The Trump administration emailed thousands of federal employees on Wednesday, ordering them to report any efforts to “disguise” diversity initiatives in their agencies or face “adverse consequences”.

The request came after President Donald Trump banned diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) offices and programmes throughout the government.

Emails seen by the BBC directed workers to “report all facts and circumstances” to a new government email address within 10 days.

Some employees interpreted it as a demand to sell out their colleagues to the White House.

“We’re really freaked out and overwhelmed,” said one employee at the Department Health and Human Services (HHS).

The Office of Personnel Management, which manages the federal workforce, issued guidance requiring agency heads to send a notice to their staff by 17:00 eastern time on Wednesday. It included an email template that many federal staffers ultimately received that night.

Some employees, like those at the Treasury Department, got slightly different versions of the email.

The Treasury Department email excluded the warning about “adverse consequences” for not reporting DEI initiatives, according to a copy shared with the BBC.

In one of his first actions as president, Trump signed two executive orders ending “diversity, equity, and inclusion” or “DEI” programmes within the federal government and announced any employees working in those roles would immediately be placed on paid administrative leave.

Such programmes are designed to increase minority participation in the workforce and educate employees about discrimination.

But critics of DEI, like Trump, argue that the practice itself is discriminatory because it takes race, gender, sexual identity or other characteristics into consideration.

Trump and his allies attacked the practice frequently during the campaign.

In a speech Thursday at the World Economic Conference in Davos, Switzerland, Trump declared he was making America a “merit-based country”.

Critics of DEI have praised Trump’s decision.

“President Trump’s executive orders rescinding affirmative action and banning DEI programs are a major milestone in American civil rights progress and a critical step towards building a colour-blind society,” Yukong Mike Zhao, president of the Asian American Coalition for Education, said in a statement.

The group had supported a successful effort at the US Supreme Court to overturn affirmative action programmes at US universities.

But current federal employees, who spoke to the BBC on condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation, said that the email they received felt more like an attempt to intimidate staff than to make the government more fair.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

President Trump has signed a torrent of executive orders since he took office, including a hiring freeze in the federal government, an order for workers to return to the office and an attempt to reclassify thousands of government employees in order to make them easier to fire.

The HHS employee who spoke to the BBC criticised the government’s DEI practices, believing that while it was important to build a diverse staff and create opportunities in health and medical fields, “identity politics have played into how we function normally and that’s not beneficial to the workforce”.

“But that doesn’t mean I want my colleagues to get fired,” the employee added.

He described the impact the email and the DEI orders had on his agency as “very calculated chaos”.

The employee’s division had been thrown into confusion, he said, with questions about hiring practices going forward, as well as what programmes and directives were allowed to continue, given Trump’s broad definition of DEI.

A second HHS employee said that hiring and research grants had been frozen and the entire department staff was waiting to see what they could do next.

The HHS, and one of its subsidiary agencies, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), issue millions of dollars in federal grants to universities and researchers across the globe to advance scientific research.

Agency employees feared that the DEI order could have an impact outside the government as well. One questioned if grants that allowed laboratories to create more opportunities for hiring minority scientists and medical professionals would now get the axe.

An employee who worked at the Food and Drug Administration told the BBC that she had not received the email, but all DEI-related activities had been paused.

“We have been told by seniors to keep doing our jobs,” she said. “But there is a sense of fear about how it’s going to have an impact on our work in general.”

The top prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) says he will seek arrest warrants against senior leaders of the Taliban government in Afghanistan over the persecution of women and girls.

Karim Khan said there were reasonable grounds to suspect Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and chief justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani bore criminal responsibility for crimes against humanity on gender grounds.

ICC judges will now decide whether to issue an arrest warrant.

The ICC investigates and brings to justice those responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, intervening when national authorities cannot or will not prosecute.

In a statement, Mr Khan said the two men were “criminally responsible for persecuting Afghan girls and women, as well as persons whom the Taliban perceived as not conforming with their ideological expectations of gender identity or expression, and persons whom the Taliban perceived as allies of girls and women”.

Opposition to the Taliban government is “brutally repressed through the commission of crimes including murder, imprisonment, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, enforced disappearance, and other inhumane acts”, he added.

The persecution was committed from at least 15 August 2021 until the present day, across Afghanistan, the statement said.

Akhundzada became the supreme commander of the Taliban in 2016, and is now leader of the so-called Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. In the 1980s, he participated in Islamist groups fighting against the Soviet military campaign in Afghanistan.

Haqqani was a close associate of Taliban founder Mullah Omar and served as a negotiator on behalf of the Taliban during discussions with US representatives in 2020.

The ICC prosecutor’s office told the BBC that issues slowed down the pace of the investigation, including “the lack of cooperation” from the Taliban authorities.

“Due to fear, individuals with important information for the investigation are frequently unwilling to come forward,” the office added.

The Taliban government is yet to comment on the ICC statement.

Nader Nadery, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Wilson Center who participated in peace talks between the previous Afghan government and the Taliban, said that many Afghan women had been waiting for this moment.

“While it might not immediately change things, it sends a strong message that there won’t be impunity,” he told the BBC.

“It builds hope for many of those activists and Afghan women on the ground that probably there is a way forward and keeping that hope alive, I believe, is a major contribution immediately.”

The Taliban regained power in Afghanistan in 2021, 20 years after a US-led invasion toppled their regime in the fallout of the 9/11 attacks in New York, but its government has not been formally recognised by any other foreign power.

“Morality laws” have since meant women have lost dozens of rights on the country.

Afghanistan is now the only country in the world where women and girls are prevented from accessing secondary and higher education – some one-and-a-half million have been deliberately deprived of schooling.

The Taliban has repeatedly promised they would be re-admitted to school once a number of issues were resolved – including ensuring the curriculum was “Islamic”. This has yet to happen.

Beauty salons have been shut down and women are prevented from entering public parks, gyms and baths.

A dress code means they must be fully covered and strict rules have banned them from travelling without a male chaperone or looking a man in the eye unless they’re related by blood or marriage.

In December, women were also banned from training as midwives and nurses, effectively closing off their last route to further education in the country.

Japanese TV host Masahiro Nakai, one of the country’s most recognisable faces on television, has announced that he is retiring after a sexual assault allegation that has rocked the country’s entertainment industry.

Nakai, who presented for Fuji Television, was accused of sexually assaulting a woman at a 2023 dinner party held by staff.

Dozens of companies have pulled their commercials from Fuji Television amid claims that the company’s staff had tried to cover up the scandal.

Nakai has denied using violence against the woman, and said on 9 January that he had “resolved” the matter with her through a settlement. But this did little to quell public anger.

In a social media statement posted on Thursday, Nakai said that he was “truly sorry for causing trouble and losses to so many people”.

“I’m really, really sorry for saying good-bye this way.”

His resignation comes days after Fuji Television president Koichi Minato confirmed that the company did not disclose Nakai’s scandal despite being aware of it long before it was reported in the media.

Vehicle makers Nissan and Toyota, as well as retail company Seven & I holdings which runs the retail 7-eleven convenience store chain, were among those that announced they were pulling advertising from Fuji Television over the scandal.

Fuji Television is expected to set up an independent committee to investigate the scandal.

Appearances of Nakai have also been scrubbed from programmes.

Nakai soared to stardom in the 1990s as the leader of Japanese boy band SMAP, one of Asia’s most successful acts. The group released more than 50 singles – many of which became chart toppers – and launched a weekly variety show on prime-time television.

After SMAP disbanded in 2016, Nakai went on to become a television host as well as one of the wealthiest celebrities in Japan.

Japan’s entertainment industry is facing a reckoning with long unspoken cases of sexual assault.

In 2023, J-pop executive Johnny Kitagawa, who by then had been dead for four years, was exposed to have sexually abused hundreds of boys and young men for decades.

His talent agency, Johnny & Associates, had managed SMAP among other boy bands.

“It’s like the United States doesn’t actually understand what I did for this country, it’s a betrayal,” Abdullah tells the BBC.

He fled Afghanistan with his parents amid the US withdrawal in August 2021 and is now a paratrooper for the US military. He worries he can’t help his sister and her husband escape too, because of President Donald Trump’s executive order suspending a resettlement programme.

The order cancels all flights and applications for Afghan refugees, without any exemption for families of active servicemembers.

Trump argues the decision addresses “record levels of migration” that threaten “the availability of resources for Americans”.

But Abdullah and several other Afghan refugees have told the BBC they feel the US has “turned its back” on them, despite years of working alongside American officials, troops and non-profit organisations in Afghanistan. We are not using their real names, as they worry doing so could jeopardise their cases or put their families at risk.

As soon as Abdullah heard about the order, he called his sister. “She was crying, she’s lost all hope,” he said. He believes his work has made her a target of the Taliban government which took power in 2021.

“The anxiety, it’s just unimaginable. She thinks we’ll never be able to see each other again,” he says.

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During the war, Abdullah says he was an interpreter for US forces. When he left Afghanistan, his sister and her husband couldn’t get passports in time to board the flight.

Suhail Shaheen, a spokesperson for the Taliban government, told the BBC there is an amnesty for anyone who worked with international forces and all Afghans can “live in the country without any fear”. He claims these refugees are “economic migrants”.

But a UN report in 2023 cast doubt on assurances from the Taliban government. It found hundreds of former government officials and armed forces members were allegedly killed despite a general amnesty.

Abdullah’s sister and her husband had completed the medical exams and interviews required for resettlement in the US. The BBC has seen a document from the US Department of Defense endorsing their application.

Now Abdullah says Trump’s insistence that immigration is too high does not justify his separation from his family. He describes sleepless nights, and says the anxiety is affecting his work in his combat unit, serving the United States.

Babak, a former legal adviser to the Afghan Air Force, is still in hiding in Afghanistan.

“They’re not just breaking their promise to us – they’re breaking us,” he says.

The BBC has seen letters from the United Nations confirming his role, as well as a letter endorsing his asylum claim by a Lt Colonel in the US Air Force. The endorsement adds that he provided advice on strikes targeting militants linked to both the Taliban and the Islamic State group.

Babak can’t understand the president’s decision, given that he worked alongside US troops. “We risked our lives because of those missions. Now we’re in grave danger,” he says.

He has been moving his wife and young son from location to location, desperately trying to stay hidden. He claims his brother was tortured for his whereabouts. The BBC cannot verify this part of his story, given the nature of his claims.

Babak is appealing to Trump and his National Security Adviser Mike Waltz to change their minds.

“Mike Waltz, you served in Afghanistan. Please encourage the president,” he tells us.

Before saying goodbye, he adds: “The one ray of light we’ve been holding onto has been extinguished.”

Ahmad managed to fly out to the US amid the chaos of the withdrawal but is now separated from his family. He felt he had no choice but to leave his father, mother and teenage siblings behind.

If he and his father had not worked with the US, he says, his family would not be targets of the Taliban government. “I can’t sleep knowing I’m one of the reasons they’re in this situation,” he adds.

Before the Taliban takeover, Ahmad worked for a non-profit called Open Government Partnership (OGP), co-founded by the US 13 years ago and headquartered in Washington. He says the work he’s proudest of is establishing a special court to address abuses against women.

But he claims his work at OGP and his advocacy for women made him a target and he was shot by Taliban fighters in 2021 before the Taliban took over the country.

The BBC has seen a letter from a hospital in Pennsylvania assessing “evidence of injury from bullet and bullet fragments” which they say is “consistent with his account of what happened to him in Kabul”.

Making matters worse, he says his family is also in danger because his father was a colonel with the Afghan army and assisted the CIA. The BBC has seen a certificate, provided by the Afghan National Security Forces, thanking his father for his service.

Ahmad says the Taliban government has harassed his parents, brothers and sisters, so they fled to Pakistan. The BBC has seen photos showing Ahmad’s father and brother being treated in a hospital for injuries he claims were inflicted by people from the Taliban government.

His family had completed several steps of the resettlement programme. He says he even provided evidence that he has enough funds to support his family once they arrive in the US, without any government help.

Now Ahmad says the situation is critical. His family are in Pakistan on visas that will expire within months. He has contacted the IOM and has been told to “be patient”.

The head of #AfghanEvac, a non-profit group helping eligible Afghan refugees resettle, said he estimated 10,000-15,000 people were in the late stages of their applications.

Mina, who is pregnant, has been waiting for a flight out of Islamabad for six months. She worries her terror will threaten her unborn child. “If I lose the baby, I’ll kill myself,” she told the BBC.

She says she used to protest for women’s rights, even after the Taliban government took control of Afghanistan. She claims she was arrested in 2023 and detained overnight.

“Even then I didn’t want to leave Afghanistan. I went into hiding after my release, but they called me and said next time, they’d kill me,” she says.

Mina worries the Pakistani government will send her back to Afghanistan. That’s partly because Pakistan will not grant Afghan refugees asylum indefinitely.

The country has taken in hundreds of thousands of refugees from its neighbour, over decades of instability in the region. According to the UN refugee agency, the country hosts three million Afghan nationals, about 1.4 million of whom are documented.

As cross-border tensions with the Taliban government have flared, there has been growing concern over the fate of Afghans in Pakistan, with reports of alleged intimidation and detentions. The UN special rapporteur has said he’s concerned and Afghans in the region deserve better treatment.

Pakistan’s government says it is expelling foreign nationals who are in the country illegally back to Afghanistan and confirmed search raids were conducted in January.

According to the IOM, more than 795,000 Afghans have been expelled from Pakistan since last September.

The Afghan refugees we’ve spoken to feel caught between a homeland where their lives are in danger, and a host country whose patience is running out.

They had been pinning their hopes on the US – but what seemed a safe harbour has been abruptly blocked off by the new president until further notice.

Japan’s central bank has raised the cost of borrowing to its highest level in 17 years, as it tries to curb rising prices.

The move by the Bank of Japan (BOJ) to raise its short-term policy rate to 0.5% comes just hours after the latest economic data showed prices rose last month at the fastest pace in 16 months.

The BOJ’s last interest rate hike in July, along with a weak jobs report from the US, caught investors around the world by surprise, which triggered a stock market selloff.

The bank’s governor, Kazuo Ueda, signalled this latest rate hike in advance in a bid to avoid another market shock.

According to official figures, core consumer prices in Japan increased by 3% in December.

Last year, the BOJ raised the cost of borrowing for the first time in 17 years.

The decision came as some of the country’s biggest corporations increased salaries for their workers to help them cope with the rising cost of living.

Wages in the country had flatlined since the late 1990s as prices rose very slowly or even fell causing policy makers to stick to an ultra-loose monetary policy until after the pandemic.

Australian police are investigating after a statue of Captain James Cook was covered in red paint and disfigured, ahead of the Australia Day weekend.

It is the second time in 12 months that the statue in Sydney has been vandalised.

Australia Day is a national holiday that is held each year on 26 January – the anniversary of Britain’s First Fleet landing at Sydney Cove in 1788. Many Indigenous Australians say the date causes them pain.

The local council in Randwick – the suburb where the statue is located – described the vandalism as “a disservice to the community and a disservice to reconciliation”.

Councillor Carolyn Martin told Sydney radio station 2GB that the vandals had knocked off one hand and parts of the face and nose.

The statue – which was first unveiled in 1874 – was previously targeted in February last year, when it was covered with red paint and had parts of its sandstone damaged. Works to repair and restore it were completed a month later.

There are several Captain Cook statues across Australia, and others have also been vandalised on or around 26 January.

In 2024, one in Melbourne was cut down on the eve of the holiday, while its plinth was spray-painted with the words “the colony will fall”. Two years earlier the same statue had been splashed with red paint, while in 2018 it was graffitied with the words “no pride” and had an Aboriginal flag placed next to it.

Cook charted Australia’s east coast in 1770, laying the groundwork for the later decision to send the First Fleet, which was led by Captain Arthur Phillip.

Australia Day is a contentious holiday for some, particularly among those in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities who view it as a reminder of the dispossession and displacement of their people.

To many Australians though, it is celebrated as a day of nation-building and achievement. Polling suggests a majority of people are supportive of keeping the holiday, despite suggestions it should be changed to a different date.

US President Donald Trump has ordered officials to make plans to declassify documents related to three of the most consequential assassinations in US history – the killings of John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr.

“A lot of people are waiting for this for long, for years, for decades,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday. “And everything will be revealed.”

The order directs top administration officials to present a plan to declassify the documents within 15 days.

President John F Kennedy was killed in Dallas in 1963. His brother Robert F Kennedy was assassinated while running for president in California 1968, just two months after King, America’s most famous civil rights leader, was murdered in Memphis, Tennessee.

Many of the documents related to the investigations have been released in the years since, although thousands still remain redacted, particularly related to the sprawling JFK investigation.

President John F Kennedy was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald, a Marine veteran who had defected to the Soviet Union and later returned to the United States.

A government commission determined that Oswald acted alone.

However, unanswered questions have long dogged the case, and have given rise to alternative theories about the involvement of government agents, the mafia and other nefarious characters – as well as more outlandish conspiracy theories.

Opinion polls over decades have indicated that most Americans don’t believe Oswald was the sole assassin.

In 1992, Congress passed a law to release all documents related to the investigation within 25 years. Both Trump in his first term and President Joe Biden released piles of JFK-related documents, but thousands – out of a total of millions – still remain partially or fully secret.

Trump promised to declassify all of the files in his first term, but held back on his promise after CIA and FBI officials persuaded him to keep some files secret. Today’s executive order states that continued secrecy “is not consistent with the public interest”.

“As a statement of intention it’s great that the president has put his promise into words on paper. That’s important,” said Jefferson Morley, a former Washington Post journalist, JFK assassination expert and editor of the online newsletter JFK Facts.

“But the details and implementation are everything. This process is just beginning. How exactly this is going to be carried out is not at all clear,” he said.

Recent document releases have revealed new details about the circumstances surrounding the assassination, including about the CIA’s extensive monitoring of Oswald.

In 2023, Paul Landis, an 88-year-old former Secret Service agent who witnessed the assassination at close range, said he took a bullet from the car after Kennedy was shot.

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Experts say the detail complicates the official story that a single bullet hit both the president and Texas Governor John Connally, who was riding in the motorcade and survived the shooting.

Mr Morley said new information has cast further doubt on the theory that Oswald acted alone and predicted that a full release of all the redacted documents could add significantly to public knowledge.

But he said that there may not be a “smoking gun”, and that CIA and other security officials will push to maintain some level of secrecy.

“This story is not over,” he said.

During the signing ceremony at the White House on Thursday, Trump asked for the pen he used to sign the order to be given to Robert F Kennedy Jr, who is RFK’s son, JFK’s nephew and the president’s nominee for health secretary.

RFK Jr has long cast doubt on the official narratives about his uncle’s assassination as well as that of his father, Robert F Kennedy.

Kennedy Sr was killed in a Los Angeles ballroom by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian man angry at US support for Israel. RFK Jr has spoken to Sirhan in prison and has stated that he does not believe Sirhan killed his father, although other Kennedy family members reject that claim.

Martin Luther King Jr was shot to death by white nationalist James Earl Ray. Members of the King family have alleged Ray did not act alone and was part of a larger conspiracy.

Satellite images reviewed by BBC Verify have shown a major oil slick spreading across the Kerch Strait that separates Russia from annexed Crimea, a month after two oil tankers were badly damaged in the Black Sea.

Oil has leaked into the strait from two ships which ran into trouble during bad weather on 15 December. Volgoneft-239 ran aground following the storm, while Volgoneft-212 sank.

​​Up to 5,000 tonnes of oil has now leaked, and media reports and official statements analysed by BBC Verify suggest the spill has spread across the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

A senior Russian scientist called the spill the country’s worst “environmental catastrophe” of the 21st Century.

“This is the first time fuel oil has been spilled in such quantities,” Viktor Danilov-Danilyan – the head of science at the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) – said in a 17 January interview with a Russian newspaper.

Russian scientists said in December that this spill could be more than twice the size of a similar disaster in the strait in 2007, which saw up to 1,600 tonnes of heavy oil leak into the sea. Ukraine’s ministry of ecology has estimated that the clear up from the latest spill could cost the Russian state up to $14bn (£11.4bn).

Paul Johnston, a scientist at Greenpeace Research Laboratories, said “there’s always an element of uncertainty around oil spills”, but a lack of timely information has heightened this uncertainty further.

“I’m not entirely optimistic we’ll ever know the full extent of the problem,” he added.

Satellite images reviewed by BBC Verify on 10 January – the most recent available high-resolution photos – showed a massive oil slick running through the strait, measuring at least 25km (15 miles) long. A second, smaller slick measuring around 5.7km (3.5 miles) long is also visible.

Mr Danilov-Danilyan said that oil could “by late January reach Odesa” in southern Ukraine and “one cannot rule out” it travelling as far as the coasts of Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey.

In a statement to BBC Verify, a spokesperson for Greenpeace said the group estimated that oil from the spill now covered an area totalling up to 400 sq km.

The spill appears to have moved quickly after the initial incident. On 24 December, satellite images reviewed by BBC Verify showed oil accumulating on a beach in Anapa – some 40 miles from the strait.

BBC Verify has analysed reports in Russian media, statements from officials and Greenpeace releases from this month that talk about oil being found or cleared up on various beaches.

The reports suggest that the oil has now spread as far north as the occupied city of Berdyansk in Ukraine and as far south-west as Lake Donuzlav on the Crimean Peninsula, which Russian illegally annexed in 2014.

The leak involves heavy M100-grade fuel oil that solidifies at a temperature of 25 degrees Celsius.

A Greenpeace spokesperson told the BBC that M100 doesn’t stay on the water’s surface for long. Once underwater, it is “technically impossible to neutralise”, and can take decades to be biodegraded by marine micro-organisms.

Footage recorded by the Russian NGO The Earth Touches Everyone and included below appeared to show large amounts of heavy oil accumulating on the seabed.

Some experts have warned that the leak has heavily impacted marine life in the region. Footage authenticated by BBC Verify has shown birds covered in oil.

It is not known exactly how many animals have been harmed by the spill.

Overall, Russian officials say about 6,000 birds have been delivered to “rehabilitation centres” on the Russian mainland, but it is unclear how many of them will survive. A local bird sanctuary in Stavropol territory said of 1,051 birds affected by the oil spill that have been delivered to them only about 17% have survived.

Greenpeace told BBC Verify that the final number of dead birds could be far higher, citing the 12,000-13,000 killed by the 2007 spill in the strait.

A dolphin rehabilitation centre in Russia’s Krasnodar Territory told Interfax news agency that around 70 dead dolphins have been discovered on the shores following the latest oil spill.

“This is a horrific blow to the ecosystem,” Mr Danilov-Danilyan told Russia media. He predicted the death of “tens of thousands of birds, many dolphins, [and] big losses in the coastal flora and fauna”.

“Practically nothing, other than microorganisms that feed on fuel oil and break it up, can live in that sort of environment, even in salt water. The removal of 200,000–500,000 tonnes, at least, of contaminated soil too will not go without consequences, and will certainly lead to a reshaping of the coast,” he said.

Dmitry Lisitsyn, Executive Fellow at Yale University’s School of the Environment, told BBC Verify that under Russian safety regulations these types of tankers are barred from leaving rivers in winter.

“Those ships are not intended for high waves, they are very long with a shallow draught,” he said.

Questions have also been raised about the seaworthiness of the vessels, which are both over 50 years old, according to Marine Traffic.

Footage released by Russian authorities showed the bow of one tanker completely broken off during the incident, with streaks of oil visible in the water. The captains of both vessels have been arrested and criminal investigations have been opened into the incident.

Ukrainian activists have accused the ships of being part of Russia’s so-called shadow oil fleet. Moscow has been accused of using the so-called ghost fleet of tankers, which are often poorly maintained and lack proper insurance, to move oil and circumvent sanctions, though analysts the BBC has spoken to could not confirm the claims.

Experts say the long-term fallout from the spill may not be limited to just Russia.

“In general, Russia has suffered more than any other country so far from the Kerch Strait accident,” Dmitry Markin of Greenpeace said.

“However, the majority of the leaked fuel oil is still in the sea. Therefore, the long-term consequences for the occupied territories of Ukraine may be no less severe.”

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Everything gets mixed up together. The child’s multi-coloured backpack. A running shoe. A steel pot perforated by shrapnel. Bits of beds, chairs, cookers, lampshades; the glass of broken windows, mirrors, drinking glasses. Scraps of clothing.

These last shredded, dust covered items can be markers. Often they belong to the dead lying near the surface of the rubble.

“Since the Israeli occupation forces withdrew from Rafah, we have had about 150 calls from civilians about the presence of their relatives’ bodies under houses,” says Haitham al-Homs, director of Emergency and Ambulance Services for the Civil Defence agency in Rafah, at the southernmost end of the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian health authorities estimate that 10,000 people are missing. Where there is no obvious marker like clothing at the surface, the search teams rely on information from relatives and neighbours, or they follow the smell of death that radiates from the ruins.

The Israeli government has banned the BBC and other international news organisations from entering Gaza and reporting independently. We depend on trusted local journalists to record the experiences of people like those who are searching for the missing.

At the end of every day, Mr Homs updates the list of those found. His team excavates the rubble with care, aware that they are searching for fragments of broken humanity. Often what is recovered is no more than a pile of bones. Israel’s high explosive bombs blasted and mangled into pieces many of the dead. The bones and scraps of clothing are placed in white body bags upon which Mr Homs writes the Arabic word “majhoul”. It means “unidentified”.

A resident of Rafah, Osama Saleh, went back to his home after the ceasefire and found a skeleton inside. The skull was fractured. Mr Saleh reckons the body lay there for four to five months. “We are humans with feeling…I can’t convey to you how miserable the tragedy is,” he says.

To be surrounded every day by the smell of decomposing bodies is a deeply unsettling experience, as those who have witnessed the aftermath of mass death will often testify.

“The bodies are terrifying. We are seeing terror,” Osama Saleh says. “I swear it is a painful feeling, I have cried.”

Families have also been arriving at hospitals to search for remains. In the courtyard of the European Hospital in southern Gaza, collections of bones and clothing are spread out on body bags.

Abdul Salam al-Mughayer, 19, from Rafah, went missing in the Shaboura area; according to his uncle, Zaki, it was a place you didn’t come back from if you went there during the war. “So, we didn’t go to look for him there for that reason. We wouldn’t have returned.”

Zaki believes a set of bones and clothes in front of him belong to the missing Abdul Salam. He is standing with a hospital worker, Jihad Abu Khreis, waiting for Abdul Salam’s brother to arrive.

“It’s 99% certain the body is his,” Mr Abu Khreis says, “but now we need the final confirmation from his brother, the closest people to him, to make sure that the trousers and shoes are his.”

Soon after the brother arrived from the tented refugee camp of al-Mawasi, also in southern Gaza. He had a photograph of Abdul Salam on his phone. There was a photo of his running shoes.

He knelt before the body bag and pulled back the cover. He touched the skull, the clothes. He saw the shoes. There were tears in his eyes. The identification was complete.

Another family moved along the row of body bags. There was a grandmother, her son, an adult sister, and a toddler. The child was kept at the back of the group while the elderly woman and her son looked under the cover of the body bag. They stared for a few seconds and then embraced each other in grief.

After this, the family, helped by hospital workers, carried away the remains. They were weeping, but nobody cried aloud.

Aya al-Dabeh was 13 years old and was living with her family and hundreds of other refugees at a school in Tal al-Hawa, in Gaza City in the north. She was one of nine children.

One day at the start of the war Aya went to go to the bathroom upstairs at the school and – her family says – she was shot in the chest by an Israeli sniper. The Israel Defense Forces say they do not target civilians and blame Hamas for attacking from civilian areas. During the war the UN Human Rights Office said that that there has been “intense shooting by Israeli forces in densely populated areas resulting in apparently unlawful killings, including of unarmed bystanders.”

The family buried Aya beside the school, and her mother Lina al- Dabah, 43, wrapped her in a blanket “to protect her from the rain and the sun” in case the grave was disturbed and exposed to the elements.

When the Israeli military took over the school Lina fled south. She went with four other children – two daughters and two sons – to reunite with her husband who’d gone earlier with the couple’s other children. Lina had no option but to leave her daughter where she lay, hoping to come back and recover the remains for a proper burial once peace came.

“Aya was a very kind girl, and everyone loved her. She used to love everyone, her teachers and her studies, and she was very good at school. She wished well for everyone,” Lina says. When the ceasefire came Lina asked relatives still living in the north to check up on Aya’s grave. The news was devastating.

“They informed us that her head was in one place, her legs were in another, while her ribs were somewhere else. The one who went to visit her was shocked and sent us the pictures,” she says.

“When I saw her, I couldn’t understand how my daughter was taken out of her grave, and how did the dogs eat her? I can’t control my nerves.”

The relatives have collected the bones and soon Lina and her family will travel north to carry Aya’s remains to a proper grave. For Lina, there is grief with no end, and a question that has no answer – the same question that sits with so many parents who lost children in Gaza. What could they have done differently, the circumstances of the war being what they were?

“I couldn’t take her from where she was buried,” says Lina. Then she asks: “Where could I have taken her?”

Netflix musical Emilia Pérez leads this year’s Oscars nominations, with Wicked also among the top contenders.

Emilia Pérez, about a Mexican drug lord who changes gender, has 13 nominations in total – although one of its stars, Selena Gomez, missed out.

Wicked received 10 nominations – including nods for British actress Cynthia Erivo and her co-star Ariana Grande.

Three-and-a-half-hour epic The Brutalist, starring Adrien Brody, also has 10 nominations, while Demi Moore has the first Oscar nomination of her career.

• Follow reaction to the Oscar nominations

• List of nominations in full

• Full coverage of the Oscars

Moore, 62, is nominated for best actress for playing a fading star who swaps her body for a younger and more beautiful version of herself in The Substance.

She said an Oscar nomination was “an incredible honour and these last few months have been beyond my wildest dreams”.

Referring to the wildfires in Los Angeles, she continued: “This is a time of incredible contrasts and right now, my heart is with my friends, family, neighbours, and community here in LA.”

In the best actor category, two big names are in contention for portraying the early years of very different real-life figures – Sebastian Stan for playing Donald Trump in The Apprentice and Timothée Chalamet for playing Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown.

That makes Chalamet, 29, the youngest person to get two best actor nominations since James Dean in the 1950s, according to Variety.

But 2003 best actor winner Brody is favourite to scoop that prize again, for playing a Hungarian architect hired by a wealthy American after World War Two in The Brutalist.

• Emilia Pérez – 13 nominations
• Wicked – 10
• The Brutalist – 10
• A Complete Unknown – 8
• Conclave – 8

The Academy Awards ceremony, hosted by US comedian Conan O’Brien, will take place on 2 March.

The nominations had been due to be announced last week, but were postponed twice because of the fires.

Organisers have said the ceremony will “reflect on the recent events while highlighting the strength, creativity, and optimism that defines Los Angeles and our industry”.

Emilia Pérez, which follows the leader of a Mexican drugs cartel who decides to change gender and identity, hasn’t set Netflix alight so far and has divided opinion among those who have watched it.

But Oscar voters have given it a resounding seal of approval.

It it the most-nominated non-English language film of all time. It’s actually a French production, is set mostly in Mexico and is mostly acted in Spanish.

Karla Sofía Gascón is nominated for best actress for the movie’s lead role, making her the first trans person to be nominated in an acting category (although Elliot Page was nominated for Juno in 2008, before the actor transitioned).

Zoe Saldaña, who plays Perez’s lawyer, is up for best supporting actress (despite having more screen time than Gascón). The film’s only notable omission is Selina Gomez, who was an outsider for a nod in the same category for playing Perez’s wife.

Erivo is the first black British woman to receive two Oscar nominations for acting, after also being nominated for Harriet in 2020.

If she wins best actress this time, for playing Elphaba in Wicked, she’ll become an EGOT – having completed the set of Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards.

Ralph Fiennes is flying the flag in the best actor category with his first nomination for 28 years. He’s recognised for playing a cardinal who oversees the selection of a new Pope in Conclave.

Elsewhere, Felicity Jones is nominated for best supporting actress for The Brutalist – a decade after her first Oscar nomination – while Sir Elton John is in the best original song race.

The country will also be rooting for two more screen legends – Wallace and Gromit (and their makers Aardman Animations), who are hoping for their fourth Oscar. They are shortlisted for best animated feature for their latest outing, Vengeance Most Fowl.

Creator Nick Park told the BBC the nomination was a “surprise and real privilege”, while co-director Merlin Crossingham said he “nearly spilt my tea” when hearing the news before adding that “we all had a huge cheer and celebration”.

Wicked, based on the Broadway musical about the origin story of the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz, has been a big box-office success and is now also a hit with Oscar voters.

It has exceeded many expectations with its 10 nominations – two more than Barbie managed last year.

After their widely-praised performances in both the film and on the press tour, Erivo and Grande will be reunited on the Oscars red carpet.

Grande said she “cannot stop crying” after receiving the first Academy Award nomination of her career.

However, the film’s mastermind Jon M Chu missed out on a nomination for best director.

Pamela Anderson had scored Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations for her vulnerable and powerful performance as an ageing Las Vegas performer in The Last Showgirl, but has missed out at the Oscars.

Best actress is a competitive field, and other big names including Angelina Jolie (Maria) and Nicole Kidman (Babygirl) were also overlooked.

British actress Marianne Jean-Baptiste could also have been a contender for playing a constantly miserable woman in Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths.

Jamie Lee Curtis lost out on a spot in the best supporting actress category for her role alongside Anderson in The Last Showgirl, while Gladiator II’s Denzel Washington couldn’t notch up the 10th acting nomination of his career.

In fact, 24 years after the original Gladiator won five Oscars, the sequel could only manage a single nomination, for best costume design.

Former James Bond star Daniel Craig had a chance for his first Oscar nomination – but voters overlooked his performance in Queer, as a gay man who ventures into the jungle in search of a plant with telepathic qualities.

And Irish-language rappers Kneecap were disappointed – their film, which received six Bafta nominations last week, was overlooked by the Oscars.

Read more about this year’s nominated films:

• A Complete Unknown: Critics praise Chalamet’s portrayal of Bob Dylan
• Anora: Mikey Madison praised for breakout role as New York stripper
• The Apprentice: Sebastian Stan says Trump ‘should be grateful’ for controversial film
• Conclave: Critics praise ‘skin-prickling suspense’
• Dune: Part Two: ‘Like no other blockbuster’, say impressed critics
• Emilia Pérez: Selena Gomez ‘shines’ in Oscar-tipped musical
• The Substance: Demi Moore is over being perfect in new ‘risky and juicy’ horror role
• Wicked: Ariana Grande channelled her loss into Wicked role

Newly released satellite imagery shows Israel Defense Forces (IDF) construction taking place within the demilitarised buffer zone that separates the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from Syria.

The image, obtained exclusively by BBC Verify, shows building work taking place at a location more than 600m inside what is known as the Area of Separation (AoS).

Under the terms of Israel’s ceasefire agreement with Syria in 1974, the IDF is prohibited from crossing the so-called Alpha Line on the western edge of the AoS.

When contacted about the images, the IDF told the BBC its “forces are operating in southern Syria, within the buffer zone and at strategic points, to protect the residents of northern Israel.”

The imagery captured on 21 January shows new structures and trucks at the cleared area.

Construction appears to have begun at the beginning of this year, with lower resolution imagery showing gradual development at the site since 1 January.

A new track or road measuring around 1km also appears to join with a pre-existing road that leads into Israeli territory.

Drone photographs shared by a Syrian journalist 20 January shows trucks, excavators and bulldozers at the site.

Jeremy Binnie, Middle East specialist a defence intelligence company Janes told us: “The photo shows what appear to be four prefabricated guard posts that they will presumably crane into position in the corners, so this is somewhere they are planning to maintain at least an interim presence”.

The BBC has previously filmed military forces near the town of Majdal Shams, which is within the buffer zone and around 5.5km from the new construction.

In November, satellite imagery also showed the IDF building a trench following the Alpha Line on the western side of the buffer zone, stretching past Jubata al-Khashab.

Following the fall of the Syrian regime last month, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered his forces to enter the AoS, saying: “We will not allow any hostile force to establish itself on our border.”

The United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) has previously said that Israeli construction along the AoS with Syria amounts to “severe violations” of the ceasefire agreement.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

Southport killer Axel Rudakubana has been sentenced to a minimum of 52 years for the “sadistic” murders of three young girls in an attack described as “shocking” and “pure evil”.

Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, Bebe King, six, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, died while eight other children and two adults – dance class leader Leanne Lucas and businessman Jonathan Hayes – were seriously wounded.

The 18-year-old refused to come into the courtroom as he was sentenced at Liverpool Crown Court, having been removed from the dock earlier due to disruptive behaviour – which included demands to see a paramedic and shouts of “I feel ill”.

Sentencing him, judge Mr Justice Goose said: “Many who have heard the evidence might describe what he did as evil, who could dispute it?”

Earlier, the details of Rudakubana’s crimes were laid out in court for the first time in graphic detail – including CCTV and dashboard camera footage from outside the Hart Space studios on Hart Street.

• How the Southport attack unfolded
• Me and girls were easy prey, says Southport survivor
• How Southport murders have ‘forever changed’ town

The court heard how, just after 11:45 BST on 29 July, Rudakubana moved through the sold-out Taylor Swift-themed dance workshop, organised by Ms Lucas, “systematically” stabbing young girls as they sat making friendship bracelets and singing along to Swift’s music.

Prosecutor Deanna Heer KC also described how Rudakubana gloated about the attacks as he was escorted through Copy Lane police station after his arrest – saying he was “glad the children were dead”.

The teenager had booked a taxi to take him to Hart Street after leaving his home in Old School Close, Banks, west Lancashire, at 11:10 BST, the court was told.

Ms Heer played footage of Rudakubana asking the driver to point him to the address of the dance class – before getting out without paying.

The driver’s dashboard camera also captured Rudakubana walk up the stairs of the Hart Space building to the first-floor studio which had 26 children, Ms Lucas, and her colleague and friend Heidi Liddle inside.

Seconds later, the sounds of screaming children filled the courtroom and the footage showed girls streaming out of the Hart Space dance studio.

The families of the victims cried in the public gallery as Ms Heer played footage of three of the girls staggering into the street and collapsing – including two of the survivors and Alice.

Unlike Bebe and Elsie Dot, Alice had managed to get out of the building despite her grave injuries, but collapsed by the car of a woman who had arrived to pick up her daughter.

Inside the studio, Bebe had been subjected to 122 knife wounds, while Elsie Dot had 85.

Ms Liddle and one other child were hiding in a locked toilet on a landing outside – Ms Liddle later describing how she realised that some of the children had not escaped when she heard them begging Rudakubana to stop.

The police arrived at Hart Street shortly before 11:59 BST – three officers and a member of the public, window-cleaner Joel Verite, charged up those stairs to find Rudakubana stood over the body of Bebe King holding a knife.

Police body-camera footage showed him tackled to the floor as Mr Verite shouted in utter shock and horror at the injuries he saw had been inflicted on Bebe.

A short time later Ms Liddle and the child hiding with her were seen sobbing in terror and relief as the police told them it was safe to emerge.

One of the survivors, a seven-year-old girl referred to as Child A, had been pulled back inside the building by Rudakubana as she tried to escape and was stabbed repeatedly, before managing to stagger into the street where she fell to the ground.

A statement written by the mother of Child A, read by Ms Heer, said her father had been “broken” by what happened to his daughter.

“Our daughter has not only experienced the most violent, frenzied attack on her body, but she’s witnessed so much horror too.”

The leader of the dance class, Ms Lucas, who read her statement in court, looked around the packed courtroom at the family members of fellow victims and survivors as she spoke.

She said: “He targeted us because we were women and girls, vulnerable and easy prey.

“To discover that he had always set out to hurt the vulnerable is beyond comprehensible.

“For Alice, Elsie, Bebe, Heidi and the surviving girls, I’m surviving for you.”

Victim impact statements were also read out by Ms Heer, in which the grieving families of two of the murder victims branded their daughters’ killer as “pure evil” and said his actions had have left them in “continuous pain”.

Stan Reiz KC, mitigating, told the court Rudakubana had appeared to have been a “normal child” until he reached 13.

Mr Reiz said: “There is no psychiatric evidence before the court that could suggest that a mental disorder contributed to the defendant’s actions.

“However, he did make a transition from a normal, well-disciplined child to someone who was capable of committing acts of such shocking and senseless violence.”

In his sentencing remarks, Justice Goose said: “I am sure Rudakubana had the settled determination to carry out these offences and had he been able to, he would have killed each and every child – all 26 of them.”

Justice Goose confirmed the offences did not reach the legal definition of terrorism because he did not kill to further a political, religious or ideological cause.

However, he told the packed courtroom that whether the “motivation was terrorism or not misses the point”.

“What he did on 29 July last year has caused such shock and revulsion to the whole nation, that it must be viewed as being at the extreme level of crime”, the judge said.

“His culpability, and the harm he caused and intended, were at the highest.”

Rudakubana was sentenced for three counts of murder, 10 of attempted murder, one of producing the biological toxin ricin and one of possession of an Al Qaeda training manual, an offence under the Terrorism Act.

In a statement after the hearing, Elsie’s family offered their gratitude to the emergency services who responded to the incident.

“We are so thankful for their bravery, compassion and strength which should serve as an inspiration to everybody,” they said.

The family also thanked Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, King Charles and the Prince and Princess of Wales for arranging private meetings where they offered their condolences.

Earlier, the prime minister said “the thoughts of the entire nation” were with the families of Rudakubana’s victims.

Sir Keir said: “I want to say directly to the survivors, families and community of Southport – you are not alone. We stand with you in your grief.

“What happened in Southport was an atrocity and as the judge has stated, this vile offender will likely never be released.

“After one of the most harrowing moments in our country’s history we owe it to these innocent young girls and all those affected to deliver the change that they deserve.”

BBC North West Tonight

President Donald Trump has said the US does not need Canadian energy, vehicles or lumber as he spoke to global business leaders at the World Economic Forum.

Trump also reiterated his threat to impose tariffs on the country, saying it can be avoided if the neighbouring nation chose to “become a state” of the US.

“You can always become a state, and if you’re a state, we won’t have a deficit. We won’t have to tariff you,” he said to gasps in the hall in Davos.

Trump has threatened to impose up to 25% tariffs on Canadian imports, possibly by 1 February.

The renewed threat of tariffs has been met with deep unease by the trade-dependent Canada.

But it has also said it will consider significant countermeasures, including a “dollar-for-dollar” response if the Trump administration follows through.

Roughly 75% of Canada’s exports head south. In contrast, Canada accounts for a much smaller 17% of US exports, though it is the second largest US trading partner, behind Mexico.

Trump in his remarks on Thursday said Canada had been “very tough to deal with over the years”.

“We don’t need them to make our cars, we make a lot of them, we don’t need their lumber because we have our own forests… we don’t need their oil and gas, we have more than anybody,” he told forum attendees via video link from Washington DC.

Trump reiterated the assertion that the US has a trade deficit with Canada of between $200bn and $250bn. It’s not clear where he got that figure.

The trade deficit with Canada – expected to be $45bn in 2024 – is mostly driven by US energy demands.

The North American auto industry also has highly integrated supply chains.

Auto parts can cross the borders between the US and Mexico and Canada multiple time before a vehicle is finally assembled.

Trump has also tied the tariffs to border security, saying it will be imposed unless Canada increases security at the shared border.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has repeatedly said that everything is on the table in response if the tariffs are imposed.

That includes a tax or embargo on energy exports to the US, though some of Canada’s provincial leaders disagree with that response.

On Thursday, Trudeau told reporters that Canada’s goal is to avoid US tariffs altogether but it will step up its response “gradually” to seek the quick removal of levies if they are imposed.

Canada is also pitching itself as a reliable trading partner and a secure source to the US for energy and critical minerals as it lobbies American lawmakers in a bid to avoid the tariffs.

• Canada offers to help Trump as it scrambles to avert tariff war

• Trudeau says ‘not a snowball’s chance in hell’ Canada will join US

Economists suggest the US depends on Canadian products for energy security.

In 2024, Canadian energy exports came to almost $170bn (C$244bn), according to a recent analysis by TD Bank economists.

Trump also said on Thursday that businesses should make their products in the US if they want to avoid tariffs.

Tariffs are a central part of Trump’s economic vision – he sees them as a way of growing the US economy, protecting jobs and raising tax revenue.

The new president has ordered federal officials to review US trade relationships for any unfair practices by 1 April.

US President Donald Trump has been criticised for launching a meme-coin while saying he “doesn’t know much” about the cryptocurrency.

The digital coin called TRUMP appeared on his social media accounts ahead of his inauguration on Monday and quickly became one of the most valuable crypto coins. The value of a single coin shot up to $75 within a day, but since has fallen to $39.

But the launch of the so-called meme-coin – a cryptocurrency with no utility other than for fun or speculation – has been widely criticised by industry insiders.

“Trump’s comments about not knowing much about the coin back up my opinion that he is making a mockery of the industry. It’s a stunt,” says Danny Scott, CEO of CoinCorner.

The latest dip in value came after Trump told reporters: “I don’t know much about it other than I launched it, other than it was very successful.”

When he was told his coin raised several billion dollars for him, he played it down saying “several billion – that’s peanuts for these guys” pointing to tech billionaires assembled for a press conference about AI.

• Live updates on Trump’s return to power
• Trump tells Putin to end ‘ridiculous war’

Meme-coins are often used by speculators to make money or to allow fans to show support to a celebrity or moment in internet culture.

It’s not the first time Trump has sold crypto products. He made millions from launching a series of NFTs of him in various superhero poses in 2022.

Some industry analysts say the president having his own meme coin is a sign that others should follow.

“TRUMP token just signaled to every company, municipality, university & individual brand that crypto can now be used as a capital formation and customer bootstrapping mechanism,” Jeff Dorman from investing firm Arca posted online.

However, the overall sentiment seems to be negative towards the president’s meme coin.

Many in the crypto world are waiting for Trump to back up campaign promises to help boost the industry in the US. People like Danny Scott hope to see focused plans, particularly around Bitcoin, from the administration.

Last year Trump promised Bitcoin fans he would make the US the “crypto capital of the planet”. A few days into his term, the president has not issued executive orders involving cryptocurrency, nor has he mentioned it in his speeches.

TRUMP coin is now the 25th most valuable crypto coin with a value of around $8 billion, according to the website CoinMarketCap.

Trump and the team behind it own 80% of the coins so, in theory, they would make billions of dollars if they sold their shares and the price remained the same.

This set-up has been described by crypto researchers at K33 as outdated for similar tokens.

“There’s no sugar-coating this – these tokenomics are horrendous for a meme-coin,” said David Zimmerman, a K33 analyst.

However, K33 analysts acknowledge that the remaining 80% of coins can’t be dumped on the open market so investors are partially shielded from price shocks.

There are thousands of cryptocurrency coins and anyone can create one.

First Lady Melania Trump launched her own meme-coin on the eve of the inauguration, which now has a value of $700m since slumping from $13 a coin to $2.70.

But many meme-coins have led to big losses for people investing in them.

• YouTube star Logan Paul apologises for CryptoZoo project failure

Dan Hughes, from crypto firm Radix, thinks the president and his wife launching their meme-coins undermines the positives of the industry.

“This pattern of celebrity-driven token launches, particularly from political figures, potentially marks a concerning trend in crypto markets where influence and liquidity manipulation could overshadow fundamental value creation,” he said.

Others in the cryptocurrency world think that launching meme-coins to make money is degrading.

“The introduction of these coins during the presidential inauguration raises concerns about potential conflicts of interest and may undermine the dignity of the president and the first lady,” said Grzegorz Drozdz, market analyst at investment firm Conotoxia.

• ANALYSIS: Six Trump executive orders to watch
• IN DEPTH: Relationship with Europe this time may be very different
• PARDONS: Jan 6 defendants get nearly everything they wanted
• WATCH: Bishop asks Trump to show mercy to LGBT people and migrants

President Donald Trump said he would ask Saudi Arabia and other Opec nations to “bring down the cost of oil” and doubled-down on his threat to use tariffs.

In a speech to executives at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday, the US president said he was ‘surprised’ that Opec hadn’t brought down the price of oil before the elections.

“Right now the price is high enough that that war will continue,” he said, referring to the Russia-Ukraine war and suggesting that the higher oil price was helping to sustain funding for the conflict in Moscow.

“You gotta bring down the oil price, that will end that war. You could end that war,” he added

The president’s comments on the oil price came after he spoke to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Wednesday. According to Saudi State media Bin Salman pledged to invest as much as $600bn in the US over the next four years, however this figure was not mentioned in the White House statement after the call.

Despite the cordial exchange, Trump said he would be asking “the Crown Prince, who’s a fantastic guy, to round it out to around $1tn”.

The price of crude fell by 1% following Trump’s comments.

According to David Oxley, Chief Climate and Commodities Economist at Capital Economics these comments are in keeping with Trump’s desire for lower gasoline prices.

“[It’s] his clear intention to use energy as leverage over Russia to end the war in Ukraine. That said, lower oil prices will certainly not incentivise US oil producers to “drill, baby, drill” – particularly in high-cost Alaska.”

“Of course, Saudi Arabia would not be guaranteed to heed a request by President Trump to expand oil production and to bring down global oil prices.”

The US president’s appearance via video at the World Economic Forum marked his first address to a global audience since his inauguration earlier this week.

He used the platform to insist that companies around the world manufacture their products in the US or face bruising tariffs on imported goods entering the American market.

BBC reporter, Oliver Smith, who was in the room with the delegates as the President made his speech, said there were “a few stoney faces” as executives left the hall after the speech, but some happy ones too.

“A very powerful speech,” says one.

“I liked it, I thought it was really good” says another, a delegate from the US.

“A lot of it made sense. Common sense. He’s just looking for fair trade”, he added

One Swiss executive though was pretty downbeat. “It’s nothing new, but it’s clear what he wants to do”, he said.

“Am I happy? No I’m not happy. I think it’s bad for the world,” he adds

Trump also said he would demand an immediate drop in interest rates, which he said had led to deeper deficits and resulted in what he described as economic calamity under the tenure of his predecessor, President Joe Biden.

“This begins with confronting the economic chaos caused by the failed policies of the last administration,” he said.

“Over the past four years, our government racked up $8 trillion in wasteful deficit spending and inflicted nation wrecking energy restrictions, crippling regulations and hidden taxes like never before.”

Trump also spoke of “good, clean, coal” to power data centres needed for artificial intelligence. “We need double the energy we currently have in the US, for AI to be as big as we want to have it,” he said, adding that he would use emergency decrees to speed the construction of new power plants.

“Nothing can destroy coal — not the weather, not a bomb, nothing,” said Trump.

A federal judge in Seattle has temporarily blocked Donald Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship in the US.

US District Court Judge John Coughenour called Trump’s executive order “blatantly unconstitutional” and issued a restraining order blocking it from going into force after a 25-minute hearing on Thursday.

Under a long-standing interpretation of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, nearly anyone born inside the US is automatically given citizenship.

Trump hopes to end that rule for children born to parents who are in the country illegally or temporarily.

Four states – Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon – asked for the order to be paused while the federal court considers the states’ legal challenge.

During arguments, Judge Coughenour asked a lawyer for the Trump administration “where were the lawyers” when the executive order was drafted by Trump’s team, and chastised him for his claim that the order is constitutional.

“It boggles my mind,” the judge said.

The executive order will be put on hold for 14 days pending further legal proceedings.

Trump, who has issued a range of unilateral actions since returning to the US presidency on Monday, has long vowed to make this particular change.

His executive order called on US government departments and agencies to deny the granting of citizenship to the children of migrants who are either in the US illegally or on temporary visas.

It would have applied to children born on 19 February and onwards, according to legal filings in the case by the Department of Justice (DoJ).

There have been reports that the administration was planning to enforce the order by withholding documents, such as passports, from people it deems ineligible for citizenship.

The judge’s order also put a temporary stop to any enforcement of the order by federal agencies.

In their lawsuit, the four states challenging the order argue that the 14th Amendment and US law “automatically confer citizenship upon individuals born in the United States” and that the president does not have the power to amend the Constitution.

They add that if the order is implemented, residents of those states will “suffer immediate and irreparable harm”.

“The individuals who are stripped of their United States citizenship will be rendered undocumented, subject to removal or detention, and many will be stateless,” the lawsuit states.

Trump’s Department of Justice argued that the case brought by the states does not warrant the “extraordinary measure” of a temporary restraining order, but the judge disagreed.

The 14th Amendment, adopted in 1868, states in part: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States”.

The DoJ argued that the clause “and subject to there jurisdiction thereof”, excludes children of non-citizens who are in the US unlawfully, and added that the order is “an integral part” of Trump’s goal to address the country’s “broken immigration system and the ongoing crisis at the southern border”.

There were 255,000 children born to undocumented mothers in the US in 2022, according to the states’ legal challenge.

The amendment has been interpreted by courts as granting citizenship to anyone born on US territory, with very limited exceptions such as the children of foreign diplomats.

Without a direct amendment to the US Constitution – which requires a two-thirds vote in both chambers of Congress, plus the approval by America’s states – experts say the issue is likely to be ultimately decided by the courts.

Lawyers for the federal government said they planned to appeal the ruling, and that they expected the case to end up in front of the US Supreme Court.

The birthright citizenship amendment dates back to the days after the US Civil War, and settled the question of the citizenship of freed, American-born former slaves.

Lane Polozola, a lawyer for Washington state, argued in court that Trump’s order would bring the nation back “to one of our… darkest chapters”.

Judge Coughenour, who paused the executive order, has served in the Western District of Washington court since 1981 after he was appointed by then-president Ronald Reagan, a Republican.

A group of 18 other Democratic-led states, along with the District of Columbia and the city of San Francisco, have filed a separate challenge to the executive order.

Trump’s order is also facing a legal challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

More than 100 Reddit communities have banned users from posting links to X in protest at owner Elon Musk’s controversial arm gesture at a rally celebrating Donald Trump’s return to office.

The billionaire twice extended his arm out straight as he thanked the crowd for “making it happen.”

Critics, including some historians, said it was a Nazi salute – Mr Musk has dismissed that, saying comparisons with Hitler were “tired” and “dirty tricks.”

However many Reddit users have been unpersuaded by his response describing his actions as “hateful”, leading the moderators of scores of communities – or subreddits – to stop content being shared on X.

X has not commented but Reddit has stressed there is no sitewide ban on X links, telling the BBC in a statement it “has a longstanding commitment to freedom of speech and freedom of association”.

However the platform relies heavily on community moderation, where unpaid individuals known as Redditors decide what is – and isn’t – allowed to be published on their own corner of the website.

In many instances, those Redditors have reached a different conclusion, deciding Mr Musk’s actions were so offensive that they won’t link to content from their subreddits on X, potentially reducing traffic, engagement and – ultimately – revenue.

The biggest subreddits to have enforced the ban include basketball community r/NBA, which has 15 million members, female-focused community r/TwoXChromosomes, which has 14 million members, and American football community r/NFL, which has 12 million members.

It is worth remembering that subreddits are almost always run by fans – it does not mean that the NFL or NBA organisations are taking a stance against Musk.

The BBC has independently verified that at least 100 subreddits have banned X posts.

Of this number, more than 60 have at least 100,000 members.

But the actual number that have instituted the ban will likely be significantly higher by taking into account smaller subreddits with only a few thousand members.

And there are many more communities discussing a potential blacklisting.

The subreddits run by fans of football clubs Liverpool, Celtic and Tottenham Hotspur have all instituted the bans, as have communities for many US sports sides as well as Formula 1.

The subreddits where residents of many cities and countries gather around the world – ranging from New Jersey to South Korea – have also blocked posts to X.

And gamers are also amongst those to bring in the ban for video games including Baldur’s Gate 3 and World of Warcraft.

But while the blacklisting may have first started in some of these communities, it is popping up in a variety of places now where people gather to discuss all sorts of topics, ranging from RuPaul’s Drag Race to Disneyland and even the military.

While the vast majority of subreddits discussing a ban are in favour of it, there are some that have refused.

The moderators of the Maine community for example say they won’t institute a ban so long as “the state maintain official accounts there”.

And those running a group for people in British Columbia said they simply aren’t “doing censorship here”.

Though there are many subreddits which already disallow posts from social media, those built around professional sports in particular may have a big impact on referrals to X.

That’s because sports subreddits generally get a lot of content from links to athletes, analysts and journalists who spend a lot of time posting online.

For example, the top two most popular posts of all time on the NBA subreddits are screenshots taken from X, while three of the top ten most popular posts of all time on the AEW wrestling subreddit are screenshots from the platform.

And gaming subreddits have a similar story, with the top posts on the Animal Crossing and Kingdom Hearts communities both screenshots from X.

But that is not to say the bans will necessarily be permanent – Reddit is known for this sort of community movement to protest against wider issues, which doesn’t always work out.

In 2023, thousands of communities “went dark” to contest changes to how the platform was being run.

Some of the biggest Reddit communities then began only allowing photos and videos of comedian John Oliver, following comments from disgruntled users.

But this proved to be short-lived.

Eventually the communities mostly became publicly available again, and Reddit’s plan ultimately proved financially beneficial – the platform subsequently successfully listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

“The dance club was full of laughter and excitement,” is how one girl, 14, described the atmosphere as a group of 26 children gathered for a Taylor Swift-themed class in Southport.

Their summer holidays had just begun and the sun was shining down on the town as they were dropped off by their parents. As the class got under way, 29 July 2024 had all the markings of a good day.

The attack that unfolded next saw Axel Rudakubana given a minimum of 52 years in prison. At his sentencing on Thursday, details of how the incident played out from the perspectives of those involved were revealed to the public for the first time.

As the girls made friendship bracelets, outside the class a taxi driver followed a passenger he had just dropped off after he had refused to pay.

The passenger, in his teens, was not dressed for the weather: the hood of his thick green hoodie was pulled tight around his face and he was wearing a surgical mask. Inside his pocket was a 20cm kitchen knife.

Initially, Axel Rudakubana could not figure how to get into the studio and was caught on CCTV struggling with a locked door – but then he spotted another entrance and stepped inside.

That was, as one child survivor put it, the “beginning of my nightmare”.

Accounts from inside the dance class confirm that Rudakubana moved calmly and purposefully.

He had been planning this moment for some time. He did not hesitate, grabbing and stabbing the girl nearest to the door as soon as he walked in.

As Rudakubana attacked, he did not say a word.

For those inside the room, it took a moment to comprehend what was happening.

“I thought the man who stabbed me was a cleaner,” one of the child victims recounted.

It must be a practical joke, she thought, but later said: “I realised it wasn’t a prank when I saw blood coming out of me”.

Her memories of what happened next are “fuzzy”, but the child said she remembers thinking: “I don’t want to die, I have got to get out of here”.

Another victim said the image of Rudakubana in her memory is that of a monster stalking around the studio.

In court, she would later tell her would-be killer: “The thing I remember most about you is your eyes.

“You looked possessed and you didn’t look human.”

Leanne Lucas, who was leading the dance class, had first spotted Rudakubana outside when she went to open a window to let some air into the warm dance studio.

She thought nothing of it until the door swung open and he appeared.

What happened next, she said, left her and the girls with “scars we cannot un-see, scars we cannot move on from”.

The full horror of what was unfolding only became fully clear when she was stabbed in the back. She later told the girls: “I’m surviving for you”.

Heidi Liddle, who was also supervising the class, had been sitting on the floor helping the children to make friendship bracelets.

By the time she realised what was happening, the fast-moving attacker had already done unspeakable damage.

Heidi jumped into action and began trying to rush the girls towards the door.

One girl ran for a toilet on the other side of the landing and she followed.

Heidi locked the door behind them and pressed herself against it. Do not make a sound, she told the girl.

And then the door rattled. Rudakubana was still looking for victims.

Outside, she heard the screams of children who had not managed to escape.

Rudakubana set out to kill as many children as he could: by the time the 15 minute frenzy was over, two girls were dead and one was dying.

Another eight children and two adults had been stabbed. Some were fighting for their lives.

If it was not for the quick-thinking and bravery of the girls, it is certain that more would have died.

One child remembers the world seeming to move in “slow motion” as Rudakubana moved towards her, attacking her friends as he made his way across the room.

Instinct kicked in.

She remembers “physically pushing” her friends who were still able to run as they fled down the stairs.

When she confronted Rudakubana in court by reading her statement, she told him: “I knew I was running for my life.

“I knew from your eyes you wanted to try to kill us all.”

When he was sentenced, the judge concluded that if Rudakubana had been able to, he would have killed each and every child present – and anyone else who got in his way.

• How red flags over Southport killer were repeatedly missed
• How Southport murders have ‘forever changed’ town

One of the children who survived that day was stabbed 30 times. She was airlifted to hospital and doctors operated on her for six hours to try and save the use of her arms, hands and fingers.

“She watched two of the girls die,” her parents told investigators.

On one occasion during her recovery, the child told her parents: “I don’t know who I am anymore.”

But six months on, she is fighting back. Her mother said: “We could never be more proud of what she has achieved over the last six months.

“He has completely failed to destroy her spirit, her amazing sense of humour, her fierceness and her pure beautiful heart.”

The Southport survivors are slowly rebuilding their lives.

Investigators who dealt with the case said they were staggered by their spirit and resilience.

That was on full display when one girl was asked what she says when her classmates ask if she wishes she had not been there that day.

“In some ways, I wish I wasn’t,” she tells them.

“But also, if I wasn’t there, someone else would have been stabbed and they could have died – so I’m glad I might have stopped someone else getting hurt.”

Christina Welch still remembers what the sky looked like the day a wildfire came within 2 miles (3.2 km) of her Santa Rosa, California, home.

It was the Tubbs fire of 2017, the most destructive in California history at the time. Ms Welch’s neighbour woke her in the morning, and told her to grab her belongings and get out. When Ms Welch opened the door, ashes were falling from the sky and smoke filled the air.

Then, in 2019, the Kincade wildfire forced her parents to evacuate for five days.

It was the final push for Ms Welch. After advice from a friend, she packed her belongings and drove across the country to her new hometown: Duluth, Minnesota.

“It was just the culmination of all of it,” the 42-year-old said. “There’s only so many times that I was going to go through every fall of worrying about what is going to set on fire, if I was going to lose a house.”

Ms Welch is one of several people who has left California in recent years because of the frequency of extreme weather, even before the most destructive wildfires in Los Angeles history killed 28 people this month.

Just this week, a new, fast-moving wildfire broke out in Los Angeles County, north-west of the city, forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate a region already reeling from destruction. Trump plans to visit Southern California on Friday to witness the devastation from the blazes.

Climate experts say so far, they have not seen mass migration from the state because of climate-related events – and it’s difficult to estimate the number of people who have left for that reason. The state’s population growth rate, however, has continued to decline since 2000, according to the US census.

But scientists and demographic experts say that as climate change leads to weather events becoming more extreme and unpredictable, the number of people leaving the state could rise, leaving some unprepared cities with the task of welcoming new residents.

“There could be this wave of new folks saying, ‘You know what? California is just not going to work out for me because this is the third time in five years that I’ve had to close my doors because of the extreme soot and smoke,'” said University of Michigan data science professor Derek Van Berkel.

“We have to start preparing for those eventualities, because they’re going to become more frequent and more extreme.”

A number of climate-related factors may push Californians to leave home over the next decade. Scientists say that climate change has led to more frequent wildfires. From 2020 to 2023, wildfires destroyed more than 15,000 structures in California, according to CalFire. At least 12,000 structures have been lost in the Los Angeles wildfires that broke out at the start of this year.

The state faces other impacts from climate change as well, including flooding. Sea level rise could put half a million California residents in areas prone to flooding by 2100, according to the state attorney general’s office.

The state also deals with at least two earthquakes on average each year of magnitude 5.5 or greater, according to the California Department of Conservation.

As extreme weather has become more frequent, home insurance rates in the state also have continued to rise. More than 100,000 California residents have lost their home insurance since 2019, according to a San Francisco Chronicle analysis.

Data suggests that climate migration is, so far, more of a local phenomenon, with some moving inland within their home state or even seeking higher ground in their own city to avoid flooding, said Jeremy Porter, head of climate implications with First Street, which conducts climate risk modeling.

But, he said, in recent years, a smaller number of people have begun to flock to cities outside of California that advertise themselves as potential “climate havens”.

The term emerged in the media after climate adaptation researcher Jesse Keenan published research about a handful of cities people were moving to because of their lower risk for extreme climate events, places Mr Keenan calls “receiving zones”.

One of them was Duluth, Minnesota, a former industrial city, home to about 90,000 people, a population that has grown slowly since 2020 after years of stagnation.

One of the draws of the town is its proximity to the Great Lakes, the series of lakes that comprises the largest freshwater body in the world. Around 10% of the US and 30% of Canada relies on the lakes for drinking water.

“In a scenario where resources have become scarce, this is a tremendous asset,” Mr Van Berkel said.

The Great Lakes water supply lured Jamie Beck Alexander and her family to Duluth. Alarmed by three consecutive, destructive wildfire seasons in California, Ms Alexander, her husband and two young children piled into a camper van and drove across the country to Minnesota in 2020.

Ms Alexander has found similarities between the small, progressive city and their old city of San Francisco.

“There’s a real depth of connection between people, and deep rootedness, things that I think are important for climate resilience,” she said.

Ms Welch ignored her friends who thought she was crazy to move to a city known for its record-breaking snowfall and icy conditions, with an average 106 days a year of sub-freezing temperatures. The crisp, pretty city on a hill has become her own, she said.

“There’s a lot of people here who love where they live and want to protect it,” Ms Welch said of Duluth.

Though some cities have embraced their designation as climate havens, it remains a challenge for smaller local governments to find the resources to plan for new residents and climate resilience, said Mr Van Berkel.

Mr Van Berkel works with Duluth and other cities in the Great Lakes area on climate change planning, including welcoming new residents moving because of climate change.

The city of Duluth declined to respond to the BBC’s request for comment on how it was preparing to potentially welcome climate migrants.

For now, Mr Porter said, the Great Lakes region and other “climate haven” cities aren’t seeing high levels of migration. But if that changed, many would not be ready, he said.

“It would take a huge investment in the local communities… for those communities to be able to take on the kind of population that some of the climate migration literature indicates,” Mr Porter said.

In the city of Duluth, for instance, housing availability can be an issue, Ms Alexander said. She said that although the city has space to create new housing, it does not currently have enough new developments for a growing population. As a result, in the years since she moved there, she said, housing prices have risen.

And any new housing and other developments also need to be made with climate change in mind, Mr Van Berkel said.

“We don’t want to make missteps that could be very costly with our infrastructure when we have climate change rearing its ugly head,” he said.

In 2024, a Category 4 Hurricane destroyed over 2,000 homes and businesses in Kelsey Lahr’s climate haven of Asheville, North Carolina.

She moved there in 2020, drawn to the city’s warm climate, restaurant and music scene, after a series of devastating wildfire seasons and mudslides near her town of Santa Barbara, California.

Before moving, Ms Lahr researched extensively the most climate-resilient places to live, with Asheville ranking near the top because of its milder temperatures and inland location, shielding it from flooding.

But last year, Hurricane Helene ploughed through western North Carolina, killing over 100 people in the state and decimating Ms Lahr’s new hometown of Asheville. Many were left without power for nearly 20 days and without potable drinking water for over a month.

“Clearly southern Appalachia is not the ‘climate haven’ that it was built up to be,” Ms Lahr said.

In Duluth, Ms Alexander said her family also learned quickly that they could not run away from climate change.

During their first summer, the town was hit with the same smoke and poor air quality that drove them away from California – this time from Canadian wildfires.

“It was like, this really profound joke that the universe played on me,” she said. “Unless we address the root cause [of climate change], we’re always going to feel like we need to pick up and move.”

Still, Ms Alexander does not regret her family’s trek to Duluth. Neither does Ms Lahr regret moving to Asheville.

Though Ms Lahr often misses the ancient forests of Yosemite National Park in California, where she would spend her summers working as a park ranger, a future that may bring more climate disasters requires sacrifices, she said.

“I sort of increasingly think that climate havens are a myth,” she said. “Everybody has to assess the risk where they live and go from there.”

During his inaugural address, President Donald Trump doubled down on his assertion that China runs the Panama Canal.

“China is operating the Panama Canal and we didn’t give it to China. We gave it to Panama and we’re taking it back,” he said.

The 51-mile (82km) Panama Canal cuts across the Central American nation and is the main link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Up to 14,000 ships use it each year as a shortcut to a journey which, before the canal was built, would have taken them on a lengthy and costly trip around the tip of South America.

The mention of Panama in his inaugural speech is not the first time he has focused on the Central American nation and its transoceanic canal.

On Christmas Day, Trump posted on social media that the “wonderful soldiers of China” were “lovingly, but illegally, operating the Panama Canal” – a claim which was swiftly denied by officials in Panama City and Beijing.

At the time, Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino described the claim as “nonsense”, stressing that there was “absolutely no Chinese interference” in the canal.

Trump has also threatened to take the canal back by force, citing “exorbitant” fees being allegedly charged for US vessels to pass through it – another claim rejected by Panamanian authorities.

Following Trump’s inauguration address, President Mulino again stressed that there was “no presence of any nation in the world that interferes with our administration” of the Panama Canal.

The strategic waterway, which handles about 5% of global maritime trade volume, is operated by the Panama Canal Authority, an agency of the Panamanian government, not Chinese soldiers.

However, Mr Trump’s inaccurate claim reflects the concerns of some US officials over China’s significant investments in the canal and its surrounding infrastructure.

Historically, the US played a pivotal role in the construction and administration of the passage, which links the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

After a failed attempt by the French to build it, the US secured the rights to undertake the project. The canal’s construction was completed in 1914.

It remained under US control until 1977, when then President Jimmy Carter signed a treaty to gradually hand it over to Panama, which Trump has referred to as “foolish”.

Since 1999, the Panama Canal Authority has held exclusive control over the operations of the waterway.

The treaties signed by both the US and Panama stipulated that it shall remain permanently neutral, but the US reserves the right to defend any threat to the canal’s neutrality using military force under this deal.

There is no public evidence to suggest that the Chinese government exercises control over the canal, or its military. However, Chinese companies have a significant presence there.

From October 2023 to September 2024, China accounted for 21.4% of the cargo volume transiting the Panama Canal, making it the second-largest user after the US.

In recent years, China has also invested heavily in ports and terminals near the canal.

Two of the five ports adjacent to the canal, Balboa and Cristóbal, which sit on the Pacific and Atlantic sides respectively, have been operated by a subsidiary of Hutchison Port Holdings since 1997.

The company is a subsidiary of the publicly listed CK Hutchison Holdings, a Hong Kong-based conglomerate founded by Hong Kong businessman Li Ka-shing.

It has port operations in 24 countries, including the UK.

Although it is not state-owned by China, says Ryan Berg, director of the Americas Program at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, there have been concerns in Washington over how much control Beijing would be able to exert over the company.

A wealth of potentially useful strategic information on ships passing through the waterway flows through these ports.

“There is an increasing geopolitical tension of economic nature between the US and China,” Mr Berg says. “That kind of information regarding cargo would be very useful in the event of a supply chain war.”

CK Hutchison did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.

The bids to operate those ports faced almost no competition, according to Andrew Thomas, a professor at the University of Akron who has written a book on the canal. “The US at the time didn’t really care about these ports and Hutchison faced no objection,” he says.

Chinese companies, both private and state-owned, have also strengthened their presence in Panama through billions of dollars in investments, including a cruise terminal and a bridge to be built over the canal.

This “package of Chinese activities”, as described by Mr Thomas, might have prompted Trump’s assertion that the canal is “owned” by China, but operation of those ports does not equate to ownership, he stresses.

Beijing has repeatedly said that China’s ties with Latin America are characterised by “equality, mutual benefit, innovation, openness and benefits for the people”.

Panama’s strategic location means China has been vying to increase its influence in the country for years and expand its footprint on a continent that has traditionally been considered the “backyard” of the US.

In 2017, Panama broke diplomatic ties with Taiwan and established formal relations with China – a huge win for Chinese diplomacy.

Months later, Panama became the first Latin American country to join China’s signature Belt and Road Initiative, a trillion-dollar global infrastructure and investment initiative.

The Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Honduras followed suit and also severed ties with Taipei in favour of Beijing.

China has slowly expanded its soft power by opening its first Confucius Institute in the country and providing a grant to build a railway. Chinese companies have also sponsored “media training” for Panamanian journalists.

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya refuses to call what’s happening this weekend in Belarus an election.

“It’s a sham,” the exiled opposition leader says. “This is a military-style operation; a performance staged by the regime to hold on to power.”

For three decades, the country has been led by an increasingly authoritarian Alexander Lukashenko, now firmly backed by Vladimir Putin who makes use of his neighbour in his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

This Sunday, Belarusians will see Lukashenko’s name on the ballot paper once again, with four other names chosen carefully to be no challenge.

No independent observers are allowed.

The tight controls have bene put in place because last time Belarusians voted for a president, the country was swept by giant protests.

In 2020, Alexander Lukashenko allowed Svetlana Tikhanovskaya to run against him, thinking that a political novice – and a woman – would make no impact.

It was a massive miscalculation.

Tikhanovskaya, who decided to stand in place of her husband after Lukashenko put him in jail, claimed victory.

When Lukashenko was awarded 80% of the vote, crowds took to the streets in the biggest ever threat to Lukashenko’s rule. The protests were ultimately crushed by riot police with mass arrests and brute force.

The European Union then refused to recognise Lukashenko’s legitimacy as president.

Today, all the key opposition figures from the period are in prison or have fled abroad, like Tikhanovskaya. Former protesters still in Belarus have been scared into silence.

So the opposition leader is not urging them to take to the streets again on Sunday.

“We call on Belarusians to reject this sham and on the international community to reject the result,” she tells the BBC. “But I say to Belarusians, you have to keep safe until the real moment of possibility.

“Because people live in constant fear, and the regime is now intensifying the repression.”

You feel that fear straight away when you speak to Belarusians.

Many don’t want to talk publicly about politics at all. Others ask you to change their names, then choose their words carefully.

Some still inside Belarus chat only via encrypted messages which they delete immediately.

All say open political activism in the country has been extinguished.

Bysol, a non-profit organisation which helps evacuate those in danger, reports a surge in applications to around 30 or 40 requests a month.

Since 2020, the group has evacuated more than 1,500 people.

It also supports former political prisoners trying to rebuild life in exile after their release.

For Yana Zhuravleva, a vet, that’s been tough.

Prior to 2020 she was devoted to her work and not particularly politically active. But that summer she joined the giant crowds, hopeful of change.

She was later sentenced to three years for a “gross violation of public order”.

“We would get punished for everything,” she recalls of her time in prison.

She calculates that about 1 in 10 of the women were there because of the protests. Like them, Yana was added to the register of those “inclined to extremism and destructive activity”.

“You can’t go to the sports hall, your only letters are from relatives and you get fewer visiting rights. If you complain you always hear the same response: remember what you’re here for,” she tells me from Poland, where she moved after her recent release.

Yana admits it took “titanic” strength not to slide into deep depression.

“In prison, I barely cried. But when I was out, I suddenly wanted to sob all the time, and didn’t know why.”

Several people I contacted have mentioned seeking psychological help, after being interrogated, threatened or imprisoned.

They describe a security service that hunts down anyone with the loosest link to the opposition, then demands names from all those it detains.

The pressure has never let up.

One woman inside Belarus, who used to monitor human rights, tells me she’s had to stop attending court hearings because the authorities spotted her.

If they could prove any link to the banned human rights organisation Viasna, she could be charged as an “extremist”.

“I can do some specific acts of support, but I have to be careful,” she told me anonymously.

“You have a very strong sense of helplessness when you see all this injustice.”

Viasna currently lists 1,256 political prisoners in Belarus. Dozens were given amnesties recently, but they were soon replaced.

For those who do escape the pressure-cooker of Belarus, there is the added struggle of knowing they may not return for a long time.

That’s why Natalia, not her real name, decided to stay in Belarus even after she was detained twice for participating in the protests.

“You’re very vulnerable once you’re on the list of the ‘repressed’,” she explains.

“You can’t get work because you are on the police data base and the authorities always have an eye on you…”

For Natalia that meant being arrested again, initially for walking her dog without a lead.

“They claimed I’d been aggressive and cursed loudly and waved my arms,” she remembers, of her detention in 2023. She was held for ten days with up to 14 people in a cell for two, a light on constantly.

For over a week, she slept on the wooden floor.

“It really shook my sense of security, I became much more anxious,” Natalia confides.

She’s abroad for now and plans to return soon, to her cats. But her neighbours say a police officer just visited her house, checking up on all potential protesters ahead of Sunday’s vote.

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya believes the ongoing repression shows that Lukashenko and his allies are afraid.

“The trauma of 2020 is still alive and he has to eliminate any possibility of uprising,” the opposition leader argues.

“He knows the Belarusians didn’t accept or forgive him, and they still want change.”

But she admits there’s little sign of that in the short-term.

For a time after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Belarusians hoped their neighbours might succeed in defeating Putin with Western help, and that Lukashenko would follow him.

Some headed for the front line themselves, choosing force after their peaceful protests had failed.

But Ukraine’s military is now struggling to hold ground and President Donald Trump is pushing for peace talks.

“The democratic world can’t make concessions to Putin,” Tikhanovskaya argues, describing Lukashenko as equally dangerous to the world.

He let Russia launch missiles at Ukraine from Belarus and send its tanks through his territory.

He’s also allowed the free flow of migrants to the Polish border and into the EU.

“He allows Putin to deploy nuclear weapons and his army in Belarus, and it’s a very short path to Poland and Lithuania,” Tikhanovskaya points out.

“He and Putin are a pair, and they support other dictators. He’s part of this chain of evil.”

There is little doubt that Sunday’s reinstatement of Alexander Lukashenko will go according to his plan.

“Those people are very capable,” explains Yana, the former political prisoner.

“They really did crush the potential for protest.”

She’s now trying to return to her profession as a vet, but in Poland, and to recover from three tough years behind bars.

Those I spoke to now see Lukashenko retiring, or eventually dying, as their greatest hope of seeing democracy.

In the meantime, many are switching focus: there’s been a surge of interest in reviving the Belarusian culture and language, an opposition cause. It’s the most many dare do in such circumstances.

“No-one says it openly, but we feel like there are no prospects. There’s depression,” Natalia admits.

But there are no obvious regrets, even so.

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya’s own life has changed dramatically since she was thrust into politics.

Cut-off from her country, her husband is also a political prisoner – kept in total isolation for almost two years.

The opposition leader insists she still “truly believes” in change.

“2020 was a huge shift in mentality in Belarus. I don’t know how long it will take, but that shift will not disappear.”

Inside a giant sphere, the engineers pored over their equipment. Before them stood a silvery metal contraption swathed in colourful wires – a box that they hope will one day make oxygen on the moon.

Once the team vacated the sphere, the experiment began. The box-like machine was now ingesting small quantities of a dusty regolith – a mixture of dust and sharp grit with a chemical composition mimicking real lunar soil.

Soon, that regolith was gloop. A layer of it heated to temperatures above 1,650C. And, with the addition of some reactants, oxygen-containing molecules began to bubble out.

“We’ve tested everything we can on Earth now,” says Brant White, a program manager at Sierra Space, a private company. “The next step is going to the moon.”

Sierra Space’s experiment unfolded at Nasa’s Johnson Space Center this summer. It is far from the only such technology that researchers are working on, as they develop systems that could supply astronauts living on a future lunar base.

Those astronauts will need oxygen to breathe but also to make rocket fuel for spacecraft that might launch from the moon and head to destinations further afield – including Mars.

Lunar base inhabitants might also require metal and they could even harvest this from the dusty grey debris that litters the lunar surface.

Much depends on whether we can build reactors able to extract such resources effectively or not.

“It could save billions of dollars from mission costs,” says Mr White as he explains that the alternative – bringing lots of oxygen and spare metal to the moon from Earth – would be arduous and expensive.

Luckily, the lunar regolith is full of metal oxides. But while the science of extracting oxygen from metal oxides, for example, is well understood on Earth, doing this on the moon is much harder. Not least because of the conditions.

The huge spherical chamber that hosted Sierra Space’s tests in July and August this year induced a vacuum and also simulated lunar temperatures and pressures.

The company says it has had to improve how the machine works over time so that it can better cope with the extremely jagged, abrasive texture of the regolith itself. “It gets everywhere, wears out all sorts of mechanisms,” says Mr White.

And the one, crucial, thing that you can’t test on Earth or even in orbit around our planet, is lunar gravity – which is roughly one sixth that of the Earth. It might not be until 2028 or later that Sierra Space can test its system on the moon, using real regolith in low gravity conditions.

The moon’s gravity could be a real problem for some oxygen-extracting technologies unless engineers design for it, says Paul Burke at Johns Hopkins University.

In April, he and colleagues published a paper detailing the results of computer simulations that showed how a different oxygen-extracting process might be hindered by the moon’s relatively feeble gravitational pull. The process under investigation here was molten regolith electrolysis, which involves using electricity to split lunar minerals containing oxygen, in order to extract the oxygen directly.

The problem is that such technology works by forming bubbles of oxygen on the surface of electrodes deep within the molten regolith itself. “It is the consistency of, say, honey. It is very, very viscous,” says Dr Burke.

“Those bubbles aren’t going to rise as fast – and may actually be delayed from detaching from the electrodes.”

There could be ways around this. One could be to vibrate the oxygen-making machine device, which might jiggle the bubbles free.

And extra-smooth electrodes might make it easier for the oxygen bubbles to detach. Dr Burke and his colleagues are now working on ideas like this.

Sierra Space’s technology, a carbothermal process, is different. In their case, when oxygen-containing bubbles form in the regolith, they do so freely, rather than on the surface of an electrode. It means there is less chance of them getting stuck, says Mr White.

Stressing the value of oxygen for future lunar expeditions, Dr Burke estimates that, per day, an astronaut would require the amount of oxygen contained in roughly two or three kilograms of regolith, depending on that astronaut’s fitness and activity levels.

However, a lunar base’s life support systems would likely recycle oxygen breathed out by astronauts. If so, it wouldn’t be necessary to process quite as much regolith just to keep the lunar residents alive.

The real use case for oxygen-extracting technologies, adds Dr Burke, is in providing the oxidiser for rocket fuels, which could enable ambitious space exploration.

Obviously the more resources that can be made on the moon the better.

Sierra Space’s system does require the addition of some carbon, though the firm says it can recycle most of this after each oxygen-producing cycle.

Along with colleagues, Palak Patel, a PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, came up with an experimental molten regolith electrolysis system, for extracting oxygen and metal from the lunar soil.

“We’re really looking at it from the standpoint of, ‘Let’s try to minimise the number of resupply missions’,” she says.

When designing their system, Ms Patel and her colleagues addressed the problem described by Dr Burke: that low gravity could impede the detachment of oxygen bubbles that form on electrodes. To counter this, they used a “sonicator”, which blasts the bubbles with sound waves in order to dislodge them.

Ms Patel says that future resource-extracting machines on the moon could derive iron, titanium or lithium from regolith, for example. These materials might help lunar-dwelling astronauts make 3D-printed spare parts for their moon base or replacement components for damaged spacecraft.

The usefulness of lunar regolith does not stop there. Ms Patel notes that, in separate experiments, she has melted simulated regolith into a tough, dark, glass-like material.

She and colleagues worked out how to turn this substance into strong, hollow bricks, which could be useful for building structures on the moon – an imposing black monolith, say. Why not?

Vegetable vendor Shivnarayan Dasana had never seen so many policemen descend on his village in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

The 60-year-old lives in Tarapur in the industrial town of Pithampur, known for its automobile and pharmaceutical factories. The town has been tense since containers holding 337 tonnes of toxic waste from the site of one of the world’s worst industrial disasters arrived for disposal three weeks ago.

The waste, transported from the now-defunct Union Carbide factory in the city of Bhopal – site of the 1984 gas tragedy that killed thousands – has sparked fears among locals.

They worry that disposing of it near their homes could be harmful and even cause an environmental disaster.

Protests erupted on 3 January, a day after the waste arrived in the town, escalating into stone-throwing and attempted self-immolations.

Since then, heavy police patrols near the disposal facility have turned Tarapur and surrounding areas into a virtual garrison.

The police have registered seven cases against 100 people since the protests began, but the townspeople continue to raise concerns about industrial pollution at smaller community meetings.

The toxic waste cleared from the Bhopal factory included five types of hazardous materials – including pesticide residue and “forever chemicals” left from its manufacturing process. These chemicals are so-named because they retain their toxic properties indefinitely.

Over the decades, these chemicals have seeped into the surrounding environment, creating a health hazard for people living around the factory in Bhopal.

But officials dismiss fears of the waste disposal causing environmental issues in Pithampur.

Senior official Swatantra Kumar Singh outlined the staggered process in an attempt to reassure the public.

“Hazardous waste will be incinerated at 1,200C (2,192F), with 90kg (194.4lb) test batches followed by 270kg batches over three months if toxicity levels are safe,” he said.

Mr Singh explained that a “four-layer filtering will purify smoke”, which will prevent toxins from entering the air and the residue from incineration will be “sealed in a two layer membrane” and “buried in a specialised landfill” to prevent soil and groundwater contamination.

“We’ve trained 100 ‘master trainers’ and are hosting sessions to explain the disposal process and build public trust,” said administrator Priyank Mishra.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav has also defended the waste disposal, calling it both safe and necessary. He urged residents to voice their concerns legally, noting that the disposal was carried out only after orders from the high court.

Environmental experts, however, have differing views on the process.

Some like Subhash C Pandey believe the disposal poses no risk if done properly. Others, like Shyamala Mani, are calling for alternatives to incineration. She argues that incineration increases residual slag and releases harmful toxins like mercury and dioxins.

Ms Mani suggests that bioremediation, a process using micro-organisms to break down harmful substances in waste, could be a more effective and eco-friendly solution.

But residents remain sceptical.

“It’s not just waste. It’s poison,” said Gayatri Tiwari, a mother of five in Tarapur village. “What’s the point of life if we can’t breathe clean air or drink clean water?”

Pollution is an undeniable reality for the residents of Pithampur. Residents cite past groundwater contamination and ongoing health issues as reasons for scepticism.

The town’s rapid industrial growth in the 1980s led to hazardous waste build-up, contaminated water and soil with mercury, arsenic and sulphates. By 2017, the federal agency Central Pollution Control Bureau flagged severe pollution in the area.

Locals allege that many companies don’t follow the rules to dispose of non-hazardous waste, choosing to dump it in the soil or water. Tests in 2024 showed elevated harmful substances in water. Activists link this to alleged environmental violations at the disposal facility but officials have denied this.

“Water filters in our homes don’t last two months. Skin diseases and kidney stones are common now. Pollution has made life unbearable,” said Pankaj Patel, 32, from Chirakhan village, pointing to his water purifier which needs frequently replacing.

Srinivas Dwivedi, regional officer of the State Pollution Control Board, dismissed concerns, saying it’s “unrealistic” to expect pre-industrial conditions in Pithampur.

Meanwhile, in Bhopal, nearly 230km (143 miles) away from Pithampur, activists argue that the disposal process is a distraction from much larger issues.

Since the disaster, the toxic material lay in the mothballed factory for decades, polluting groundwater in the surrounding areas.

More than 1.1 million tonnes of contaminated soil remain at the Union Carbide factory site, according to a 2010 report by National Environmental Engineering Research Institute and the National Geophysical Research Institute.

“The government is making a show of disposing of 337 metric tonnes while ignoring the much bigger problem in Bhopal,” said Nityanand Jayaraman, a leading environmentalist.

“The contamination has worsened over the years, yet the government has done little to address it,” added Rachna Dhingra, another activist.

Government estimates say 3,500 people died shortly after the gas leak, with over 15,000 dying later. Activists claim the toll is much higher, with victims still suffering from the side effects of the poisoning.

“Given Pithampur’s history of pollution, residents’ fears are valid,” said Mr Jayaraman.

Officials said they are only “dealing with the waste as specified by the court’s directive”.

But the reality of Bhopal has deepened the mistrust among the people of Pithampur, who are now prepared to take to the streets again to oppose the waste disposal.

Vegetable vendor Shivnarayan Dasana said the issue goes beyond the waste itself.

“It’s about survival – ours and our children’s,” he said.

The Trump administration emailed thousands of federal employees on Wednesday, ordering them to report any efforts to “disguise” diversity initiatives in their agencies or face “adverse consequences”.

The request came after President Donald Trump banned diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) offices and programmes throughout the government.

Emails seen by the BBC directed workers to “report all facts and circumstances” to a new government email address within 10 days.

Some employees interpreted it as a demand to sell out their colleagues to the White House.

“We’re really freaked out and overwhelmed,” said one employee at the Department Health and Human Services (HHS).

The Office of Personnel Management, which manages the federal workforce, issued guidance requiring agency heads to send a notice to their staff by 17:00 eastern time on Wednesday. It included an email template that many federal staffers ultimately received that night.

Some employees, like those at the Treasury Department, got slightly different versions of the email.

The Treasury Department email excluded the warning about “adverse consequences” for not reporting DEI initiatives, according to a copy shared with the BBC.

In one of his first actions as president, Trump signed two executive orders ending “diversity, equity, and inclusion” or “DEI” programmes within the federal government and announced any employees working in those roles would immediately be placed on paid administrative leave.

Such programmes are designed to increase minority participation in the workforce and educate employees about discrimination.

But critics of DEI, like Trump, argue that the practice itself is discriminatory because it takes race, gender, sexual identity or other characteristics into consideration.

Trump and his allies attacked the practice frequently during the campaign.

In a speech Thursday at the World Economic Conference in Davos, Switzerland, Trump declared he was making America a “merit-based country”.

Critics of DEI have praised Trump’s decision.

“President Trump’s executive orders rescinding affirmative action and banning DEI programs are a major milestone in American civil rights progress and a critical step towards building a colour-blind society,” Yukong Mike Zhao, president of the Asian American Coalition for Education, said in a statement.

The group had supported a successful effort at the US Supreme Court to overturn affirmative action programmes at US universities.

But current federal employees, who spoke to the BBC on condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation, said that the email they received felt more like an attempt to intimidate staff than to make the government more fair.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

President Trump has signed a torrent of executive orders since he took office, including a hiring freeze in the federal government, an order for workers to return to the office and an attempt to reclassify thousands of government employees in order to make them easier to fire.

The HHS employee who spoke to the BBC criticised the government’s DEI practices, believing that while it was important to build a diverse staff and create opportunities in health and medical fields, “identity politics have played into how we function normally and that’s not beneficial to the workforce”.

“But that doesn’t mean I want my colleagues to get fired,” the employee added.

He described the impact the email and the DEI orders had on his agency as “very calculated chaos”.

The employee’s division had been thrown into confusion, he said, with questions about hiring practices going forward, as well as what programmes and directives were allowed to continue, given Trump’s broad definition of DEI.

A second HHS employee said that hiring and research grants had been frozen and the entire department staff was waiting to see what they could do next.

The HHS, and one of its subsidiary agencies, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), issue millions of dollars in federal grants to universities and researchers across the globe to advance scientific research.

Agency employees feared that the DEI order could have an impact outside the government as well. One questioned if grants that allowed laboratories to create more opportunities for hiring minority scientists and medical professionals would now get the axe.

An employee who worked at the Food and Drug Administration told the BBC that she had not received the email, but all DEI-related activities had been paused.

“We have been told by seniors to keep doing our jobs,” she said. “But there is a sense of fear about how it’s going to have an impact on our work in general.”

Do you remember the feeling of sitting an exam? The halls crammed with desks and the sound of the ticking clock. Cambridge University Press and Assessment (CUP&A), one of the UK’s biggest exam providers, has been setting papers since the 1850s and its English exams have now been taken by more than 100 million people around the world. But today’s exam is very different to that very first paper.

In 1913, three people sat down to take the first Cambridge English exam. They were all teachers and all of them failed. But would you? This is one of the questions – you can find the answers at the end.

Correct or justify four of the following sentences, giving your reasons:

(a) I hope you are determined to seriously improve.

(b) Comparing Shakespeare with Aeschylus, the former is by no means inferior to the latter.

(c) I admit that I was willing to have made peace with you.

(d) The statement was incorrect, as any one familiar with the spot, and who was acquainted with the facts, will admit.

(e) It has the largest circulation of any paper in England.

(f) The lyrical gifts of Shakespeare are woven into the actual language of the characters.

The exam comprised a series of papers on phonetics, grammar, and translation, which took 12 hours to complete.

“At first, it was an exam for a small elite who wanted to study English as an academic subject, like Latin or Ancient Greek,” says Dr Evelina Galaczi, director of research at CUP&A.

“At the time, grammar and translation were considered the most important thing, but now the exam is much more about using English to communicate.

“The shift was gradual, but in the Second World War English became a global language and so speaking and pronunciation became much more important.

“That was a catalyst for change, and I firmly believe that learning English opens doors.”

By the 1950s, there had been requests for the English exam to offer translation questions in dozens of different languages, ranging from Arabic to Vietnamese.

Gillian Cooke, group archivist at CUP&A, said: ” I think the take up for each language was quite small and so that probably wasn’t cost effective.

“It might be one of the reasons why the translation paper was dropped in the 1970s.”

The Cambridge English exam has continued to evolve.

There are now different versions tailored to the needs of schools, higher education, and businesses.

“More than 100 million people across 130 countries have now sat our English exams,” says marketing director for higher education, Ian Cook.

“They’re recognised by more than 25,000 organisations from governments – which use them for immigration purposes – to employers and universities.

“Some universities in Germany, Sweden, and East Asia, for example, deliver IT and healthcare courses in English in order to attract the best candidates and so students need to show they have the language skills to cope with the course.”

Today, the exams are also available digitally and artificial intelligence (AI) is being used to create adaptive tests.

“In simple terms, the next question you’re served up depends on how well you answered the previous one,” says Mr Cook.

“And by offering a range of slightly more difficult and then easier questions as you go through, the technology will help to find your level.

“Our expertise and research have proven that the more teaching and tests are personalised, the better for students.

“We want people to have confidence, to pass – and show what they’re capable of.”

Despite the changes, CUP&A insists that its approach is as much about continuity as innovation.

Dr Galaczi adds: “Examiners and AI work together in marking and setting content for the exams, so we harness the strengths of both the human being and the machine.”

CUP&A says opinions about correct English grammar have changed, but in 1913, these would have been the expected answers:

(a) This is a split infinitive which would have been considered wrong. It should have said “to improve seriously”

(b) This is a hanging participle. It should have read “Shakespeare is by no means inferior to Aeschylus”. Now we would say “Shakespeare is just as good as”.

(c) Wrong tense. It should be “to make peace”.

(d) “Would admit” not “Will admit”.

(e) Correct

(f) Correct

Christina Welch still remembers what the sky looked like the day a wildfire came within 2 miles (3.2 km) of her Santa Rosa, California, home.

It was the Tubbs fire of 2017, the most destructive in California history at the time. Ms Welch’s neighbour woke her in the morning, and told her to grab her belongings and get out. When Ms Welch opened the door, ashes were falling from the sky and smoke filled the air.

Then, in 2019, the Kincade wildfire forced her parents to evacuate for five days.

It was the final push for Ms Welch. After advice from a friend, she packed her belongings and drove across the country to her new hometown: Duluth, Minnesota.

“It was just the culmination of all of it,” the 42-year-old said. “There’s only so many times that I was going to go through every fall of worrying about what is going to set on fire, if I was going to lose a house.”

Ms Welch is one of several people who has left California in recent years because of the frequency of extreme weather, even before the most destructive wildfires in Los Angeles history killed 28 people this month.

Just this week, a new, fast-moving wildfire broke out in Los Angeles County, north-west of the city, forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate a region already reeling from destruction. Trump plans to visit Southern California on Friday to witness the devastation from the blazes.

Climate experts say so far, they have not seen mass migration from the state because of climate-related events – and it’s difficult to estimate the number of people who have left for that reason. The state’s population growth rate, however, has continued to decline since 2000, according to the US census.

But scientists and demographic experts say that as climate change leads to weather events becoming more extreme and unpredictable, the number of people leaving the state could rise, leaving some unprepared cities with the task of welcoming new residents.

“There could be this wave of new folks saying, ‘You know what? California is just not going to work out for me because this is the third time in five years that I’ve had to close my doors because of the extreme soot and smoke,'” said University of Michigan data science professor Derek Van Berkel.

“We have to start preparing for those eventualities, because they’re going to become more frequent and more extreme.”

A number of climate-related factors may push Californians to leave home over the next decade. Scientists say that climate change has led to more frequent wildfires. From 2020 to 2023, wildfires destroyed more than 15,000 structures in California, according to CalFire. At least 12,000 structures have been lost in the Los Angeles wildfires that broke out at the start of this year.

The state faces other impacts from climate change as well, including flooding. Sea level rise could put half a million California residents in areas prone to flooding by 2100, according to the state attorney general’s office.

The state also deals with at least two earthquakes on average each year of magnitude 5.5 or greater, according to the California Department of Conservation.

As extreme weather has become more frequent, home insurance rates in the state also have continued to rise. More than 100,000 California residents have lost their home insurance since 2019, according to a San Francisco Chronicle analysis.

Data suggests that climate migration is, so far, more of a local phenomenon, with some moving inland within their home state or even seeking higher ground in their own city to avoid flooding, said Jeremy Porter, head of climate implications with First Street, which conducts climate risk modeling.

But, he said, in recent years, a smaller number of people have begun to flock to cities outside of California that advertise themselves as potential “climate havens”.

The term emerged in the media after climate adaptation researcher Jesse Keenan published research about a handful of cities people were moving to because of their lower risk for extreme climate events, places Mr Keenan calls “receiving zones”.

One of them was Duluth, Minnesota, a former industrial city, home to about 90,000 people, a population that has grown slowly since 2020 after years of stagnation.

One of the draws of the town is its proximity to the Great Lakes, the series of lakes that comprises the largest freshwater body in the world. Around 10% of the US and 30% of Canada relies on the lakes for drinking water.

“In a scenario where resources have become scarce, this is a tremendous asset,” Mr Van Berkel said.

The Great Lakes water supply lured Jamie Beck Alexander and her family to Duluth. Alarmed by three consecutive, destructive wildfire seasons in California, Ms Alexander, her husband and two young children piled into a camper van and drove across the country to Minnesota in 2020.

Ms Alexander has found similarities between the small, progressive city and their old city of San Francisco.

“There’s a real depth of connection between people, and deep rootedness, things that I think are important for climate resilience,” she said.

Ms Welch ignored her friends who thought she was crazy to move to a city known for its record-breaking snowfall and icy conditions, with an average 106 days a year of sub-freezing temperatures. The crisp, pretty city on a hill has become her own, she said.

“There’s a lot of people here who love where they live and want to protect it,” Ms Welch said of Duluth.

Though some cities have embraced their designation as climate havens, it remains a challenge for smaller local governments to find the resources to plan for new residents and climate resilience, said Mr Van Berkel.

Mr Van Berkel works with Duluth and other cities in the Great Lakes area on climate change planning, including welcoming new residents moving because of climate change.

The city of Duluth declined to respond to the BBC’s request for comment on how it was preparing to potentially welcome climate migrants.

For now, Mr Porter said, the Great Lakes region and other “climate haven” cities aren’t seeing high levels of migration. But if that changed, many would not be ready, he said.

“It would take a huge investment in the local communities… for those communities to be able to take on the kind of population that some of the climate migration literature indicates,” Mr Porter said.

In the city of Duluth, for instance, housing availability can be an issue, Ms Alexander said. She said that although the city has space to create new housing, it does not currently have enough new developments for a growing population. As a result, in the years since she moved there, she said, housing prices have risen.

And any new housing and other developments also need to be made with climate change in mind, Mr Van Berkel said.

“We don’t want to make missteps that could be very costly with our infrastructure when we have climate change rearing its ugly head,” he said.

In 2024, a Category 4 Hurricane destroyed over 2,000 homes and businesses in Kelsey Lahr’s climate haven of Asheville, North Carolina.

She moved there in 2020, drawn to the city’s warm climate, restaurant and music scene, after a series of devastating wildfire seasons and mudslides near her town of Santa Barbara, California.

Before moving, Ms Lahr researched extensively the most climate-resilient places to live, with Asheville ranking near the top because of its milder temperatures and inland location, shielding it from flooding.

But last year, Hurricane Helene ploughed through western North Carolina, killing over 100 people in the state and decimating Ms Lahr’s new hometown of Asheville. Many were left without power for nearly 20 days and without potable drinking water for over a month.

“Clearly southern Appalachia is not the ‘climate haven’ that it was built up to be,” Ms Lahr said.

In Duluth, Ms Alexander said her family also learned quickly that they could not run away from climate change.

During their first summer, the town was hit with the same smoke and poor air quality that drove them away from California – this time from Canadian wildfires.

“It was like, this really profound joke that the universe played on me,” she said. “Unless we address the root cause [of climate change], we’re always going to feel like we need to pick up and move.”

Still, Ms Alexander does not regret her family’s trek to Duluth. Neither does Ms Lahr regret moving to Asheville.

Though Ms Lahr often misses the ancient forests of Yosemite National Park in California, where she would spend her summers working as a park ranger, a future that may bring more climate disasters requires sacrifices, she said.

“I sort of increasingly think that climate havens are a myth,” she said. “Everybody has to assess the risk where they live and go from there.”

Australian police are investigating after a statue of Captain James Cook was covered in red paint and disfigured, ahead of the Australia Day weekend.

It is the second time in 12 months that the statue in Sydney has been vandalised.

Australia Day is a national holiday that is held each year on 26 January – the anniversary of Britain’s First Fleet landing at Sydney Cove in 1788. Many Indigenous Australians say the date causes them pain.

The local council in Randwick – the suburb where the statue is located – described the vandalism as “a disservice to the community and a disservice to reconciliation”.

Councillor Carolyn Martin told Sydney radio station 2GB that the vandals had knocked off one hand and parts of the face and nose.

The statue – which was first unveiled in 1874 – was previously targeted in February last year, when it was covered with red paint and had parts of its sandstone damaged. Works to repair and restore it were completed a month later.

There are several Captain Cook statues across Australia, and others have also been vandalised on or around 26 January.

In 2024, one in Melbourne was cut down on the eve of the holiday, while its plinth was spray-painted with the words “the colony will fall”. Two years earlier the same statue had been splashed with red paint, while in 2018 it was graffitied with the words “no pride” and had an Aboriginal flag placed next to it.

Cook charted Australia’s east coast in 1770, laying the groundwork for the later decision to send the First Fleet, which was led by Captain Arthur Phillip.

Australia Day is a contentious holiday for some, particularly among those in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities who view it as a reminder of the dispossession and displacement of their people.

To many Australians though, it is celebrated as a day of nation-building and achievement. Polling suggests a majority of people are supportive of keeping the holiday, despite suggestions it should be changed to a different date.

Satellite images reviewed by BBC Verify have shown a major oil slick spreading across the Kerch Strait that separates Russia from annexed Crimea, a month after two oil tankers were badly damaged in the Black Sea.

Oil has leaked into the strait from two ships which ran into trouble during bad weather on 15 December. Volgoneft-239 ran aground following the storm, while Volgoneft-212 sank.

​​Up to 5,000 tonnes of oil has now leaked, and media reports and official statements analysed by BBC Verify suggest the spill has spread across the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

A senior Russian scientist called the spill the country’s worst “environmental catastrophe” of the 21st Century.

“This is the first time fuel oil has been spilled in such quantities,” Viktor Danilov-Danilyan – the head of science at the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) – said in a 17 January interview with a Russian newspaper.

Russian scientists said in December that this spill could be more than twice the size of a similar disaster in the strait in 2007, which saw up to 1,600 tonnes of heavy oil leak into the sea. Ukraine’s ministry of ecology has estimated that the clear up from the latest spill could cost the Russian state up to $14bn (£11.4bn).

Paul Johnston, a scientist at Greenpeace Research Laboratories, said “there’s always an element of uncertainty around oil spills”, but a lack of timely information has heightened this uncertainty further.

“I’m not entirely optimistic we’ll ever know the full extent of the problem,” he added.

Satellite images reviewed by BBC Verify on 10 January – the most recent available high-resolution photos – showed a massive oil slick running through the strait, measuring at least 25km (15 miles) long. A second, smaller slick measuring around 5.7km (3.5 miles) long is also visible.

Mr Danilov-Danilyan said that oil could “by late January reach Odesa” in southern Ukraine and “one cannot rule out” it travelling as far as the coasts of Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey.

In a statement to BBC Verify, a spokesperson for Greenpeace said the group estimated that oil from the spill now covered an area totalling up to 400 sq km.

The spill appears to have moved quickly after the initial incident. On 24 December, satellite images reviewed by BBC Verify showed oil accumulating on a beach in Anapa – some 40 miles from the strait.

BBC Verify has analysed reports in Russian media, statements from officials and Greenpeace releases from this month that talk about oil being found or cleared up on various beaches.

The reports suggest that the oil has now spread as far north as the occupied city of Berdyansk in Ukraine and as far south-west as Lake Donuzlav on the Crimean Peninsula, which Russian illegally annexed in 2014.

The leak involves heavy M100-grade fuel oil that solidifies at a temperature of 25 degrees Celsius.

A Greenpeace spokesperson told the BBC that M100 doesn’t stay on the water’s surface for long. Once underwater, it is “technically impossible to neutralise”, and can take decades to be biodegraded by marine micro-organisms.

Footage recorded by the Russian NGO The Earth Touches Everyone and included below appeared to show large amounts of heavy oil accumulating on the seabed.

Some experts have warned that the leak has heavily impacted marine life in the region. Footage authenticated by BBC Verify has shown birds covered in oil.

It is not known exactly how many animals have been harmed by the spill.

Overall, Russian officials say about 6,000 birds have been delivered to “rehabilitation centres” on the Russian mainland, but it is unclear how many of them will survive. A local bird sanctuary in Stavropol territory said of 1,051 birds affected by the oil spill that have been delivered to them only about 17% have survived.

Greenpeace told BBC Verify that the final number of dead birds could be far higher, citing the 12,000-13,000 killed by the 2007 spill in the strait.

A dolphin rehabilitation centre in Russia’s Krasnodar Territory told Interfax news agency that around 70 dead dolphins have been discovered on the shores following the latest oil spill.

“This is a horrific blow to the ecosystem,” Mr Danilov-Danilyan told Russia media. He predicted the death of “tens of thousands of birds, many dolphins, [and] big losses in the coastal flora and fauna”.

“Practically nothing, other than microorganisms that feed on fuel oil and break it up, can live in that sort of environment, even in salt water. The removal of 200,000–500,000 tonnes, at least, of contaminated soil too will not go without consequences, and will certainly lead to a reshaping of the coast,” he said.

Dmitry Lisitsyn, Executive Fellow at Yale University’s School of the Environment, told BBC Verify that under Russian safety regulations these types of tankers are barred from leaving rivers in winter.

“Those ships are not intended for high waves, they are very long with a shallow draught,” he said.

Questions have also been raised about the seaworthiness of the vessels, which are both over 50 years old, according to Marine Traffic.

Footage released by Russian authorities showed the bow of one tanker completely broken off during the incident, with streaks of oil visible in the water. The captains of both vessels have been arrested and criminal investigations have been opened into the incident.

Ukrainian activists have accused the ships of being part of Russia’s so-called shadow oil fleet. Moscow has been accused of using the so-called ghost fleet of tankers, which are often poorly maintained and lack proper insurance, to move oil and circumvent sanctions, though analysts the BBC has spoken to could not confirm the claims.

Experts say the long-term fallout from the spill may not be limited to just Russia.

“In general, Russia has suffered more than any other country so far from the Kerch Strait accident,” Dmitry Markin of Greenpeace said.

“However, the majority of the leaked fuel oil is still in the sea. Therefore, the long-term consequences for the occupied territories of Ukraine may be no less severe.”

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

President Donald Trump has said the US does not need Canadian energy, vehicles or lumber as he spoke to global business leaders at the World Economic Forum.

Trump also reiterated his threat to impose tariffs on the country, saying it can be avoided if the neighbouring nation chose to “become a state” of the US.

“You can always become a state, and if you’re a state, we won’t have a deficit. We won’t have to tariff you,” he said to gasps in the hall in Davos.

Trump has threatened to impose up to 25% tariffs on Canadian imports, possibly by 1 February.

The renewed threat of tariffs has been met with deep unease by the trade-dependent Canada.

But it has also said it will consider significant countermeasures, including a “dollar-for-dollar” response if the Trump administration follows through.

Roughly 75% of Canada’s exports head south. In contrast, Canada accounts for a much smaller 17% of US exports, though it is the second largest US trading partner, behind Mexico.

Trump in his remarks on Thursday said Canada had been “very tough to deal with over the years”.

“We don’t need them to make our cars, we make a lot of them, we don’t need their lumber because we have our own forests… we don’t need their oil and gas, we have more than anybody,” he told forum attendees via video link from Washington DC.

Trump reiterated the assertion that the US has a trade deficit with Canada of between $200bn and $250bn. It’s not clear where he got that figure.

The trade deficit with Canada – expected to be $45bn in 2024 – is mostly driven by US energy demands.

The North American auto industry also has highly integrated supply chains.

Auto parts can cross the borders between the US and Mexico and Canada multiple time before a vehicle is finally assembled.

Trump has also tied the tariffs to border security, saying it will be imposed unless Canada increases security at the shared border.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has repeatedly said that everything is on the table in response if the tariffs are imposed.

That includes a tax or embargo on energy exports to the US, though some of Canada’s provincial leaders disagree with that response.

On Thursday, Trudeau told reporters that Canada’s goal is to avoid US tariffs altogether but it will step up its response “gradually” to seek the quick removal of levies if they are imposed.

Canada is also pitching itself as a reliable trading partner and a secure source to the US for energy and critical minerals as it lobbies American lawmakers in a bid to avoid the tariffs.

• Canada offers to help Trump as it scrambles to avert tariff war

• Trudeau says ‘not a snowball’s chance in hell’ Canada will join US

Economists suggest the US depends on Canadian products for energy security.

In 2024, Canadian energy exports came to almost $170bn (C$244bn), according to a recent analysis by TD Bank economists.

Trump also said on Thursday that businesses should make their products in the US if they want to avoid tariffs.

Tariffs are a central part of Trump’s economic vision – he sees them as a way of growing the US economy, protecting jobs and raising tax revenue.

The new president has ordered federal officials to review US trade relationships for any unfair practices by 1 April.

Some online sites are prescribing men a hair loss drug that has potentially risky side effects without consistent safety checks, the BBC has found.

The side effects of finasteride can include suicidal thoughts and impotence, yet some big brand companies will send the pills in the post without seeing or chatting with the customer.

Kyle, who is 26 and from Wakefield, regrets buying the pills online after filling out a ‘tick-box’ form.

He says his life has been turned upside down by an all too quick decision.

Kyle started taking finasteride last spring, after it was recommended to him by a mate who was on it.

He says he did a bit of research beforehand, but buying it online was simple.

“I just typed it in on Google and it came up with all these online pharmacies,” Kyle says.

“It’s everywhere. It’s so easily accessible.”

The prescription pills arrived on his doorstep within a week of ordering them.

“I had no consultation with a doctor. No zoom meeting. I didn’t have to send any pictures to them or anything like that to actually make sure I did have male pattern baldness.

“I started it and, yeah – that was the biggest mistake of my life.”

Since taking the drug, Kyle says he’s been having problems with his sexual, mental and physical health – problems he had never experienced before and which have persisted since he stopped the medication.

“Life just feels grey. It’s, like, castrated my emotions,” Kyle says.

“It just stripped everything from me – all my personality and everything. I stopped going out with my mates, stopped playing football and started having all these issues.”

Finasteride is one of the most common pills for hair loss, taken by tens of thousands of men in the UK. It is only available by private prescription.

It works by stopping testosterone turning into another hormone, called dihydrotestosterone (DHT), that can stop hair growing.

Kyle took it for about six weeks, but stopped after experiencing problems including suicidal thoughts.

In late April 2024 – just weeks after Kyle got his prescription – UK regulators took urgent action over finasteride, saying packs must contain a special safety alert card warning of the small risk of severe side effects including suicidal thoughts and sexual dysfunction.

After being contacted by other men like Kyle through Your Voice, Your BBC News, we asked a male colleague to buy finasteride from three leading online providers to see what the checks now involved.

Online prescriber ‘Hims’ mentioned the side effects.

Superdrug also offered the option to chat with a doctor – that cost extra.

Only Boots pharmacy asked for a photo of hair loss.

When some packs arrived, none contained the new patient alert card that drug makers were asked to add.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory agency says manufacturers have been given up to a year to comply, but it might take longer.

Boots, Hims and Superdrug say online finasteride customers are asked to confirm that they have read and understood the possible risks.

They say until the alert cards are “rolled out” and put in packs, users can read the long patient information leaftlet already included with the medicine to learn about side effects.

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society says online prescribing can be very useful for a lot of patients, particularly if they are too embarrassed to visit a doctor. But the checks must be robust.

James Davies, RPS director for England told BBC News: “It’s really important that regardless of whether it’s online or face to face, these thorough checks are taking place.

“That means that a full medical history is taken, there’s an opportunity to understand the medication that may be prescribed, the side effects, the risks and the benefits.”

He said sharing photos of the hair loss with the prescriber and having a video call to discuss all of the issues could be useful.

The British Association of Hair Restoration Surgery (BAHRS) believes patients shouldn’t get the drug just by filling out an online form.

Greg Williams, hair transplant surgeon and vice president of BAHRS, says although finsasteride is a good treatment for many, the small chance of serious side effects must be explained and closely monitored.

“There will be some patients who have risk factors that might make finasteride a risky prescription. I’m not saying it can’t be prescribed, but patients need to be appropriately counselled.”

Europe’s drug regulator is doing its own safety review of finasteride which could include a ban.

Nearly a year since first ordering the drug, Kyle says he deeply regrets taking finasteride.

“It’s just a little pill. You take it and don’t really think about what it can do to you,” he says.

“Every day I beat myself up saying like ‘You had a perfect life, you didn’t have to risk something over hair’.

“It was vain of me…but when you get insecure you do stupid things.

“If I were made aware of what it can do I never would have took it.”

US President Donald Trump has ordered officials to make plans to declassify documents related to three of the most consequential assassinations in US history – the killings of John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr.

“A lot of people are waiting for this for long, for years, for decades,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday. “And everything will be revealed.”

The order directs top administration officials to present a plan to declassify the documents within 15 days.

President John F Kennedy was killed in Dallas in 1963. His brother Robert F Kennedy was assassinated while running for president in California 1968, just two months after King, America’s most famous civil rights leader, was murdered in Memphis, Tennessee.

Many of the documents related to the investigations have been released in the years since, although thousands still remain redacted, particularly related to the sprawling JFK investigation.

President John F Kennedy was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald, a Marine veteran who had defected to the Soviet Union and later returned to the United States.

A government commission determined that Oswald acted alone.

However, unanswered questions have long dogged the case, and have given rise to alternative theories about the involvement of government agents, the mafia and other nefarious characters – as well as more outlandish conspiracy theories.

Opinion polls over decades have indicated that most Americans don’t believe Oswald was the sole assassin.

In 1992, Congress passed a law to release all documents related to the investigation within 25 years. Both Trump in his first term and President Joe Biden released piles of JFK-related documents, but thousands – out of a total of millions – still remain partially or fully secret.

Trump promised to declassify all of the files in his first term, but held back on his promise after CIA and FBI officials persuaded him to keep some files secret. Today’s executive order states that continued secrecy “is not consistent with the public interest”.

“As a statement of intention it’s great that the president has put his promise into words on paper. That’s important,” said Jefferson Morley, a former Washington Post journalist, JFK assassination expert and editor of the online newsletter JFK Facts.

“But the details and implementation are everything. This process is just beginning. How exactly this is going to be carried out is not at all clear,” he said.

Recent document releases have revealed new details about the circumstances surrounding the assassination, including about the CIA’s extensive monitoring of Oswald.

In 2023, Paul Landis, an 88-year-old former Secret Service agent who witnessed the assassination at close range, said he took a bullet from the car after Kennedy was shot.

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Experts say the detail complicates the official story that a single bullet hit both the president and Texas Governor John Connally, who was riding in the motorcade and survived the shooting.

Mr Morley said new information has cast further doubt on the theory that Oswald acted alone and predicted that a full release of all the redacted documents could add significantly to public knowledge.

But he said that there may not be a “smoking gun”, and that CIA and other security officials will push to maintain some level of secrecy.

“This story is not over,” he said.

During the signing ceremony at the White House on Thursday, Trump asked for the pen he used to sign the order to be given to Robert F Kennedy Jr, who is RFK’s son, JFK’s nephew and the president’s nominee for health secretary.

RFK Jr has long cast doubt on the official narratives about his uncle’s assassination as well as that of his father, Robert F Kennedy.

Kennedy Sr was killed in a Los Angeles ballroom by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian man angry at US support for Israel. RFK Jr has spoken to Sirhan in prison and has stated that he does not believe Sirhan killed his father, although other Kennedy family members reject that claim.

Martin Luther King Jr was shot to death by white nationalist James Earl Ray. Members of the King family have alleged Ray did not act alone and was part of a larger conspiracy.

Southport killer Axel Rudakubana has been sentenced to a minimum of 52 years for the “sadistic” murders of three young girls in an attack described as “shocking” and “pure evil”.

Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, Bebe King, six, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, died while eight other children and two adults – dance class leader Leanne Lucas and businessman Jonathan Hayes – were seriously wounded.

The 18-year-old refused to come into the courtroom as he was sentenced at Liverpool Crown Court, having been removed from the dock earlier due to disruptive behaviour – which included demands to see a paramedic and shouts of “I feel ill”.

Sentencing him, judge Mr Justice Goose said: “Many who have heard the evidence might describe what he did as evil, who could dispute it?”

Earlier, the details of Rudakubana’s crimes were laid out in court for the first time in graphic detail – including CCTV and dashboard camera footage from outside the Hart Space studios on Hart Street.

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The court heard how, just after 11:45 BST on 29 July, Rudakubana moved through the sold-out Taylor Swift-themed dance workshop, organised by Ms Lucas, “systematically” stabbing young girls as they sat making friendship bracelets and singing along to Swift’s music.

Prosecutor Deanna Heer KC also described how Rudakubana gloated about the attacks as he was escorted through Copy Lane police station after his arrest – saying he was “glad the children were dead”.

The teenager had booked a taxi to take him to Hart Street after leaving his home in Old School Close, Banks, west Lancashire, at 11:10 BST, the court was told.

Ms Heer played footage of Rudakubana asking the driver to point him to the address of the dance class – before getting out without paying.

The driver’s dashboard camera also captured Rudakubana walk up the stairs of the Hart Space building to the first-floor studio which had 26 children, Ms Lucas, and her colleague and friend Heidi Liddle inside.

Seconds later, the sounds of screaming children filled the courtroom and the footage showed girls streaming out of the Hart Space dance studio.

The families of the victims cried in the public gallery as Ms Heer played footage of three of the girls staggering into the street and collapsing – including two of the survivors and Alice.

Unlike Bebe and Elsie Dot, Alice had managed to get out of the building despite her grave injuries, but collapsed by the car of a woman who had arrived to pick up her daughter.

Inside the studio, Bebe had been subjected to 122 knife wounds, while Elsie Dot had 85.

Ms Liddle and one other child were hiding in a locked toilet on a landing outside – Ms Liddle later describing how she realised that some of the children had not escaped when she heard them begging Rudakubana to stop.

The police arrived at Hart Street shortly before 11:59 BST – three officers and a member of the public, window-cleaner Joel Verite, charged up those stairs to find Rudakubana stood over the body of Bebe King holding a knife.

Police body-camera footage showed him tackled to the floor as Mr Verite shouted in utter shock and horror at the injuries he saw had been inflicted on Bebe.

A short time later Ms Liddle and the child hiding with her were seen sobbing in terror and relief as the police told them it was safe to emerge.

One of the survivors, a seven-year-old girl referred to as Child A, had been pulled back inside the building by Rudakubana as she tried to escape and was stabbed repeatedly, before managing to stagger into the street where she fell to the ground.

A statement written by the mother of Child A, read by Ms Heer, said her father had been “broken” by what happened to his daughter.

“Our daughter has not only experienced the most violent, frenzied attack on her body, but she’s witnessed so much horror too.”

The leader of the dance class, Ms Lucas, who read her statement in court, looked around the packed courtroom at the family members of fellow victims and survivors as she spoke.

She said: “He targeted us because we were women and girls, vulnerable and easy prey.

“To discover that he had always set out to hurt the vulnerable is beyond comprehensible.

“For Alice, Elsie, Bebe, Heidi and the surviving girls, I’m surviving for you.”

Victim impact statements were also read out by Ms Heer, in which the grieving families of two of the murder victims branded their daughters’ killer as “pure evil” and said his actions had have left them in “continuous pain”.

Stan Reiz KC, mitigating, told the court Rudakubana had appeared to have been a “normal child” until he reached 13.

Mr Reiz said: “There is no psychiatric evidence before the court that could suggest that a mental disorder contributed to the defendant’s actions.

“However, he did make a transition from a normal, well-disciplined child to someone who was capable of committing acts of such shocking and senseless violence.”

In his sentencing remarks, Justice Goose said: “I am sure Rudakubana had the settled determination to carry out these offences and had he been able to, he would have killed each and every child – all 26 of them.”

Justice Goose confirmed the offences did not reach the legal definition of terrorism because he did not kill to further a political, religious or ideological cause.

However, he told the packed courtroom that whether the “motivation was terrorism or not misses the point”.

“What he did on 29 July last year has caused such shock and revulsion to the whole nation, that it must be viewed as being at the extreme level of crime”, the judge said.

“His culpability, and the harm he caused and intended, were at the highest.”

Rudakubana was sentenced for three counts of murder, 10 of attempted murder, one of producing the biological toxin ricin and one of possession of an Al Qaeda training manual, an offence under the Terrorism Act.

In a statement after the hearing, Elsie’s family offered their gratitude to the emergency services who responded to the incident.

“We are so thankful for their bravery, compassion and strength which should serve as an inspiration to everybody,” they said.

The family also thanked Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, King Charles and the Prince and Princess of Wales for arranging private meetings where they offered their condolences.

Earlier, the prime minister said “the thoughts of the entire nation” were with the families of Rudakubana’s victims.

Sir Keir said: “I want to say directly to the survivors, families and community of Southport – you are not alone. We stand with you in your grief.

“What happened in Southport was an atrocity and as the judge has stated, this vile offender will likely never be released.

“After one of the most harrowing moments in our country’s history we owe it to these innocent young girls and all those affected to deliver the change that they deserve.”

BBC North West Tonight

“It’s like the United States doesn’t actually understand what I did for this country, it’s a betrayal,” Abdullah tells the BBC.

He fled Afghanistan with his parents amid the US withdrawal in August 2021 and is now a paratrooper for the US military. He worries he can’t help his sister and her husband escape too, because of President Donald Trump’s executive order suspending a resettlement programme.

The order cancels all flights and applications for Afghan refugees, without any exemption for families of active servicemembers.

Trump argues the decision addresses “record levels of migration” that threaten “the availability of resources for Americans”.

But Abdullah and several other Afghan refugees have told the BBC they feel the US has “turned its back” on them, despite years of working alongside American officials, troops and non-profit organisations in Afghanistan. We are not using their real names, as they worry doing so could jeopardise their cases or put their families at risk.

As soon as Abdullah heard about the order, he called his sister. “She was crying, she’s lost all hope,” he said. He believes his work has made her a target of the Taliban government which took power in 2021.

“The anxiety, it’s just unimaginable. She thinks we’ll never be able to see each other again,” he says.

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During the war, Abdullah says he was an interpreter for US forces. When he left Afghanistan, his sister and her husband couldn’t get passports in time to board the flight.

Suhail Shaheen, a spokesperson for the Taliban government, told the BBC there is an amnesty for anyone who worked with international forces and all Afghans can “live in the country without any fear”. He claims these refugees are “economic migrants”.

But a UN report in 2023 cast doubt on assurances from the Taliban government. It found hundreds of former government officials and armed forces members were allegedly killed despite a general amnesty.

Abdullah’s sister and her husband had completed the medical exams and interviews required for resettlement in the US. The BBC has seen a document from the US Department of Defense endorsing their application.

Now Abdullah says Trump’s insistence that immigration is too high does not justify his separation from his family. He describes sleepless nights, and says the anxiety is affecting his work in his combat unit, serving the United States.

Babak, a former legal adviser to the Afghan Air Force, is still in hiding in Afghanistan.

“They’re not just breaking their promise to us – they’re breaking us,” he says.

The BBC has seen letters from the United Nations confirming his role, as well as a letter endorsing his asylum claim by a Lt Colonel in the US Air Force. The endorsement adds that he provided advice on strikes targeting militants linked to both the Taliban and the Islamic State group.

Babak can’t understand the president’s decision, given that he worked alongside US troops. “We risked our lives because of those missions. Now we’re in grave danger,” he says.

He has been moving his wife and young son from location to location, desperately trying to stay hidden. He claims his brother was tortured for his whereabouts. The BBC cannot verify this part of his story, given the nature of his claims.

Babak is appealing to Trump and his National Security Adviser Mike Waltz to change their minds.

“Mike Waltz, you served in Afghanistan. Please encourage the president,” he tells us.

Before saying goodbye, he adds: “The one ray of light we’ve been holding onto has been extinguished.”

Ahmad managed to fly out to the US amid the chaos of the withdrawal but is now separated from his family. He felt he had no choice but to leave his father, mother and teenage siblings behind.

If he and his father had not worked with the US, he says, his family would not be targets of the Taliban government. “I can’t sleep knowing I’m one of the reasons they’re in this situation,” he adds.

Before the Taliban takeover, Ahmad worked for a non-profit called Open Government Partnership (OGP), co-founded by the US 13 years ago and headquartered in Washington. He says the work he’s proudest of is establishing a special court to address abuses against women.

But he claims his work at OGP and his advocacy for women made him a target and he was shot by Taliban fighters in 2021 before the Taliban took over the country.

The BBC has seen a letter from a hospital in Pennsylvania assessing “evidence of injury from bullet and bullet fragments” which they say is “consistent with his account of what happened to him in Kabul”.

Making matters worse, he says his family is also in danger because his father was a colonel with the Afghan army and assisted the CIA. The BBC has seen a certificate, provided by the Afghan National Security Forces, thanking his father for his service.

Ahmad says the Taliban government has harassed his parents, brothers and sisters, so they fled to Pakistan. The BBC has seen photos showing Ahmad’s father and brother being treated in a hospital for injuries he claims were inflicted by people from the Taliban government.

His family had completed several steps of the resettlement programme. He says he even provided evidence that he has enough funds to support his family once they arrive in the US, without any government help.

Now Ahmad says the situation is critical. His family are in Pakistan on visas that will expire within months. He has contacted the IOM and has been told to “be patient”.

The head of #AfghanEvac, a non-profit group helping eligible Afghan refugees resettle, said he estimated 10,000-15,000 people were in the late stages of their applications.

Mina, who is pregnant, has been waiting for a flight out of Islamabad for six months. She worries her terror will threaten her unborn child. “If I lose the baby, I’ll kill myself,” she told the BBC.

She says she used to protest for women’s rights, even after the Taliban government took control of Afghanistan. She claims she was arrested in 2023 and detained overnight.

“Even then I didn’t want to leave Afghanistan. I went into hiding after my release, but they called me and said next time, they’d kill me,” she says.

Mina worries the Pakistani government will send her back to Afghanistan. That’s partly because Pakistan will not grant Afghan refugees asylum indefinitely.

The country has taken in hundreds of thousands of refugees from its neighbour, over decades of instability in the region. According to the UN refugee agency, the country hosts three million Afghan nationals, about 1.4 million of whom are documented.

As cross-border tensions with the Taliban government have flared, there has been growing concern over the fate of Afghans in Pakistan, with reports of alleged intimidation and detentions. The UN special rapporteur has said he’s concerned and Afghans in the region deserve better treatment.

Pakistan’s government says it is expelling foreign nationals who are in the country illegally back to Afghanistan and confirmed search raids were conducted in January.

According to the IOM, more than 795,000 Afghans have been expelled from Pakistan since last September.

The Afghan refugees we’ve spoken to feel caught between a homeland where their lives are in danger, and a host country whose patience is running out.

They had been pinning their hopes on the US – but what seemed a safe harbour has been abruptly blocked off by the new president until further notice.

Adele has been accused of sabotaging the sale of a £6m mansion she used to live in by its owners, who claim she once said it was haunted.

The award-winning singer rented the Grade II-listed Lock House in Partridge Green, West Sussex, in 2012.

The owner has submitted planning permission to transform the property from a single dwelling to three residential units and convert an existing garage and flat into a separate cottage.

In the submission, the owner said comments made by Adele about the 10-bedroom house being haunted during an interview had hindered the selling process.

“The first tenant, Adele, stayed for six months and blighted the property by saying it is haunted,” it said.

“This comment negatively impacted future marketing efforts and continues to affect the property’s reputation to this day.”

Discussing Lock House in an interview with Anderson Cooper on CBS when she lived at the property, Adele said: “This bit’s all quite scary, really.

“I’m not rattling around here on my own. It gives me the creeps.”

Adele did not use the word “haunted” during the interview.

After the singer vacated the property, it was relisted for sale, but received no offers.

It was then rented to a tenant who wanted to use the property to run a bespoke dressmaking business. But it was later discovered the tenant was running a residential retreat with 11 guest bedrooms and a fitness boot camp, the application said.

According to the application, the owner has actively tried to sell the property for about 14 years.

The only offer ever received was in August 2020, but the prospective buyer withdrew after learning about the property’s supposed haunted status, it added.

Lock House was originally constructed in about 1909 before it underwent a major reconstruction programme in 1940.

In 1971, it was divided up and sold at auction in 26 separate lots. But it was subsequently bought by the church and became the Convent of the Visitation.

The current owner acquired Lock House in 2003 from a property trader, who had previously purchased it after the convent relocated to Albourne.

According to its current listing, Lock House and its 32-acre estate features 10 bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, an indoor and outdoor swimming pool, a tennis court, a helicopter pad and a cinema room.

It is up for sale for £5,995,000.

UnitedHealthcare has named a new boss almost two months after its then-chief executive Brian Thompson was shot and killed in New York.

Company veteran Tim Noel will take charge of the largest health insurer in the US, which has more than 50 million customers, at a critical moment.

Mr Thompson’s killing on 4 December in central Manhattan ignited a wide debate about how the US healthcare system operates.

Many Americans, who pay more for healthcare than people in any other country, have expressed anger over what they see as unfair treatment by insurance firms.

Mr Noel “brings unparalleled experience to this role with a proven track record and strong commitment to improving how health care works for consumers, physicians, employers, governments and our other partners,” UnitedHealthcare’s parent company UnitedHealth Group said.

A manhunt ensued for days as police worked to identify who was responsible in the December killing, which happened outside a Manhattan hotel where the CEO was staying.

After five days, Luigi Mangione, 26, was arrested in a McDonald’s restaurant in Pennsylvania after a worker called police.

Mr Mangione has pleaded not guilty to charges in the killing. He is facing 11 state criminal counts, including murder as an act of terrorism.

As well as the state-level charges, he is also accused of federal – national-level – stalking and murder offences that could lead to a death penalty sentence.

Prosecutors allege that Mr Mangione shot Mr Thompson before going on the run.

Yuval Raphael, who survived the 7 October attack in 2023, has been chosen to represent Israel at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.

Raphael, 24, was at the Nova musical festival when Hamas attackers killed 360 young partygoers and took 40 more hostage.

The amateur singer was attending with friends and says she survived by hiding under dead bodies inside a bomb shelter for eight hours.

Raphael has been sharing her story while competing on Israeli talent show HaKokhav HaBa (The Next Star) and winning it means she gets to compete at Eurovision in Basel, Switzerland in May.

She said after winning the show: “I can’t explain how excited and ready I am! Thank you for giving me this huge honour and trusting me to represent my country on the grand Eurovision stage in Switzerland.”

Raphael, who says she still has shrapnel in her head and leg from the festival attack, only began singing professionally last year.

During the final of the music competition, she sang a version of ABBA’s Dancing Queen, dedicating it to “all the angels” who were killed at the festival.

She also told viewers that “music is one of the strongest ingredients in my healing process” during the show.

Raphael, who is fluent in English and French as well as Hebrew, has taken part in advocacy for Israel over the last year, including speaking to the UN Human Rights Council about her experience of surviving the attack.

Her official song will be revealed in the coming weeks by Israeli public broadcaster Kan, according to the Eurovision Song Contest website.

Last year’s winner of The Next Star, Eden Golan, represented Israel at Eurovision with Hurricane, which came fifth in the competition.

The show previously selected Netta, who won Eurovision in 2018 and Noa Kirel, who came third in 2023.

Golan’s Eurovision entry was met with criticism, as it was Israel’s first time performing at Eurovision since the outbreak of its most recent war in the Middle East.

Her team were also forced to alter the lyrics and name of Golan’s song – from October Rain to Hurricane – after it was seen to break rules on political neutrality.

There were several campaigns to block Israel from taking part altogether, but the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which hosts the event, ruled Israel was allowed to compete.

Golan was booed whilst performing at a dress rehearsal for the competition, which took place in Malmo, Sweden and confined to her hotel room when she wasn’t performing, due to threats of harm to the Israeli delegation.

Israel and Gaza are currently upholding a ceasefire after 15 months of fighting, which began in October 2023 after Hamas gunmen breached Israel’s Gaza perimeter fence at multiple locations and attacked nearby Israeli communities, IDF bases and a music festival.

About 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.

The IDF responded by launching an air and ground campaign in Gaza, during which more than 47,100 Palestinians have been killed, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Namibia’s former First Lady Monica Geingos has released a video message warning people that fraudsters are using her name and likeness to target unsuspecting citizens.

Manipulated clips circulating for some time on social media appear to show her asking people to invest in a foreign exchange (forex) scheme.

There have been many victims, including one woman who was swindled out of her retirement savings, a spokesperson for Mrs Geingos told the BBC.

The former first lady’s team have been raising the issue for almost two years, but this is the first time Mrs Geingos has made an appeal in person as the volume of fake messages has “gotten worse over the past two months”.

Mrs Geingos’ husband, Hage Geingob, was Namibia’s president from 2015 until he died in office last year.

In Thursday’s video message, the lawyer and businesswoman said she was asked to make a public appeal in person as the problem had become “ubiquitous… across social media platforms”.

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There are a large number of accounts on TikTok, Instagram and X that look at first as if they belong to her – using her profile image and a handle that is very similar to her name.

People are also being contacted directly.

“Recently, someone received a video call purportedly of me convincing them to invest in some kind of weird forex scheme,” Mrs Geingos said.

“I’m not a forex person, I’m not on any social media platform asking for any money or giving any loans out or whatever you’re being told.”

She urged people not to “communicate with these fake accounts” but to report them.

The TikTok clips have used genuine footage of Mrs Geingos speaking dubbed with a voice that sounds like hers. The bank account details and phone numbers provided are all Namibian.

Mavis Elias, the former first lady’s executive assistant, said that “the most susceptible to this type of activity are those that are driven by what they see”.

She said that her office had been inundated with messages from people who had been defrauded – large amounts have been involved in some cases.

“At this juncture, it’s just a concern [over] the fact that it’s gotten worse over the past few months.

“That is distressing because it means that the more accounts are being made and the more people are becoming susceptible to it, the more people lose their hard-earned money,” Ms Elias said.

These types of scams have become a “widespread threat in Africa and… internationally”, according to Craig Pedersen, a cyber-security expert at South African company TCGForensics.

He told the BBC that while several reports suggested the scams were being run from South Africa, they now appear to be “globally spread”.

Mrs Geingos is not the only high-profile person whose image and voice has been manipulated.

In South Africa, well-known figures such as wealthy businessmen Johann Rupert and Patrice Motsepe as well as President Cyril Ramaphosa have been caught up in similar schemes to trick people out of their money.

“Scammers frequently use celebrities in their scams to lull their victims into a false sense of confidence and to encourage the victim not to ask too many questions,” Mr Pedersen said.

Dr Thembekile Olivia Mayayise, an expert in this field at South Africa’s Wits University, echoed this, saying she had come across numerous videos online using a celebrity’s likeness.

People are urged to be “more cautious with investments” and scrutinise any suspicious communication they receive – especially from well-known figures.

“Ultimately the consumer needs to become more distrusting of celebrity endorsements – particularly with regards to investments,” Mr Pedersen said.

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An endangered plant known as the “corpse flower” for its putrid stink is blooming in Australia – and captivating the internet in the process, with thousands already tuned in to a livestream to witness its grand debut.

The titan arum plant, housed in the Royal Botanic Gardens of Sydney, blooms only once every few years for just 24 hours.

Affectionately dubbed Putricia, it will release a smell described as “wet socks, hot cat food, or rotting possum flesh”.

The long wait to see Putricia fully unfurl has spawned jokes and even a unique lingo in the livestream’s chat, with thousands commenting “WWTF”, or “We Watch the Flower”.

The livestream attracted more than 8,000 simultaneous viewers on Thursday, doubling within hours as the plant’s appearance slowly changed.

John Siemon, director of horticulture and living collections at the gardens, compared the spectacle to Sydney’s 2000 Olympics, saying “we’ve had 15,000 people come through the gates before it [the flower] even opened”.

“This specimen is around 10 years old. We acquired it from our colleagues in LA Botanic Garden at the age of three, and we’ve been nurturing it for the last seven years,” he told the BBC’s Newsday programme.

“[We’re] incredibly excited to have our first bloom in 15 years.”

After days of inaction, the view on the livestream markedly changed on Thursday as Putricia, comfortably ensconced behind a red velvet rope, began to open up.

As she continues to bloom, viewers can expect to see Putricia unfold a vibrant maroon or crimson skirt, known as a spathe, around her spadix which is the large spike in the middle of the plant.

The gardens has said it is “hard to predict exactly when” Putricia will bloom, but that has not stopped the thousands gathered online.

“I’m back again to see how Putricia is going and I can see she’s still taking her time like the queen she is, fair play,” wrote one commenter. “This is the slowest burlesque ever,” said another.

Yet another person wrote: “Overnight I watched, fell asleep, awoke, watched, fell asleep. I am weak, but Putricia is strong. WWTF.”

Other popular acronyms among viewers are WDNRP (We Do Not Rush Putricia) and BBTB (Blessed Be The Bloom).

The plant can only be found in the rainforests of Sumatra, Indonesia, where it is known as bunga bangkai – or “corpse flower” in Indonesian. Its scientific name is , which is derived from Ancient Greek and means “giant misshapen penis”.

When in bloom, the plant’s long yellow spadix emits a strong odour, often compared to the smell of decaying flesh, to trick pollinators into landing on what they think is rotten meat so they can move pollen between male and female specimens.

It has the world’s largest flowering structure, as it can grow up to 3m (10 feet) tall and weigh up to 150kg. The plant contains several hundred flowers in the base of its spadix.

It is endangered in the wild due to deforestation and land degradation.

Putricia is one of several titan arums in Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens, which last saw one bloom 15 years ago.

But there have been other corpse flower blooms across Australia in recent years, including Melbourne and Adelaide’s botanic gardens, each time attracting thousands of curious visitors keen on having a whiff.

There are also a few housed in Kew Gardens in London, where one bloomed in June last year. The titan arum first flowered outside of Sumatra in 1889 in Kew.

The conservative opposition leader tipped to lead Germany following next month’s elections has promised far-reaching changes to border and asylum rules after a group of children were targeted in a deadly knife attack in Bavaria.

Friedrich Merz promised in effect to close Germany’s borders to all irregular migrants, including those with a right to protection.

A two-year-old boy of Moroccan origin and a man aged 41 were killed in Wednesday’s attack in Aschaffenburg, and several others were hurt.

An Afghan man aged 28 was due to appear in court on Thursday accused of murder and grievous harm.

Wednesday’s stabbing in Aschaffenburg is the latest in a string of violent and fatal attacks that have involved suspects who have sought asylum in Germany.

In a matter of hours, the stabbings prompted a hardened tone from Chancellor Olaf Scholz as well as Merz, the centre-right opposition leader.

Scholz promised quick action and called it an “act of terror” – although officials have not, so far, said that they believe there was a terrorist motive.

Merz, whose Christian Democrats lead the opinion polls ahead of 23 February federal elections, refused to accept that attacks in Mannheim last May, Solingen in August and Magdeburg last month, would be “the new normal”.

The Afghan suspect in yesterday’s attack arrived in Germany in 2022 and was linked to three previous acts of violence, according to Bavarian officials. He had agreed to leave Germany last month but was still receiving psychiatric treatment and living in asylum accommodation.

An investigating judge will decide whether he should be remanded in custody or placed temporarily in a psychiatric hospital.

Merz said that on his first day as chancellor he would instruct the interior ministry to take permanent control of Germany’s borders.

“We see before us the ruins of 10 years of misguided asylum and immigration policy in Germany,” he said. “We reached the limit.”

Under his party colleague, Angela Merkel, Germany welcomed more than a million refugees during Europe’s 2015-16 migrant crisis.

Criticising EU asylum rules as as “recognisably dysfunctional”, he said Germany should now “exercise its right to the primacy of national law”.

Germany has already reinstated checks on its borders to combat illegal immigration, which is allowed temporarily under the EU’s border-free Schengen rules as a “last-resort” measure, but not on permanent basis.

Merz also said it was time to significantly increase the number of places available for detention ahead of deportation.

Merz’s promise to close the borders to illegal entries on day one at the chancellery in Berlin has a Trumpian ring to it.

The US president has pushed through a flurry of executive orders and actions to tackle illegal immigration since he re-entered the White House this week.

In Germany, both the centre-left chancellor and Merz are conscious that the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has been consistently polling second, has made immigration a signature issue.

AfD leader Alice Weidel has called for a vote in the German parliament next week on closing Germany’s borders and turning back irregular migrants. “The knife terror of Aschaffenburg must have consequences now,” she said on social media.

Some critics will argue that Scholz and Merz’s move to take a tougher stance now comes too late. Others will argue that a rightwards shift by mainstream parties could simply bolster the AfD’s arguments.

In any case German politics does not lend itself to a presidential-style set of day-one decrees, given the necessity of forming coalitions with other parties.

The leader of the liberal Free Democratic Party, Christian Lindner, said Merz would not be able to introduce such changes if he went into coalition with the Social Democrats or Green party.

Nancy Faeser, who is both interior minister and a party colleague of Olaf Scholz, suggested that “some people are now making largely fact-free arguments in election campaign mode”.

“I can only warn very clearly against abusing such a terrible act for populism, that only benefits the right-wing populists with their contempt for humanity,” she said.

The 41-year-old man who was killed in Wednesday’s knife attack has been praised, apparently for coming to the aid of the kindergarten group and saving the lives of other children.

Another two-year-old of Syrian origin suffered knife wounds to her neck.

A man of 72 suffered serious stab wounds and a kindergarten teacher suffered a broken arm.

A court in the Indian capital, Delhi, has ordered the seizure of two “offensive” paintings by MF Husain, one of India’s most famous artists.

The court on Monday granted permission for the police to seize the artworks after a complaint was filed alleging that the paintings, displayed at an art gallery and featuring two Hindu deities, “hurt religious sentiments”.

Husain, who died in 2011 aged 95, often faced backlash for the depictions of nude Hindu gods in his paintings.

The Delhi Art Gallery (DAG), which hosted the exhibition, denied any wrongdoing and stated that a “detailed” police investigation found no “cognisable offence” by the gallery.

The exhibition Husain: The Timeless Modernist at DAG showcased over 100 paintings from 26 October to 14 December.

The complainant, Amita Sachdeva, a lawyer, said on X that on 4 December, she photographed the “offensive paintings” displayed at the DAG and, after researching previous complaints against the late artist, filed a police complaint five days later.

On 10 December, Ms Sachdeva reported that she visited the gallery with the investigating officer, only to discover that the paintings had been removed. She claimed that the gallery officials asserted they had never exhibited the paintings.

The paintings that Ms Sachdeva shared online depicted Hindu gods Ganesha and Hanuman alongside nude female figures. She also alleged that the Delhi police had failed to file a report.

She later petitioned the court to preserve the CCTV footage from the gallery during the period when the paintings were reportedly on display, according to media reports.

On Monday, a judge at Delhi’s Patiala House Courts said that the police had accessed the footage and submitted their report. According to the inquiry, the exhibition was held in a private space and was intended solely to showcase the artist’s original work, the judge added.

The DAG said in a statement that it had been assisting police with their inquiries. It said the exhibition had attracted about 5,000 visitors and had received “positive reviews in the press as well as from the public”.

The complainant had been the only person to raise any objection to any of the artworks in the exhibition, the gallery said.

“The complainant has herself displayed and publicised the images of the drawings over social media and television news media deliberately intending them to be viewed by a larger audience, while contending that the same images hurt her personal religious sentiments.”

Maqbool Fida Husain was one of India’s biggest painters and was called “Picasso of India” but his art often stirred controversy in the country. His works have sold for millions of dollars.

His career was marked by controversy when he was accused of obscenity and denounced by hardline Hindus for a painting of a nude goddess.

In 2006, Husain publicly apologised for his painting, Mother India. It showed a nude woman kneeling on the ground creating the shape of the Indian map. He left the country the same year and lived in self-imposed exile in London until his death.

In 2008, India’s Supreme Court refused to launch criminal proceedings against Husain, saying that his paintings were not obscene and nudity was common in Indian iconography and history.

The court had then dismissed an appeal against a high court ruling that quashed criminal proceedings against Husain in the cities of Bhopal, Indore and Rajkot, condemning the rise of a “new puritanism” in India.

The court also rejected calls for Husain, then in exile, to be summoned and asked to explain his paintings, which were accused of outraging religious sentiments and disturbing national integrity.

“There are so many such subjects, photographs and publications. Will you file cases against all of them? What about temple structures? Husain’s work is art. If you don’t want to see it, don’t see it. There are so many such art forms in temple structures,” the top court said.

Many believe there is a rising tide of illiberalism against artistic expression in India.

In October the Bombay High Court reprimanded the customs department for seizing artworks by renowned artists FN Souza and Akbar Padamsee on the grounds that they were “obscene material.”

The court ruled that not every nude or sexually explicit painting qualifies as obscene and ordered the release of seven seized artworks.