Two Americans held by the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan have been exchanged for an Afghan imprisoned in the US on drug trafficking and terrorism charges.

The news emerged after Ryan Corbett and William Wallace McKenty were freed. The Afghan, Khan Mohmmad, had been serving a life sentence in a federal prison in California on drug trafficking and terrorism charges.

A statement from the Taliban government in Kabul announced the agreement, which was concluded just before President Joe Biden ended his term in office.

Mr Corbett’s release was confirmed by his family. US media, quoting official sources, identified Mr McKenty as the second American.

The deal – reportedly the culmination of two years of negotiations – was done just before Joe Biden handed over power to Donald Trump on Monday.

“An Afghan fighter Khan Mohammed imprisoned in America has been released in exchange for American citizens and returned to the country,” the Taliban foreign ministry said in a statement.

The family of Ryan Corbett thanked both administrations as well as Qatar for what they described as its vital role.

“Today, our hearts are filled with overwhelming gratitude and praise to God for sustaining Ryan’s life and bringing him back home after what has been the most challenging and uncertain 894 days of our lives,” the family said.

Mr Corbett had lived in Afghanistan for many years with his family and was detained by the Taliban more than two years ago when he returned on a business trip.

There are few details about Mr McKenty, whose family have asked for privacy.

Khan Mohammad was a member of the Taliban taken captive in Afghanistan during the US’s military engagement. He was jailed in 2008. Joe Biden commuted his sentence just before he left office.

The Taliban called the exchange the result of “long and fruitful negotiations” with the US and “a good example of resolving issues through dialogue”.

“The Islamic Emirate looks positively at the actions of the United States of America that help the normalisation and development of relations between the two countries,” it said.

Since the Taliban took power in 2021, they have not been formally recognised by any government.

While the move is not likely to change relations between Kabul and Washington, more negotiations may follow – two other Americans are still in Afghanistan, believed to be George Glezmann and Mahmood Habibi.

The Taliban are also seeking the release of an Afghan who is one of the few remaining prisoners at the US’s Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

At a rally in Washington on the eve of his inauguration, President Trump threatened to cut humanitarian aid to Afghanistan unless the Taliban returned the military equipment seized after the US pulled out in 2021.

A US Department of Defense report in 2022 estimated that military equipment worth $7bn had been left behind in Afghanistan after US forces withdrew.

The mysterious balls that forced the closure of several beaches in Sydney last week were found to contain saturated fatty acids, E. coli and faecal bacteria, authorities say.

Sydney’s Northern Beaches council said it has sent the debris to the New South Wales Environment Protection Authority (EPA) for further analysis.

Nine beaches, including popular spots Manly and Dee Why, were closed on 14 January after the marble-sized balls started washing up.

It came months after thousands of black blobs started appearing on the city’s coasts in October, prompting authorities to close some of its most famous beaches for several days and order a massive clean-up.

The latest batch of balls was cleaned up from harbour beaches this week, the Northern Beaches council said in its statement on Tuesday.

It urged anyone who spotted the balls not to handle them and to contact authorities.

Besides the acids and bacteria, the balls also contained volcanic rock pumice.

Northern Beaches mayor Sue Heins said she hopes the EPA analysis will “identify the source so that they can stop this from happening at other beaches”.

“We are continuing to conduct regular inspections of our beaches and encourage the community to report any sightings,” she said.

The first batch of debris in October were at first mistakenly called “tar balls” but were later found to contain everything from cooking oil and soap scum molecules, to blood pressure medication, pesticides, hair, methamphetamine and veterinary drugs.

Scientists said they resembled fat, oil and grease blobs – often called “fatbergs” – which are commonly formed in sewage systems.

But Sydney Water has reported that its water treatment plants are operating normally and that there were no known issues with waste systems in the city.

South Korea’s suspended president Yoon Suk Yeol has made his first appearance at his impeachment trial, where he denied ordering the arrest of lawmakers during his attempt to impose martial law.

Parliament voted to impeach Yoon last month, and last week the Constitutional Court began a trial to decide whether to permanently remove him from office.

Yoon is also facing a separate criminal investigation into whether he led an insurrection. He has been detained since last week.

Security was tight on Tuesday as Yoon was transported by van from the detention centre, where he is being held, to the Constitutional Court.

Police formed human walls and held up anti-riot barricades to stop hundreds of his supporters who had gathered nearby from getting too close. Last weekend saw violence as dozens of Yoon’s supporters clashed with law enforcers and broke into another court house.

On Tuesday, Yoon was asked if he had ordered military commanders to “drag out” lawmakers from parliament on the night he declared martial law, in order to prevent them from overturning his order.

He replied: “No.”

Military commanders had earlier alleged that Yoon had given such an order on 3 December, after lawmakers climbed fences and broke barricades to enter the parliament building and vote down Yoon’s martial law declaration.

“I am a person who has lived with a firm belief in liberal democracy,” Yoon said in his opening remarks on Tuesday.

“As the Constitutional Court exists to safeguard the constitution, I ask that you thoroughly examine all aspects of this case,” he told the judges.

During the hearing, which lasted nearly two hours, Yoon and his lawyers argued that the martial law order was “a formality that was not meant to be executed”.

Yoon had cited threats from “anti-state forces” and North Korea when he declared martial law, but it soon became clear that his move had been spurred not by external threats but by his own domestic political troubles.

The lawyers prosecuting the case, who were selected by the parliament, accused Yoon and his lawyers for making “largely contradictory, irrational, and unclear” comments.

“If they continue to evade responsibility as they did today, it will only work against them in the impeachment trial and cause even greater disappointment among the public,” the prosecutors told reporters after the hearing.

Outside the courtroom, Yoon’s supporters – who have become more agitated and aggressive lately – demanded that the suspended president be released and restored to office immediately.

They were forced to set up some distance from the court due to tight security. Waving their trademark combination of Korean and US flags, some wore Maga-style baseball caps embossed with the slogan “Make Korea Free Again”, an echo of the campaign slogan used by US President Donald Trump.

Some of their chants included calls for the leader of South Korea’s main opposition party, Lee Jae-myung, and the investigator leading Yoon’s criminal case to be executed.

Several of the supporters told the BBC they believed Yoon’s martial law declaration was an attempt to protect the country’s democracy.

They accused the opposition party of being pro-China and pro-North Korea, and for wanting to turn South Korea into a communist country.

“This is a conflict between people who pursue communism and people who pursue democracy,” said Wongeun Seong, a 49-year-old businessman who joined the protest on the way back from a lunch meeting.

Former defence minister Kim Yong-hyun, who reportedly suggested martial law to Yoon, will testify during the next hearing on Thursday.

Yoon will be removed from office if at least six of the eight-member Constitutional Court bench votes to uphold the impeachment. A presidential election must then be called within 60 days.

South Korea has been in political chaos since the failed martial law attempt. Thousands of protesters and supporters of Yoon have taken to the streets multiple times despite the winter cold.

The crisis has hit the country’s economy, with the won weakening and global credit rating agencies warning of weakening consumer and business sentiment.

Niluper says she has been living in agony.

A Uyghur refugee, she has spent the past decade hoping her husband would join her and their three sons in Turkey, where they now live.

The family was detained in Thailand in 2014 after fleeing increasing repression in their hometown in China’s Xinjiang province. She and the children were allowed to leave Thailand a year later. But her husband remained in detention, along with 47 other Uyghur men.

Niluper – not her real name – now fears she and her children may never see him again.

Ten days ago, she learned that Thai officials had tried to persuade the detainees to sign forms consenting to be sent back to China. When they realised what was in the forms, they refused to sign them.

The Thai government has denied having any immediate plans to send them back. But human rights groups believe they could be deported at any time.

“I don’t know how to explain this to my sons,” Niluper told the BBC on a video call from Turkey. Her sons, she says, keep asking about their father. The youngest has never met him.

“I don’t know how to digest this. I’m living in constant pain, constant fear that at any moment I may get the news from Thailand that my husband has been deported.”

The last time Thailand deported Uyghur asylum seekers was in July 2015. Without warning, it put 109 of them onto a plane back to China, prompting a storm of protest from governments and human rights groups.

The few photos that were released show them hooded and handcuffed, guarded by large numbers of Chinese police officers. Little is known about what happened to them after their return. Other deported Uyghurs have received long prison sentences in secret trials.

The nominee for Secretary of State in the incoming Trump administration, Marco Rubio, has promised to press Thailand not to send the remaining Uyghurs back.

Their living conditions have been described by one human rights defender as “a hell on earth”.

They are all being held in the Immigration Detention Centre (IDC) in central Bangkok, which houses most of those charged with immigration violations in Thailand. Some are there only briefly, while waiting to be deported; others are there much longer.

Driving along the narrow, congested road known as Suan Phlu it is easy to miss the non-descript cluster of cement buildings, and difficult to believe they house an estimated 900 detainees – the Thai authorities give out no precise numbers.

The IDC is known to be hot, overcrowded and unsanitary. Journalists are not allowed inside. Lawyers usually warn their clients to avoid being sent there if at all possible.

There are 43 Uyghurs there, plus another five being held in a Bangkok prison for trying to escape. They are the last of around 350 who fled China in 2013 and 2014.

They are kept in isolation from other inmates and are rarely allowed visits by outsiders or lawyers. They get few opportunities to exercise, or even to see daylight. They have been charged with no crime, apart from entering Thailand without a visa. Five Uyghurs have died in custody.

“The conditions there are appalling,” says Chalida Tajaroensuk, director of the People’s Empowerment Foundation, an NGO trying to help the Uyghurs.

“There is not enough food – it is mostly just soup made with cucumber and chicken bones. It is crammed in there. The water they get, both for drinking and washing, is dirty. Only basic medicines are provided and these are inadequate. If someone falls ill, it takes a long time to get an appointment with the doctor. And because of the dirty water, the hot weather and bad ventilation, a lot of the Uyghurs get rashes or other skin problems.”

But the worst part of their detention, say those who have experienced it, is not knowing how long they will be imprisoned in Thailand, and the constant fear of being sent back to China.

Niluper says there were always rumours about deportation but it was difficult to find out more. Escaping was hard because they had children with them.

“It was horrible. We were so scared all the time,” recalls Niluper.

“When we thought about being sent back to China, we would have preferred to die in Thailand.”

China’s repression of the Muslim Uyghurs has been well documented by the UN and human rights groups. Up to one million Uyghurs are believed to have been detained in re-education camps, in what human rights advocates say is a state campaign to eradicate Uyghur identity and culture. There are many allegations of torture and enforced disappearances, which China denies. It says it has been running “vocational centres” focused on de-radicalising Uyghurs.

Niluper says she and her husband faced hostility from Chinese state officials over their religiosity – her husband was an avid reader of religious texts.

The couple made the decision to flee when people they knew were being arrested or disappearing. The family were in a group of 220 Uyghurs who were caught by the Thai police trying to cross the border to Malaysia in March 2014.

Niluper was held in an IDC near the border, and then later in Bangkok, until with 170 other women and children, she was allowed in June 2015 to go to Turkey, which usually offers Uyghurs asylum.

But her husband remains in the Bangkok IDC. They were separated when they were detained, and she has had no contact with him since a brief meeting they were permitted in July 2014.

She says she was one of 18 pregnant women and 25 children crammed into a room that was just four by eight metres. The food was “bad and there was never enough for all of us”.

“I was the last one to give birth, at midnight, in the bathroom. The next day the guard saw my condition and that of my baby was not good, so they took us to the hospital.”

Niluper was also separated from her eldest son, who was just two years old at the time and held with his father – an experience which she says has traumatised him, after experiencing “terrible conditions” and witnessing a guard beating an inmate. When the guards brought him back to her, she says, he did not recognise her.

“He was so scared, screaming and crying. He could not understand what had happened. He did not want to talk to anyone.”

It took a long time before he accepted his mother, she says, and after that he would not leave her even for a moment, even after they had arrived in Turkey.

“It took a really, really long time for him to understand that he was finally in a safe place.”

Thailand has never explained why it will not allow the remaining Uyghurs to join their families in Turkey, but it is almost certainly because of pressure from China.

Unlike other inmates in the IDC, the fate of the Uyghurs is not handled by the Immigration Department but instead by Thailand’s National Security Council, a body chaired by the prime minister in which the military has significant influence.

As the influence of the US, Thailand’s oldest military ally, wanes, that of China has been steadily increasing. The current Thai government is keen to build even closer ties to China, to help revive the faltering economy.

The United Nations Refugee Agency has been accused of doing little to help the Uyghurs, but says it is given no access to them, so is unable to do much. Thailand does not recognise refugee status.

Accommodating China’s wish to get the Uyghurs back is not without risk though. Thailand has just taken a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, for which it lobbied hard.

Deporting 48 men who have already endured more than a decade of incarceration would badly tarnish the image the Thai government is trying to project.

Thailand will also be mindful of what happened just a month after the last mass deportation in 2015.

On 17 August that year a powerful bomb exploded at a shrine in Bangkok which was popular with Chinese tourists. Twenty people were killed, in what was widely assumed to be a retaliation by Uyghur militants, although the Thai authorities tried to downplay the link.

Two Uyghur men were charged with the bombing, but their trial has lasted for nine years, with no end in sight. One of them, say his lawyers, is almost certainly innocent. A veil of secrecy surrounds the trial; the authorities seem reluctant to let anything from the hearings tying the bomb to the deportation to get out.

Even those Uyghurs who have managed to get to Turkey must then deal with their uncertain status there, and with the severance of all communications with their families in Xinjiang.

“I have not heard my mother’s voice for 10 years,” says Hasan Imam, an Uyghur refugee who now works as a lorry driver in Turkey.

He was in the same group as Niluper caught by the Malaysian border in 2014.

He remembers how the following year the Thai authorities deceived them about their plan to deport some of them to China. He says they were told some men would be moved to a different facility, because the one they were in was too crowded.

This was after some women and children had been sent to Turkey, and, unusually, the men in the camp were also allowed to talk to their wives and children in Turkey on a phone.

“We were all happy, and full of hope,” Hassan says. “They selected them, one by one. At this point they had no idea they would be sent back to China. It was only later, through an illicit phone we had, that we found out from Turkey that they had been deported.”

This filled the remaining detainees with despair, recalls Hasan, and two years later, when he was moved temporarily to another holding camp, he and 19 others made a remarkable escape, using a nail to make a hole in a crumbling wall.

Eleven were recaptured, but Hasan managed to cross the forested border into Malaysia, and from there reached Turkey.

“I do not know what condition my parents are in but for those still detained in Thailand it is even worse,” he says.

They fear being sent back and imprisoned in China – and they also fear that it would mean more severe punishment for their families, he explains.

“The mental strain for them is unbearable.”

Australia’s federal police have said they are investigating whether “overseas actors or individuals” are paying criminals to carry out antisemitic crimes in the country.

There has been a spate of such incidents in recent months, the latest of which saw a childcare centre in Sydney set alight and sprayed with anti-Jewish graffiti. No-one was injured.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called a snap cabinet meeting in response, where officials agreed to set up a national database to track antisemitic incidents.

Thus far, the federal police taskforce, set up in December to investigate such incidents, received more than 166 reports of antisemitic crimes.

“We are looking into whether overseas actors or individuals have paid local criminals in Australia to carry out some of these crimes in our suburbs,” Australian Federal Police (AFP) Commissioner Reece Kershaw said, adding that it was possible that cryptocurrency was involved.

The digital currency can take longer to identify, Mr Kershaw said.

The commissioner said police were also investigating whether young people were carrying out these crimes and whether they had been radicalised online.

However, Mr Kershaw cautioned, “intelligence is not the same as evidence” and more charges were expected soon.

Last week, a man from Sydney became the first person to be charged by the federal taskforce, dubbed Special Operation Avalite, over alleged death threats he made towards a Jewish organisation.

Albanese said Tuesday’s incident at a childcare centre in the eastern Sydney suburb of Maroubra was “as cowardly as it is disgusting” and described it as a “hate crime”.

“This was an attack targeted at the Jewish community. And it is a crime that concerns us all because it is also an attack on the nation and society we have built together,” he wrote on social media.

The Jewish Council of Australia, which was set up last year in opposition to antisemitism, said that it “strongly condemns” this and all such incidents.

“These acts underscore the urgent need for cooperation, education and community dialogue to combat prejudice and promote understanding,” it said in a statement.

Most of the recent incidents have taken place in Sydney and have involved antisemitic graffiti, arson and vandalism of buildings including synagogues.

New South Wales has set up its own state-level taskforce to address these incidents and 36 people been charged so far with antisemtic related offences.

A further 70 arrests have been made for similar crimes in the neighbouring state of Victoria, where a synagogue was set on fire last month.

US President Donald Trump issued pardons or commutations for more than 1,500 people convicted or charged in connection with the US Capitol riot four years ago.

Fourteen members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, two far-right groups, are among those whose sentences were commuted by the new Republican president as he took office on Monday.

Trump also signed an order directing the Department of Justice to drop all pending cases against suspects accused in the riot.

The executive action came shortly after Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the US inside the Capitol, which was stormed by his supporters on 6 January 2021 as lawmakers met to certify Joe Biden’s election victory.

During a signing ceremony in the Oval Office on Monday evening, Trump displayed a list of the names of US Capitol riot defendants he said were receiving a pardon.

“These are the hostages, approximately 1,500 for a pardon, full pardon,” Trump said. “This is a big one.”

“These people have been destroyed,” he added. “What they’ve done to these people is outrageous. There’s rarely been anything like it in the history of our country.”

The proclamation says that it “ends a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years and begins a process of national reconciliation”.

According to Justice Department figures released earlier this month, approximately 1,583 defendants have been charged with crimes associated with the riot.

More than 600 have been charged with assaulting, resisting or obstructing law enforcement, including around 175 charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer.

Capitol Police officers were attacked with weapons including metal batons, wooden planks, flagpoles, fire extinguishers and pepper spray.

The 14 defendants who had their sentences commuted – meaning they will be released, but their convictions will remain on the record – include Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes.

Rhodes, a former US Army paratrooper and Yale-educated lawyer, led a contingent of his militia members to Washington. They stashed weapons in a hotel room across the Potomac River in Virginia while participating in the melee.

Rhodes did not enter the Capitol but directed his members from outside, and was sentenced in 2023 to 18 years in prison.

Trump issued a blanket “full, complete and unconditional pardon” to all others who were involved in the riot.

They include former Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, who was jailed for 22 years for seditious conspiracy over the riot.

Tarrio was not present at the riot, instead watching it on TV from a hotel room in Baltimore after being banned from Washington, DC, following an arrest for weapons offenses.

Tarrio’s lawyer said his client expected to be released, and in a post Tarrio’s mother said he would arrive home in Miami from a federal prison in Louisiana on Tuesday.

The move was swiftly denounced by Democrats as an attempt to re-write history.

Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who was among the lawmakers forced to flee during the riot, called Trump’s actions “an outrageous insult to our justice system and the heroes who suffered physical scars and emotional trauma as they protected the Capitol, the Congress and the Constitution”.

The former top Democrat in Congress said Trump “has decided to make one of his top priorities the abandonment and betrayal of police officers” who had physically fought with protesters to defend lawmakers.

Before he was sworn into office, some Trump aides indicated that he would not issue sweeping pardons, but would instead review each conviction on a case-by-case basis.

Just days ago, Vice-President JD Vance told Fox News “if you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.” He also said there was a “grey area” in some cases.

Pam Bondi, Trump’s nominee for attorney general, called for a “case-by-case” review last week during her Senate confirmation hearing when asked whether Trump’s clemency decisions would include those who attacked police officers.

“I condemn any violence on a law enforcement officer in this country,” she said.

The Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson also recently called for individual case reviews.

Trump’s blanket order came the same day that Joe Biden used the final minutes of his presidency to issue pre-emptive pardons for his brothers and sister, as well as members of the US House of Representatives committee whose investigation into the Capitol riot concluded Trump was to blame.

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• Stewart Rhodes’ son: ‘How I escaped my father’s militia’

The melee at the US Capitol, after a Trump rally nearby, lasted several hours. About 140 police officers were injured.

Lawmakers fled during the disorder and an unarmed female rioter, Ashli Babbitt, was fatally shot inside the building by officers.

The Justice Department launched a nationwide manhunt for suspects in its aftermath, which continued until today.

More than half the convictions have been misdemeanours, such as disorderly conduct or trespassing. Most convictions resulted in sentences of under one year in prison or probation, and most of those convicted have already served their sentences.

Trump previously called those prosecuted for the riot “political prisoners”, who posed “zero threat”.

Democrats describe the day as an attempted insurrection, and an attack on democracy itself.

Washington state Democratic Senator Patty Murray said in a statement: “It’s a sad day for America when a President who refused to relinquish power and incited an insurrection returns to office years later only to grant violent criminals a Presidential pardon or commutation.”

She also accused Trump of trying to “paper over the history and reality of that dark day”.

Meanwhile, supporters and family members of Capitol riot defendants have been waiting outside the jailhouse in Washington DC throughout the cold on Monday, for news that their loved ones will be freed by Trump.

A number of those convicted or awaiting trial were being held at the jail, while others were serving sentences in federal prisons across the country.

“Freedom!” one woman shouted earlier, as Trump vowed to release what he refers to as the “J6 hostages” during his speech at the Capitol One arena.

People at the jail said that they expected defendants to begin leaving within hours of Trump’s action.

Derrick Storms, chief legal counsel for defendants in Capitol riot cases, told BBC News that he expects prisoners to be released from the DC jail before midnight.

At least 66 people have been killed in a fire that engulfed a popular Turkish ski resort hotel, leaving some to jump out of windows.

The fire broke out at the wooden-clad 12-storey Grand Kartal Hotel at 03:27 local time (00:27 GMT) during a busy holiday period when 234 people were staying there.

An initial toll of 10 dead was raised significantly in the hours after the fire by Turkey’s interior ministry. At least two people died after trying to jump to safety.

It took 12 hours for the fire to be put out. Four people have been arrested, including the owner, the justice minister says.

“Our pain is great,” Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said.

Footage circulating in Turkey showed linen hanging from windows which was used by those trying to escape the burning building.

Ski instructor Necmi Kepcetutan told the BBC he was on the second floor of the hotel when the fire broke out and managed to get out via the ski room. He then helped with relief efforts.

Eyewitnesses said the family that owned the hotel had been there at the time of the fire and Mr Kepcetutan said he saw some of the family outside.

The cause of the fire has not yet been found, but Bolu governor Abdulaziz Aydin said initial reports suggested it had broken out in the restaurant section of the hotel’s fourth floor and spread to the floors above.

Aydin said the distance between the hotel, in Kartalkaya, and the centre of Bolu, paired with the freezing weather conditions, meant it took more than an hour for fire engines to arrive. Emergency services sent 267 workers to the site.

The hotel was investigating whether guests, including children, were trapped in their rooms as the fire spread.

The hotel had two fire escapes, according to the interior minister, and one hotel worker said they had managed to rescue 30-35 people.

Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said prosecutors had been allocated to investigate the blaze.

The hotel was last inspected in 2024, and the tourism minister said there had been no concerns regarding the hotel’s fire safety prior to Tuesday’s disaster.

However, the Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects (TMMOB) said that according to regulations, an automatic fire extinguisher system is needed.

“In the photos on the hotel’s website, it is seen that the automatic sprinkler system, which was supposed to be installed in 2008, was not installed,” the union said in a statement.

It added that it was unclear if other regulations had been complied with but, based on the statements of survivors, “it is understood that the detection and warning systems did not work and the escape routes could not be determined”.

The Bolu mountains are popular with skiers from Istanbul and the capital Ankara, which is roughly 170km (105 miles) away, and the hotel was operating at high occupancy at the start of two-week school holidays.

Former UK ambassador to Turkey, Sir Peter Westmacott, told the BBC that he had stayed in the area in the past and that the fire “feels very personal”.

“The fact that so many people have lost their lives is just devastating news for those of us who care about Turkey,” he said.

Although the fire was confined to one hotel, the governor told Turkish media that a neighbouring hotel was evacuated as a precaution.

Guests evacuated from the hotel were taken to hotels closer to the centre of Bolu.

Global stock markets swayed on Tuesday, as investors tried to digest what US President Donald Trump will do on tariffs.

In his inaugural address Trump stopped short of announcing fresh import taxes on his first day in office, though he later said new tariffs on Mexico and Canada could come on 1 February.

Shares in the US and Europe opened slightly higher, while those in Asia saw modest gains.

Trump has promised an ambitious agenda – including trade reforms, lower taxes and cuts to government regulations – which has the potential to boost company profits.

But some economists have warned that the measures may also raise inflation, which in turn could force the Federal Reserve to increase interest rates.

The dollar, which had fallen on Monday after the inauguration, regained some ground against some other major currencies, including the pound and the euro.

Trump had previously threatened new tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China on day one of his presidency. While they did not materialise on Monday, they are still on the agenda.

“We’re thinking in terms of 25% on Mexico and Canada, because they’re allowing vast numbers of people, Canada’s a very bad abuser also, vast numbers of people to come in, and fentanyl to come in,” Trump said in the Oval Office.

In a presidential memo, he directed federal agencies to investigate why America continues to import more goods than it exports as well as probing potential unfair trade practices and alleged currency manipulation by other countries.

Trump also said new tariffs on China could depend on whether a deal is reached over TikTok’s future. If Beijing blocked such an agreement “it would be somewhat of a hostile act”, he said.

But he said the US is not yet ready to impose tariffs on all imports into the country.

During the election campaign, Trump pledged a universal tariff of 10% and said he would hit China with a 60% import tax.

He has said tariffs will make Americans richer, although critics say the costs are likely to be passed on to consumers.

The president has also said he would create an “External Revenue Service” to collect all tariffs, duties and revenues from foreign sources.

US markets opened higher on Tuesday, with the S&P 500, the Dow, and the Nasdaq all seeing rises. Markets had been closed on Monday for the Martin Luther King Jr national holiday.

In Europe, London’s FTSE 100 and Paris’s Cac 40 were up slightly in afternoon trade.

Danish offshore wind giant Orsted was a big loser, with its shares down as much as 17% in morning trade, after announcing a $1.7bn (£1.4bn) impairment charge on delays to a US project and after Trump said he would end leasing to wind farms.

Earlier, markets in the Asia-Pacific region also saw small gains.

In the currency markets “plans and discussions of levies on Canada and Mexico saw those currencies fall sharply,” Fiona Cincotta, senior market analyst at City Index, told the BBC’s Today programme.

Oil fell on the prospect of more supply, and Bitcoin was higher due to Trump’s pledges of support for cryptocurrencies.

Tim Waterer, chief market analyst at financial services firm KCM Trade, said “market sentiment was dented during the signing of executive orders by President Trump in the Oval Office”.

“Investors heard more explicit details regarding the Trump tariff agenda, which sullied the market mood somewhat.”

Other analysts warned that Trump’s return to the White House will reintroduce an element of unpredictability in the markets.

“The first few hours of the Trump administration have underscored that policy environment will be dynamic once again and markets should brace for volatility,” said Charu Chanana, chief investment strategist at investment bank Saxo.

Trump adviser Judy Shelton said Trump’s “main priority is to re-energise the private sector”.

He wants to “unleash the individual through more economic liberty, through lower taxes, through less regulation”, she said.

She said tariffs were “a very effective negotiating tool” and it will be used “with our closest neighbours and largest trade partners Mexico and Canada” with regard to immigration.

She said tariffs would not necessarily be inflationary for Americans – people may not pay higher prices for imported goods, and instead turn to US producers.

• LIVE: Follow BBC’s live coverage
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At least eight Palestinians have been killed and 35 injured by Israeli security forces during a major operation in Jenin in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry says.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military, police and Shin Bet security service had launched an “extensive and significant” operation to “defeat terrorism” in Jenin, which is seen as a stronghold of Palestinian armed groups.

Palestinian media said Israeli forces moved into Jenin and its refugee camp following several drone strikes.

It comes just three days after the start of a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel in Gaza and highlights the threat of more violence in the West Bank.

A statement from Israel’s prime minister said the operation, dubbed “Iron Wall”, was an “additional step in achieving the objective we have set: bolstering security” in the West Bank.

“We are acting methodically and with determination against the Iranian axis wherever it reaches: in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and [the West Bank] – and we are still active,” he added.

Israel accuses Iran of smuggling weapons and funds to Hamas, PIJ and other armed groups in the West Bank to foment unrest.

Israeli media cited a military source as saying that the goals of the operation were to preserve its “freedom of action” in the West Bank, dismantle armed groups’ infrastructure, and eliminate imminent threats. The source also said the operation would continue for “as long as necessary”.

Jenin’s governor, Kamal Abu al-Rub, told AFP news agency that “what is happening is an invasion of the camp”.

“It came quickly, Apache [helicopters] in the sky and Israeli military vehicles everywhere,” he added.

The official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, cited local sources as saying that Israeli forces were “completely besieging” Jenin camp, and that armoured bulldozers had dug up several streets.

It also cited the director of Jenin’s Government hospital, Wissam Bakr, as saying that three doctors and two nurses were among those wounded by Israeli gunfire.

The Israeli raid follows a weeks-long operation by Palestinian security forces against armed groups in Jenin camp that sought to restore the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority’s control.

An AFP journalist said PA security personnel withdrew from some of their positions around the camp before the Israeli forces moved in.

Hamas condemned the Israeli operation in Jenin and called on Palestinians in the West Bank to escalate attacks against Israeli forces there in response.

There has been a spike in violence in the West Bank since Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 and the ensuing war in Gaza.

Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed as Israeli forces have intensified their raids, saying they are trying to stem deadly Palestinian attacks on Israelis in the West Bank and Israel.

In another development in the West Bank overnight, groups of masked Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians, smashing cars and burning homes.

It happened just as new US President Donald Trump announced that he was lifting sanctions on violent settlers imposed by the Biden administration.

A far-right Israeli minister welcomed the reversal in US policy, while Palestinian officials said it would encourage further violence.

Israel has built about 160 settlements housing some 700,000 Jews since it occupied the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war. The settlements are considered illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.

“It’s insane! We’re heading for a general election. The country feels broken. Our economy is stagnant… But most German news outlets just seem obsessed with Trump, Trump, Trump!”

Iris Mühler, a teacher in engineering in north-east Germany is one of a number of voters I’ve been talking to ahead of February snap elections. She isn’t alone in her perception.

Despite facing a whole raft of its own domestic difficulties – not least in leading EU countries, Germany and France – Europe has been very Trump-focused since he won the US presidential election in November.

The continent had a bumpy ride last time he was in the White House. Many fear Trump 2.0 could be a lot worse. And Europe’s traditional powers are already struggling with their own problems.

France and Germany are mired in political and economic woes, the EU as a whole lags behind China and the US in terms of competitiveness, while in the UK, public services are in a woeful state.

So: is the continent prepared for Donald Trump or has it been caught napping at the wheel (again)?

When it comes to trade and defence, Trump acts more like a transactional businessman than a US statesman who prizes transatlantic alliances dating back to World War Two.

“He simply doesn’t believe in win-win partnerships,” the former German Chancellor Angela Merkel told me. She experienced Trump last time he was in office and concluded he views the world through the prism of winners and losers.

He’s convinced that Europe has taken advantage of the US for years and that’s got to stop.

Leaders in Europe have watched open-mouthed these last weeks since Trump won the US presidential election, for the second time. He’s chosen to publicly lambast allies in Europe and Canada, rather than focus his ire on those he recognises as a strategic threat, like China.

Trump dangles the possibility of abandoning Nato – the transatlantic military alliance that Europe has relied on for its security for decades. He has said he’d “encourage” Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” with European allies if they “don’t pay” their way more and boost their defence spending.

When it comes to trade, Trump is clearly as livid with the EU now as he was during his first term in office. The bloc sells far more to the United States than it imports from the US. In January 2022, the trade surplus was €15.4 billion (£13 billion).

Donald Trump’s answer? He says he’ll impose blanket tariffs on all foreign imports of 10-20%, with even higher tariffs on certain goods like cars.

That’s a disaster scenario for Germany, which relies on exports and the automobile industry in particular. Its economy is already spluttering – last year it shrunk by 0.2%.

As the biggest economy in the eurozone, financial difficulties in Germany risk affecting the currency as a whole.

• LIVE: Follow BBC’s live coverage
• ANALYSIS: The promise and peril of Trump’s speech
• IN PICTURES: Key moments of the inauguration
• WATCH: The new president’s day so far
• EXPLAINED: What Trump is doing on day one
• FASHION: Melania’s striking hat and other eye-catching looks
• VIRAL MOMENTS: Carrie Underwood goes a cappella and other moments

Merkel has said that when he was president last time, Trump appeared to have it in for Germany.

Ian Bond, the deputy director for the Centre for European Reform, believes the country will remain “top of Trump’s (European) hit list.”

“What he said in the past is things like, he doesn’t want to see any Mercedes-Benz on the streets of New York. Now, this is kind of nuts, because, actually, most of the Mercedes-Benz that you see on the streets of New York are made in Alabama, where Mercedes has a big plant.

“He has often been more hostile to Germany than any other country in Europe. It might be slightly easier for Germany with a new and more conservative government (after the upcoming general election), but I wouldn’t be holding my breath.”

The UK hopes to avoid Trump tariffs as it doesn’t have such a trade imbalance with the US, but it may well get lashed by tail winds if it comes to an EU-US trade war.

Trump’s bullish style can come as no surprise to allies after his first term in the White House. The real conundrum for Europe now is his unpredictability: How much is bluster and intimidation and how much is a promise of action?

Ian Lesser, vice president at the German Marshall Fund of the United States think tank, believes Trump’s tariff threats are real and that Europe is far from ready.

“They’re not prepared, no one really is. This very different approach to global trade upsets many cornerstones of the international economy, which has evolved over decades.”

The European Commission claims to be ready for any number of moves by Trump when he returns to the White House. It is a huge trade power on the world stage. But Mr Lesser says the biggest impact on Europe could come if Trump launches an aggressive trade war against China. That could result in supply chain disruptions for Europe and Beijing dumping even more cheap products on European markets, to the detriment of local businesses.

“For Europe it’s double exposure: exposure to what America might do and then what China will do in response.”

What complicates things further is that trade and defence aren’t separate issues for Trump and his administration. He recently refused to rule out economic and/or military action against EU and Nato member Denmark if it didn’t hand over the autonomous territory Greenland to the US.

And Trump’s incoming vice president appeared, this autumn, to make US defence of Europe conditional on EU regulatory bodies stepping away from the social platform X.

JD Vance warned the US could pull its support for Nato if the EU continued a longstanding investigation into X, which is owned by Trump’s Golden Boy, Elon Musk.

Recently, Mr Musk also displayed a keenness for taking sides in European politics. He launched repeated online attacks against centre-left European leaders Sir Keir Starmer in the UK and outgoing German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Musk posted on X that the extreme anti-migration AfD party was Germany’s only hope.

This shocked many in Europe but pollsters suggest Mr Musk’s controversial posts have little actual influence on European public opinion.

Trump and Mr Musk are widely distrusted in Europe, as clearly illustrated in a new poll commissioned by the European Council of Foreign Relations, entitled The EU and global public opinion after the US elections.

In the end, different European leaders have different approaches to “Taming the Trump,” as insiders describe attempts. Some flatter his not-exactly-tiny ego.

French President Emmanuel Macron is the expert here. He was one of the first world leaders to congratulate Trump on social media after his re-election in November and he swiftly invited him to attend the glittering and dignitary-resplendent re-opening of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.

When he was first in the White House, President Macron wowed Trump as guest of honour at the annual display of pomp and military might of Bastille Day in Paris.

The UK, meanwhile, knows Trump has a soft spot for Scotland, where his mother comes from, and for the British Royal Family. He visibly relished attending a state banquet with the now-late Queen Elizabeth II in 2019. He heaped praise on Prince William after sitting down with him this autumn.

Others in Europe favour flashing the cash.

European Central Bank (ECB) chief, Christine Lagarde, has advised Europe’s leaders to adopt a “cheque-book strategy” and negotiate with Trump rather than retaliate against his proposed tariffs.

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, speaks of buying more (expensive) US liquified natural gas (LNG) as part of Europe’s effort to diversify its energy supplies. It has been weaning itself off a reliance on cheap Russian gas since the Kremlin launched its large-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Sources in the Commission also speak of possibly buying more US agricultural products and weapons.

Macron, meanwhile, has long advocated what he calls “strategic autonomy” – essentially Europe learning to be more self-sufficient, in order to survive.

“Europe… can die and that depends entirely on our choices,” he said this spring.

Covid showed Europe how dependent it was on Chinese imports, like medicines. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine exposed Europe’s over-reliance on Russian energy.

Macron is now sounding the alarm about the US: “The United States of America has two priorities. The USA first, and that is legitimate, and the China issue, second. And the European issue is not a geopolitical priority for the coming years and decades.”

Trump’s return to the White House is making European leaders think about continental weaknesses.

When it comes to defence, Trump’s insistence that Europe spend more is generally accepted (though how much more is a hot topic of debate). But where Trump talks in terms of increasing GDP spending, Europeans are discussing how to spend their defence budgets more wisely and in a more joined-up way to boost continental safety.

Emmanuel Macron wants an EU-wide industrial defence policy. He says the war in Ukraine illustrated that “our fragmentation is a weakness… We have sometimes discovered ourselves, as Europeans, that our guns were not of the same calibre, that our missiles did not match.”

Europe frets that Trump will not want to continue being the main sponsor of military aid to Ukraine as was the case under the Biden administration.

Next month, EU leaders have invited the UK – one of Europe’s two big military powers – to an informal summit to discuss working together better on security and defence.

The EU’s defence chief and former Estonian prime minister, Kaja Kallas, believes European unity of purpose is needed. “We need to act in a united way. Then, we are strong. Then, we are also serious on the world stage.”

There are analysts who say Europe is in a far weaker, more fractured state to deal with Trump 2.0 than it was in 2016 when he was first elected. I’d say the answer to that is yes. But also no.

Yes – as discussed, economic growth is sluggish and politics are volatile.

Populist nationalist eurosceptic parties are gaining strength in many European countries. Some, like Germany’s AfD, are soft on Moscow – while others like Italian PM Giorgia Meloni may be tempted to prioritise transatlantic ties with Trump rather than European unity.

But beware of looking back at Europe when Trump was first elected president through rose-tinted spectacles.

Financially, northern Europe was definitely doing better than it is now, but, in terms of unity, the continent was deeply divided on the back of the migrant crisis in 2015. Populist eurosceptic parties were also on the rise then and, following the Brexit vote in June 2016, there were widespread predictions the EU would soon lose other member countries and fall apart altogether.

Fast forward to 2025 and the EU has weathered Brexit, the Covid pandemic, the migration crisis and Trump’s first term in office – and countries very much pulled together after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

It was more of a stumbling, rather than sailing through these successive crises, but the EU is still standing and the wounds of Brexit, for example, have healed with time.

Post-Brexit UK is seen by the EU as a close ally that shares the same values in a world threatened by an ambitious China, an expansionist Russia and an unpredictable, bullish incoming US president.

Nato, meanwhile, though worried about Trump’s commitment to the alliance, has been boosted militarily and geostrategically by Sweden and Russian neighbour Finland becoming members following the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Maybe, just maybe, Trump will see fewer differences that frustrate and antagonise him about Europe this time round.

It’s a Europe that recognises the need to spend more on defence, as he demands; that is far warier of China, as he expects, and that is more right-leaning in its politics, as he prefers.

Is it a Europe whose leaders also stand up to Trump, despite threats and bluster, if they feel he crosses a line – be it over human rights, free speech or dallying with dictators?

The next chapter in relations between transatlantic frenemies waits to be written.

Global stock markets swayed on Tuesday, as investors tried to digest what US President Donald Trump will do on tariffs.

In his inaugural address Trump stopped short of announcing fresh import taxes on his first day in office, though he later said new tariffs on Mexico and Canada could come on 1 February.

Shares in the US and Europe opened slightly higher, while those in Asia saw modest gains.

Trump has promised an ambitious agenda – including trade reforms, lower taxes and cuts to government regulations – which has the potential to boost company profits.

But some economists have warned that the measures may also raise inflation, which in turn could force the Federal Reserve to increase interest rates.

The dollar, which had fallen on Monday after the inauguration, regained some ground against some other major currencies, including the pound and the euro.

Trump had previously threatened new tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China on day one of his presidency. While they did not materialise on Monday, they are still on the agenda.

“We’re thinking in terms of 25% on Mexico and Canada, because they’re allowing vast numbers of people, Canada’s a very bad abuser also, vast numbers of people to come in, and fentanyl to come in,” Trump said in the Oval Office.

In a presidential memo, he directed federal agencies to investigate why America continues to import more goods than it exports as well as probing potential unfair trade practices and alleged currency manipulation by other countries.

Trump also said new tariffs on China could depend on whether a deal is reached over TikTok’s future. If Beijing blocked such an agreement “it would be somewhat of a hostile act”, he said.

But he said the US is not yet ready to impose tariffs on all imports into the country.

During the election campaign, Trump pledged a universal tariff of 10% and said he would hit China with a 60% import tax.

He has said tariffs will make Americans richer, although critics say the costs are likely to be passed on to consumers.

The president has also said he would create an “External Revenue Service” to collect all tariffs, duties and revenues from foreign sources.

US markets opened higher on Tuesday, with the S&P 500, the Dow, and the Nasdaq all seeing rises. Markets had been closed on Monday for the Martin Luther King Jr national holiday.

In Europe, London’s FTSE 100 and Paris’s Cac 40 were up slightly in afternoon trade.

Danish offshore wind giant Orsted was a big loser, with its shares down as much as 17% in morning trade, after announcing a $1.7bn (£1.4bn) impairment charge on delays to a US project and after Trump said he would end leasing to wind farms.

Earlier, markets in the Asia-Pacific region also saw small gains.

In the currency markets “plans and discussions of levies on Canada and Mexico saw those currencies fall sharply,” Fiona Cincotta, senior market analyst at City Index, told the BBC’s Today programme.

Oil fell on the prospect of more supply, and Bitcoin was higher due to Trump’s pledges of support for cryptocurrencies.

Tim Waterer, chief market analyst at financial services firm KCM Trade, said “market sentiment was dented during the signing of executive orders by President Trump in the Oval Office”.

“Investors heard more explicit details regarding the Trump tariff agenda, which sullied the market mood somewhat.”

Other analysts warned that Trump’s return to the White House will reintroduce an element of unpredictability in the markets.

“The first few hours of the Trump administration have underscored that policy environment will be dynamic once again and markets should brace for volatility,” said Charu Chanana, chief investment strategist at investment bank Saxo.

Trump adviser Judy Shelton said Trump’s “main priority is to re-energise the private sector”.

He wants to “unleash the individual through more economic liberty, through lower taxes, through less regulation”, she said.

She said tariffs were “a very effective negotiating tool” and it will be used “with our closest neighbours and largest trade partners Mexico and Canada” with regard to immigration.

She said tariffs would not necessarily be inflationary for Americans – people may not pay higher prices for imported goods, and instead turn to US producers.

• LIVE: Follow BBC’s live coverage
• ANALYSIS: Anthony Zurcher on the beginning of a new Trump era
• IN PICTURES: Defining images as the 47th US president takes office
• WATCH: Inauguration day in two minutes
• VIRAL MOMENTS: Carrie Underwood goes a cappella and Melania’s air kiss

Inauguration Day is all about pomp, pageantry – and pictures.

The clothes worn on this world stage – the colour, cut and details – take the spotlight. From Melania’s striking hat to Usha’s fashion forward overcoat, here’s a roundup of some of the day’s most memorable looks.

Melania Trump kicked off Inauguration Day with an outfit that has all the hallmarks of her favoured first lady style: sharply cut, with spiked heels and a dramatic flourish via the headgear. It is simultaneously serious and chic.

The designer chosen by the 54-year-old first lady for the inauguration is the subject of fascination – and, again, an opportunity to transmit a message. That the former model chose New York designer Adam Lippes and a coordinating hat by Eric Javits, was a marked shift of gear.

She may have worn the American fashion designer Ralph Lauren to her husband’s last inauguration, but much more frequently turns to the big European houses. Plus, unlike Lauren, neither Lippes nor Javits are such household, starry names.

In a statement, Lippes said the look had been hand-stitched in New York “by some of America’s finest craftsmen.” Fittingly, Lippes recently opened a new boutique in Palm Beach, close to the Trump’s home, Mar-a-Lago, or the “southern White House”.

Very much on-brand is the price tag: Melania Trump is known for her extravagant tastes – many of her outfits while previously first lady had price tags running well into the thousands – and Lippes’ dresses, for example, go from £1,000 up to over £7,500.

• Melania Trump, enigmatic first lady who might do it differently this time

• What lies ahead for Trump family now?

It also speaks to her love of hats. The brim is wide enough and the contrast between the cream ribbon and navy hat big enough that it draws the eyes upwards – even if it obscures the eyes of the wearer.

There was a loadedness to its incongruity. As celebrity stylist and fashion expert Lauren Rothman points out, “a boater is traditionally a summer hat. It’s traditionally worn by, you know, in Venice, right?” Not in a freezing cold DC.

“This was just such a spectacular use of signalling and blending Palm Beach and DC with international global fashion aesthetic, while understanding the traditional and political power that is also necessary for your look to communicate,” she said.

The first lady made an equally dramatic appearance at the first inaugural ball wearing a full-length gown with a thick black ribbon-like strip, echoed in a choker-style necklace.

From a distance, the inky squiggle could easily remind viewers of the signature that Melania’s husband had earlier signed on a flurry of executive orders.

Her black-and-white look was echoed in the classic tux worn by her husband, 24 years her senior.

First daughter Ivanka Trump, 43, matched Melania’s serious colour palette with an emerald green skirt suit with a matching hat.

The hourglass silhouette – the cinched in waist and fuller skirt – felt pointed and intentional. It was reminiscent of Dior’s glamorous New Look, which ushered in a new era in fashion after World War Two.

The asymmetry of the cut, however, sounded a note of continuation: Ivanka wore a white Oscar de la Renta jacket with an asymmetric handkerchief hem for inauguration day in 2017.

The first daughter’s outfit feels like it could be harking back to the work of Adolfo Sardiña, a Cuban-born American fashion designer who started out as an apprentice milliner at Bergdorf Goodman in the late 1940s and went on to be known for his spectacular hats, which were worn by Nancy Reagan to both of her husband’s inaugurations.

For Lauren Rothman, the look had a very international flavour. “We’re seeing a little bit of Princess Kate style,” she said.

It speaks to the idea of a Trump dynasty, in a way more akin to royalty than a democracy. “Her look is really a signal that indicates her strong understanding of the political kingdom,” she said.

Yet for all of its regality, Rothman also identifies an accessibility. She has clients already texting her asking, ‘how can I get that outfit in another color?’ And I’ve already sent a few links.”

Former first lady Jill Biden, 73, yet again wore a purplish blue from head to toe – a colour that has come to represent the administration of the last four years.

At her husband’s swearing-in ceremony in 2021, Jill wore a blue coat created by designer/founder Alexandra O’Neill for the New York–based luxury womenswear label Markarian. It reportedly quintupled sales for the designer. It was custom made and embroidered with Swarovski crystals, plus had a pandemic-era matching face mask.

Both Bidens have chosen to dress in clothes again by Ralph Lauren, whose designs and back story are often seen as synonymous with the American dream.

It comes as no surprise: Jill has worn his clothes throughout the last four years and was at his fashion show in the Hamptons last September.

Her husband recently awarded Lauren the Presidential Medal of Freedom – the nation’s highest civilian honour – and in the process made him the first fashion designer to receive the distinction.

Lauren suits have been a fitting uniform of choice for the outgoing president. On the White House website as he leaves office, it sums up his presidency: “for all Americans, a country for all Americans, a future for all Americans.”

You could argue his Lauren suits are also designed to not leave any Americans out – never straying too far from classic blue and classic lines.

The lawyer and wife of Vice President-elect JD Vance, Usha Vance’s most high profile appearance to date was speaking the 2024 Republican National Convention. For the occasion, the 39-year-old chose a cobalt blue off-the-shoulder Badgley Mischka dress, which retails for $495 (£400). According to a spokesperson speaking to industry website WWD, Vance must have bought the garment herself as the brand wasn’t consulted.

But, there were clear signs of a pivot to more high-fashion choices. She chose an Oscar de la Renta overcoat with a strikingly fashion-forward detail: a scarf intentionally tucked into her waist-height belt. Is it a sign of a more stylised image to come as Vance takes her place as the second lady?

I would absolutely label her as one to watch,” said Lauren Rothman, “because she is the newest member into the spotlight, she is receiving help – and it’s working.” Plus: “her energy indicates a comfort in it. Like, I was ready for this.”

She sees an authenticity too: “It doesn’t look like a costume. It looks like she’s having fun.” She cited an optimism in the choice of pink, where many of the other figures in Trump’s universe went for more sombre colours.

• How ‘spirit guide’ Usha Vance supported JD Vance’s meteoric rise

Suits, ties, shoulder pads, pearls; these are the traditional attire of inauguration day. But John Fetterman, the 55-year-old US senator from Pennsylvania since 2023, has never been one to stick to traditional dress codes – he wore a Carhartt hoodie with a picture of a bow-tie printed onto it for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last year.

Still, if tradition didn’t mean Fetterman opted for a pair of trousers, you would have thought the weather might – temperatures in Washington were so low that the ceremony was moved inside for the first time since 1985. Yet Fetterman showed up coatless, in only a hoodie, and wearing shorts.

It is fitting – Fetterman is all about bucking convention – he was, after all, the first Senate Democrat to meet with Trump since the election.

The “tech bros” have been undergoing some interesting style shifts of late. Most recently in Elon Musk’s case, a Belstaff jacket drew the internet’s eyes, while Mark Zuckerberg’s style makeover has seen him transform from “normcore” grey T-shirts and inconspicuous jeans to luxury labels, his own brand of slogan T-shirts with Greek and Latin phrases and million pound watches.

For Lauren Rothman, there was “a sleekness” about the way they looked, “and they also sort of showed up as a squad, sunglasses and suits.”

But, she said, “the most significant part of how the tech giants showed up was in their significant others. Mark Zuckerberg’s wife Priscilla Chan wore “the classic DC look: a short statement necklace and a buttoned up coat”.

The author and fiancée to Jeff Bezos, Lauren Sanchez, by contrast to both the darkly suited tech entrepreneurs surrounding her, as well as to Chan, wore a startling white Alexander McQueen suit with pointed, padded shoulders. Underneath was a lingerie-inspired look that has already drawn some criticism online for a perceived lack of appropriateness on a state occasion.

At Bill Clinton’s 1997 inauguration, Hillary Clinton wore a candy floss-pink outfit by Oscar de la Renta. And to her husband’s first swearing-in ceremony in 1993 she went for an unusually busy look – a checked suit and a blue velour hat.

In 2017 at Trump’s first inauguration, she wore a white and cream Lauren pantsuit – the outfit that clearly makes her feel most battle-ready and professional.

In marked contrast to her previous palette, the 77-year-old went for a grave navy this time round. On her coat there was a single brooch.

Its details remain unclear but brooches are often the site of sartorial messaging and Clinton knows it. She recently wore a bald eagle brooch – a national symbol – with the US flag on it for the funeral of Jimmy Carter.

The look was by British sustainable designer Stella McCartney, a move that feels like it could be aimed at the incoming administration’s climate plans.

Trump has confirmed plans to once again pull the US out of the Paris agreement, which tries to mitigate the worst impacts of the climate crisis.

What the incoming president chose to wear was never going to stray too far from his norm of navy suits.

According to Lauren Rothman, “we’re still seeing, you know, a pretty simple suit” but she said the big difference and a “huge signal that is different, is in his tie.”

“It’s really ultimately a mix of red and blue, which creates a purple effect.

“The more muted tie kind of signals in my world, I don’t need to scream. I don’t need to project. I have arrived.”

Another big point of interest, particularly on Inauguration Day, is where the president gets his suits.

It is unclear where the 78-year-old’s suit came from, but as he used his inauguration speech to talk about increasing American industry, it would be fitting from him to wear an American suit, menswear expert Derek Guy pointed out.

“American manufacturing is on the decline, especially in clothing. Some of the factories that made clothes for previous inaugurations have since shuttered. It would be nice to see more support for American manufacturing, even if it’s only symbolic,” he said.

LIVE: Follow BBC’s live coverage

ANALYSIS: Anthony Zurcher on the beginning of a new Trump era

IN PICTURES: Defining images as the 47th US president takes office

WATCH: Inauguration day in two minutes

VIRAL MOMENTS: Carrie Underwood goes a cappella and Melania’s air kiss

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second presidential term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

Donald Trump, who rode back into power on a wave of voter dissatisfaction with the status quo, promised a new “golden age” for America in his inaugural address.

The speech was a mix of promises – and contradictions – that underlined some of the opportunities and challenges the new president will face in his second term in office.

He started talking at a little after noon on Monday, and it seemed at times like he didn’t stop talking – at ad-libbed remarks later at the Capitol, at his indoor parade rally at a downtown sports arena and at the White House executive order signing – until well into the evening.

Through it all, Trump demonstrated the kind of dramatic flair and penchant for controversy and confrontation that has energised his supporters and infuriated his critics.

During his inaugural address, Trump paid particular attention to immigration and the economy – issues that polls suggest American voters cared about most last year. He also promised to end government-promoted diversity programmes and noted that US official policy would only recognise two genders, male and female.

That last line generated an enthusiastic response at the Capitol and wild cheers from his crowd of supporters gathered at a nearby sport arena. It’s a sign that cultural issues – where he drew the most vivid contrasts with Democrats in last year’s election – will continue to be one of Trump’s most powerful ways the new president connects with his base.

Before he outlined what this new age would entail, however, Trump painted a dark picture of the current American political climate.

• LIVE – latest updates and analysis

As his predecessor, Joe Biden, and other Democrats sat stone-faced to one side, Trump said the government faces a “crisis of trust”. He condemned the “vicious, violent and unfair weaponisation” of the US Justice Department, which had investigated and attempted to prosecute him for contesting the 2020 election results.

He claimed a mandate to reverse “horrible betrayals” and lashed out at a “radical and corrupt establishment” that he said extracted power and wealth from America’s citizens.

It was the kind of populist, anti-elite rhetoric that has been a staple of Trump’s speeches for a decade. Unlike when Trump first began his ascent to the pinnacles of US political power in 2015, however, Trump represents the current emerging establishment as much as any one man. And sitting behind him on the dais were a collection of some of the wealthiest, and most influential, corporate leaders in the world.

On the day of his inauguration, Trump has the attention – and the initiative. His aides have promised hundreds of executive actions – on a range of subjects, including immigration, energy, trade, education and hot-button cultural issues.

In his inaugural address, he detailed a handful of them. He pledged to declare national emergencies on energy and immigration, allowing him to put the US military on the border, drastically limit the rights of asylum-seekers and reopen large swaths of federal land to energy extraction. He repeated his pledge to change the name of Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America” and to take back the Panama Canal.

He made an unfounded claim that China was running the key waterway and said that US ships, including naval vessels, were paying too much in transit fees – perhaps a hint at the real objective in future negotiations with the Panamanian government.

“The US will once again consider itself a growing nation,” he said, pledging to increase American wealth and expand “our territory”.

That last bit might catch the ear of US allies, who have already been concerned by Trump’s interest in acquiring Greenland and quips about making Canada the 51st US state.

On the campaign trail, and in this speech, Trump made a series of big promises. Now that he is president, he will be challenged to deliver – and show what the “golden age” he heralds actually means.

After Trump concluded his speech and saw Biden depart via a Marine helicopter, he gave off-the-cuff remarks at a gathering of supporters elsewhere in the Capitol. It was there that the more unscripted Trump – the one who frequently generates headlines and turns American politics on its head – reemerged.

The 2020 election was “rigged”, he said. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was criminally responsible for the 6 January, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. He boasted about the size of his 2024 election victory and said he grudgingly agreed to talk about “unity” in his inaugural address.

It was just a taste of what was in store for the rest of the day – and for the next four years.

At a signing ceremony in the evening, Trump took an ordinary presidential act – rescinding orders from a previous administration of different party – and turned it into spectacle.

After giving another winding speech – his third of the day – Trump moved to a small desk on the stage at the downtown sport arena where his indoor inaugural parade had just concluded. Then he went to work freezing new federal regulations and hiring, reversing Biden administration directives, mandating federal workers work in-office full-time and withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accords.

“Can you imagine Joe Biden doing this?” he asked after signing the regulation freeze – but that applied to the moment as much as the content of the orders.

He also signed more symbolic orders to end the “weaponisation of government” and instruct his administration to address the higher cost of living.

After the arena ceremony, Trump tossed the pens he used into the crowd – another Trumping flourish.

Then he went back to the White House, and executive orders continued – pardoning nearly all of the 1,600-plus supporters arrested in the 6 January Capitol riot, temporarily suspending the TikTok ban and withdrawing the US from the World Health Organisation.

He also reinterpreted a key constitutional amendment and instructed his administration to cease granting citizenship to US-born children of undocumented migrants.

All the while, he offered a running commentary – including proposing a 25% tariff on Mexico and Canada starting on 1 February, accusing Democrats of cheating in the 2020 election and expressing doubt about the Gaza War ceasefire.

Trump returns to power with a team that has a detailed strategy for governing and an aggressive agenda to pursue. Trump himself, however, can still be as unpredictable and unfocused as ever – making remarks that could represent new policy or just a momentary distraction.

The second Trump era has truly begun.

• LIVE: Follow BBC’s live coverage
• IN PICTURES: Key moments of the inauguration
• WATCH: The new president’s day so far
• EXPLAINED: What Donald Trump could do on day one
• FASHION: Melania’s striking hat and other eye-catching looks

Scottish soldier Donnie MacRae died as a German prisoner of war during World War Two – but it was not until almost 80 years later that his family discovered he had been buried without his brain.

Donnie died in a PoW hospital in 1941 and because he had suffered with a rare neurological condition an autopsy was performed on his body.

During the post-mortem, his brain and part of his spinal cord were removed and sent to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Psychiatry in Munich to be used for research.

His body was buried by the Germans and later reburied by the Allies in the Commonwealth War Graves cemetery in Berlin but no-one knew his brain had been removed.

In total, about 160 small slices of Donnie’s brain and spinal cord have been kept in the archives of the Munich research centre – since renamed the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry – ever since.

A BBC Radio 4 documentary – Shadow of War: A Tainted Anatomy – looks at why this happened and at the work being carried out to reunite the remains with the soldier in his grave.

Donnie MacRae grew up as a Gaelic speaker in Gairloch on the west coast of Scotland.

The family were music lovers, with a strong tradition of bagpiping, and they were all talented tailors, including Donnie.

He had plans to use hand-woven tweeds from his home village to set up his own tailoring business in Blair Atholl in Perthshire, where his brother lived and worked as a chauffeur at a local hotel.

However, in 1939, with the country on the brink of war, Donnie joined the Territorial Army and was called up to fight.

He was a private with the Seaforth Highlanders and was captured as a prisoner of war while fighting at St Valery, France, in June 1940.

He died the following year, at the age of 33, in a prisoner of war camp hospital.

Though the MacRae family knew of Donnie’s capture and death, they were never informed about an autopsy, or about samples being taken from his brain.

It was only in 2020, when Prof Paul Weindling from Oxford Brookes University got in touch, that his niece Libby MacRae learned what had happened after Donnie’s death.

Prof Weindling is part of an international group of researchers who are examining records of thousands of brains that were held at the Max Planck Society in Germany.

The aim of the project is to identify all the victims and to commemorate them properly.

“One overlooked group is certainly prisoners of war whose brains were taken for neuropathological research by the Germans and stockpiled for many, many years,” Prof Weindling says.

The Germans wanted to be at the forefront of medical research and the reason why Donnie’s brain ended up at the institute in Munich lies in the manner of his death.

When he was captured he had been wounded by a rifle bullet in the left knee and back.

Although the wound healed he was later readmitted to hospital where his condition deteriorated quickly in the following months.

At first he had double vision, tingling in his fingertips and difficulty speaking.

This rapidly led to paralysis in both arms and an inability to speak.

In the days before his death he was unable to move.

Donnie died on 6 March 1941 of a rare condition called Landry’s Paralysis – known in the UK as the Guillain-Barré syndrome – where the immune system attacks the nervous system.

It is usually not fatal and, as a result, an autopsy was undertaken, including a dissection of his brain.

Dr Sabine Hildebrandt, a lecturer at Harvard Medical School with a keen interest in the ethics of the period, told the BBC it was an “excruciating fact” that removing tissue after death was not unusual.

“I’m not saying that they were ethically correct, but they were within the routine process of scientific work at the time,” Dr Hildebrandt says.

The slices of Donnie’s brain and spinal cord were fixed in a solution and put on to glass microscope slides to be used for research into his condition.

His niece Libby says: “It’s difficult to say what it feels like.

“I think it’s pretty horrible, actually, to think about it.”

As well as Donnie, Prof Weindling and his team uncovered records of four other British prisoners of war who had their brains removed and held for research purposes during 1941.

They were Patrick O’Connell, Donald McPhail, Joseph Elston and William Lancaster.

Until very recently, none of the families of the men had any idea what had happened to their relatives.

They were among about 2,000 brains that were taken for research by the leading Berlin and Munich institutes during World War Two, including those of children killed during the Holocaust.

The victims also included Polish Jews and Catholics, those with mental illness, political prisoners, Belgian resistance fighters and French and Polish soldiers.

Other German institutes are also known to have harvested body parts for research.

Dr Hildebrandt says the output of research from the German institutes was vast, and researchers across the world were “envious” of the volume of work coming out of the country.

After the war, the Allies investigated the true nature of Nazi crimes and the resulting Nuremberg Trial saw nearly 200 people convicted of war crimes.

However, the Kaiser Wilhelm research institutes and those anatomists involved were allowed to continue their work.

This was in part due to the fact that, although it is now considered deeply unethical to keep human tissue without consent, at the time it was the norm.

However, questions arise over why nothing was done for so long about material held in German archives.

In the late 1980s there was a push from the German government to get rid of any specimens that had been “sourced” during World War Two, in particular any samples from persecuted groups.

There was to be a mass burial of hundreds of thousands of slides in Munich and a short deadline of just a few months was set.

Prof Heinz Wässle, who was head of the neurological department of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Berlin at the time, said there was pressure to act extremely quickly.

“We were not able in short notice to find out which of the sections were from victims and which were just ordinary neuropathological material, therefore our decision was to bury all the sections from 1933 to 1945.”

However, the Munich institute chose a different policy.

It only buried those with suspected links to the so-called euthanasia programmes, which referred to the systematic killing of those the Nazis deemed “unworthy of life” because of alleged genetic diseases or defects.

Many slides, considered to be of scientific interest, were retained.

The samples of Donnie MacRae were held for research purposes until 2015, when they were then put into an archive collection.

Now, more than 80 years after his death, work is under way to reunite this material with the rest of Donnie’s remains in his war grave in Berlin.

Prof Weindling and his colleagues have been connecting microscope samples with patient records, and contacting the next of kin.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission recently agreed to accept Donnie’s brain and spinal cord samples from the Max Planck Institute and reunite them with the remains already buried at their cemetery in Berlin.

“We are hoping this will mean we are in the position to re-inter the remains later this year,” they said.

Libby says she hopes the painful situation is close to finally being resolved.

“I’m so glad to hear that the Commonwealth War Graves Commission will eventually bury the specimens, and all of Donnie will be together in a peaceful place,” she said.

Her wish is to see a new Gaelic inscription on Donnie’s grave in Berlin – “Faodaidh an saoghal tighinn gu crìch ach mairidh gaol is ceòl gu bràth”.

It translates as: “The world may come to an end, but love and music will last forever.”

Shadow of War: A Tainted Anatomy is on BBC Radio 4 at 8pm on Tuesday 21st January and available on BBC Sounds.

When Mir Ahmad Bin Quasem was abducted at night by armed men from his home in Bangladesh, his four-year-old daughter was too young to understand what was happening.

“They were dragging me away, I was barefoot,” he tells me, sobbing. “My youngest daughter was running behind me with my shoes saying ‘take, father’, as if she thought I was going away.”

He was held in solitary confinement for eight years, handcuffed and blindfolded, yet still doesn’t know where or why.

The British-trained barrister, 40, is one of Bangladesh’s so-called “disappeared”. These were critics of Sheikh Hasina, the country’s prime minister of more than 20 years, in two terms, until she was deposed last August.

Hasina’s regime ruled over the worst violence Bangladesh has seen since its war of independence in 1971 in which hundreds were killed, including at least 90 people while she clung to power on her last day in office.

Controversial in her own right, Hasina is also the aunt of Labour MP Tulip Siddiq – who resigned as Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s anti-corruption minister last week after a slew of corruption allegations that she denied.

These included claims Siddiq’s family embezzled up to £3.9bn from infrastructure spending in Bangladesh – and that she used properties in London linked to her aunt’s allies.

The government’s ethics watchdog later found she did not break the ministerial code, but Siddiq resigned anyway.

That isn’t necessarily the end of the matter, though.

The episode raises troubling questions about Starmer’s judgement and Labour’s approach to courting the votes of people of Bangladeshi heritage.

Questions are now swirling over why Labour failed to see this coming, given the party has long known about Siddiq’s links to her scandal-hit aunt. It was 2016 when Bin Quasem’s case was first raised with her.

He and others among Bangladesh’s “disappeared” have represented an awkward tension with Siddiq’s publicly voiced views on human rights in the years since.

She long campaigned for the release from Iran of her constituent Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, for example, while showing an apparent comparative indifference in her public statements to the suffering and extrajudicial killings under her aunt’s regime in Bangladesh.

Siddiq has also previously appeared alongside her aunt at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and appeared on BBC television as a spokesperson for the Awami League, the political party Hasina has led since 1981.

Siddiq also thanked Awami League members for helping her election as a Labour MP in 2015. Two pages on her website from 2008 and 2009 setting out her links to the party were later removed.

Yet once in Parliament Siddiq told journalists that she had “no capability or desire to influence politics in Bangladesh”.

So these links weren’t a secret, but perhaps they weren’t viewed as a bad thing within Labour, not least since it has shown little sign of distancing itself from the Awami League in recent years.

Then-Labour MP Jim Fitzpatrick told the Commons in 2012 that they were “sister organisations”, a warmth shared by many of his colleagues.

And Starmer – who entered Parliament in 2015 at the same time as Siddiq in her neighbouring seat – has met Hasina multiple times.

This included in 2022 when the then-Bangladeshi PM was in London for Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral, a meeting that Bin Quasem calls “heartbreaking and shocking”.

A Starmer ally argues it is “perfectly legitimate” for him to have met Hasina, and it did not amount to an endorsement of her policies.

The apparent attempts by Labour over the years to keep Bangladesh on side might reflect the political reality here in the UK, especially in parts of the capital city.

“You can’t succeed in east London without understanding the Bangladeshi vote”, one seasoned Labour campaigner explains.

However, those who fail to appreciate the country’s divided and volatile politics can end up offending those they are attempting to charm. “You need to carefully balance what you say and do,” the campaigner says. “If you are too overt for one [Bangladeshi] party, you’ll get criticised.”

Analysis by the FT suggests there are at least 17 UK constituencies where the voting-age Bangladeshi population is larger than the Labour majority.

Starmer’s Holborn and St Pancras constituency has at least 6,000 adult residents of Bangladeshi origin.

Might this mix of warmth and political pragmatism have clouded Starmer’s judgement from a potential corruption storm on the horizon when, shortly after winning the election in July, he appointed Siddiq as the Treasury minister responsible for leading Britain’s anti-corruption efforts?

“Starmer has blindspots for his friends and political allies,” says a Labour source. “It’s not new.”

Investigative journalist David Bergman, who has been shedding light on Siddiq’s connections to Bangladeshi politics for a decade, points out context is everything. “This was not a major story until Labour got into power, Tulip Siddiq became a minister and the Awami League government fell,” he says.

He argues someone in the party should have raised concerns many years before. “There was first a blind spot about Tulip Siddiq’s failure to respond to enforced disappearances in Bangladesh,” Bergman argues.

“Then there was a blind spot about how tied she was to the UK Awami League.”

When I put this to one Labour MP, they responded that the UK media, as well as Labour, have had a Bangladesh blind spot.

“There are some 600,000 people in the British Bangla diaspora”, they say. “It is a country with the eighth largest population on Earth yet we’ve not heard a peep [from the UK media] since the events of 5 August.”

The corruption investigations into Hasina are likely to rumble on for some time, potentially bringing further issues for Starmer’s top team to address in the months ahead while Siddiq remains a Labour MP.

For Bin Quasem, the toppling of Hasina’s regime saw him abruptly awoken in his cell, bundled into a car and dumped in a ditch, before finally being allowed to return home to his two daughters.

Toddlers when he last saw them in 2016, they are now young women. “I couldn’t really recognise them, and they couldn’t recognise me,” he tells me through tears.

“At times it’s difficult to stomach that I never got to see my daughters grow up.

“I missed the best part of life. I missed their childhood.”

As dusk settles over Mbacke Kadior, a village in central Senegal, the rhythmic chants of the Muslim worshippers dressed in patchwork garments fill the air.

Gathered in a tight circle outside a mosque, the Baye Fall followers sway and sing at the top of their lungs, their voices rising and falling in unison. The flames of a small fire flicker in the background, casting dancing shadows on their multi-coloured clothes.

Their dreadlocks swing as they move, and their faces shine with sweat and fervour during this sacred ritual, known as the “saam fall” – both a celebration and an act of devotion.

Participants often appear to be in a trance during the chanting that can last for two hours – and takes place twice a week.

The Baye Fall, a subgroup of Senegal’s large Mouride brotherhood, are unlike any other Muslim group.

They make up a tiny fraction of the 17 million population in Senegal, a mainly Muslim country in West Africa.

But their striking appearance makes them stand out, and their unorthodox practices are believed by some to stray too far from Islamic norms.

For Baye Fall devotees, faith is not expressed through five daily prayers or fasting during the holy month of Ramadan, like most Muslims, but through hard work and community service. In their eyes, heaven is not merely a destination but a reward for those who toil.

They are often misunderstood by other Muslims – and there is also a misconception in the West that some drink alcohol and smoke marijuana, which is not part of their ethos.

“The philosophy of the Baye Fall community is focused on work. It’s a mystical kind of working, where labour itself becomes devotion to God,” Maam Samba, a leader of a Baye Fall group in Mbacke Kadior, tells the BBC.

They feel each task – whether ploughing fields under the relentless sun, building schools, or crafting goods – is imbued with spiritual significance. Work is not merely a duty; it is a meditative act, a form of prayer in motion.

It is here in the village of Mbacke Kadior that the community believes their founder, Ibrahima Fall, first met Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba, who in the 19th Century established the Mouride brotherhood, a branch of Sufi Islam, that plays an influential role in Senegal.

Fall is said to have dedicated himself entirely to Bamba’s service and often neglected his own needs, including eating, fasting, praying and taking care of himself.

His followers recount that over time his clothes became worn and patched, reflecting his selfless devotion. This is how the Baye Fall philosophy and tradition of patchwork clothing originated.

This kind of loyalty to a religious leader is what his followers now practise – a concept known as “ndiguel” – many Baye Fall even include the word in their children’s names.

Fall’s work ethic is also reflected in the heart of Mbacke Kadior at a workshop where collaboration and creativity thrive to create beautiful patchwork clothing.

Women work with quiet focus, dipping plain fabrics into vats of vibrant dyes. With each dip, the cloth absorbs layers of rich, bold colours, gradually transforming into striking textiles.

The men, equally meticulous, take the dyed fabrics and skilfully sew them into garments that are both practical and expressive of the Baye Fall’s distinct identity.

The air buzzes with purpose as the clothing takes shape, a blend of artistry and labour that mirrors their dedication. These finished pieces are then distributed to markets across Senegal, where they sustain livelihoods and share the community’s philosophy far and wide.

“The Baye Fall style is original,” explains Mr Samba, whose late father was a respected Baye Fall sheikh, or marabout as religious leaders are known in Senegal.

“The patchwork clothing symbolises universality – you can be Muslim and still maintain your culture. But not everyone understands this. We say if you don’t accept criticism, you can’t progress.”

While other Muslims are fasting from sunrise to sunset during Ramadan, it is the Baye Fall who dedicate themselves to preparing food for the evening iftar meal when the fast is broken at mosques.

This devotion is not limited to manual tasks.

The Baye Fall have established co-operatives, social businesses, and non-governmental organisations aimed at fostering sustainable development in rural Senegal. For them, work is not just a means of survival but an expression of spirituality.

“We have schools, health centres and social enterprises to create work,” Mr Samba explains. “In our philosophy of life, everything must be done with respect, love, and attention to nature. Ecology is central to our sustainable development model.”

But the group has also received criticism for its practice of begging on the streets.

While asking for money is not against the Baye Fall belief system, it is traditionally done with the intention of taking the contributions back to the leader, who redistributes them for the benefit of the community.

“There are real Baye Fall and what we call ‘Baye Faux’- false Baye Fall,” Cheikh Senne, a former vice-chancellor of Alioune Diop University in the town of Bambey and expert on the Mouride brotherhood, tells the BBC.

In urban centres like the capital, Dakar, the presence of these “Baye Faux” has become pervasive.

“These are people who dress like us and beg in the streets but do not contribute to the community. It’s a serious issue that harms our reputation,” says Mr Senne.

The Baye Fall’s emphasis on hard work and community has resonated beyond Senegal’s borders.

Among their followers is Keaton Sawyer Scanlon, an American who joined a community after a visit in 2019. She has since been given the Senegalese name Fatima Batouly Bah and describes her first encounter with a marabout as a life-changing moment.

“It felt like his body was emitting light,” she tells the BBC. “My heart recognised a truth. This was a profound spiritual awakening for me.”

Ms Bah now lives among the Baye Fall, participating in their projects and embodying their ethos of service. She is part of a small but growing number of international adherents who have embraced the group’s unique path.

The Baye Fall play a vital role in Senegalese society and their involvement in a wide range of agricultural activities is important for the economy.

Each year they swear allegiance to the current Mouride leader, known as the caliph or grand marabout, by donating money, cattle and crops to the brotherhood to show their loyalty.

They are also instrumental in maintaining the Grande Mosque in Senegal’s holy city of Touba, the epicentre of Mouridism – and are in charge of its upkeep.

In Touba they serve as unofficial security guards at the Grande Mosque during big events, like the annual Magal pilgrimage when hundreds of thousands of people come to the city.

For example, they make sure people are dressed modestly, no drugs are sold in the area and that the caliph is not disrespected.

“The Baye Fall have always guaranteed the security of the caliph and the city,” says Mr Senne. “Nobody dares act improperly when a Baye Fall is around.”

Despite disapproval from some, the Baye Fall’s impact on Senegal’s cultural and religious landscape is growing – though they do face challenges in balancing tradition with modernity.

Limited resources hinder their ambitious plans.

Yet their vision remains clear: sustainable development, rooted in faith and service, that could also help some of the huge numbers of unemployed young people in Senegal who despair of finding a livelihood.

Many of the thousands of migrants making dangerous sea crossings to Europe come from Senegal.

“We want to do more,” says Mr Samba. “We want to create more employment – because young people need it here in Senegal.

“We need collaboration with governments and international organisations. This is our hope for the future.”

For them, hard work is the answer to both the country’s economic and spiritual needs.

• Senegalese trek to Muslim festival
• Islam’s mystical entrepreneurs
• Senegal election offers hope to frustrated young Africans
• ‘Try or die’ – one man’s determination to leave Senegal
• A quick guide to Senegal

Chappell Roan can’t be stopped.

Over the last 12 months, the 26-year-old has become the buzziest star in pop. A flamboyant, flame-haired sensation, whose songs are as colourful as they are raw.

Her debut album, released to little fanfare in 2023, has just topped the UK charts for a second time. Next week, she’s up for six Grammy awards, including best new artist. And BBC Radio 1 have named her their Sound Of 2025.

Success has been all the sweeter because her former record label refused to release many of the songs that exploded onto the charts last year.

“They were like, ‘This is not gonna work. We don’t get it’,” Roan tells Radio 1’s Jack Saunders.

• Watch Radio 1’s full interview with Sound Of 2025 winner Chappell Roan.

Reaching pop’s A-list isn’t just a vindication but a revolution.

The 26-year-old is the first female pop star to achieve mainstream success as an openly queer person, rather than coming out as part of their post-fame narrative.

On a more personal level, she’s finally got the financial security to move into a house of her own, and acquire a rescue cat, named Cherub Lou.

“She’s super tiny, her breath smells so bad, and she doesn’t have a meow,” the singer dotes.

If kitten ownership is a benefit of fame, Roan has bristled at the downsides.

She has spoken out against abusive fans, calling out “creepy behaviour” from people who harass her in airport queues and “stalk” her parents’ home. Last September, she went viral for cussing a photographer who’d been shouting abuse at stars on the red carpet of the MTV Awards.

“I was looking around, and I was like, ‘This is what people are OK with all the time? And I’m supposed to act normal? This is not normal. This is crazy’,” she recalls.

The incident made headlines. British tabloids called her outburst the “tantrum” of a “spoiled diva”.

But Roan is unapologetic.

“I’ve been responding that way to disrespect my whole life – but now there are cameras on me, and I also happen to be a pop star, and those things don’t match. It’s like oil and water.”

Roan says musicians are trained to be obedient. Standing up for yourself is portrayed as whining or ingratitude, and rejecting convention comes at a cost.

“I think, actually, I’d be more successful if I was OK wearing a muzzle,” she laughs.

“If I were to override more of my basic instincts, where my heart is going, ‘‘, I would be bigger.

“I would be way bigger… And I would still be on tour right now.”

Indeed, Roan rejected the pressure of extending her 2024 tour to protect her physical and mental health. She credits that resolve to her late grandfather.

“There’s something he said that I think about in every move I make with my career. There are always options.”

“So when someone says, ‘Do this concert because you’ll never get offered that much money ever again’, it’s like, who cares?

“If I don’t feel like doing this right now, there are always options. There is not a scarcity of opportunity. I think about that all the time.”

As fans will know by now, Roan was born Kayleigh Rose Amstutz and raised in the Bible Belt town of Willard, Missouri.

The oldest of four children, she aspired to be an actress – but, for a long time, it seemed her future would be in sport. She ran at state-competition level, and almost went to college for cross-country.

Then she entered a singing contest at the age of 13 and won. Before long, she’d written her first song, about a crush on a Mormon boy who wasn’t allowed to date outside his faith.

She took her stage name as a tribute to her grandfather Dennis K Chappell and his favourite song, a Western ballad called The Strawberry Roan.

“He was very funny and very smart,” she recalls. “And I don’t think he ever questioned my ability.

“A lot of people were like, ‘You should go completely country’, or, ‘You should try Christian music’. And he never told me to do anything.

“He was the only person that was like, ‘You don’t need a plan B. Just do it’.”

Eventually, one of her compositions, a gothic ballad called Die Young, caught the attention of Atlantic Records, which signed her at the age of just 17.

Moving to LA, she recorded and released her first EP, School Nights, in 2017. It was a solid but unremarkable affair, steeped in the sounds of Lana Del Rey and Lorde.

Roan only found a sound of her own when a group of gay friends took her to a drag bar.

“I walked into that club in West Hollywood and it was like heaven,” she told the BBC last year. “It was amazing to see all these people who were happy and confident in their bodies.

“And the go-go dancers! I was enthralled. I couldn’t stop watching them. I was like, ‘I have to do that’.”

She didn’t become a dancer, but she did write a song imagining what it would be like to be one and how her mother would react. Roan called it Pink Pony Club after a strip bar in her home town.

“That song changed everything,” she says. “It put me in a new category.

“I never thought I could actually be a ‘pop star girl’ and Pink Pony forced me into that.”

Her label disagreed. They refused to release Pink Pony Club for two years. Shortly after they relented, Roan was dropped in a round of pandemic-era cost-cutting.

Bruised but not broken, she went back home and spent the next year serving coffee in a drive-through doughnut shop.

“It absolutely had a positive impact on me,” she says. “You have the knowledge of what it’s like to clean a public restroom. That’s very important.”

The period was transformational in other ways. She saved her earnings, had her heart broken by a person “with pale blue eyes”, moved back to Los Angeles, and gave herself a year to make it.

It might have taken a little longer than that, but she hit the ground running.

During her exile, Roan had stayed in touch with her Pink Pony Club co-writer, Daniel Nigro.

He was also working with another up-and-coming singer called Olivia Rodrigo and, when her career took off, Roan got a courtside seat, supporting Rodrigo on tour and providing backing vocals on her second album, Guts.

More importantly, Nigro used the momentum to sign Roan to his own record label and ensure the release of her debut album in September 2023.

At first, it seemed like Roan’s original label had been right. Sales were disappointing and audiences were slow to catch on because her in-your-face queer anthems were out of step with the trend for whispery, confessional pop.

But those songs came to life on stage. Big, fun and designed for audience participation, they’re taken to new heights by Roan’s powerhouse voice and flamboyant stage persona.

“A drag queen does not get on stage to calm people down,” she says. “A drag queen does not say things to flatter people. A queen makes you blush, you know what I mean? Expect the same energy at my show.”

Sure enough, it was a live-streamed appearance at last year’s Coachella Festival that pushed her into the upper echelons of pop.

Dressed in a PVC crop top that declared “Eat Me”, she played the packed Gobi tent like a headliner, strutting purposefully across the stage and coaching the audience in the campy choreography for Hot To Go.

Then she stared directly into the camera and dedicated a song to her ex.

“Bitch I know you’re watching… and all those horrible things happening to you are karma.”

The clip went viral and, before long, her career did, too.

By the summer, all of her shows had been upgraded. Festivals kept having to move her to bigger stages. When she played Lollapalooza in August, she drew the event’s biggest ever daytime crowd.

“It just takes a decade,” she says. “That’s what I tell everyone. ‘If you’re OK with it taking 10 years, then you’re good’.”

As fans discovered her debut album, Roan also released a standalone single – a sarcastic slice of synth-pop called Good Luck Babe, which became her breakout hit.

“I don’t even know if I’ve ever said this in an interview, but it was originally called Good Luck, Jane,” she reveals.

“I wanted it to be about me falling in love with my best friend, and then her being like, ‘Ha ha ha, I don’t like you back, I like boys.’

“And it was like, ‘OK, well, good luck with that, ‘.”

A masterclass in pop storytelling, Good Luck Babe has a proper three-act structure, with a killer pay-off in the middle eight and a chorus you just can’t shake.

Still, Roan was shocked by its success.

“I just threw it out, like, I don’t know what this is going to do – and it carried the whole year!”

The question, of course, is what the star does next, now that she’s the Sound of 2025.

She’s already previewed two new songs, The Subway and The Giver, in concert – but all she will reveal about a second album is that she’s “more reluctant to be sad or dark”.

“It feels so good to party,” she explains.

Looking back at the last 12 months, she’s philosophical about what it means to be pop’s hottest new commodity.

“A lot of people think fame is the pinnacle of success, because what more could you possibly want than adoration?”

Roan does admit that the admiration of strangers is more “addictive” than she’d expected.

“Like, I understand why I’m so scared to lose this feeling.

“It’s so scary to think that one day people will not care about you the same way as they do right now – and I think [that idea] lives in women’s brains a lot different than men’s.”

Ultimately, she decides, success and failure are “out of my control”. Instead, she wants to make good choices.

“If I can look back and say, ‘I did not crumble under the weight of expectation, and I did not stand for being abused or blackmailed’, [then] at least I stayed true to my heart,” she says.

“Like I said before, there are always options.”

• 1) Chappell Roan
• 2) Ezra Collective
• 3) Barry Can’t Swim
• 4) Myles Smith
• 5) English Teacher

On the first full day of peace in Gaza on Monday, rescue workers and civilians began to reckon with the sheer scale of the destruction to the Strip.

Gaza’s Civil Defence agency – the strip’s main emergency response service – said it feared there were more than 10,000 bodies still buried under the vast sea of rubble.

Spokesman Mahmoud Basal told the BBC that they hoped to recover the dead within 100 days, but were likely to be delayed by a deficit of bulldozers and other essential equipment.

New images from Gaza following Sunday’s ceasefire showed scenes of total devastation wrought during 15 months of Israeli offensive, particularly in the north of the enclave.

The UN has previously estimated that 60% of structures across Gaza have been damaged or destroyed.

Though the sounds of bombing were replaced by celebrations as the ceasefire began on Sunday, the reality facing people across Gaza remains desperate.

According to the UN World Food Programme (WFP), the war has left more than two million Gazans homeless, without income, and completely dependent on food aid to survive.

That aid began to enter Gaza immediately after the ceasefire on Sunday and the UN said at least 630 lorries went into the Strip before the end of the day.

On Monday, a further 915 lorries entered the enclave, the UN said, the highest number since the start of the war 15 months ago.

Sam Rose, acting director of Unrwa, the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency in Gaza, said the aid supplies were just the beginning in the challenge of bringing the strip back to life.

“We’re not just talking about food, healthcare, buildings, roads, infrastructure, we’ve got individuals, families, communities that need to be rebuilt,” he said.

“The trauma that they’ve gone through, the suffering, the loss, the grief, the humiliation, and the cruelty that they’ve endured over the past 16 months – this is going to be a very, very long road.”

In Israel, the families of the three hostages who were freed in the first exchange spoke at a news conference in Tel Aviv on Monday night. Mandy Damari, the mother of dual Israeli-British citizen Emily Damari, said Emily was in “high spirits” and “on the road to recovery” despite losing two fingers in the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023.

Meirav Leshem Gonen, the mother of Romi Gonen, said: “We got our Romi back, but all families deserve the same outcome, both the living and the dead. Our hearts go out to the other families.”

Before the news conference, Israeli authorities released new footage showing Damari, 28, Gonen, 24, and Doron Steinbrecher, 31 tearfully greeting their mothers on Sunday just moments after being taken out of Gaza.

If the first phase of the ceasefire holds, 30 more hostages will be released from Gaza over the next 40 days in return for about 1,800 Palestinians freed from Israeli jails.

Palestinian health authorities estimate that more than 46,900 people were killed in Gaza during the more than 15 months of war and more than 110,700 were wounded.

The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but it says the majority of the dead are women and children – an assertion backed by the UN.

A UK-led study published by the medical journal The Lancet this month suggested that the health ministry figures may underestimate the death toll by more than 40%.

The Gaza Civil Defence agency said in a statement on Monday that 48% of its own personnel had been killed, injured or detained during the conflict, and 85% of its vehicles and 17 out of 21 facilities had been damaged or destroyed.

Though the risk from air strikes is gone, for now, the grim work continues for the remaining Civil Defence workers. Pictures shared with the BBC by members of the agency in northern Gaza on Monday showed them performing harrowing work, including the recovery of dead babies and of human remains in poor condition.

“In every street there are dead. In every neighbourhood there are people under the buildings,” said Abdullah Al-Majdalawi, a 24-year-old Civil Defence worker in Gaza City.

“Even after the ceasefire we received many calls from people saying please come, my family is buried under the rubble.”

• Joy fades as Gazans return to destroyed homes
• How 15 months of war has devastated Gaza
• ‘I want to fulfil my dead brother’s dream’ – rebuilding life in Gaza’s ruins

Malaak Kasab, a 23-year-old recent graduate displaced from Gaza City, told the BBC on Monday that members of her own family were among those yet to be recovered.

“We have lost a lot of members of our family and some are still under the destroyed buildings,” she said. “There are a lot of people under the rubble – everybody knows about this.”

Kasab’s family home in an apartment building was not completely destroyed, she said, but very badly damaged. “There are no doors, no windows, no water, no electricity, nothing. Not even wood to make a fire. It is unliveable.”

Movement is still dangerous for displaced Gazans as the Israeli military begins the process of withdrawing from populated areas of the Strip.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has warned people not to approach its personnel or installations, nor enter a buffer zone it created around the border of Gaza and around the Netzarim corridor, which bisects Gaza separating north from south.

But many residents were eager to see what was left of their homes sooner than they had been advised. Hatem Eliwah, a 42-year-old factory supervisor from Gaza City, said he was considering setting out on foot from his shelter in Khan Younis in the south.

“We have been waiting for this ceasefire like people waiting to enter heaven,” Eliwah said. “I lost two of my brothers and their families. I lost cousins, uncles. The only thing I still hope for is to go home.”

There are grave concerns on both sides that the deal could collapse even before the first phase is complete in roughly six weeks, and Israel has stressed it reserves the right to resume military action in Gaza at any time.

Speaking at a meeting of the UN Security Council on Monday, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres welcomed the deal as a “ray of hope” and said its obligations must be met.

But Guterres warned of a worsening situation in the occupied West Bank, which has seen a huge rise in Israeli settler attacks against Palestinian villages since the Hamas attack on Israel of 7 October 2023.

“Senior Israeli officials openly speak of formally annexing all or part of the West Bank in the coming months,” Guterres said, adding: “Any such annexation would constitute a most serious violation of international law.”

Working from home is creating a generation who are “not doing proper work”, the former boss of Marks and Spencer and Asda has warned.

Lord Rose told BBC Panorama that home working was part of the UK economy’s “general decline” and employees’ productivity was suffering.

His comments come as some companies are calling time on remote working. Amazon, Boots and JP Morgan are just some of the businesses who now require their head office staff to be in every day.

However, work-from-home expert Prof Nicholas Bloom said that while fully remote work can be “quite damaging” to some workers’ productivity, spending three days out of five in the office was as productive as fully office-based work overall.

Lord Rose, who was chief executive of M&S and recently stepped down as the chairman of Asda, said: “We have regressed in this country in terms of working practices, productivity and in terms of the country’s wellbeing, I think, by 20 years in the last four.”

In a November 2024 GB snapshot survey by the Office for National Statistics, 26% of people said they had been hybrid-working in the prior seven days, with some days in the workplace and some days at home – while 14% had been fully remote and 41% had commuted to their workplace every day (the remainder were not working in the week surveyed).

The shift to working from home has transformed local economies. Industry estimates indicate that vacant office space has nearly doubled since the pandemic, a quarter of dry-cleaning businesses have shut down, and the number of golf games played during the working week has risen 350% – suggesting some people are mixing work and pleasure.

Working from home is rapidly becoming a major battleground in the culture wars. The government is currently legislating to strengthen the right of employees across the UK to request working from home and says that it intends to make it harder for employers to turn down requests.

But some employers – including government bodies – are battling with staff to get them back into the office, arguing that face-to-face interaction is essential to collaborative working.

In some cases, such as independent record label Hospital Records, this requires negotiation between a young workforce – some of whom may never have worked full-time in an office – and their older bosses.

Company founder Chris Goss, who introduced a new policy requiring staff work three days in the office rather than two, said he had “a nagging feeling” that remote working has affected the company’s bottom line.

“I firmly believe that the music industry is all about relationships, and so the one single way for any of us to be able to build those kind of meaningful relationships is to do it in person.”

Maya, a 25-year-old marketing manager at the company, said she likes being around her more experienced colleagues in the workplace. “There’s a lot of people in my team that are a lot further along in their career, so if I need help with something, you know, I can just ask someone.”

But she believes she would not be able to be in the office five days a week “because my social battery drains and I need sometimes to be just at home and just to smash out loads of admin”.

Prof Bloom, a Stanford University economist, said his research into working from home suggests employees in their teens and early 20s should probably be in the office at least four days a week to maximise their opportunities for being mentored.

However, he said polls of tens of thousands of employees in the UK, US and Europe suggest workers valued the ability to work from home for two days a week about as much as an 8% pay rise.

Employment rights minister Justin Madders told Panorama there was a growing body of evidence that working from home was more productive. He also said it was good for growth because companies will have “a much more motivated workforce” and “if we’re able to get more people into work because flexibility is available for them, that will help us reach our growth ambitions”.

Prof Bloom may not be as optimistic about the effect hybrid working has on productivity, but he does agree that increasing the number of roles which can be done from home could help with economic growth if it encourages more people back into work, such as those with caring responsibilities.

“That is a huge boost” and “kind of a win, win, win”, because people would be able to work in better conditions, contribute to tax revenue and “everyone gains”.

One of the people who could benefit is Harleen, who was made redundant after she had her second child and has been unable to return to work because she cannot find a fully remote role that fits around her autistic son’s routine.

“I am not seeing those jobs advertised. I’m not seeing anything that caters to that flexibility,” she said.

“Every day I wake up and I’m thinking I’m living in Groundhog Day. All I’m doing is being a mother. I enjoy being a mum, but I want productivity. I start to feel like I’m just being brain dead.”

In the public sector, productivity is the lowest it has been since 1997 – except for the pandemic lockdown years – and some blame working from home. Since November 2023, civil servants have been called back in for between two to three days a week.

But in several public bodies, including at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in Newport, South Wales, some staff are refusing to return.

Ed, an IT delivery manager at the ONS and a rep for the PCS trade union, said he has worked almost entirely from home since the pandemic. He says it helps him to get his children to school and nursery and not waste time on commuting.

“We’ve never been told by senior leaders at the ONS that there is a problem with productivity, there’s a problem with quality, there’s a problem with meeting deadlines,” he said.

“We will never see this opportunity again. We have to fight for workers’ rights.”

He and other union members are threatening to strike if they are forced to travel into the office 40% of the time. Civilian staff in the Metropolitan Police and union members at the Land Registry are also in dispute over policies on returning to the office.

The ONS, which is in talks with the union, says it believes “face-to-face interaction” helps to “build working relationships, supports collaboration, and innovation”.

But whatever the outcome of disputes such as this, it is clear that all of us working full-time in the office is now a thing of the past.

In the shadow of Iceland’s largest geothermal power station, a large warehouse houses a hi-tech indoor farm of sorts that’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.

Under a strange pink-purple glow, illuminated panels buzz and cylindrical columns of water bubble away as a futuristic crop of microalgae grows.

It’s here that Iceland’s Vaxa Technologies has developed a system that harnesses energy and other resources from the nearby power plant to cultivate these tiny aquatic organisms.

“It’s a new way of thinking about food production,” says general manager Kristinn Haflidason as he gives me a tour of the space-age facility.

For much of our history, humans have consumed seaweed, also known as macroalgae.

But its tiny relative, microalgae has been a less common food source, although it was eaten for centuries in ancient Central America and Africa.

Now scientists and entrepreneurs are increasingly exploring its potential as a nutrition-rich, sustainable food.

About 35 minutes from the capital Reykjavik, the Vaxa site produces the microalgae Nannochloropsis, both as food for people, and for feed in fish and shrimp farming.

It also grows a type of bacteria called Arthospira, also known as blue-green algae, as it shares similar properties with microalgae.

When dried out it is known as spirulina and is used as a dietary supplement, a food ingredient, and as a bright-blue food colouring.

These tiny organisms photosynthesise, capturing energy from light to absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen.

“The algae is eating CO2, or turning the CO2 into biomass,” explains Mr Haflidason. “It’s carbon negative.”

Vaxa’s plant has a unique situation.

It’s the only place where algae cultivation is integrated with a geothermal power station, which supplies clean electricity, delivers cold water for cultivation, hot water for heating, and even pipes across its CO2 emissions.

“You end up with a slightly negative carbon footprint,” says Asger Munch Smidt-Jensen, a food technology consultant at Danish Technology Institute (DTI), who co-authored a study assessing the environmental impact of Vaxa’s spirulina production.

“We also found a relatively low footprint, both in terms of land and water use.”

Round-the-clock renewable energy, plus a stream of CO2, and nutrients with a low carbon footprint, are needed to ensure the setup is climate-friendly, and he thinks that isn’t easily replicated.

“There is a huge input of energy to run these photo-bioreactors, and you have to artificially simulate the sun, so you need a high energy light source,” he explains.

“My main takeaway is that we should utilise these areas [like Iceland] where we have low impact energy sources to make energy intensive products,” adds Mr Munch Smidt-Jensen.

• Watch Click: The Icelandic farm growing algae for food

Back at the algae plant, I climb onto an elevated platform, where I’m surrounded by noisy modular units called photo-bioreactors, where thousands upon thousands of tiny red and blue LED lights fuel the microalgae’s growth, in place of sunlight.

They’re also supplied water and nutrients.

“More than 90% of the photosynthesis happens within very specific wavelengths of red and blue light,” explains Mr Haflidason. “We are only giving them the light that they use.”

All the conditions are tightly controlled and optimised by machine learning, he adds.

About 7% of the crop is harvested daily and rapidly replenished by new growth.

Vaxa’s facility can produce up to 150 metric tonnes of algae annually and it plans to expand.

As the crops are rich in protein, carbohydrates, omega-3s, fatty-acids, and vitamin B12, Mr Haflidason believes growing microalgae this way could help tackle global food insecurity.

Many other companies are betting on the potential of microalgae – it’s estimated the market will be worth $25.4bn (£20.5bn) by 2033.

Danish start-up Algiecel has been trialling portable shipping container-sized modules that house photo-bioreactors, and which could link up to carbon-emitting industries to capture their CO2, while simultaneously producing food and feed.

Crops are also being used in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, biofuel and a replacement for plastic.

Perhaps also microalgae could be produced in space.

In a project funded by the European Space Agency, the Danish Technological Institution plans to test if a microalgae can be grown on the International Space Station.

Despite all the investment, there’s some way to go before microalgae becomes an everyday part of our diet.

It still needs a lot of development, according to Mr Munch Smidt-Jensen.

He points out that the texture lacks firmness. Meanwhile the taste can be “fishy” if the algae is a saltwater variety.

“But there are ways of overcoming this,” he adds.

There’s also the societal question.

“Are people ready for it? How do we make it so that everyone wants to eat this?”

Malene Lihme Olsen, a food scientist at Copenhagen University who researches micro algae, says its nutritional value needs more research.

“Green microalgae [chlorella] have a very robust cell wall, so it can be difficult for us to digest and get all the nutrients,” she says.

For now she says microalgae is better added to other “carrier products” like pasta or bread to help with taste, texture and appearance.

However, Ms Olsen believes microalgae are a promising future food.

“If you compare one hectare of soy in Brazil, and imagine we had one hectare of algae field, you could produce 15 times more protein a year [from the algae].”

Back at the plant I’m looking at an unappetising green sludge. It’s the harvested microalgae with the water squeezed out, ready for further processing.

Mr Haflidason offers me a taste and, after initial reluctance, I try some and find its flavour neutral with a texture like tofu.

“We are absolutely not proposing that anyone should eat green sludge,” jokes Mr Haflidason.

Instead the processed algae is an ingredient for everyday foods, and in Reykjavik one bakery makes bread with Spirulina and a gym puts it in smoothies.

“We’re not going to change what you eat. We’re just going to change the nutritional value of the foods that you eat,” he says.

Elon Musk has caused outrage over a one-armed gesture he gave during a speech celebrating the inauguration of Donald Trump.

Musk thanked the crowd for “making it happen”, before placing his right hand over his heart and then thrusting the same arm out into air straight ahead of him. He then turned and repeated the action for those sitting behind him.

Many on X, the social medial platform he owns, have likened the gesture to a Nazi salute.

In response, Musk posted on X: “Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.”

Musk, the world’s richest man and a close ally of President Trump, was speaking at the Capital One Arena in Washington DC when he made the gesture.

“My heart goes out to you. It is thanks to you that the future of civilisation is assured,” the 53-year-old said, after giving the second one-armed salute.

There was immediate backlash on social media.

Claire Aubin, a historian who specializes in Nazism within the United States, said Musk’s gesture was a “sieg heil”, or Nazi salute.

“My professional opinion is that you’re all right, you should believe your eyes,” she posted on X, in reference to those who believed the gesture to be an overt reference to Nazis.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University, said: “Historian of fascism here. It was a Nazi salute and a very belligerent one too.”

Andrea Stroppa, a close confidant of Musk who has connected him with far-right Italian PM Giorgia Meloni, was reported by Italian media to have posted the clip of Musk with the caption: “Roman Empire is back starting from Roman salute”.

• LIVE: Follow BBC’s live coverage
• ANALYSIS: Anthony Zurcher on the beginning of a new Trump era
• IN PICTURES: Defining images as the 47th US president takes office
• WATCH: Inauguration day in two minutes
• VIRAL MOMENTS: Carrie Underwood goes a cappella and Melania’s air kiss

The Roman salute was widely used in Italy by Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Party, before later being adopted by Adolf Hitler in Germany.

Stroppa later deleted his post, Italian media said. He later posted that “that gesture, which some mistook for a Nazi salute, is simply Elon, who has autism, expressing his feelings by saying, ‘I want to give my heart to you’,” he said.

“That is exactly what he communicated into the microphone. ELON DISLIKES EXTREMISTS!”

The gesture comes as Musk’s politics have increasingly shifted to the right. He has made recent statements in support of Germany’s far-right AfD party and British anti-immigration party Reform UK.

Appearing at the Davos at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was asked about the comparison to a Nazi salute, something that is banned in Germany.

“We have the freedom of speech in Europe and in Germany,” he said.

“… what we do not accept is if this is supporting extreme right positions. And this is what I would like to repeat again.”

But some have defended Musk, including the Anti-Defamation League, an organisation founded to combat anti-Semitism.

“It seems that Elon Musk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute,” the group posted on X.

Musk has become one of Trump’s closest allies and has been tapped to co-lead what the president has termed the Department of Government Efficiency.

At least 66 people have been killed in a fire that engulfed a popular Turkish ski resort hotel, leaving some to jump out of windows.

The fire broke out at the wooden-clad 12-storey Grand Kartal Hotel at 03:27 local time (00:27 GMT) during a busy holiday period when 234 people were staying there.

An initial toll of 10 dead was raised significantly in the hours after the fire by Turkey’s interior ministry. At least two people died after trying to jump to safety.

It took 12 hours for the fire to be put out. Four people have been arrested, including the owner, the justice minister says.

“Our pain is great,” Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said.

Footage circulating in Turkey showed linen hanging from windows which was used by those trying to escape the burning building.

Ski instructor Necmi Kepcetutan told the BBC he was on the second floor of the hotel when the fire broke out and managed to get out via the ski room. He then helped with relief efforts.

Eyewitnesses said the family that owned the hotel had been there at the time of the fire and Mr Kepcetutan said he saw some of the family outside.

The cause of the fire has not yet been found, but Bolu governor Abdulaziz Aydin said initial reports suggested it had broken out in the restaurant section of the hotel’s fourth floor and spread to the floors above.

Aydin said the distance between the hotel, in Kartalkaya, and the centre of Bolu, paired with the freezing weather conditions, meant it took more than an hour for fire engines to arrive. Emergency services sent 267 workers to the site.

The hotel was investigating whether guests, including children, were trapped in their rooms as the fire spread.

The hotel had two fire escapes, according to the interior minister, and one hotel worker said they had managed to rescue 30-35 people.

Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said prosecutors had been allocated to investigate the blaze.

The hotel was last inspected in 2024, and the tourism minister said there had been no concerns regarding the hotel’s fire safety prior to Tuesday’s disaster.

However, the Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects (TMMOB) said that according to regulations, an automatic fire extinguisher system is needed.

“In the photos on the hotel’s website, it is seen that the automatic sprinkler system, which was supposed to be installed in 2008, was not installed,” the union said in a statement.

It added that it was unclear if other regulations had been complied with but, based on the statements of survivors, “it is understood that the detection and warning systems did not work and the escape routes could not be determined”.

The Bolu mountains are popular with skiers from Istanbul and the capital Ankara, which is roughly 170km (105 miles) away, and the hotel was operating at high occupancy at the start of two-week school holidays.

Former UK ambassador to Turkey, Sir Peter Westmacott, told the BBC that he had stayed in the area in the past and that the fire “feels very personal”.

“The fact that so many people have lost their lives is just devastating news for those of us who care about Turkey,” he said.

Although the fire was confined to one hotel, the governor told Turkish media that a neighbouring hotel was evacuated as a precaution.

Guests evacuated from the hotel were taken to hotels closer to the centre of Bolu.

After a flurry of executive orders were issued following his inauguration, US President Donald Trump is expected to sign even more on his first full day in office Tuesday.

After being sworn in as US president again, the Republican wasted no time in using his powers to act on a range of policy priorities. These covered issues from immigration and climate to pardoning people convicted for the 2021 Capitol riot.

Executive orders carry the weight of law, but can be overturned by subsequent presidents or the courts. Several of those planned by Trump face legal challenges.

Meanwhile, other presidential directives like proclamations are usually not legally binding. Here are some of Trump’s actions so far.

• Follow live updates after Trump returns to the presidency
• What are executive orders?
• Trump declares border emergency and seeks to end US birthright citizenship

‘National emergency’

Trump has proclaimed that “America’s sovereignty is under attack”, declaring this to be a national emergency that allows him to free up more funding to reinforce the border with Mexico.

The same directive tells officials to relaunch efforts to build a border wall with Mexico that was started under his first presidency. This is not an executive order and it is unclear how such an effort might be funded.

Closing the border

The president has told the military to “seal the borders” – citing the flow of illicit drugs, human smuggling and crime relating to crossings.

Birthright citizenship

Trump has ordered that officials deny the right to citizenship to the children of migrants either in the US illegally or on temporary visas.

But the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution has long been interpreted to enshrine that right, and Trump’s order was immediately challenged in federal court.

Terrorism designation for gangs and cartels

Trump has designated drug cartels and international gangs as foreign terrorist organisations – adding the likes of Salvadoran gang MS-13 to a list that includes the so-called Islamic State.

‘Remain in Mexico’ and no more ‘catch and release’

Trump has re-implemented his “Remain in Mexico” policy from his first term. This returned about 70,000 non-Mexican asylum seekers across the border to await hearings, before being cancelled by President Joe Biden.

The same order demands the end of “catch and release”, a policy that allows migrants to live in US communities while they await their hearings. Trump has previously promised “the largest deportation program in American history”, but this could face legal and logistical challenges.

The order also shut down a major Biden-era immigration pipeline: a sponsorship initiative that allowed up to 30,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to fly to the US. It had been designed to cut illegal crossings.

Death penalty for some immigrant criminals

Trump has ordered that the federal death penalty be reinstated. Executions have not happened in recent years. It would apply to any “capital crime committed by an alien illegally present in this country” and anyone convicted of murdering a law-enforcement officer.

Refugee resettlement

Trump has suspended the US refugee resettlement programme, though details remain unclear.

Pull out of the Paris agreement (again)

Trump has signed off on withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement – the landmark international deal to limit rising global temperatures. He will have to wait a year before it happens. He previously withdrew in 2017, before Biden re-entered.

‘Energy emergency’

Trump has declared a “national energy emergency”, promising to fill up oil reserves. In his inaugural address, he vowed to “drill, baby, drill” for more fossil fuels.

Alaskan fuel

He signed an executive order titled “unleashing Alaska’s extraordinary resource potential”, pledging to “unlock” oil, gas and other natural resources from the state.

End Green New Deal

Trump has halted the Green New Deal, a series of Biden measures that were aimed at boosting green jobs, regulating the fossil fuel industry and limiting pollution.

He has ordered agencies to halt funds appropriated through two laws, the Inflation Reduction Act and another law on infrastructure and jobs. He said the US would end leasing to wind farms and revoke what he calls an electric vehicle “mandate”.

• Trump vows to leave Paris climate agreement and ‘drill, baby, drill’

Trump signed an executive order to begin the process of withdrawing the US from the UN’s health body, the World Health Organization (WHO).

This marks the second time Trump has ordered the US be pulled out of the WHO, after Biden re-entered it. He was critical of how the Geneva-based institution handled Covid-19.

• Trump orders US to leave World Health Organization

Transgender people

Trump has declared that the US will only recognise “two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality”. It is expected to affect transgender policies relating to government communications, civil rights protections and federal funding, as well as prisons. It will affect official documents like passports and visas.

In the same executive order, Trump ended all government programmes, policies, statements and communications that promote or support “gender ideology”.

DEI

Trump has also halted all “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI) programmes within the federal government – labelling them “radical and wasteful”. The administration has also promised further actions that may affect the private sector.

• Trump moves to make anti-DEI policy official

Trump has signed a directive postponing by 75 days the implementation of a law that would ban Chinese-owned app TikTok in the US. The platform had briefly been shut the day before the inauguration, to comply with the law – which demands that a new American owner be found.

Trump formerly backed a TikTok ban, but indicated he reversed course after his campaign videos attracted billions of views. Asked what the action does after he signed it, he said it gives him the right to “sell it or close it”.

• What does Trump’s executive order mean for TikTok?

• LIVE: Follow BBC’s live coverage
• ANALYSIS: The promise and peril of Trump’s speech
• IN PICTURES: Key moments of the inauguration
• WATCH: The new president’s day so far
• EXPLAINED: What Trump is doing on day one
• FASHION: Melania’s striking hat and other eye-catching looks
• VIRAL MOMENTS: Carrie Underwood goes a cappella and other moments

Pardoning hundreds who stormed US Capitol

Trump announced he was issuing pardons for nearly 1,600 of his supporters who were arrested in the riot at the US Capitol in 2021.

Trump has repeatedly referred to those arrested in the riot as “hostages”. At least 600 were charged with assaulting or impeding federal officers.

Commuting sentences of Oath Keepers, Proud Boys

Trump also commuted sentences for members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, far-right groups who were convicted of seditious conspiracy in relation to the riot.

A lawyer for former Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, who was jailed for 22 years for seditious conspiracy, said his client also expected to be released.

• Proud Boys and Oath Keepers among riot defendants pardoned

Doge and Elon Musk

Trump has signed a directive creating the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) – a new advisory body on cutting government costs. It is expected to be led by Elon Musk – who Trump separately said would get an office for about 20 employees.

Freeze on federal hiring

Another order halts any new federal hiring – except within the US military and several other categories – until the Trump administration has full control over the government.

Federal employees returning to the office

Trump has also signed a memorandum mandating that federal workers must work in the office and are not allowed to work from home.

Censorship

Another directive orders the “restoration of freedom of speech and preventing government censorship”. It directs the attorney general to investigate the activities of officials at certain agencies – such as the Department of Justice, Securities and Exchange Commission, and Federal Trade Commission – during the Biden era.

Political prosecutions

Another executive order seeks to end the “weaponisation of government against political adversaries”. It mandates a review of the work of various law enforcement and intelligence agencies under Biden to “identify any instances” of alleged weaponisation, and then recommend “appropriate remedial actions”.

‘American-First’

Trump has announced he is pausing foreign aid, outlining that he wants a review of foreign assistance programs. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said this was part of a new “American-First” foreign policy.

Cuba

Trump wants to undo Biden’s recent decision to remove Cuba from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism. He could also reinstate sanctions against Venezuela. Both countries were frequent targets of his ire during his first administration.

Regulatory freeze

Another order directs federal agencies to refrain from issuing any new regulations until the Trump administration has full control of the government.

Unvaccinated federal workers

As part of a directive reversing Biden-era policies, Trump revoked a mandate that federal workers must be vaccinated with the Covid vaccine. He has promised to reinstate the 8,000 military service members who were discharged due to the Pentagon’s Covid vaccine mandate – with full backpay.

Tackling inflation

Trump has signed a directive asking every US federal department and agency to address the cost of living. The directive, which is not an executive order, asks agencies to look at lowering the costs of housing, healthcare and key household items, groceries and fuel.

It asks for a report in 30 days. It not clear how the Trump administration intends to lower these costs – and this is not detailed in the directive.

‘Gulf of America’ and Alaska’s Mount Denali

Trump has directed the secretary of the interior to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America”.

The same order also directs the secretary to rename Alaska’s Mount Denali to Mount McKinley – in honour of America’s 25th president whose tariff policies Trump admires. President Barack Obama changed the name from McKinley to Denali to reflect what North America’s highest peak was called by native tribes.

Tariffs

After bracing for weeks for a trade war with the US, Canada has – for now – evaded import taxes that Donald Trump had threatened to impose on the country as soon as he takes office.

But Trump said on Monday the tariffs on Canada and Mexico could come on 1 February, and ordered federal officials to review US trade relationships for unfair practices, including those with Canada, Mexico and China.

• Canada avoids Trump’s tariffs – for now

Secret documents

At a rally on Sunday, Trump said he would release classified documents related to the assassination of President John F Kennedy in 1963, a subject of countless conspiracy theories, as well as the 1968 killings of Senator Robert Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

Crypto pile

Trump has championed cryptocurrency, and his election saw the value of Bitcoin increase by 30%. Some believe Trump will move quickly to create a federal “Bitcoin stockpile” – a strategic reserve similar to the US’s stockpile of gold and oil – that he has said would serve as a “permanent national asset to benefit all Americans”.

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second presidential term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

From behind his desk in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump signed a flurry of executive orders and decrees aimed at cracking down on immigration.

From one order tackling the definition of birthright citizenship, to another declaring illegal immigration at the border a national emergency, Trump swiftly made moves on his promises to tighten the US-Mexico border.

But some of his plans – particularly around changing the definition of birthright citizenship – are likely to face significant hurdles.

He is already facing legal challenges from immigration advocacy groups, which have reacted furiously to his announcements.

One organisation said his plans “do not uphold American values”, and another said Trump’s administration was “actively trying to destroy our lives”.

In his inaugural address earlier in the day, Trump vowed that “all illegal entry will be halted” and that millions of “criminal aliens” would be deported.

He also signed an order declaring Mexican drug cartels terrorist organisations. “I have no higher responsibility than to defend our country from threats and invasions,” he explained.

At another event at Washington’s Capital One Arena, Trump formally revoked nearly 80 executive actions of his predecessor Joe Biden. He had previously vowed to scrap Biden’s policies “within five minutes”.

Following his inauguration, he also signed a proclamation that gave officials the authority to “repel, repatriate, or remove” migrants until he was satisfied that “the invasion at the southern border has ceased”.

• LIVE: Follow BBC’s live coverage
• ANALYSIS: Anthony Zurcher on the beginning of a new Trump era
• IN PICTURES: Defining images as the 47th US president takes office
• WATCH: Inauguration day in two minutes
• VIRAL MOMENTS: Carrie Underwood goes a cappella and Melania’s air kiss

Although the details of the order are not yet known, officials have said that Trump plans to end birthright citizenship.

That refers to an approach of the US government whereby anyone born on American soil is considered a citizen at birth, regardless of their parents’ immigration status.

Trump appears to be seeking to change the rules so that that the children of undocumented migrants living in the US will no longer automatically be considered US citizens. It would not apply retrospectively.

Exactly how he intends to achieve this is unclear, however, because birthright citizenship is enshrined in the constitution and would require a two-thirds vote in both chambers of Congress to change.

• Trump wants to end birthright citizenship. Can he do it?

Trump has instructed federal agencies to stop issuing documentation to children born in the US to parents who are in the country illegally or on temporary visas, which could effectively deny them access to public services.

Advocacy group the American Civil Liberties Union (ALCU) immediately said it was suing the Trump administration over the order. “Denying citizenship to US-born children is not only unconstitutional – it’s also a reckless and ruthless repudiation of American values,” it said in a statement.

The new administration has also moved to swiftly scrap CBP One, a mobile application used by migrants to book appointments to appear at a port of entry.

Biden administration officials had credited the app with helping reduce the number of detentions at the border since it was first introduced in January 2023. It was the only legal pathway to request asylum at the US-Mexico border.

Now, the Customs and Border Protection website notes that the app is “no longer available”.

App users also now are shown a message noting that “existing appointments scheduled through CBP One are no longer valid”.

According to CBS, the BBC’s US partner, the Biden administration had scheduled roughly 30,000 appointments via CBP One for migrants to enter the US in the next three weeks.

Other estimates had suggested that as many as 270,000 migrants were in Mexico waiting for an opportunity to enter the US using CBP One.

In the Mexican border city of Tijuana, some migrants reported feeling defeated and deflated after learning of CBP One’s demise.

“I hope God touches his [Trump’s] heart,” said Oralia, a Mexican woman who fled cartel violence in her home state along with her epileptic son. “We really do need the help.”

She had been waiting for an appointment through CBP One for seven months.

Among his other day-one moves, Trump ordered a shutdown of another Biden-era initiative, which allowed up to 30,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to fly to the US per month. Like the CBP One app, it was designed to lower the number of illegal crossings.

Immigration advocacy groups have reacted furiously to Trump’s various orders.

As well as the criticism from the ACLU, the president and CEO of the National Immigration Forum said the orders were “disappointing but not surprising”.

“The expected orders would separate families and weaken our economy,” Jennie Murray’s statement continued. “They do not uphold American values.”

Greisa Martinez Rosas, the executive director of United We Dream – a national immigrant youth organisation – said that the orders show that the administration “will spend the next four years actively trying to destroy our lives”.

“Trump’s pledges to carry out mass raids and deportations will have devastating consequences on communities nationwide, leaving millions of families and individuals in disarray if immediate action is not taken by our elected officials to publicly fight back,” she added.

US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to begin the process of withdrawing the US from the World Health Organization (WHO).

“Oooh, that’s a big one,” the newly inaugurated US president said as he approved the document after arriving back at the White House. It was one of dozens of executive actions he put his signature to on day one in office.

This marks the second time Trump has ordered the US be pulled out of the WHO.

Trump was critical of how the international body handled Covid-19 and began the process of pulling out from the Geneva-based institution during the pandemic. President Joe Biden later reversed that decision.

Carrying out this executive action on day one makes it more likely the US will formally leave the global agency.

“They wanted us back so badly so we’ll see what happens,” Trump said in the Oval Office, referring to the WHO, perhaps hinting the US might return eventually.

• Trump moves to make ‘two genders’ and anti-DEI policy official
• Trump vows to leave Paris climate agreement and ‘drill, baby, drill’

The order said the US was withdrawing “due to the organization’s mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, and other global health crises, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states”.

The executive order also said the withdrawal was the result of “unfairly onerous payments” the US made to the WHO, which is part of the United Nations.

When Trump was still in office the first time around, he was critical of the organisation for being too “China-centric” in its tackling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Trump accused the WHO of being biased towards China in how it issued guidance during the outbreak.

Under the Biden administration the US continued to be the largest funder of the WHO and in 2023 it contributed almost one-fifth of the agency’s budget.

The organisation’s annual budget is $6.8bn (£5.5bn).

• LIVE: Follow BBC’s live coverage
• ANALYSIS: Anthony Zurcher on the beginning of a new Trump era
• IN PICTURES: Defining images as the 47th US president takes office
• WATCH: Inauguration day in two minutes
• VIRAL MOMENTS: Carrie Underwood goes a cappella and Melania’s air kiss

It is possible that funding could disappear almost immediately, and it is not clear that other nations will step up to fill the gap.

A US withdrawal could have an impact on WHO’s ability to respond to emergencies such as an Ebola outbreak, or MPOX – let alone another Covid-19-style pandemic.

Public health experts have suggested there could be other consequences for Americans’ health if progress is reversed on fighting infectious diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, HIV and Aids.

Ashish Jha, who formerly worked as Covid-19 response co-ordinator under President Biden, previously warned leaving would “harm not only the health of people around the world, but also US leadership and scientific prowess”.

“It’s a cataclysmic presidential decision. Withdrawal is a grievous wound to world health, but a still deeper wound to the US,” Lawrence Gostin, a global public health expert and Georgetown University professor said.

There are also concerns that America’s withdrawal could ultimately open the door to greater Chinese influence over the global body, not less.

The upsides to the move are few, but some argue it could prompt further reforms of how the WHO works, meaning it better serves public health needs of people worldwide.

If that happens, it might be enough to tempt the US back into the fold. However, the tone of the language coming from Washington suggests this second attempt by President Trump to pull the US out of the international health body will not be reconsidered.

All websites on which pornographic material can be found, including social media platforms, must introduce “robust” age-checking techniques such as demanding photo ID or running credit card checks for UK users by July.

The long-awaited guidance, issued by regulator Ofcom, has been made under the Online Safety Act (OSA), and is intended to prevent children from easily accessing pornography online.

Research indicates the average age at which young people first see explicit material online in the UK is 13 – with many being exposed to it much earlier.

“For too long, many online services which allow porn and other harmful material have ignored the fact that children are accessing their services”, said Ofcom boss Melanie Dawes, adding: “today, this starts to change.”

Ofcom confirmed to the BBC this meant user-to-user services such as social media platforms must implement “highly effective checks” – which in some cases might mean “preventing children from accessing the entire site”.

However, some porn sites and privacy campaigners have warned the move will be counterproductive, saying introducing beefed-up age verification will only push people to “darker corners” of the internet.

The media regulator estimates that approximately 14 million people watch online pornography in the UK.

But it is so readily available that campaign groups have raised concerns that children see it at a young age – with one in 10 children seeing it by age nine, according to a survey by the Children’s Commissioner.

“As age checks start to roll out in the coming months, adults will start to notice a difference in how they access certain online services,” said Dame Melanie.

The rules also require services which publish their own pornographic content – including with generative AI tools – to begin introducing age checks immediately.

Age verification platform Yoti called such technology “essential” for creating safe spaces online.

“It is important that age assurance is enforced across pornographic sites of all sizes, creating a level playing field, and providing age-appropriate access for adults,” said chief regulatory and policy officer Julie Dawson.

However Aylo, parent company of the website Pornhub, told the BBC this sort of age verification was “ineffective, haphazard and dangerous”.

It claimed pornography use changed significantly in US state Louisiana after similar age verification controls came into force, with its website’s traffic dropping 80% in the state.

“These people did not stop looking for porn, they just migrated to darker corners of the internet that don’t ask users to verify age,” it claimed.

“In practice, the laws have just made the internet more dangerous for adults and children.”

Ofcom has published what it calls a “non-exhaustive” list of technologies that may be used to verify ages, which includes:

• Open banking
• Photo ID matching
• Facial age estimation
• Mobile network operator age checks
• Credit card checks
• Digital identity services
• Email-based age estimation

The rules specifically state that “self-declaration of age” is no longer considered a “highly effective” method of checking ages – and therefore is not acceptable.

It also states that pornographic content should not be accessible to users before they have completed an age check.

Other age verification firms have responded positively to the news.

“The regulator’s long-awaited guidance on age assurance means adult content providers now have the clarity they need to get their houses in order and put in place robust and reliable methods to keep explicit material well away from underage users,” said Lina Ghazal, head of regulatory and public affairs at Verifymy.

But privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch warned that many age-checking methods could be circumvented, and should not be seen as a panacea.

“Children must be protected online, but many technological age checking methods are ineffective and introduce additional risks to children and adults alike including security breaches, privacy intrusion, errors, digital exclusion and censorship,” said boss Silkie Carlo.

“We must avoid anything like a digital ID system for the internet that would both eradicate privacy online and fail to keep children safe,” she added.

Digital driving licences are to be introduced in the UK as the government looks to use technology to “transform public services”.

They will be accessed on a new government smartphone app and could be accepted as a form of ID when buying alcohol, voting, or boarding domestic flights.

Physical licences will still be issued, but ministers believe the voluntary digital option will “drag government into the 2020s,” according to The Times.

A government spokesperson told BBC News: “This government is committed to using technology to make people’s lives easier and transform public services.

“Technology now makes it possible for digital identities to be more secure than physical ones, but we remain clear that they will not be made mandatory.”

The virtual licences could be used at supermarket self checkouts, The Times said, allowing customers to verify their own age without waiting for a member of staff.

The new digital licences will be introduced later this year, the newspaper reported.

A possible feature could allow users to hide their address in certain situations, such as in bars or shops.

It was estimated there were more than 34 million full driving licence holders in England in 2023, according to government data.

The digital licences are likely to be launched as part of a “wallet” within a new government app called Gov.uk.

The wallet is understood to be secured in a similar way to many banking apps, and would only allow the genuine owner of a licence to access it.

It will use features found on many smartphones, such as biometrics and multifactor authentication, like security codes.

The government is said to be considering integrating other services into the app, such as tax payments and benefits claims.

Other forms of identification, such as national insurance numbers, could also be added – but it is not thought physical identification will be replaced entirely.

The new technology appears to stop short of being a broad digital ID card – as previously called for by Sir Tony Blair and Lord William Hague.

At the time, the head of privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch said such a move “would be one of the biggest assaults on privacy ever seen in the UK”.

In 2016, the then-boss of the UK’s Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) said digital licences were being developed.

Virtual licences are already in use in Australia, Denmark, Iceland and Norway, as well as some US states.

In the European Union, every member state is required to introduce at least one form of digital ID by 2026.

At least eight Palestinians have been killed and 35 injured by Israeli security forces during a major operation in Jenin in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry says.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military, police and Shin Bet security service had launched an “extensive and significant” operation to “defeat terrorism” in Jenin, which is seen as a stronghold of Palestinian armed groups.

Palestinian media said Israeli forces moved into Jenin and its refugee camp following several drone strikes.

It comes just three days after the start of a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel in Gaza and highlights the threat of more violence in the West Bank.

A statement from Israel’s prime minister said the operation, dubbed “Iron Wall”, was an “additional step in achieving the objective we have set: bolstering security” in the West Bank.

“We are acting methodically and with determination against the Iranian axis wherever it reaches: in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and [the West Bank] – and we are still active,” he added.

Israel accuses Iran of smuggling weapons and funds to Hamas, PIJ and other armed groups in the West Bank to foment unrest.

Israeli media cited a military source as saying that the goals of the operation were to preserve its “freedom of action” in the West Bank, dismantle armed groups’ infrastructure, and eliminate imminent threats. The source also said the operation would continue for “as long as necessary”.

Jenin’s governor, Kamal Abu al-Rub, told AFP news agency that “what is happening is an invasion of the camp”.

“It came quickly, Apache [helicopters] in the sky and Israeli military vehicles everywhere,” he added.

The official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, cited local sources as saying that Israeli forces were “completely besieging” Jenin camp, and that armoured bulldozers had dug up several streets.

It also cited the director of Jenin’s Government hospital, Wissam Bakr, as saying that three doctors and two nurses were among those wounded by Israeli gunfire.

The Israeli raid follows a weeks-long operation by Palestinian security forces against armed groups in Jenin camp that sought to restore the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority’s control.

An AFP journalist said PA security personnel withdrew from some of their positions around the camp before the Israeli forces moved in.

Hamas condemned the Israeli operation in Jenin and called on Palestinians in the West Bank to escalate attacks against Israeli forces there in response.

There has been a spike in violence in the West Bank since Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 and the ensuing war in Gaza.

Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed as Israeli forces have intensified their raids, saying they are trying to stem deadly Palestinian attacks on Israelis in the West Bank and Israel.

In another development in the West Bank overnight, groups of masked Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians, smashing cars and burning homes.

It happened just as new US President Donald Trump announced that he was lifting sanctions on violent settlers imposed by the Biden administration.

A far-right Israeli minister welcomed the reversal in US policy, while Palestinian officials said it would encourage further violence.

Israel has built about 160 settlements housing some 700,000 Jews since it occupied the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war. The settlements are considered illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.

The mysterious balls that forced the closure of several beaches in Sydney last week were found to contain saturated fatty acids, E. coli and faecal bacteria, authorities say.

Sydney’s Northern Beaches council said it has sent the debris to the New South Wales Environment Protection Authority (EPA) for further analysis.

Nine beaches, including popular spots Manly and Dee Why, were closed on 14 January after the marble-sized balls started washing up.

It came months after thousands of black blobs started appearing on the city’s coasts in October, prompting authorities to close some of its most famous beaches for several days and order a massive clean-up.

The latest batch of balls was cleaned up from harbour beaches this week, the Northern Beaches council said in its statement on Tuesday.

It urged anyone who spotted the balls not to handle them and to contact authorities.

Besides the acids and bacteria, the balls also contained volcanic rock pumice.

Northern Beaches mayor Sue Heins said she hopes the EPA analysis will “identify the source so that they can stop this from happening at other beaches”.

“We are continuing to conduct regular inspections of our beaches and encourage the community to report any sightings,” she said.

The first batch of debris in October were at first mistakenly called “tar balls” but were later found to contain everything from cooking oil and soap scum molecules, to blood pressure medication, pesticides, hair, methamphetamine and veterinary drugs.

Scientists said they resembled fat, oil and grease blobs – often called “fatbergs” – which are commonly formed in sewage systems.

But Sydney Water has reported that its water treatment plants are operating normally and that there were no known issues with waste systems in the city.

Meta says its working urgently to fix a problem with Instagram which results in a “results hidden” message when users search for the terms “Democrat” or “Democrats”.

Some social media users have accused the company of political bias, pointing out the issue has been occurring after President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday, which was attended by Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg.

Meta has insisted that is not the case, saying it is a technical problem which has also affected other hashtags, including a Republican one.

However, social media expert Matt Navarra said it was “embarrassing” for Instagram regardless.

“In a hyper-partisan environment, even unintentional errors like this can escalate into accusations of partisanship,” he said.

“If these issues are not resolved quickly they risk fuelling conspiracy theories and damaging Meta’s reputation.”

While users who type “#Democrat” or “#Democrats” see no results, the hashtag “Republican” returns 3.3 million posts on the social media platform.

By manually searching Instagram for “Democrats”, rather than clicking on a hashtag, users are greeted by a screen reading “we’ve hidden these results”.

“Results for the term you searched for may contain sensitive content,” it says.

There are also limited results when people search for “Republicans” as opposed to “Republican”.

“We’re aware of an error affecting hashtags across the political spectrum and we are working quickly to resolve it”, Meta told the BBC in a statement.

Mr Zuckerberg attending Trump’s return to office is the latest in a series of moves that have seen him – and other tech bosses – move closer to the incoming Republican administration.

In January, Meta announced a major shake-up of its policies towards how material on its platforms is moderated, with Mr Zuckerberg citing the “cultural tipping point” Trump’s re-election represented.

Joel Kaplan, a prominent Republican, has been chosen to replace Sir Nick Clegg as Meta’s global affairs chief.

Mr Zuckerberg visited the US president at his resort in Mar-a-Lago in November and Meta made a donation to a Tump fund.

Trump and his allies previously criticised Met, claiming censor right-wing voice and even threatened the Meta boss with jail.

However reacting to its decision to axe fact checkers, Trump told a news conference he was impressed by Zuckerberg’s decision and said Meta had “come a long way”.

A court in India has sentenced a man to life in prison for the rape and murder of a junior doctor, in a case that sparked nationwide outrage and protests.

The judge rejected demands for the death penalty but said that Sanjay Roy, a hospital volunteer in Kolkata city who was convicted over the weekend, would spend the rest of his life in jail.

Roy has maintained he is innocent and is expected to appeal against the verdict in a higher court.

The victim’s family said they wanted him to be hanged, and that they were “shocked” by the sentence.

“We will continue our fight, and won’t let investigations stop… Come what may, we will fight for justice,” the woman’s father told AFP news agency. Indian law prohibits revealing the identity of victims of sexual violence and that of their family members.

Immediately after the sentencing, dozens of doctors protested outside the court, saying they were not satisfied with the investigation and the sentence.

The trainee doctor’s murder last August at the state-run hospital in Kolkata in West Bengal state sent shockwaves across the country.

The 31-year-old had gone to sleep in the seminar hall of the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital after a night shift. Her half-naked, severely injured body was later discovered near a podium by a colleague.

The autopsy report indicated that the woman had been strangled and had injury marks that showed she fought back.

The crime sparked widespread protests and concerns over the safety of healthcare workers in India, especially women. In Kolkata, doctors went on strike for weeks, demanding action against the accused and officials who they said were complicit in delaying or derailing the investigation.

Roy was arrested a day after the crime. According to the charge sheet filed by federal investigators, which the BBC has seen, Roy went to the hospital in a drunken state and found the female doctor sleeping alone.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) – India’s premier crime agency that investigated the case – had demanded the death penalty for Roy.

But on Monday, the judge disagreed, saying he had considered all the evidence and did not consider the case to be a “rarest-of-rare” crime.

Before announcing the sentence, the judge also gave Roy a chance to speak in court. He claimed that he was innocent and was being “falsely implicated” in the case.

Without taking any names, Roy alleged that there were “others involved in the crime”.

The judge dismissed Roy’s claims and said the court had already found him guilty of all charges.

Some politicians and social media users criticised the sentence.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said that she was not satisfied with the court’s order. “We want justice. Such criminals should be hanged,” she told reporters.

A far-right organisation should be banned and some members investigated by police, the BBC has been told, after we secretly filmed people in the group saying migrants should be shot.

Former Counter-Extremism Commissioner Dame Sara Khan believes the UK government should urgently change the law to make groups like Patriotic Alternative illegal.

Barrister Ramya Nagesh watched some of the footage and said: “There’s more than enough evidence for the police to investigate and refer to the Crown Prosecution Service.”

An undercover BBC reporter spent a year investigating the far-right group and its members were recorded using racial slurs.

One Patriotic Alternative (PA) member said he believed a race war was inevitable and the organisation should use a similar tactic to the Nazi party to gain power.

The group cannot be banned under current legislation as they do not advocate terrorism but Dame Sara, the UK’s first Counter-Extremism Commissioner, feels they are “creating a climate conducive to terrorism”.

Patriotic Alternative leader Mark Collett said they are not extremist, do not promote violence and peacefully campaign for the rights of what he calls indigenous British people.

The group, considered to be the UK’s largest far-right group with about 500 members and thousands of followers online, says it exists to “raise awareness” of immigration and promote “family values”.

The BBC Wales Investigates programme found some members making comments that experts say could amount to inciting racial hatred.

Patriotic Alternative have regional branches around the UK and encourage members – including former teachers and nurses – to hold protests, highlight immigration issues, film their activities and share clips online.

A BBC journalist infiltrated the group in Wales using a fake identity, Dan Jones, someone who slept on friends’ sofas in Cardiff and did not have a full-time job.

Posing as a new recruit, the undercover reporter covertly filmed at Patriotic Alternative demonstrations, their summer camp and secretive annual conference over the course of a year and heard some members sharing extreme views.

Dan attended a number of demonstrations in south Wales, including in Merthyr Tydfil where the group protested against the housing of migrants.

He went to banner-waving events on busy road bridges where the group would visibly demonstrate against controversial local issues, encouraging drivers to honk horns in support.

These events are legal and often attended by people who are not in Patriotic Alternative.

However it was at these so-called ‘banner drop’ protests where Dan met people like Roger Phillips.

While he said he wasn’t a Patriotic Alternative member, Mr Phillips joined the group at a demonstration and privately told Dan “35 to 40 of us were prepping, arming ourselves” after being at a protest against plans to use a hotel in Llanelli to house asylum seekers.

“I’m buying a pump action shotgun now,” Mr Phillips told the undercover reporter.

“Who do you think is going to fight these migrants? Us lot.”

He discussed modifying ammunition and claimed the weapon he planned to get could “kill you at 150 yards”.

Mr Phillips said afterwards that he had suspected Dan was undercover so fed him false information and that he had been talking about paintballing guns.

Joe Marsh, Patriotic Alternative’s Wales organiser and former leader of the anti-Muslim Welsh Defence League, invited Dan to events.

“If you didn’t have Jamaicans and Africans here stabbing people, we wouldn’t have any knife crime,” the former British National Party (BNP) activist and former football hooligan was filmed saying.

After the stabbing of three young girls in Southport in July 2024, Mr Marsh told his followers: “People shouldn’t be calling demos at mosques… if you are going to do one, outside a migrant hotel or in the town centre.”

The next day, hotels housing migrants near Rotherham and in Tamworth were set on fire. We do not know if any of the protesters were Patriotic Alternative members or followers of Mr Marsh.

Mr Marsh told the BBC he had not incited racial hatred, he had legally protested and had not introduced any new recruits to members with extreme views.

The secret filming exposed how the more extreme views of some members came out, like when Aaron Watkins offered Dan some casual work.

Mr Watkins is now a handyman after losing his tax job at HMRC after being outed for making racist comments online and being spotted at demonstrations.

While the pair were wallpapering a house, Mr Watkins told Dan: “The communities that are the most diverse are the people we want to get rid of, violently preferably.”

“Round them up into camps and if they refuse to leave, we shoot them. The people who come here are parasites.”

Mr Watkins told Dan that anti-terrorism detectives did not find any evidence against him when they investigated him for making racist comments because he had a new phone and had destroyed his old handset.

“I’d burnt the old one, literally on a barbecue,” he privately admitted. “So, they couldn’t get me.”

When the BBC approached Mr Watkins afterwards, he declined to comment.

Our undercover reporter was invited to join social media chatgroups where he got messages daily about how immigrants were “invading” the UK.

Dan was invited to Patriotic Alternative’s summer camp in Derbyshire and to their annual conference where he met Patrick – and the former history teacher from Bristol said the group should mirror the tactic of the Nazi party in 1920s Germany.

“If you look at what the national socialist party did in Germany… community organising, talking to people about local issues, not as politicians… that is what paved the way for them skyrocketing to the elections from 1929 onwards,” he said.

Patrick then told Dan a race war was “inevitable”, and if immigrants did not leave: “The only way to get rid of them will be to kill every single one of them.”

When asked about his comments afterwards, Patrick accused the BBC of having an anti-white bias and “persecuting ordinary British people who care deeply about the safety and wellbeing of our indigenous people”.

Dan shared a conversation with one of the conference guest speakers who was a far-right activist and a convicted criminal from Australia, Blair Cottrell.

He was secretly filmed likening Africans to dogs and suggested that slaves had been happy to work for white people.

“An old lady was stabbed to death by a gang of African kids. When you look at the way things happen in Africa, the only language they understand is violence” he told Dan and other group members.

“The only way to effectively respond to a crime that they’ve committed as heinous as what I described is to literally skin them,” he was filmed saying.

“You hang a few of their bodies up across some traffic lights or something. Just theoretically of course, I can’t condone it.”

The BBC has repeatedly asked Blair Cottrell about his comments – he replied, but did not answer our questions.

Dan has now left Patriotic Alternative and the undercover footage was shown to a leading barrister who said the BBC’s findings should prompt a police investigation because, in her view, some of the comments could incite racial hatred.

“After the Southport riots, we saw prosecutions of individuals who’d posted even just one or two messages on their social media platforms,” said criminal barrister Ramya Nagesh, who has written a book on hate crime.

“And those messages were arguably not as inflammatory as the ones you have shown me.”

Dame Sara said groups like Patriotic Alternative were “attempting to mainstream extremism in our country”.

“They should absolutely not be allowed to operate with impunity,” said Dame Sara.

“We’ve seen their recent activity and their contribution towards public disorder in the summer riots.”

She has now called on the UK government to introduce new laws to ban groups like this.

“It’s incredibly urgent… unless something changes, I’m afraid we’re going to continue to see groups like PA radicalise our children and make us a weaker and less democratic society.”

The UK government said extremism has “no place in society” and was working to “assess and consider the right approach” to tackling the issue.

“We work closely with law enforcement, local communities and our international partners to tackle groups and individuals who sow division and hatred,” said a Home Office spokesperson.

Patriotic Alternative’s leader said any comments were made in private.

“We’re people that advocate for the rights of indigenous Britons and we are people that are campaigning now against what is going on in this country,” said Mark Collett, who formed the group after being a press officer for the BNP.

When pressed about the use of racial slurs by his members, Mr Collett said this was prohibited in the group’s code of conduct.

“If people have breached that code of conduct, then we will deal with that in due course,” he added.

Meta says its working urgently to fix a problem with Instagram which results in a “results hidden” message when users search for the terms “Democrat” or “Democrats”.

Some social media users have accused the company of political bias, pointing out the issue has been occurring after President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday, which was attended by Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg.

Meta has insisted that is not the case, saying it is a technical problem which has also affected other hashtags, including a Republican one.

However, social media expert Matt Navarra said it was “embarrassing” for Instagram regardless.

“In a hyper-partisan environment, even unintentional errors like this can escalate into accusations of partisanship,” he said.

“If these issues are not resolved quickly they risk fuelling conspiracy theories and damaging Meta’s reputation.”

While users who type “#Democrat” or “#Democrats” see no results, the hashtag “Republican” returns 3.3 million posts on the social media platform.

By manually searching Instagram for “Democrats”, rather than clicking on a hashtag, users are greeted by a screen reading “we’ve hidden these results”.

“Results for the term you searched for may contain sensitive content,” it says.

There are also limited results when people search for “Republicans” as opposed to “Republican”.

“We’re aware of an error affecting hashtags across the political spectrum and we are working quickly to resolve it”, Meta told the BBC in a statement.

Mr Zuckerberg attending Trump’s return to office is the latest in a series of moves that have seen him – and other tech bosses – move closer to the incoming Republican administration.

In January, Meta announced a major shake-up of its policies towards how material on its platforms is moderated, with Mr Zuckerberg citing the “cultural tipping point” Trump’s re-election represented.

Joel Kaplan, a prominent Republican, has been chosen to replace Sir Nick Clegg as Meta’s global affairs chief.

Mr Zuckerberg visited the US president at his resort in Mar-a-Lago in November and Meta made a donation to a Tump fund.

Trump and his allies previously criticised Met, claiming censor right-wing voice and even threatened the Meta boss with jail.

However reacting to its decision to axe fact checkers, Trump told a news conference he was impressed by Zuckerberg’s decision and said Meta had “come a long way”.

Niluper says she has been living in agony.

A Uyghur refugee, she has spent the past decade hoping her husband would join her and their three sons in Turkey, where they now live.

The family was detained in Thailand in 2014 after fleeing increasing repression in their hometown in China’s Xinjiang province. She and the children were allowed to leave Thailand a year later. But her husband remained in detention, along with 47 other Uyghur men.

Niluper – not her real name – now fears she and her children may never see him again.

Ten days ago, she learned that Thai officials had tried to persuade the detainees to sign forms consenting to be sent back to China. When they realised what was in the forms, they refused to sign them.

The Thai government has denied having any immediate plans to send them back. But human rights groups believe they could be deported at any time.

“I don’t know how to explain this to my sons,” Niluper told the BBC on a video call from Turkey. Her sons, she says, keep asking about their father. The youngest has never met him.

“I don’t know how to digest this. I’m living in constant pain, constant fear that at any moment I may get the news from Thailand that my husband has been deported.”

The last time Thailand deported Uyghur asylum seekers was in July 2015. Without warning, it put 109 of them onto a plane back to China, prompting a storm of protest from governments and human rights groups.

The few photos that were released show them hooded and handcuffed, guarded by large numbers of Chinese police officers. Little is known about what happened to them after their return. Other deported Uyghurs have received long prison sentences in secret trials.

The nominee for Secretary of State in the incoming Trump administration, Marco Rubio, has promised to press Thailand not to send the remaining Uyghurs back.

Their living conditions have been described by one human rights defender as “a hell on earth”.

They are all being held in the Immigration Detention Centre (IDC) in central Bangkok, which houses most of those charged with immigration violations in Thailand. Some are there only briefly, while waiting to be deported; others are there much longer.

Driving along the narrow, congested road known as Suan Phlu it is easy to miss the non-descript cluster of cement buildings, and difficult to believe they house an estimated 900 detainees – the Thai authorities give out no precise numbers.

The IDC is known to be hot, overcrowded and unsanitary. Journalists are not allowed inside. Lawyers usually warn their clients to avoid being sent there if at all possible.

There are 43 Uyghurs there, plus another five being held in a Bangkok prison for trying to escape. They are the last of around 350 who fled China in 2013 and 2014.

They are kept in isolation from other inmates and are rarely allowed visits by outsiders or lawyers. They get few opportunities to exercise, or even to see daylight. They have been charged with no crime, apart from entering Thailand without a visa. Five Uyghurs have died in custody.

“The conditions there are appalling,” says Chalida Tajaroensuk, director of the People’s Empowerment Foundation, an NGO trying to help the Uyghurs.

“There is not enough food – it is mostly just soup made with cucumber and chicken bones. It is crammed in there. The water they get, both for drinking and washing, is dirty. Only basic medicines are provided and these are inadequate. If someone falls ill, it takes a long time to get an appointment with the doctor. And because of the dirty water, the hot weather and bad ventilation, a lot of the Uyghurs get rashes or other skin problems.”

But the worst part of their detention, say those who have experienced it, is not knowing how long they will be imprisoned in Thailand, and the constant fear of being sent back to China.

Niluper says there were always rumours about deportation but it was difficult to find out more. Escaping was hard because they had children with them.

“It was horrible. We were so scared all the time,” recalls Niluper.

“When we thought about being sent back to China, we would have preferred to die in Thailand.”

China’s repression of the Muslim Uyghurs has been well documented by the UN and human rights groups. Up to one million Uyghurs are believed to have been detained in re-education camps, in what human rights advocates say is a state campaign to eradicate Uyghur identity and culture. There are many allegations of torture and enforced disappearances, which China denies. It says it has been running “vocational centres” focused on de-radicalising Uyghurs.

Niluper says she and her husband faced hostility from Chinese state officials over their religiosity – her husband was an avid reader of religious texts.

The couple made the decision to flee when people they knew were being arrested or disappearing. The family were in a group of 220 Uyghurs who were caught by the Thai police trying to cross the border to Malaysia in March 2014.

Niluper was held in an IDC near the border, and then later in Bangkok, until with 170 other women and children, she was allowed in June 2015 to go to Turkey, which usually offers Uyghurs asylum.

But her husband remains in the Bangkok IDC. They were separated when they were detained, and she has had no contact with him since a brief meeting they were permitted in July 2014.

She says she was one of 18 pregnant women and 25 children crammed into a room that was just four by eight metres. The food was “bad and there was never enough for all of us”.

“I was the last one to give birth, at midnight, in the bathroom. The next day the guard saw my condition and that of my baby was not good, so they took us to the hospital.”

Niluper was also separated from her eldest son, who was just two years old at the time and held with his father – an experience which she says has traumatised him, after experiencing “terrible conditions” and witnessing a guard beating an inmate. When the guards brought him back to her, she says, he did not recognise her.

“He was so scared, screaming and crying. He could not understand what had happened. He did not want to talk to anyone.”

It took a long time before he accepted his mother, she says, and after that he would not leave her even for a moment, even after they had arrived in Turkey.

“It took a really, really long time for him to understand that he was finally in a safe place.”

Thailand has never explained why it will not allow the remaining Uyghurs to join their families in Turkey, but it is almost certainly because of pressure from China.

Unlike other inmates in the IDC, the fate of the Uyghurs is not handled by the Immigration Department but instead by Thailand’s National Security Council, a body chaired by the prime minister in which the military has significant influence.

As the influence of the US, Thailand’s oldest military ally, wanes, that of China has been steadily increasing. The current Thai government is keen to build even closer ties to China, to help revive the faltering economy.

The United Nations Refugee Agency has been accused of doing little to help the Uyghurs, but says it is given no access to them, so is unable to do much. Thailand does not recognise refugee status.

Accommodating China’s wish to get the Uyghurs back is not without risk though. Thailand has just taken a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, for which it lobbied hard.

Deporting 48 men who have already endured more than a decade of incarceration would badly tarnish the image the Thai government is trying to project.

Thailand will also be mindful of what happened just a month after the last mass deportation in 2015.

On 17 August that year a powerful bomb exploded at a shrine in Bangkok which was popular with Chinese tourists. Twenty people were killed, in what was widely assumed to be a retaliation by Uyghur militants, although the Thai authorities tried to downplay the link.

Two Uyghur men were charged with the bombing, but their trial has lasted for nine years, with no end in sight. One of them, say his lawyers, is almost certainly innocent. A veil of secrecy surrounds the trial; the authorities seem reluctant to let anything from the hearings tying the bomb to the deportation to get out.

Even those Uyghurs who have managed to get to Turkey must then deal with their uncertain status there, and with the severance of all communications with their families in Xinjiang.

“I have not heard my mother’s voice for 10 years,” says Hasan Imam, an Uyghur refugee who now works as a lorry driver in Turkey.

He was in the same group as Niluper caught by the Malaysian border in 2014.

He remembers how the following year the Thai authorities deceived them about their plan to deport some of them to China. He says they were told some men would be moved to a different facility, because the one they were in was too crowded.

This was after some women and children had been sent to Turkey, and, unusually, the men in the camp were also allowed to talk to their wives and children in Turkey on a phone.

“We were all happy, and full of hope,” Hassan says. “They selected them, one by one. At this point they had no idea they would be sent back to China. It was only later, through an illicit phone we had, that we found out from Turkey that they had been deported.”

This filled the remaining detainees with despair, recalls Hasan, and two years later, when he was moved temporarily to another holding camp, he and 19 others made a remarkable escape, using a nail to make a hole in a crumbling wall.

Eleven were recaptured, but Hasan managed to cross the forested border into Malaysia, and from there reached Turkey.

“I do not know what condition my parents are in but for those still detained in Thailand it is even worse,” he says.

They fear being sent back and imprisoned in China – and they also fear that it would mean more severe punishment for their families, he explains.

“The mental strain for them is unbearable.”

The British rock guitarist John Sykes, who played with Whitesnake and Thin Lizzy, has died aged 65.

A statement on his website said Sykes “passed away after a hard fought battle with cancer”.

It described him as a “thoughtful, kind, and charismatic man whose presence lit up the room” and said that, in his final days, he had expressed a “sincere love and gratitude for his fans”.

Sykes appeared on two Whitesnake albums and co-wrote some of the band’s best-known songs, including Still Of The Night and Is This Love.

He began his career in 1980 with heavy metal band Tygers Of Pan Tang, recording two albums before joining Thin Lizzy in 1982.

He played on the 1983 release Thunder and Lightning before accompanying frontman Phil Lynott on a European tour with a separate group called The Three Musketeers.

In 1984, he joined Whitesnake at the invitation of founder and frontman David Coverdale, recording parts for their Slide It In album and later for their self-titled 1987 release which was a critical and commercial success.

After leaving Whitesnake he released two albums with his own group, Blue Murder, and later formed a touring version of Thin Lizzy which had disbanded in the years before Lynott’s death in 1986.

The statement on Sykes’s website read: “It is with great sorrow we share that John Sykes has passed away after a hard fought battle with cancer.

“He will be remembered by many as a man with exceptional musical talent but for those who didn’t know him personally, he was a thoughtful, kind, and charismatic man whose presence lit up the room.

“He certainly marched to the beat of his own drum and always pulled for the underdog. In his final days, he spoke of his sincere love and gratitude for his fans who stuck by him through all these years.

“While the impact of his loss is profound and the mood sombre, we hope the light of his memory will extinguish the shadow of his absence.”

Paying tribute on X, Coverdale shared a number of photos of himself and and Sykes together in Whitesnake’s heyday.

“Just heard the shocking news of John’s passing…” he said.

“My sincere condolences to his family, friends & fans…”

Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash shared a picture of Sykes performing and wrote simply: “RIP”.

Mozambique’s main opposition leader Venâncio Mondlane has told the BBC he is prepared to serve in the government if President Daniel Chapo meets his demands to end the political crisis that has hit the country following disputed elections.

Chapo said he had set up a team that was “considering” whether his rival should be invited to join a new “inclusive” government.

The two men outlined their positions in separate interviews with the BBC, giving the impression that they were open to rapprochement after the deaths of about 300 people in post-election unrest.

Mondlane rejected his defeat in October’s election, saying the result was rigged – something that Chapo denied.

Mozambique’s highest court declared Chapo the winner with 65% of the vote to Mondlane’s 24%.

Chapo was the candidate of the ruling Frelimo party, as his predecessor, Filipe Nyusi, had to step down after serving two terms in office.

Chapo was officially sworn in as president on 15 January, about a week after Mondlane held his own inauguration to declare himself the “people’s president”.

Mondlane told the BBC that Chapo was “forced” on the nation, and was the “president of the defence force”.

Mondlane said that he had, nevertheless, decided to suspend protests for the first 100 days of his rival’s term on condition he did the following:

• unconditionally release about 5,000 people detained for participating in demonstrations against the election result
• pay financial compensation to the families of people killed by police during the protests and
• offer free medical treatment for about 200 people injured by the police.

Mondlane said that if Chapo agreed to this, he would “open a window” for negotiations or else he would call on his supporters to renew protests.

Asked whether he was prepared to work in Chapo’s government, Mondlane replied: “Yes, if he has a genuine interest to work with me. He’s got a chance to invite me to the table of dialogue.”

In his interview with the BBC, Chapo said he wanted to “govern in an inclusive way”, and to introduce reforms to address concerns about the electoral law, human rights and freedom of expression.

He said talks were currently taking place with opposition parties represented in the new parliament, and they would later be widened to include “all segments of society”.

Chapo added that he wanted to form a government that was “open to all Mozambicans”, but he wanted to stress that “the profile of the people is very important”.

Asked whether he believed Mondlane qualified to serve in government, Chapo replied: “It will depend… because there is a team that is right now considering that, on the profile of the people, their competencies, their meritocracy, the patriotism – all these pre-requisites that I’m alluding to.

“If the team reaches the conclusion that these people have the right profile, they will be part of the government. Those who do not have that profile will not take part.”

Aged 47, Chapo was chosen by Frelimo, which has been in power since independence 49 years ago, as its candidate to rally young voters affected by high unemployment, and fed up with the party’s decades-long rule.

• Mozambique at a crossroads as new president sworn in

He told the BBC that he wanted both local and foreign investment to increase in Mozambique in order to make the economy “more dynamic”.

This would help create jobs for young people so that they could “build their homes, establish their families and stabilize their lives”.

Mondlane, 50, was seen to have considerable support among young people after he rallied them during the election campaign with the slogan “Save Mozambique – this country is ours”.

He contested the poll as an independent after breaking away from the main opposition Renamo party.

A small party that backed his candidacy won a few parliamentary seats in the election.

• Children shot dead after joining pot-banging protests in Mozambique
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• The poet who caught the eye of Mozambique’s freedom fighters

The first study to assess how weight-loss drugs affect the whole of human health has discovered an “eye-opening” impact on the body, researchers say.

The analysis, involving about two million people, linked the drugs to better heart health, fewer infections, a lower risk of drug abuse and fewer cases of dementia.

The US researchers also warned the drugs were “not without risk” and seemed to increase joint pain and potentially deadly inflammation in the pancreas.

However, the results need very careful interpretation.

Weight-loss drugs have exploded in popularity – but a full understanding of everything they touch in the body is still coming together.

“This is new territory,” said lead researcher Dr Ziyad al-Aly, clinical epidemiologist at Washington University.

Initially, they were a proven treatment for type 2 diabetes. Then, weight loss was noticed as a significant side-effect – and Ozempic and Wegovy became household names.

The study used data on US veterans with type 2 diabetes, some of whom were given Ozempic or Wegovy and some more standard drugs – to measure their effect on 175 other illnesses.

There appeared to be a significant boon to heart health, with lower levels of heart attacks, stroke, heart failure and high blood pressure, in those taking the new weight-loss drugs.

They also cut the risk of substance abuse (including alcohol, opioids and cannabis) as well as reducing schizophrenia, suicidal thoughts and seizures.

Despite the study being short, and people taking the drugs for only 3.5 years because of how new they are, it reported a 12% reduction in Alzheimer’s disease.

There was also less liver cancer, muscle pain and chronic kidney disease as well as a noted reduction in bacterial infections and fever.

On the flip side, people were more likely to have problems in their digestive system. Feeling sick, tummy pain, inflammation in the stomach, diverticulitis (bulges in the intestines that can be painful) and haemorrhoids were more common on Ozempic or Wegovy.

The data, published in the journal Nature Medicine, also showed low blood pressure, including fainting, headaches, disturbed sleep, kidney stones, inflammation in the kidneys and a range of bone or joint pains, including arthritis, became more frequent.

“It was definitely eye-opening for me to see all these different hits in different organ systems,” Dr Aly told BBC News.

The explanations for the drugs’ seemingly wide-ranging impact are both obvious and mysterious.

Losing excess weight would in turn improve health. For example, lower levels of sleep apnoea – when breathing stops and starts while slumbering – is thought to be down to losing weight around the tongue and throat, which can block the airways.

But the drugs also appear to be directly altering the behaviour of cells and tissues in the body.

Dr Aly said: “Obesity is bad for the brain. Obesity is bad for mental health. Obesity is bad for the heart. Obesity could be the mother of all ills.”

Ozempic and Wegovy have the same active ingredient, semaglutide, in different doses, and mimic the hormone glucagon-like peptide-1.

Released by the gut after eating, GLP-1 travels through the blood and sticks to little receptors on the surface of brains cells.

This tells the brain there is food in the stomach and is why people feel less hungry after eating.

However, receptors that respond to GLP-1 are found throughout the body, including in the heart and some parts of the immune system.

“It is very clear this class of drugs seem to suppress reward mechanisms [in the brain so it] inhibits that urge to seek out alcohol, to seek out tobacco, to seek out gambling,” Dr Aly said.

Meanwhile, lower levels of inflammation, the alarm bell of the immune system, could have a wide range of health impacts.

The range of health benefits may strengthen the case for some people using the drugs, Dr Aly said.

“When you add more benefit, for the people who really are at risk of these conditions, that’s an added plus,” he said.

But for those whose weight is not affecting their health, “maybe the risk that they’re buying themselves is actually much higher than the benefit”.

However, the study has drawbacks that limit its findings.

Most of the veterans were white men, so it did not include any female-specific effects, such as the anecdotal phenomenon of improved fertility and unexpected “Ozempic babies”.

And there could be reasons why some had been prescribed Ozempic or Weygovy, rather than other drugs, that could provide alternative explanations for some of the findings.

Thorough clinical trials have already proven benefits to heart health – and nausea is a known side-effect – but other findings will need to go through similar rigorous testing.

Alzheimer’s starts more than a decade before symptoms appear – but this study suggests just a few years on semaglutide has a protective effect.

Trials are already under way to work out if this effect is real.

“Such trials will lead us much closer to the truth,” Prof Naveed Sattar, from the University of Glasgow, said.

“Fortunately… several will report out in the next one to four years.”

And while “interesting”, he said this latest study’s findings were not strong enough to influence how the drugs were prescribed.

Prof Sir Stephen O’Rahilly, from the University of Cambridge, said the study needed to be interpreted “carefully” but provided “useful reassurance” about the drugs’ safety in people with diabetes.

And further studies in other patients were “awaited with interest”.

The “most surprising finding” was the increase in joint pain, since weight loss should reduce pressure on the joints.

But the fact some cells in the immune system had GLP-1 receptors meant the impact of these drugs was “somewhat unpredictable” and while some inflammatory disorders may be eased, “others might conceivably be exacerbated”, Prof O’Rahilly said.