a deal and had been “dictating” rather than negotiating. They said that changed after the death of Sinwar and Israeli operations against Hamas’s allies in the region.

On top of that, the official said, there was “momentum created by both US administrations” – the Biden White House and the incoming Trump team.

“We could not achieve a deal like this until conditions had changed,” the official added.

On 12 December, Biden’s negotiating team visited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Middle East envoy Brett McGurk and CIA director Bill Burns were all in attendance.

A US official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the meeting lasted “multiple hours” and focused on the “new regional equation” and “how we catapult from the Lebanon ceasefire into another round of intensive discussions” on Gaza.

• Follow updates on this story
• How the historic deal was sealed with 10 minutes to spare
• Gazans anxiously await ceasefire, fearing last-minute catastrophes
• Bowen: Israel has changed since Donald Trump’s last term – has he?

There was also another piece on the chessboard by this stage: Donald Trump.

On 16 December, weeks after Trump’s victory, the BBC spoke to a Hamas official who was unusually optimistic about the ceasefire efforts, suggesting they seemed to be more serious.

The official – who had taken part in every set of talks since November 2023 – appeared reassured by the fact that an adviser to the incoming US president had sent a message to mediators indicating Trump wanted an agreement before his inauguration.

Trump had also warned of “all hell to pay” if Hamas did not agree to release the hostages – but the Palestinian official was bullish.

“This time, the pressure will not be limited to Hamas, as was customary under the Biden administration,” the official said. “There will also be pressure on Netanyahu. He is the one obstructing the deal, and Trump seems to understand that very well.”

However, that same official’s prediction that a deal could be done by Christmas proved to be optimistic.

During December, the process remained beset by problems. Israel publicly ruled out releasing certain high-profile prisoners, while the White House accused Hamas of throwing up roadblocks over the hostage releases.

A Biden administration official said: “Hamas [was] refusing to agree – and this was a breakdown at that point – to the list of hostages that would be released in phase one of the deal.

“That’s just so fundamental. This is a hostage release deal. Unless you agree to the list of hostages who will come out, there’s not going to be a deal.”

The same official said Hamas made “completely untrue” claims about not knowing the location of the hostages, and added: “We held the line and basically left the table until Hamas agreed to the hostage list.”

An anonymous Israeli official said Hamas had sought to conceal the number of living hostages and “tried to dictate that they would send us only dead bodies”.

For its part, Hamas claimed Israel unexpectedly added 11 names to the list of hostages it wanted to be released in the first phase. Hamas considered them reserve soldiers, and therefore not eligible to be released alongside the women, injured and elderly hostages due to be released in phase one.

The door was left open to Qatari and Egyptian mediators to continue their efforts and on 3 January, there was an apparent breakthrough when Hamas proposed the release of 110 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences in return.

There were by now well-established terms of reference for such trades. For each hostage Hamas was to release, Israel would have to provide what had become known in the nomenclature of the draft deal as a “key” – meaning an agreed number or even specific identities of Palestinian prisoners.

A US official said: “There’s an equation for how many Palestinian prisoners come out. So for female soldiers, for example, there’s a key. And for elderly males, there’s a key. And for women civilians, there’s a key. And this has all been worked out and the prisoners have been named, hundreds and hundreds of prisoners on the list.”

The exchange file in the negotiations – Palestinian prisoners for hostages held by Hamas – became known as “the keys”.

During this phase of the talks, Hamas also relented on two long-standing demands: the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza in the first phase and a formal Israeli commitment to a total ceasefire.

Sensing a breakthrough, the Egyptian mediator urgently dispatched Major General Ahmed Abdel Khaleq – who oversees the Palestinian portfolio in Egyptian intelligence – to Doha. After meeting with Hamas representatives, he secured confirmation the group would make what a senior Hamas official described as “painful concessions.”

But on 6 January, according to a Palestinian official, Israel rejected the offer put forward by Hamas on the 11 hostages. Hamas responded by sending the BBC and other media outlets a list featuring the names and ages of 34 Israeli hostages. Two days later, the body of one of those on that list – Yosef AlZayadni – was found inside Gaza.

The list included reserve soldiers, which indicated Hamas was willing to release them in the first phase.

This appeared to be an attempt to embarrass Netanyahu and rally hostage families in Israel and around the world to pressure him into accepting the deal.

It was also an indication Hamas had not walked away.

Meetings stretching into the small hours of Doha’s hot evenings became common during the final stretch of the negotiations.

In the last month, they had developed into so-called “proximity talks”, with both sides in the same two-storey building, according to multiple accounts from officials familiar with the details.

A senior US official said Hamas’s delegation was on the first floor and Israel’s on the floor above. Mediators ran pieces of paper between them. Maps of Israeli troop withdrawal proposals and details about hostages or prisoners drafted for release were shuttled back and forth.

“That takes an enormous amount of work and, I have to say, all of that was not fully nailed down, really, until just the [final] hours,” said the official.

Inside the building, the delegations met separately with senior figures from Qatar and Egypt. Among those closely involved in the details was Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.

Two crucial areas were worked on in the final phases of the talks: the lists for release of hostages held by Hamas and Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, and the positions for Israeli troop withdrawals from populated areas in Gaza during phase one.

By 9 January, the pressure had escalated. Trump’s envoy, Biden’s envoy, and the Egyptian intelligence chief convened in Doha for a serious eight-hour negotiation session.

A senior Egyptian official told the BBC: “We are at the closest point to reaching an agreement.”

Agreement had been reached on 90% of the outstanding issues, but further talks were required.

Steve Witkoff, Trump’s recently appointed Middle East envoy, was dispatched to Tel Aviv to meet Netanyahu. Though not yet officially in post, the New York property tycoon had become more and more involved in the talks, which Trump was taking a keen interest in.

He was about to be sent on an assignment that proved to be pivotal.

When Trump’s man in the Middle East arrived in Israel on 11 January, it was the sabbath.

Witkoff was asked to wait until the sabbath had ended before he met Netanyahu but, in a breach of custom, the envoy refused and demanded to meet the prime minister immediately.

Netanyahu appears to have come under serious strong-arming during the meeting and the intervention from the Trump camp to get the Israeli government to set aside its final reservations seems to have been critical.

The meeting was reportedly fractious and the message to Netanyahu from the incoming president was clear: Trump wants a deal – now get it done.

Commenting on those talks, an Israeli official who asked to remain anonymous said it was a “very important meeting”.

When Witkoff returned to Doha, he remained in the room with the talks, spending time with Biden’s envoy Mr McGurk, in what two US officials called a “near unprecedented” transition effort in American diplomacy.

This week, Hamas official Bassem Naim told Al Arabiya he “couldn’t imagine that [the deal] could be possible without the pressure of the incoming administration led by President Trump” – and specifically cited Witkoff’s presence at the talks.

By now, the fact a deal could be imminent was out in the open and public expectation was building – not least among the families of those being held hostage and Palestinians displaced inside Gaza.

The final 72 hours of talks involved a constant back and forth over the finer points of how the deal would be implemented, according to one account.

One source close to the negotiations described the hammering out of “arrangements and logistics” for how the hostages would be released in Gaza and for the withdrawal movements of Israeli troops.

On 12 January, a senior Palestinian official familiar with the negotiations said “all the officials are here in the same building”, adding: “Tonight is decisive. We are only a few steps away from an agreement.”

That meeting lasted six hours – but, like so many times before, an impasse was reached.

This time the disagreement that arose was over the mechanism for the return of displaced individuals from southern Gaza to the north.

Israel wanted to search returnees and their vehicles to ensure no militants or military equipment were being transported – which Hamas refused to accept.

Mediators proposed that Qatari and Egyptian technical teams conduct the searches instead. Both sides agreed and one of the final remaining stalemates was resolved.

On 15 January shortly after 18:00, a Hamas negotiator wrote in a message to the BBC: “Everything is finished.”

The podium was being readied.

A deal which once looked impossible had taken shape.

Whitney Houston may have been one of the most acclaimed singers of her generation but when David Roberts was asked to be her bodyguard he wasn’t exactly star-struck.

“I said ‘Whitney Houston, who’s he?’,” recalled the former police sergeant turned close protection officer.

He went on to spend six years protecting the late superstar as she toured the world and believes he was the inspiration for the 1992 film The Bodyguard, starring Houston and Kevin Costner.

“It was an eye-opener, bearing in mind I’m from a farming community on the tip of north Wales, the Llyn Peninsula.

“And here I am travelling the world right with arguably one of the most famous people in the world so it was quite an interesting experience,” said the 72-year-old, speaking from his home in Palm Beach, Florida.

Twenty-five years on he has written a book about his time with the star who died aged 48 in 2012.

David joined the RAF Police in 1968 and served in Northern Ireland before joining North Wales Police in 1972.

He later transferred to the Met Police, concluding his service in 1988 as a sergeant providing protection for visiting dignitaries and heads of state.

It was while working for the American embassy in London in 1988 he first met Houston after she flew into the UK.

He recalled meeting a “most sophisticated, educated, intelligent, shy young lady”.

“I was singularly impressed,” he said.

“Her beauty was outstanding, even after the long flight from New York to London.”

Ahead of the meeting his daughter had brought him up to speed on her career and he had been out and bought some of her music.

“She had the voice of an angel, clearly,” he said.

He and Whitney “got on famously” from the get-go.

The initial job was for three months but he was later asked to be the director of security for her Far East tour.

“I can’t imagine a high-profile personality in so much demand being easier to look after,” he said.

He said she spent most of their time in her hotel room on the phone to her then boyfriend, comedian Eddie Murphy.

“He is just as funny off stage as he is on stage, a great chap, I like him,” said David.

He would later witness her tumultuous relationships with singer Bobby Brown who she married in 1992.

They remained married for 15 years.

“It’s remarkable to me it lasted as long as it did,” said David.

“In fact, the day of the wedding all the people who were involved in the security there said, ‘OK guys, we’ll be back here next year for the divorce party – we really did not think it would last and yet she proved us all wrong.”

As for his own relationship with the megastar, he said he got to know her “to the extent that there was very little need for conversation when we were out in public”.

“I’d look at her and know what she’s thinking and what she wanted or if we were in a crowd or I’d feel a tug on the back of my jacket we had to go.”

“There is always that level of synergy between the protector and the protectee,” he said.

He would check Houston into hotels using the name Rachel Marron – the name of the character Houston would go on to play in The Bodyguard.

But he insisted not everything in the film is as true to life.

In the film Costner and Houston’s characters develop a romance but he insisted he was “more like a “kindly uncle” to the star.

When asked if he would have died for her he is unequivocal.

“Of course,” he said.

“If I did my homework wrong, if I got the threats assessment or the risk management or the preparation wrong, then yes, I would have paid for that, yes.”

And there was plenty of risk to assess.

During the Far East tour he said there were about 50 fans who were considered a potential threat.

“The obsessed fans were not just happy to see her, not just happy to be in her presence, they wanted a piece of her, and that’s when it becomes a little bit tedious from my perspective,” he said.

“We had one that would write reams and reams and reams of all manner of mentally disturbed comments on toilet paper.

“There was a chap in Australia who used to send his soiled underwear and socks.”

He said the man had written he was going to be at her show in Sydney.

“He gave us his seat number and advised that when she sang the encore Greatest Love of All he was going to come on stage and ‘take her to meet his mother in heaven’.”

He was surrounded by undercover officers but the concert finished without issue.

“He didn’t move, he didn’t show one sign of emotion at all,” said David.

“She finished singing, he stood up, he walked out, we’ve never heard from him since.”

This insight into the world of the mega-famous left David questioning why so many young people chase stardom.

“It was patently obvious to me from the very beginning that that level of fame is too expensive a price to pay,” he said.

He said the only time she could achieve any type of normal life was when she was with friends and family or in a hotel room “otherwise, nothing was normal”.

He said years spent following Houston around the world “came at a cost” to him too.

When asked if that cost was to his own personal relationships he said: “You’d have to ask any one of my three wives, I’m not entirely sure.”

The job came to an abrupt end in 1995.

He said for the last nine months they were together he witnessed Houston’s “gradual but obvious deterioration”.

He said he never saw drugs paraphernalia but frequently witnessed the star in emotional distress.

“There was a problem that needed to be addressed by those who cared for her, not just the family and friends, but the executives who were making millions from exploiting her to the extent that they did,” he said.

“But the general consensus at the time was that Houston could not possibly go to rehabilitation as it would be detrimental to her reputation and career.”

He said he raised concerns.

“I was told ‘Miss Houston has decided she’s not going to travel internationally anymore, so she doesn’t need someone of your expertise, but if ever she decides to travel again, we will call you’,” he recalled.

“So that was the end of that.

“That was technically my swan song, that was the bullet that I did take for her.”

In 2012 at just 48 Houston died in her room at the Beverly Hilton Hotel of accidental drowning due to the effects of cocaine use and heart disease.

“It hurt. It was dreadful,” said David.

“You get over the initial shock and then the anger takes over because it shouldn’t have been.”

Then in 2015, Bobbi Kristina Brown, the only daughter of Houston and R&B singer Bobby Brown, was found unresponsive in a bathtub at her home in Georgia and died six months later.

David remembered Houston being wheeled out of the livery room with Bobbi in her arms and as she grew, watching her run around playing games.

“The only solace you get from the entire affair is believing that she [Houston], her father, her mother and her daughter are reconciled in a place that no-one could hurt them anymore,” said David.

He said he had written his book, Whitney: The Memoir of Her Bodyguard, to “dissipate the anger” he has carried ever since Houston’s death.

“The entertainment industry is a beast. It has demands that are unrealistic. You take a young 20-odd year old girl and you make them this famous, there are demands, you’ve got to produce 10 albums in the next five years – but where’s the normal life? You haven’t got time for that,” he said.

“You’re part of our money-making machine and that’s what she was”.

A chairlift accident at a ski resort in Spain has left 10 people injured, including two women in intensive care.

The Astún resort in the Spanish Pyrenees, where the incident happened, was closed as rescue services attended the scene.

A pulley failure appears to have caused a cable to slacken and some chairs to drop to the ground, throwing skiers into the snow.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said he was “shocked” by the news of the incident.

Initial reports said 30 people had been hurt, but local media later reported that 17 needed medical attention.

Ambulances and helicopters took some of the injured to hospital. Two women, both aged 18, are in intensive care, El Pais newspaper says.

According the state broadcaster TVE a pulley at one end of the chairlift came loose and part of the structure supporting it collapsed, causing a cable to lose tension and several seats to fall.

Dozens of people left hanging on the 15m-high (50ft) chairlift were helped down.

Jaime Pelegri, who was on the lift, told the BBC that a cable lost tension before the chairs on his side of the structure fell.

“It was very scary, but very fast,” he said – adding that ambulances and helicopters arrived at the scene within 15 minutes.

Previously in a post on X: “Luckily we are fine but there are injured people, we have seen several stretchers coming down.”

Images on social media appear to show one of the chairlift’s flywheels off its upright. The cause of the incident is not yet known.

Regional President Jorge Azcón and Spain’s Minister of the Interior Roberto Bermúdez de Castro went to the scene.

Azcón wrote on X: “All the necessary services of the [government] are working to assist the affected and injured people.”

PM Pedro Sánchez said he had spoken with Azcón to offer the “full support” of the government.

A telephone line has been set up for the families of those affected.

The Astún resort, which is popular with Spanish skiers, is located in the Aragon region of the Pyrenees mountains, near the border with France.

Did you witness this at Astún? Get in touch here.

Dr Mustafa Ali Abdulrahman Ibo and his colleagues bravely perform surgery under increasing bombardment in the last remaining hospital in el-Fasher, a city that has been under siege for the last nine months in Sudan’s western Darfur region.

Over the last month the hospital has recorded 28 deaths and more than 50 injuries among its staff and patients because of intense shelling. This is the highest number of casualties recorded in a month since the siege began.

“Recent continuous attacks targeting Saudi Hospital have intensified dramatically, it has become part of our daily lives,” Dr Ibo, a Darfuri who has lived in el-Fasher since 2011, told the BBC.

He said the most frightening day had been when a team of medics were performing an emergency caesarean as the shelling began – a near-death experience for them all.

”The first one hit the hospital’s perimeter wall… [then] another shell hit the maternity operating room, the debris damaged the electrical generator, cutting off the power and plunging us into complete darkness,” he said.

The surgical team had no option but to use the torches on their phones to finish the two-hour operation.

Part of the building had collapsed and the room was full of dust with shrapnel scattered all over the place.

Dr Khatab Mohammed, who had been leading the surgery, described the dangers.

“The situation was dire, the environment was no longer sterile,” the 29-year-old medic told the BBC.

“After ensuring our safety and the patient’s safety from shrapnel, we cleaned her and changed our surgical gowns since our clothes were full of dust and we continued the surgery,” he said, adding that the patient could have died from complications.

After successfully delivering the baby, the doctors moved mother and new-born to another room to recover and then gathered to take a group photo.

It was a testament to their survival, but Dr Mohammed added: “I thought it might be our last photo, believing that another shell would hit the same spot and we would all die.”

They went on to perform two more life-saving emergency operations that day.

These doctors – most of whom are graduates of the University of el-Fasher – have stayed put since Sudan’s civil war erupted in April 2023.

The conflict has pitted the army against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and has caused the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis, forcing more than 12 million people from their homes.

The two rivals had been allies – coming to power together in a coup – but fell out over an internationally backed plan to move towards civilian rule.

A year into the conflict, the siege of el-Fasher began. It is the only city still under army control in Darfur, where the RSF has been accused of carrying out ethnic cleansing against non-Arab communities.

The RSF began attacking el-Fasher from three sides and cut off supply routes. In a report issued last month, the UN Human Rights Office said the fighting had left more that 780 civilians dead and more than 1,140 injured – many of them casualties of crossfire.

The fighting has forced all other hospitals in el-Fasher to shut.

• A simple guide to Sudan’s war
• BBC hears of horror and hunger in rare visit to Darfur massacre town

South Hospital, which was supported by medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), was the main health facility in the city dealing with war casualties.

It was near the frontline and was stormed in June by RSF fighters, who also looted medicine and equipment and assaulted staff.

Saudi Hospital, which is run by the Ministry of Health and funded by non-governmental organisations, the UN and MSF, specialises in obstetrics and gynaecology but is now providing all medical services – it is the only place in North Darfur state with surgical capacity.

Amid shortages of medical supplies, equipment and personnel, Saudi Hospital is facing ”a heart-breaking situation that violates all humanitarian and international laws and values”, its medical director, 28-year-old Mudathir Ibrahim Suleiman, told the BBC.

He recalled how terrifying it was during recent bombings: “Pregnant women, children and staff were in shock and paralysis, some people were injured and had to be pulled out the rubble.

“All the current conditions push us to consider stopping our work, but women and children have no other place to save their lives except this hospital,” he said.

“The staff at the hospital are doing the impossible to save lives.”

All normal aspects of life have completely disappeared from el-Fasher, especially in the northern and eastern parts. The university, for example, operates via online learning, with exam centres established in safer cities like Kassala in eastern Sudan.

With widespread hunger and insecurity, the city has also emptied. About half the population have sought refuge in the nearby Zamzam camp, where an estimated 500,000 people now live in famine conditions.

Saudi Hospital also serves the camp, with MSF running ambulances to bring in emergency cases.

But these have also recently started coming under attack, including an incident earlier this month when a gunman shot at a “clearly marked ambulance with the MSF logo and flag”.

“We are horrified by this deadly attack on a humanitarian crew carrying out life-saving medical work where it’s desperately needed,” MSF’s Michel Olivier Lacharité said in a statement.

Dr Ibo admitted it was his colleagues – there are 35 doctors and 60 nurses at Saudi Hospital – who kept him going.

”We lose people every day, and offices and rooms are destroyed, but thanks to the determination of the young staff, we continue to persevere.

”We draw our resilience from the people of el-Fasher – we are its children and graduates of the University of el-Fasher.”

Aid agencies are warning that one of the worst maternal and child health emergencies is unfolding in Darfur, where some areas are also being targeted in air strikes by the military.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has called for a halt to attacks on health facilities and adherence to international humanitarian laws.

“The sanctity of health must be respected even in war,” WHO Sudan communications officer Loza Mesfin Tesfaye told the BBC.

Dr Mohammed, who is originally from Sudan’s White Nile State but came to el-Fasher to study medicine in 2014, also pays homage to his team, who have ignored many opportunities to flee.

“Our souls refused to abandon the people of this city – especially given the catastrophic conditions we witness daily.”

All the medics, who communicated via chats and voice notes on WhatsApp, sounded focused.

”We are determined to continue saving lives, from wherever we can, even underground or under the shade of a tree, we pray for the war to end and for peace to prevail,” said Dr Ibo.

• US sanctions Sudan army chief Burhan over civilian deaths
• Sudan’s ‘invisible crisis’ – where more children are fleeing war than anywhere else
• I couldn’t bury my brother because of Sudan bombing
• BBC hears of horror and hunger in rare visit to Darfur massacre town

After finishing university and moving back to Birmingham, Khiefa Gabbidon struggled to make friends when she started work.

The 22-year-old had a job in the tech industry which she described as a male-dominated field and said she did not have any women around her.

“I looked around to see if I could find any female friends but I couldn’t so I thought ‘I’m going to have to create something’,” she added.

Eager to find her clique, Ms Gabbidon created a community group for women in May called Space For Girls.

It encourages like-minded women to meet up and take part in a range of activities such as running sessions, meals out and hiking.

The group has since attracted more than 8,000 followers on Instagram and a WhatsApp community of more than 1,500 women.

Before she started the group, Ms Gabbidon said she “had no-one” adding: “It was a really difficult time to go through.”

But she said she had since realised many women of her age were going through the same thing.

“It’s a common feeling, this emptiness and the loneliness – and to know we’re here to support each other definitely helps,” she added.

The group hold “speed mating” events which use the same concept as speed dating but for people to make friends.

Suzanna Jones went to one of their recent events and said she had found it difficult to make friends as a young person, before joining the group.

“I would never strike up a conversation on the train or in the gym but when you know there are other people looking for friends and are open to get to know you…it makes it easier,” she added.

Katherine Hale started going to Space For Girls events after coming across a video on TikTok.

She regularly attends the running club on Tuesday evenings which she said had helped her with her anxiety and made it easier to meet new people without having long, face-to-face conversations.

“It’s just nice to have that support, even though you don’t necessarily know everybody,” she added.

“Just knowing that if you’re having a bad day, you can pop a message in the group chat or individually and they can help you through it – it’s made a huge difference.”

A recent survey by mental health charity Mind revealed 54% of people across the West Midlands said they preferred to put on a brave face to avoid talking about their mental health.

More than half of those said that made them feel isolated and less able to socialise.

Rachel McNair, from Birmingham Mind, said community groups like Space For Girls were important in helping people to open up.

“There’s a huge gap in services for people who are looking to make meaningful connections, especially for younger people across the city,” she said.

TikTok is set to be banned in the US on 19 January after the Supreme Court denied a last ditch legal bid from its Chinese owner, ByteDance.

It found the law banning the social media platform did not violate the first amendment rights of TikTok and its 170 million users, as the companies argued.

But will the decision of the country’s highest judicial authority actually stop Americans using it?

The White House says “given the sheer fact of timing”, the process of implementing the law will indeed fall to Trump, who will be sworn in on Monday – the day after the ban comes into effect.

President-elect Donald Trump has indicated he will offer TikTok a lifeline.

So what happens next?

On Saturday Trump said he will “most likely” give TikTok a 90-day reprieve from a the ban. He told NBC News an announcement on the matter would probably come on Monday.

On Friday, just before the court released its ruling, he said he spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping about TikTok, as well as issues around trade.

“It is my expectation that we will solve many problems together, and starting immediately,” he posted on social media.

And on Thursday Trump’s incoming national security advised Mike Waltz told Fox News the president-elect was looking for ways to “preserve” TikTok, saying Americans’ access to the platform and their data would be preserved.

“I don’t want to get ahead of our executive orders, but we’re going to create the space to put that deal in place,” Mr Waltz said.

The Biden administration has made clear they will not enforce the law – so another option would be for Trump to follow suit and allow the law to stand but tell the Department of Justice (DoJ) to ignore it.

The government would be effectively telling Apple and Google that they won’t be punished for continuing to allow people to download TikTok onto their devices, 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.

If Trump can’t unban TikTok, then what happens?

The most likely way the US would enforce the ban is to order app stores to make it unavailable for download in that region.

But the DoJ has said the actual process of implementing the law – and making sure firms are compliant – will be “a process that plays out over time”.

If people can no longer use a legitimate means to access TikTok through digital storefronts it won’t impact those who’ve already got it on their phones.

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

But because the app most likely won’t be publicly available anymore, new updates will no longer be delivered to users in the US – which will 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 ends up taking this kind of form it seems likely that those who are determined to use TikTok after it comes into effect will still be able to do so – but it won’t be the experience they are used to.

However there are 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.

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

Professor Milton L. Mueller of the Georgia Institute of Technology – who filed a legal brief in support of TikTok – said the complexity of the issue means even the experts are unclear about what happens next.

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.

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 now that it has actually been banned – and what will happen 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.

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.