On election night, Donald Trump repeated the phrase: “Promises made, promises kept.”

Now, Republicans have officially taken control of Congress and his “promises” are a whole lot easier to keep.

In Washington political parlance, it’s called “a governing trifecta”, when the president’s party also controls both chambers of Congress – the House of Representatives and the Senate.

That control is what Donald Trump’s Republican Party now has.

Single-party control was once common, but in recent decades it has become rarer and shorter. Often, the party in power loses seats when midterm congressional elections roll around two years later.

Both Trump and Joe Biden enjoyed trifectas for their first two years in the White House, but they also saw that having such control is no guarantee a president can get their way.

• Seven things Trump says he will do in power
• When does he become president again?
• What happens to his legal cases now
• How he pulled off an incredible comeback

In his first two years, Trump passed a signature tax bill – reducing corporate taxes from 35% to 21%, and cutting some taxes on individuals.

But with some members of his own party resistant to his surprise ascent to the top in 2016, he struggled with other aims.

His plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act (known as Obamacare) failed when a senator from his own party, John McCain, refused to vote for it. He also failed to pass an infrastructure bill as he had promised.

In his first two years, when the Democrats controlled the House and the Senate, Biden succeeded in passing the American Rescue plan, the Investment and Jobs Act, and the Chips and Science Act. But he, too, had to significantly scale back his sending and investment plans – touted as the Build Back Better package – after opposition from one of his own senators.

A major impediment to total control for either party is that Senate bills require a three-fifths majority, or 60 votes, to bypass the filibuster, which enables senators to delay legislation by keeping debate open-ended. That means that when a party has a simple majority in the Senate, it needs to reach across the aisle to get a bill passed.

Even with a healthy majority in the Senate this time around, Trump will not have the magic 60 seats that would allow him to overcome opposition attempts to delay legislation.

And on Wednesday, Republicans in the Senate selected John Thune as their majority leader over Florida’s Rick Scott, the clear favourite in the Trump camp, in a sign some lawmakers may be reasserting their independence (Trump did not officially endorse Scott).

That said, a trifecta, if astutely managed, does open the way for the possibility of major legislative initiatives.

Trump’s power advantage could be key in pushing through his big promises such as the largest deportation of migrants in history, sweeping tariffs on foreign imports, and the rolling back of environmental protections.

Using legislation to achieve these ends will make such plans much harder to overturn in the courts – something Donald Trump was plagued by in his first term when he extensively used executive orders that were regularly and often successfully challenged.

The judicial landscape also has changed in Trump’s favour.

The signature achievement of his first term was putting three conservatives on the Supreme Court – cementing a two-thirds majority for possibly decades to come.

He also named more than four dozen judges to the federal appeals courts, flipping several circuits to a more conservative bent.

The majority Republicans have in the Senate also provides a key advantage.

Trump will be able to get his nominees for administration posts approved more easily, something he struggled with back in 2017 when internal resistance to him in the Republican Party was still significant.

All this bodes for a busy and possibly turbulent next two years. But, as recent history indicates, these trifectas don’t last all that long. The incoming administration will want to get a move on.

Sri Lanka’s 17.1 million voters head to the polls again on Thursday to vote in snap parliamentary elections, barely seven weeks after choosing a new president.

More than 8,800 candidates are in the fray in an election marked by a low-key campaign.

Voting begins at 07:00 local time (01:30 GMT) and ends until 16:00 (10.30 GMT). Counting will start in the evening and results are expected on Friday.

Out of 225 seats in the parliament, 196 MPs will be directly elected. The rest would be nominated by political parties based on the percentage of votes they get in what is known as proportional representation.

“Over 8,800 candidates belonging to 49 political parties and 284 independent groups are contesting the elections but only around 1,000 candidates have actively campaigned,” Rohana Hettiarachchi, executive director of poll monitoring group People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections, told the BBC.

High inflation, food and fuel shortages precipitated a political crisis in 2022 which led to the ousting of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. His successor Ranil Wickremesinghe managed to negotiate a bailout package worth $3bn with the International Monetary Fund – but many Sri Lankans continue to feel economic hardship.

“We are still stuck with the problems we faced before. We still don’t have financial help even to fulfil our daily needs,” 26-year-old garment factory worker Manjula Devi, who works in the Katunayake Free Trade Zone near Colombo, told the BBC.

The number of people living below the poverty line in Sri Lanka has risen to 25.9% in the past four years. The World Bank expects the economy to grow by only 2.2% in 2024.

“Sri Lanka has still not recovered from the 2022 economic crisis, even with the IMF bailout,” Raisa Wickrematunge, deputy editor of Himal Southasian magazine, told the BBC.

“I am typing this from the Sri Jayawardenapura general hospital, a public hospital which is switching off its lights and fans to try to bring down skyrocketing electricity costs.”

In 2022, the country defaulted on its foreign debt for the first time, forcing it to seek debt restructuring deals.

Observers expect a multi-cornered contest in the general election, which may ultimately dent the chances of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s party, Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, enacting ambitious reforms.

“Analysts predict he may struggle to get two-thirds and may have to rely on coalitions. This would make his task much more difficult,” says Raisa Wickrematunge.

The election campaign has been largely peaceful with no reports of poll-related deaths or large scale misuse of government resources.

“Violence is negligible compared to previous elections. It will be peaceful elections,” hopes Rohana Hettiarachchie.

The largest coral ever recorded has been found by scientists in the southwest Pacific Ocean.

The mega coral – which is a collection of many connected, tiny creatures that together form one organism rather than a reef – could be more than 300 years old.

It is bigger than a blue whale, the team say.

It was found by a videographer working on a National Geographic ship visiting remote parts of the Pacific to see how it has been affected by climate change.

“I went diving in a place where the map said there was a shipwreck and then I saw something,” said Manu San Felix.

He called over his diving buddy, who is also his son Inigo, and they dived further down to inspect it.

Seeing the coral, which is in the Solomon Islands, was like seeing a “cathedral underwater”, he said.

“It’s very emotional. I felt this huge respect for something that’s stayed in one place and survived for hundreds of years,” he said.

“I thought, ‘Wow, this was here when Napoleon was alive’,” he added.

Scientists on the expedition measured the coral using a type of tape measure under water. It is 34m wide, 32m long and 5.5m high.

Globally coral is facing severe pressures as oceans warm with climate change.

Often described as an “architect” of the seas, corals can join together to form vast reefs where fish and other species live.

Coral reefs also underpin the livelihoods of one billion people including by supporting tourism or fishing, according to the World Economic Forum.

This specimen was found in deeper waters than some coral reefs, which may have protected it from higher temperatures at the sea surface.

The discovery was announced at the same time as the UN climate talks COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan that are trying to make progress in tackling climate change.

Mr Trevor Manemahaga, climate minister for the Solomon Islands at the summit, told BBC News that his nation would be proud of the newly-found coral.

“We want the world to know that this is a special place and it needs to be protected,” he said.

“We rely mostly on marine resources for economic survival so coral is very, very important […] And it’s very crucial and critical for our economy to make sure our coral is not exploited,” he said.

Small island nations like the Solomon Islands are extremely vulnerable to climate change.

Mr Manemahaga said he’s seen first-hand the effects of global warming on his nation, as it causes more powerful cyclones and erodes the coastline causing homes to fall into the water.

Many developing countries at the talks are calling for more cash from richer nations to help them pay for their strategies to tackle climate change.

Mr Manemahaga said that more finance for the Solomon Islands would help the country create more varied jobs that would mean fewer people worked in industries that damage coral reefs.

Currently logging is a major part of the country’s economy – between 50-70% of the country’s annual export revenue – but it cauuses high levels of water pollution that damages coral in the area.

Eric Brown, who is a coral scientist on the National Geographic research trip, says that the health of the coral was “looking pretty good”.

“While the nearby shallow reefs were degraded due to warmer seas, witnessing this large healthy coral oasis in slightly deeper waters is a beacon of hope,” he said.

The coral is a species called Pavona clavus and provides a home to shrimp, crabs, fish and other marine creatures.

The age of the specimen also means it acts like a window into the history into oceanic conditions in the past. Scientists hope to study it to learn more about how it has grown.

A report this week found that 44% of corals living in warm waters are threatened with extinction, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. That is an increase of a third since the species were last assessed in 2008.

Thousands of police are being deployed in Paris to ensure security at Thursday’s France-Israel football international, a week after violence in Amsterdam in which Maccabi Tel Aviv fans came under attack.

Paris police chief Laurent Nuñez said that 4,000 officers would be on patrol, 2,500 at the Stade de France in the northern Paris suburbs and the rest on public transport and inside the capital.

In addition around 1,600 private security guards will be on duty at the stadium, and an elite anti-terrorist police unit will protect the visiting Israeli squad.

“It is a high-risk match [because of] an extremely tense geopolitical context,” Mr Nuñez said.

“We will not allow any attempt to disturb public order.”

The Uefa Nations League match is under intense scrutiny following the violence after last Thursday’s match between Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv in the Netherlands.

The stadium, which can hold 80,000, will be only a quarter full. Following advice by the Israeli government, no more than 100 or so Israeli fans are expected to travel to Paris, though other Israel supporters may go to the game.

Politicians across Europe decried a “return of antisemitism” after Israeli fans were chased through the streets of Amsterdam.

Maccabi fans were themselves involved in vandalism, tearing down a Palestinian flag, attacking a taxi and chanting anti-Arab slogans, according to city authorities. They were then targeted by “small groups of rioters… on foot, by scooter or car”, the city said in a 12-page report.

Violence between Israel and its neighbours in the Middle East has the potential to spread to Europe.

France, Belgium and the Netherlands all have large Muslim populations of North African origin and they live beside far smaller Jewish populations, who in the main identify strongly with Israel.

To express solidarity with European Jews after Amsterdam, President Emmanuel Macron has said he will attend Thursday’s match, which begins at 20:45 (19:45 GMT).

He will be joined by Prime Minister Michel Barnier as well as previous presidents François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy.

Supporters have been told to expect identity checks ahead of the game. Bars and restaurants in the area have been told to close from the afternoon.

The Stade de France was the scene of a dangerous breakdown in law-and-order at a Uefa Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid in 2022. However since then the Rugby World Cup and Paris Olympics have both been peacefully staged there.

France’s far-left France Unbowed (LFI) party – which sides with Palestinians and Lebanese in the conflicts with Israel – has called for Thursday’s match to be cancelled, or at least for President Macron to refuse to attend.

• New arrests in Amsterdam over riots after Maccabi match

“We do not want our head of state honouring a country that commits genocide,” said LFI deputy David Guiraud. Israel has denied allegations of genocide as baseless and grossly distorted.

But Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said it was out of the question to cancel or relocate the match. “France does not give way to those who sow hatred,” he said.

France and Israel are in the same group in the Uefa competition, alongside Italy and Belgium. In their first leg – played in Budapest – France beat Israel 4-1.

Pre-match tensions were already in evidence after a pro-Israeli “gala” event was given the go-ahead for Wednesday evening in Paris, which the far-right Israeli minister Bezalel Smotrich was at one point expected to attend – although it was later thought his “presence” would be by video-link.

Pro-Palestinian and anti-racist organisations were planning demonstrations in the capital to coincide with the event.

Relations between Macron and Benyamin Netanyahu have come under severe strain in recent weeks, after Macron accused the Israeli prime minister of “spreading barbarism” in Gaza and Lebanon.

French Jews were also upset when Macron was quoted as saying that Netanyahu should accept United Nations calls for a ceasefire because “his country was itself created by a decision of the UN.” This was interpreted in Israel as an insult to Jews who had lost their lives in their country’s war of independence.

France in turn was angered when two French officials were briefly detained by Israeli authorities at a holy site in East Jerusalem that is under French administration.

Macron has been described as pursuing a zigzag in his approach to the Middle East, as in many other domains, flipflopping inconsistently between outspoken statements of support for Israel and then its Arab neighbours.

Indian women on average hit menopause a few years earlier than their counterparts in the West, studies show. A recent paper found that women experiencing premature menopause, particularly in the age group of 30–39 years, is also on the rise. Yet there are few resources to help them deal with it.

“In some studies, the average age of menopause in India is 47 – meaning some women can hit it by 44-45 while others by 50 and this is considered normal,” says Dr Ruma Satwik, a gynaecologist and obstetrician at Delhi’s Sir Gangaram Hospital.

This is several years earlier than, for example, the US where the average age is 51.

Doctors say the earlier menopause is a result of nutritional and environmental circumstances as well as genetic factors.

But in a country where conversation on menstruation still comes with stigma and taboo, menopause awareness is lagging.

Sangeeta, who goes by one name, is overwhelmed every day as she juggles work, household chores and childcare while enduring severe hot flashes, fatigue, insomnia, backache and abdominal pain.

“What’s the point of living like this?” the 43-year-old asks. “Sometimes I feel my pain will end when I die.”

A janitor at Dr Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, a government-run facility in the capital, Delhi, Ms Sangeeta hit menopause a year ago but did not know until recently that the hospital had a dedicated clinic to address the health concerns it raised.

Hundreds of miles away in the financial capital, Mumbai, Mini Mathur says she felt like she was experiencing “every possible” symptom after she turned 50.

The TV host says she had never had any medical concerns and followed a healthy lifestyle. The onslaught of symptoms reminded her of the advice a friend had given her years ago.

“It’s coming for everyone. Please hit the ground running.”

India’s 2011 Census data showed the country had 96 million women above 45 years. By 2026, that number is projected to reach 400 million, says Dr Anju Soni, president of the Indian Menopause Society.

“Indian women live one-third of their life after menopause,” she says.

Women are considered to have hit menopause when they haven’t menstruated for a year. But this is preceded by perimenopause, a phase of gradual decline in reproductive hormones that can last from anywhere between two to 10 years.

The symptoms are wide ranging: from affecting mood, memory, focus, libido to effects on bone, brain, muscle, skin and hair. Depending on its severity, women may find their quality of life decline.

• The Netflix show putting the spotlight on menopause
• What is the menopause and what are the main symptoms?

Most symptoms are manageable with supplements, changes in diet, exercise and, if necessary, hormone replacement therapy, doctors say. But there are no tests to determine the condition and they usually rely on eliminating other causes for the symptoms.

Doctors say menopause and perimenopause are under-researched across the world with very little taught about it in medical school.

This can make the process of getting a diagnosis quite frustrating for women, Dr Satwik says.

Ms Mathur says it took visits to several healthcare centres across the country and abroad over the past two years before she received the care she needed.

She was stunned to find that a lot of her symptoms – which included brain fog, low mood, joint pain and anxiety – became “vastly better” when she began using progesterone cream topically.

“I had to go to Austria to find a doctor who wouldn’t negate my symptoms and feelings and say ‘sabko hota hai [it happens to everyone]’.”

The refrain is all too familiar for 60-year-old activist Atul Sharma who was so worried about the changes menopause brought in her mood and sex drive that she hid the condition from her husband for nearly six years.

Ms Sharma, who works with women in rural areas on health and economic empowerment in northern Uttar Pradesh state, found there was barely any provision for menopausal women at rural government clinics. Primary healthcare workers who wanted to help did not have any specialised training.

• NICE stresses HRT as first-line menopause treatment
• Bone-building drug coming for post-menopause women

“Even the nurse who comes here says, ‘Ab iske liye bhi davai mangogi [now you will seek medicine for this also]? Just bear it with. It happens to every woman’.”

In 2022-24, Dr Satwik surveyed over 370 women between the ages of 40 and 60 on their symptoms and its severity.

“About 20% experienced nothing at all. The rest experienced one or more symptoms mildly while 15-20% were experiencing it to a severe degree.”

While information within India remains scarce, many women say they are turning to social media and that online resources are often more illuminating than conversations with their doctors.

Many follow American specialists like Dr Mary Claire Haver who shares latest research on social media and celebrities like Hollywood actresses Naomi Watts and Halle Berry who have been promoting the documentary The M Factor: Shredding the Silence on Menopause. Watts is herself writing a book on menopause while Berry is pushing for new legislation to promote its research, training and education.

Ms Mathur says she feels privileged that she was able to get treatment. “How are women who are bringing up families, kids, going to work, travelling in packed local trains dealing with it?

“We are not up to date with the West,” she says. “We don’t have enough brands of oestrogen patches and progesterone creams that we need in India.”

She’s now studying a course in the US, certified by the National Board of Health and Wellness Coaches, hoping to eventually bridge the gap between information, resources and access to specialists for women from all kinds of backgrounds in India.

“The cost of this treatment is out of reach for many poor women in India,” Ms Sharma says. Ms Sangeeta says she is resigned to living with pain.

Increased awareness has to come from the medical fraternity, says Dr Satwik, adding that there need to be as many talks on menopause or perimenopause as there are on fertility and adolescent health.

Dr Soni says the government already has a network of healthcare workers in rural and remote areas.

“They already give supplements and provide health care services to pregnant women. Now extend that to menopausal women.”

Brazil’s Supreme Court has been evacuated and a man has been found dead after two explosions were heard outside the building on Wednesday evening.

The blasts hit the centre of Brazil’s capital – where the Supreme Court, parliament and presidential palace are all located.

Brasilia’s deputy governor said the explosions occurred after a man attempted to enter the court and was stopped. Police confirmed that they discovered a body outside the building, but have yet to offer further details.

The country’s solicitor general, Jorge Messias, condemned what he said was a deliberate attack and vowed a full investigation into the blasts would be launched.

“I strongly condemn the attacks against the Supreme court and the lower house,” he said in a statement posted to X.

“We must know the motivation behind the attacks, and to re-establish peace and safety as fast as possible.”

Images carried by news agencies showed the deceased man lying in an area outside the court, as officers cordoned off the area.

A police spokesperson told AFP that they could “confirm that there is a body in front of the Supreme Court”, but offered no further details.

Brasilia’s Deputy Governor Celina Leao told reporters the explosion occurred after a man approached the entrance to the court and failed to gain entry, and recommended parliament remain closed on Thursday while investigations continued.

“It could have been a lone wolf, like others we’ve seen around the world,” she told reporters, according to the AP news agency.

“We are considering it as a suicide because there was only one victim. But investigations will show if that was indeed the case.”

An eyewitness said she had seen a man waving at her before throwing explosives at the Supreme Court justice building.

“I was at the bus stop and this guy just waved hello and didn’t say anything else,” Lavana Costa told TV Globo.

“Then we heard the noise. I looked around at the noise and saw fire and smoke. The supreme court [STF] security guards came… He had already thrown something at the statue of justice.

“When the STF security guards were approaching, he threw something again. That’s when it blew up and he fell to the ground.”

Earlier, the Supreme Court said in a statement that the building had been evacuated as a “precautionary measure” after explosions were heard. Justices had just finished hearing a plenary session and were quickly evacuated safely, it added.

The court is located in the Plaza de los Tres Poderes, across the square from the presidential palace. Local media reported that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had left the area shortly before the blasts.

The explosions come just a week before Chinese President Xi Jinping is due to visit the capital, following a trip to a G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro.

Last year, the plaza was the scene of mass disorder, after supporters of ex-President Jair Bolsonaro ransacked the buildings in a bid to prevent his electoral defeat by President Lula.

The boss of Tesla and the social media site X, Elon Musk, suggested last month at Donald Trump’s rally in New York City that it would be possible to cut “at least $2 trillion” from US government spending by eradicating “waste”.

Musk has now been appointed to co-head a new Department of Government Efficiency by the incoming US president, giving him an opportunity to try to put his plans into action.

In the most recent fiscal year (from October 2023 to September 2024) the US federal government spent $6.75 trillion (£5.3 trillion) according to the US Treasury.

This means Musk’s proposed cuts of $2 trillion would represent around a cut of around 30% of total federal government spending — also known as national spending in other countries.

How realistic is that proposal?

To answer that, it’s helpful to break down the total spending figure.

Around $880bn (13% of total US government spending) goes on interest payments on the national debt, which means that line of expenditure cannot be reduced without putting the US government in default.

Around $1.46 trillion (22%) goes on Social Security, which primarily means pensions for Americans over the retirement age. This is a line of spending which is “mandatory”, meaning it must be spent by law on those eligible.

Other large mandatory lines of government expenditure include Medicare – a government-funded health insurance program primarily serving Americans aged over 65.

So-called “discretionary” US government spending – outlays that are not permanently enshrined in law but have to be voted on annually by US lawmakers – includes defence ($874bn, 13%), transportation ($137bn, 2%) and education, training, employment and social services ($305bn, 5%).

Altogether, discretionary spending accounted for around 25% of the total in the 2023 financial year according to the Congressional Budget Office, with more than half of that going to defence.

In theory, discretionary spending would be easier for the incoming Trump administration to cut than mandatory spending.

Donald Trump has said that Musk – and his co-head at the new Department of Government Efficiency, Vivek Ramaswamy – will achieve the savings from dismantling government bureaucracy, slashing excess regulations and restructuring government agencies. In an interview with the BBC in April 2023 Musk claimed to have reduced the staff of Twitter (now X) from 8,000 to 1,500 after acquiring the social network in 2022.

Yet if all of the $2 trillion in US government expenditure savings now being targeted by Musk were to come from discretionary spending, analysts calculate that entire agencies – from transport, to agriculture, to Homeland Security – would have to be entirely closed down. Discretionary spending accounted for only $1.7 trillion in 2023.

Musk did not specify if he would aim to deliver $2 trillion in savings in a single year, or over a longer period, but many US public finance experts, including those who are in favour in principle of reductions in US government spending, are sceptical savings on such a scale can be found in the near term without either a collapse in the delivery of important government functions or sparking major public resistance.

After taking control of the House of Representatives in 2022, Republican lawmakers have struggled to pass legislation to deliver considerably smaller cuts of $130bn in discretionary government spending after meeting opposition from other Republicans.

It’s also important to note that Donald Trump campaigned on a platform of making Social Security more financially generous, not less, by removing the income tax payable on it. And, on defence, Trump said he would build an “iron dome missile defence shield” around America, implying greater spending in this area, not cuts.

Total US federal government spending as a share of the US economy in 2024 was around 23% according to the US Treasury.

That’s a considerably smaller share than national government spending in other developed countries.

However, a large share of government spending in the US, including almost all school spending, is done at a state rather than a federal level, and states are funded by local sales and property taxes.

The International Monetary Fund has projected that total US “general government expenditure”, which includes spending by individual states, will be around 37.5% of its GDP in 2024.

That compares with 43% in the UK, 48% in Germany and 57% in France.

The US government is currently running an annual deficit – a shortfall between its spending and tax revenues – equal to around 6% of its economy. And America’s national debt held by the public is currently equal to around 97% of the size of the economy.

The non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) think tank has projected that this is currently set to climb to 125% by 2035.

The CRFB has projected that absent major spending reductions, Donald Trump’s planned tax cuts would considerably widen the US deficit in the coming decade and push up the US national debt to 143% by the middle of the next decade.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

South Korean actor Song Jae Lim, known for his breakout role in the K-drama The Moon Embracing the Sun, was found dead on Tuesday in his Seoul home.

The 39-year-old, who began his career as a model, rose to prominence in the period drama in 2012, before going on to star in other variety shows and television series.

Reports say a note was found in the apartment, with police adding that there is no evidence of foul play.

His death has renewed concerns over the immense pressures facing those in South Korea’s entertainment industry.

South Korean stars paid tribute to Song following news of his death.

Fellow actor Yoo Sun, who worked alongside Song in the 2016 series Our Gap Soon, posted a photo of them together on Instagram with the caption: “It’s too sad, it hurts so much… May you find peace and rest.”

Another actor, Park Ho San said in an Instagram post: “Since you were always so cheerful, it’s hard to believe [the news].”

According to news site Yonhap, the actor’s family said they wished to hold a small funeral involving only family members.

South Korea’s entertainment industry is known for its high-pressure environment, where celebrities are held to strict standards over their appearances and behaviour.

The recent deaths of high-profile celebrities — including Parasite actor Lee Sun-kyun, K-pop stars Moonbin, Goo Hara and Sulli — have raised concerns about the toll such pressures may have taken.

For information and support about any issues raised in this story contact the BBC Action Line.

The Paris prosecutor has asked for a prison sentence of five years and a five-year ban from political office for far-right leader Marine Le Pen in an illegal party funding case.

Nicolas Barret asked for the ban to become effective immediately after the verdict, even if the defence team appeals, ruling Le Pen out of standing again for president in 2027.

She and more than 20 other senior party figures are accused of hiring assistants who worked on party business, rather than for the European Parliament which paid them.

Le Pen, who denies the charges, told reporters the requested sentence was an “outrage”, and accused the prosecution of trying to “ruin” her National Rally (RN) party.

“I think the prosecution’s wish is to deprive the French people of the ability to vote for whom they want,” she said after the hearing in the French capital, where she is on trial with 24 other defendants.

Le Pen was defeated by Emmanual Macron at the last presidential election in 2022 by 58.55% to 41.45% but RN is the biggest among the numerous parties in the National Assembly.

As well as the prison sentence and ban from political office, a fine of €300,000 (£249,000; $319,000) is being sought against the RN leader.

The proposed prison sentence is “convertible” and France’s AFP news agency says that Le Pen “would not necessarily go to prison”.

However, the ban on political office would take effect immediately and would not be delayed by the appeals process, as some had been expecting.

The prosecutor asked for the ban to apply to all 25 defendants.

“The law applies to all,” Mr Barret told the court.

The defendants plus the party itself, as a legal entity, are accused of syphoning EU parliamentary funds to pay the salaries of party workers.

According to the prosecution case, Le Pen presided over a system for several years in which RN staff members from Paris were “taken on” as EU parliamentary assistants in Brussels.

It is being argued in court that these RN officials rarely set foot in the EU parliament and had no role there.

Le Pen has argued that parliamentary assistants paid for by the Brussels assembly were naturally involved in politics because that was what drew them to the job in the first place.

RN chairman Jordan Bardella, who is not a defendant in the case, called the prosecution’s demands an “assault on democracy” in a post on X.

“The prosecution is not acting justly,” he said. “It is seeking to persecute and take revenge on Marine Le Pen.”

A lawyer for the European Parliament, Patrick Maisonneuve, said he was not surprised by the sentence being requested.

“There is a consistency in the prosecution’s demands,” he was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency.

The trial is due to continue until 27 November.

India’s Supreme Court has said that authorities cannot demolish homes merely because a person has been accused of a crime and has laid down strict guidelines for any such action.

The ruling comes in response to a number of petitions seeking action against authorities using demolition as a punitive measure against those accused or convicted of crimes.

“The executive [the government] cannot become a judge and demolish properties. The chilling sight of a bulldozer demolishing a building reminds one of lawlessness where might was right,” the Supreme Court said on Wednesday.

It also directed authorities to give sufficient time to the affected person to challenge the order or vacate the property.

The ruling comes against a backdrop of a spate of instances, where authorities in states, particularly governed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have used demolition as a tool to punish people accused of crimes.

The reason cited is illegal construction but experts have questioned the logic and say there is no legal justification for doing this.

While victims include Hindu families, such demolitions have mostly targeted Muslims, especially after religious violence or protests, opposition leaders and activists say.

The BJP denies the allegation and state chief ministers have linked demolitions with their tough stance on crime.

• Is bulldozer punishment trampling justice in India?

During the hearing on Wednesday, the Supreme Court used strong words to criticise the practice.

“Such highhanded and arbitrary actions have no place in a constitutional democracy,” it said, adding that officials “who took the law in their hands” should be held accountable.

The court then issued guidelines, which make it mandatory for authorities to give a 15-day notice to an occupant before the alleged illegal property is demolished.

The notice should explain the reasons for demolition. If the accused does not respond to the notice within 15 days, authorities can proceed with the action but they would be required to film the process, the court said.

It also warned that violating these guidelines would amount to contempt of court.

The court has strongly criticised extrajudicial demolitions throughout the hearing.

Earlier this month, it observed that demolishing properties merely because a person was accused of a crime was “simply unacceptable under rule of law”.

It also observed that citizens’ voices could not be silenced by the threat of demolition.

While the Supreme Court’s guidelines can be seen as a positive step towards preventing such demolitions from becoming the norm, observers point out that implementing the order will be key in ensuring the practice stops.

Human rights group Amnesty International praised the ruling, saying that though it has come late, it is a welcome move in upholding the rights of the people.

“This is a big win in ending the deeply unjust, widespread, unlawful and punitive demolitions, mostly targeting the minority Muslim community, by the Indian authorities which have often been peddled as ‘bulldozer justice’ by ruling party political leaders and media,” the organisation said in a statement.

A car attack that killed 35 people in China has sparked questions about a recent spate of public violence, as officials continue to censor discussion on the incident.

On social media, many are discussing the social phenomenon of “taking revenge on society”, where individuals act on personal grievances by attacking strangers.

Police said the driver who ploughed into crowds at a stadium in the southern city of Zhuhai on Monday night acted out of unhappiness over a divorce settlement.

While it is believed to be China’s deadliest known act of violence in decades, it follows a string of attacks in recent months, including a stabbing spree at a Shanghai supermarket and a knife attack at a Beijing school.

Amid a national outcry over the Zhuhai incident, President Xi Jinping has vowed “severe punishment” for the perpetrator. Police said the 62-year-old driver, who has been arrested, is in a coma due to self-inflicted wounds.

On Chinese social media platforms, many expressed shock at his actions and asked if it was a symptom of deeper societal problems.

One comment that went viral on Weibo read: “How can you take revenge on society because your family life is not going well? You’ve taken the lives of so many innocent people, will you ever have peace of mind.”

“If there is a widespread lack of job security and huge pressure to survive… then society is bound to be full of problems, hostility and terror,” a user said on WeChat.

Another person wrote in a widely-shared post: “We should be examining the deep-rooted, social [factors] that have fostered so many indiscriminate [attacks on] the weak.”

A number of violent attacks in China have been reported this year, including a mass stabbing and firearms attack in Shandong in February which killed at least 21 people.

In October, a knife attack at a top school in Beijing injured five people, while in September, a man went on a stabbing spree at a supermarket in Shanghai, killing three people and injuring several others.

Many posts, comments and articles about the Zhuhai incident have been censored in recent days, as officials limit discussion of what appears to have been deemed a politically sensitive topic. In China, it is common for censors to quickly take down social media posts linked to high-profile incidents of crime.

Despite this, several emotional accounts raising questions about the incident have continued circulating widely online. The BBC has not been able to independently verify these accounts.

One person said a family friend was killed in the attack when she was doing her evening workout with a walking group.

“My mother is finding it hard to accept the loss of such a close friend. The more I witness her grief, the more I resent the cold-bloodedness of the murderer,” the person wrote.

They also accused Chinese media of “barely reporting” on the incident while giving more coverage to a high-profile military airshow taking place in Zhuhai at the same time.

“In the eyes of those in power, aeroplanes are more important than human lives.”

Several Chinese media outlets have told BBC Chinese that in the initial hours after the incident, they had received clear instructions not to report on it.

News outlets have since put out reports on the attack, mostly angling on statements from the police and Xi Jinping.

But state broadcaster CCTV did not mention the attack in its lead midday bulletin on Wednesday – instead focusing on President Xi’s upcoming trip to South America and the airshow in Zhuhai.

The main pages of China’s daily newspapers also had no mention of the deadliest act of mass violence in public in years.

Another post widely circulated online was written by a person who said their mother was badly injured in the attack and was currently receiving treatment in a hospital’s intensive care unit.

The person said it was unclear if their mother would survive and that their father, who witnessed the attack, was devastated. “His heart is broken, but he is still trying his best to respond calmly to phone calls and all the people who care about my mum.”

They also criticised the lack of information in the hours following the incident.

“Up to 10 hours after it happened, there were no statistics on the casualties, no statements from the police,” they said.

Other users have mentioned how it took 24 hours for authorities to release the full 35-person death toll. The Weibo social media platform has also censored a hashtag mentioning the death toll.

Donald Trump’s nomination of Congressman Matt Gaetz to be his attorney general arrived like a thunder-clap in Washington DC on Wednesday afternoon.

Of all the president-elect’s picks for his administration so far, this is easily the most controversial – and sends a clear message that Trump intends to shake up the establishment when he returns to power.

The firebrand Florida politician is perhaps best known for spearheading the effort to unseat then-Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy last year. But he has a consistent history of being a flamethrower in the staid halls of Congress.

In 2018, he brought a right-wing Holocaust denier to the State of the Union, and later tried to expel two fathers who lost children in a mass shooting from a hearing after they objected to a claim he made about gun control.

His bombastic approach means he has no shortage of enemies, including within his own party. And so Trump’s choice of Gaetz for this crucial role is a signal to those Republicans, too – his second administration will be staffed by loyalists who he trusts to enact his agenda, conventional political opinion be damned.

Gasps were heard during a meeting of Republican lawmakers when the nomination for America’s top US prosecutor was announced, Axios reported, citing sources in the room.

Republican Congressman Mike Simpson of Idaho reportedly responded with an expletive.

“I don’t think it’s a serious nomination for the attorney general,” Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski said. “This one was not on my Bingo card.”

• Tesla, crypto and jails among trade winners
• What top team picks tell us about Trump 2.0
• Will Trump be sentenced over hush money case?
• Second-term priorities take shape

Gaetz does have some allies on Capitol Hill who share an unwavering loyalty to Trump. The Florida lawmaker has been one of the president-elect’s most aggressive and relentless defenders – at congressional hearings, in press conferences and during television appearances.

On Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson, another devoted Trump loyalist, called Gaetz an “accomplished attorney”.

“He’s a reformer in his mind and heart, and I think that he’ll bring a lot to the table on that,” said Johnson.

In a social media post, Trump spelled out how he intends to use Gaetz as a wrecking ball to radically change the US Department of Justice, which he has regularly blamed for his multiple legal troubles.

“Matt will root out the systemic corruption at the DOJ, and return the department to its true mission of fighting crime and upholding our democracy and constitution,” he wrote.

During the campaign, Trump promised retribution for the numerous investigations launched against him. Now, it appears, Gaetz will be at the frontlines of Trump’s efforts to bring the justice department to heel.

The department also investigated Gaetz himself.

Last year, it declined to bring charges over allegations he violated sex trafficking laws during a trip he took to the Bahamas with paid escorts. He was the subject of an ongoing ethics investigation in the House of Representatives into allegations of sexual misconduct, illicit drug use and misuse of campaign funds.

But on Wednesday evening, Johnson said Gaetz had resigned as a lawmaker, effectively ending the House probe since the committee only investigates members.

Gaetz has denied all the allegations against him.

According to CBS News, Gaetz had asked Trump for a pre-emptive pardon for any related crimes prior to the president leaving office in January 2021.

All this makes him an unlikely choice for a position that typically goes to more senior politicians, well versed in law.

Gaetz, 42, has a law degree and worked for a Florida law firm before his eight years in Congress. Joe Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, was a senior federal appellate court judge. Trump in his first term picked US Senator Jeff Sessions, and later Bill Barr, who had decades of experience in Republican presidential administrations.

The Senate will be responsible for confirming Gaetz’s nomination, and the Florida congressman has ruffled more then a few feathers in that chamber – including among Republicans. While his party has a majority, it would only take four “no” votes, joined by unified Democratic opposition, to sink his chances.

Gaetz himself said last year that he would love to be attorney general while acknowledging it was unlikely.

“The world is not ready, probably,” he told Newsmax in an interview. “Certainly Senate confirmation wouldn’t be, but you know, a boy can dream.”

For the moment, however, Trump’s closest supporters are celebrating his pick.

“The hammer of justice is coming,” Elon Musk posted about Gaetz on X.

Regardless of the ultimate outcome of Gaetz’s bid to be attorney general, Trump has fired a warning shot across the bow of US government. While his second term in office may be more organised than his first, it may end up being even more confrontational.

North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the race for the White House in his twice weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

Billionaire Elon Musk has been tasked with leading incoming President Donald Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency (Doge).

In a statement on social media, the US president-elect said Musk – along with former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy – would “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies”.

It is a role that the tech entrepreneur has arguably prepared for through his business leadership, and one he has spent months pushing for.

But it is also one that is expected to garner him influence over government policy – and the regulatory environment facing his enterprises.

• Follow live: Trump transition updates
• Can Musk cut $2tn from US government spending?
• Tesla, crypto and jails among trade winners
• What top team picks tell us about Trump 2.0
• Will Trump be sentenced over hush money case?
• Second-term priorities take shape

Musk told a Trump rally in October that he believed the US government’s budget could be cut by “at least” $2tn from about $6.5tn. He has also frequently suggested the number of government employees could be significantly reduced.

Ramaswamy, meanwhile, has put forward plans to scrap a number of federal departments including the Department of Education, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Internal Revenue Service and the FBI.

Musk has cast his plans to optimise government efficiency in heroic terms, pointing to his hopes of one day colonising Mars, while arguing that the feat would only be possible “so long as it is not smothered by bureaucracy”.

At the time, he said creating the new Doge was “the only path to extending life beyond Earth”.

Any major cuts to government agencies could also have potentially significant implications for his business interests, which are closely entwined with the government.

Rocket firm SpaceX alone has more than $8bn-worth of ongoing contracts with the US government, according to public contracting sites, and could stand to benefit further from closer government ties.

Meanwhile, his electric car company Tesla is facing investigations from numerous government agencies over issues such as the safety of its self-driving features. His desire to cut regulation could affect such probes.

Musk in recent years has repeatedly accused regulators of launching trivial probes and standing in the way of his companies.

In September he threatened to sue the Federal Aviation Administration over its plans to fine his SpaceX company $633,000 for alleged licence infringements related to some of its rocket launches from Cape Canaveral in Florida. He accused the agency of “regulatory overreach”.

Musk “stands to benefit personally from a lot of the deregulation that he touts,” says Christopher Phelps, a professor of modern US political history, adding: “I think putting someone who is a billionaire and runs major corporations in charge of a federal project of deregulation is innately full of conflicts of interest.”

Others said Musk, who has long described himself as having a libertarian bent, appeared to be a true believer in the benefits of smaller government.

“There’s no doubt that Musk has significant vested interests in the US regulatory landscape as a result of his many business enterprises,” says Prof Gift.

“At the same time, it’s hard to make the case that this is the only impetus driving him.

“Musk has undertaken huge personal and political risks in coming out for Trump, and many of his activities and rhetoric seem to reflect an individual ideologically committed to causes he believes in.”

“Clearly he has got skin in the game and there’s a self-interest, but equally you can have a sincere belief that there is too much government regulation and too much government bureaucracy,” says Alex Waddan, a professor of US politics at the University of Leicester.

For years, Musk did not play a big role in politics, despite his large fortune, now worth more than $300bn, according to Forbes estimates.

But he spoke out against the pandemic lockdowns of 2020. His criticism of the Biden administration mounted after the White House did not invite Tesla to an electric car summit in 2021.

He formally endorsed Trump this year after an assassination attempt, ultimately donating a reported $200m (£157m) to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and appearing at numerous rallies.

Prof Phelps describes Musk’s relationship with Trump as “transactional”, adding that the new role “gives him a lot of symbolic clout – and possibly the clout to get the things that matter most to him done”.

As the South African-born billionaire is not a US citizen by birth, Musk cannot become president – something that has frustrated other famous faces who became involved in politics in the past.

But he can have an influence on US policy, and Trump will have a sympathetic adviser to call upon.

“Trump is looking to surround himself with loyalists in his new administration, and there’s no-one who’s been more loyal than Musk since he announced his endorsement for Trump,” says Thomas Gift, a political science professor and director of the Centre on US Politics at University College London.

“Not only did Musk go ‘all in’ in supporting Trump personally and financially during the campaign, but he’s also evolved into a trusted adviser on topics as diverse as technology policy to the war in Ukraine.”

In an early sign of the influence the tech entrepreneur may be rewarded with for his loyalty, Musk was party to a call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky following the election. The war in Ukraine will be a major foreign policy concern when Trump takes office.

“That is actually quite extraordinary,” says Prof Waddan. “Normally, even your biggest donors wouldn’t get that kind of access.”

Musk first raised the idea of a cost-cutting effort while hosting Trump on X this summer. The official name is a winking reference to a meme featuring a Shiba Inu dog, which then gave its name to the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, a favourite of Musk, which has seen its value soar since the election.

Prof Phelps says the name is “a nod to crypto deregulation being part of what they’ll do”.

But it is not clear how much of Musk’s talk of cutting might actually become reality.

For one thing, the new department will not have an official role, but provide “advice and guidance from outside government” according to the announcement.

Experts have also warned that cuts of the scale discussed could be enormously disruptive – and run into pushback in Congress – depending on how rapidly they are implemented.

Musk himself acknowledged the risks, saying Americans should be ready to stomach temporary hardship for long-run gain.

The way he has run his own firms may hint at what Americans can expect.

After his October 2022 takeover of the social media platform Twitter – which he branded as X – Musk introduced radical changes, including the reduction X’s workforce from around 8,000 to 1,500 in a matter of weeks.

“His idea of efficiency was to let a lot of people go,” says Alex Waddan, a professor of US politics at the University of Leicester.

Musk also loosened content moderation, stopped verifying accounts and welcomed users back to the platform who had been banned for violating its rules on hate speech and disinformation.

Among the users he reinstated was Trump, who had been banned following the Capitol riot in January 2021 after continuing to claim the 2020 election had been rigged against him.

Critics argue his changes have given prominence to hate-speech and misinformation – though Musk maintains the site is politically neutral.

The overhaul also prompted an exodus of advertisers, the main way the site has made money. Though Musk has introduced new ways to raise revenue, such as paid subscriptions, the company today is worth far less than the $44bn Musk paid for it just two years ago.

Musk’s record at his other big companies – Tesla and SpaceX – is stronger.

Among car companies, Tesla stands out for making electric vehicles at a large profit, thanks in part to streamlined operations. His rocket firm SpaceX is credited with enabling rocket launches at significantly lower cost.

“As a serial entrepreneur, Musk has been relentless in trying to improve institutional efficiency at his own enterprises,” Prof Gift says.

He adds that though Musk’s primary role will be “slashing through the thicket of red tape that is the US federal government”, his position will also give him influence in the new administration.

“While his role in the Department of Government Efficiency will be a more informal one, there’s no doubt that he’s got Trump’s ear – at least for the moment.”

A week after Donald Trump won a second-term in the White House, the contours of his new presidency have started taking shape.

The president-elect has announced nearly a dozen appointees, the first steps toward filling out his White House staff and key government departments. He also made comments to the media and on social media that highlight what his priorities will be upon taking office in January, with a special focus on immigration and foreign policy.

After a sometimes chaotic start to his first term, Trump is laying the groundwork for his next administration with a more clearly defined plan – and personnel ready to enact it.

Here’s a look at what we’ve learned so far.

• Follow live: Trump transition updates

Some of Trump’s newly revealed appointments suggest that the president-elect’s campaign promise to deport millions of undocumented migrants living in the US is no exaggeration.

Stephen Miller, who has been Trump’s close adviser and speechwriter since 2015, is Trump’s choice for White House deputy chief of staff for policy. He will likely shape any plans for mass deportations – and pare back both undocumented and legal immigration. During Trump’s first term, Miller was involved in developing some of the administration’s strictest immigration policies.

Thomas Homan, acting director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency in Trump’s first term, supported the president’s policy of separating undocumented families detained at the US-Mexico border. Now he’s back with an even broader portfolio, as Trump’s “immigration tsar”.

“I will run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen,” Homan said at a conservative conference in July.

Critics have warned that Trump’s mass deportation plan could cost upwards of $300bn. In an interview with NBC News last week, however, the president-elect said cost was not an issue.

“When people have killed and murdered, when drug lords have destroyed countries, and now they’re going to go back to those countries because they’re not staying here,” he said. “There is no price tag.”

• How would Trump’s promise of mass deportations of migrants work?

Many conservatives believe that China poses the single greatest threat to continued US global dominance, both economically and militarily. While Trump has been more circumspect, limiting most of his China critiques to the realm of trade, he is filling his foreign policy team with vocal China critics.

The president-elect picked Florida Congressman Mike Waltz, a retired Army colonel, as his national security adviser – a key foreign policy post within the White House. Waltz has said the US is in a “cold war” with China and was one of the first members of Congress to call for a US boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

In October, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, Trump’s pick for US ambassador to the UN, accused China of “blatant and malicious election interference” amid reports that China-backed hackers attempted to gather information from the former president’s phones.

While Trump has yet to officially name his choice for secretary of state, Florida Senator Marco Rubio – another China hawk – appears to be the leading contender for the top diplomatic job. In 2020, Rubio was sanctioned by the Chinese government after he pushed measures to punish the nation for its crackdown on pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong.

US-China relations were often rocky during Trump’s first term, amidst trade disputes and the Covid pandemic. The Biden administration, which kept many of Trump’s China tariffs and imposed some new ones, only somewhat calmed the waters. Now it looks like the next Trump administration will pick up where the last one left off.

• Who has joined Trump’s team so far?
• Trump picks Musk to advise on how to ‘dismantle’ bureaucracy

While the list of Trump’s political appointees grows, there’s another group that stays small – and exceedingly influential.

Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in the world, has been a full-time presence at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago transition headquarters. According to media reports, he is advising the president-elect on cabinet nominees and even joined a conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last week.

On Tuesday night, Trump announced that he was assigning Musk to work with tech entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy in a “department of government efficiency” tasked with identifying new budget cuts.

Musk has regularly offered his political opinions on his social media platform X, including endorsing Florida Senator Rick Scott’s bid to be the next Senate majority leader.

Musk’s political action committee spent around $200m to help Trump’s presidential campaign, and he promises to continue to fund the group’s efforts to advance the president-elect’s agenda and help Republican candidates in upcoming congressional elections.

Meanwhile, it remains to be seen where Robert F Kennedy Jr, another key figure, lands. Trump has said that he plans to give the former Democrat and vaccine sceptic, who abandoned his independent bid and endorsed the Republican, a role in making America “healthy” again.

“He wants to do some things, and we’re going to let him go to it,” Trump said in his election victory speech.

As Trump takes office, Republicans have control of the Senate and could still take the House, albeit by a slim margin. However, the president-elect’s early actions suggest he is more concerned with exercising his presidential power than working with the legislative branch.

Last week, he posted on social media that the Senate’s Republican leadership should smooth the way for more presidential “recess appointments” – allowing him to fill top administration jobs without Senate approval when Congress is not in session. The move would strengthen presidential power by undercutting the chamber’s constitutional role to “advise and consent” on political appointees.

Meanwhile, the president-elect keeps chipping away at those narrow congressional majorities. Senators who move to administration roles can quickly be replaced by appointment from the governor of their home state. But any House vacancies – such as ones created by Stefanik and Waltz’s departures – require special elections that can take months to schedule.

Some of Trump’s advisers, including Musk, have warned that the president-elect could be endangering his legislative agenda if he plucks too many more Republicans from the chambers.

Even in the best of circumstances, congressional legislation takes time, effort and compromise. Executive action, such as new immigration enforcement, can be done with the stroke of a presidential pen.

Trump’s actions indicate he is, at least at the moment, more focused on the latter.

Trump has only just begun filling out the thousands of jobs that open up with a new presidential administration, not including the senior-level career bureaucrats he has said he will replace.

In 2016, as a political newcomer, he had to rely on more establishment Republicans for key roles. This time, he has a wealth of prospective candidates with proven track records of supporting him and after eight years, Trump loyalists are the Republican establishment.

On Tuesday, Trump named South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem as homeland security secretary, and Fox News host and conservative author Pete Hegseth as defence secretary.

The latter has been particularly controversial, given his lack of experience navigating the sprawling US military bureaucracy and penchant for inflammatory remarks. For Trump, however, status as an outsider and a willingness to lean into hot-button cultural issues are a strength, not a flaw.

And above all else, Hegseth and Noem have been fierce Trump defenders from the start.

Some of Trump’s other picks, like Rubio and Stefanik, were critics of Trump early in his first presidential bid, but they have now spent years demonstrating that their harsh words are a thing of the past.

Rubio, who ran for president against Trump in 2016, may still have White House ambitions, however. Trump often soured on appointees who seemed drawn to the limelight during his first term, and even the warmest of relationships could go bad.

Trump may be placing a premium on loyalty with his early staff announcements, but the pressures of governing ultimately will reveal whether his second four years in office end up different from his first.

• Seven things Trump says he will do in power
• When does he become president again?
• What happens to his legal cases now
• How he pulled off an incredible comeback

North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of US politics in his twice weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

Donald Trump and his Republican Party have an ambitious agenda and control of US Congress.

Trump has said he will “make heads spin” as he moves full-speed ahead after his inauguration on 20 January.

His team has said to expect a flurry of executive orders – directives from the US president – out of the Oval Office in the first week.

Policy experts and lawyers are already drafting those orders as part of the administration’s transition.

Still, advocacy groups and Democratic state governors have vowed to challenge at least some of those plans.

Here is what the president-elect has said about his second-term priorities.

• Follow live: Trump transition updates

Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News on Sunday “we know he promised to sign an executive order to secure the southern border”.

“We know that on day one he is going to launch the largest mass deportation of illegal immigrants in American history,” she said.

In the week since his re-election, Trump has prioritised filling leadership positions that would oversee immigration, suggesting he is preparing to tackle his plans for border policy early.

He tapped veteran immigration official Tom Homan as his “border tsar”; selected South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem to oversee homeland security; and appointed Steven Miller as White House deputy chief of staff for policy. Mr Miller is best known for shaping some of Trump’s most restrictive policies on illegal immigration during his first term.

Any mass deportation programme could face logistical difficulties as well as a flurry of legal challenges from immigration and human rights activists.

Trump could also re-implement his “Remain in Mexico” policy that required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while claims are processed.

President Joe Biden had called the programme “inhumane” and tried to end it on his first day in office, but faced legal challenges. In 2022, the Supreme Court allowed him to move ahead.

During the Trump administration, about 70,000 asylum seekers were returned to Mexico to wait for their hearings.

Another day one promise was to end birthright citizenship – the 150-year-old principle that says anyone born on US soil is an American citizen.

It’s not clear how Trump plans to achieve this policy. He has pledged an executive order but birthright citizenship is explicitly guaranteed by the US Constitution, meaning it can only be altered under specific circumstances.

He would need states to agree to a national convention or a two-thirds vote in favour in the narrowly split Congress to propose a change, then subsequent approval by three-fourths of state legislatures – of which Republicans control just over half.

Trump did not mention pardons in his victory speech, but he has long suggested that pardoning those convicted of storming the Capitol in 2021 would be a priority.

“Oh, absolutely, I would. If they’re innocent, I would pardon them,” Trump said during a panel at the National Association of Black Journalists.

US presidents have wide authority to forgive people convicted of federal crimes or end their prison sentences. Prosecutors may also decide to drop pending cases depending on who Trump might choose to pardon.

What’s less clear is who might get a pardon.

At one point, Trump told CNN: “I am inclined to pardon many of them. I can’t say for every single one, because a couple of them, probably they got out of control.”

Ms Leavitt told the Washington Post that he will decide “on a case-by-case basis when he is back in the White House”.

More than 1,500 people were arrested in connection with the Capitol riot. According to federal numbers, more than 750 of them were sentenced for crimes ranging from trespassing to assaulting police officers and seditious conspiracy.

Trump has also faced his own legal challenges over his actions following the 2020 election and a separate classified documents case.

Special Counsel Jack Smith, a veteran prosecutor appointed to oversee the US Department of Justice’s investigations into Trump, filed charges, to which the president-elect has pleaded not guilty.

This week, sources told CBS News that Mr Smith plans to resign before Trump takes office and avoid Trump’s promises to fire him. The BBC’s US media partner also reported that his office would wind down the two cases it was pursuing against Trump.

It remains unclear whether Trump and his supporters will still try to punish Mr Smith. Congressional Republicans have reportedly implied they intend to investigate his work.

“Jack Smith’s abuse of the justice system cannot go unpunished”, billionaire and Trump ally Elon Musk posted on social media.

Trump had said firing Jack Smith is one of his top priorities.

“I would fire him within two seconds. He’ll be one of the first things addressed,” he said in an interview in October.

Trump regularly railed against the special counsel in interviews and online, calling him a “crooked person”, a “scoundrel” and other insults.

Smith’s cases were already facing an uncertain future. The Supreme Court ruled in July that presidents have partial immunity from criminal prosecution for their conduct in office, undermining Mr Smith’s work.

Trump’s electoral win also gives him the power to pardon himself of any federal crimes, though no president has done so before.

In his 2016 campaign, Trump made withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement a priority. Within six months of taking office, the United States moved to exit the landmark deal.

President Joe Biden made rejoining the agreement one of his top priorities when he ran against Trump in 2020. Biden signed a letter requesting the US be readmitted on his first day in office.

How will Trump respond in his second term? Media reports suggest that his team is preparing orders to withdraw once again when he takes office in January.

Leaving the agreement would mean the US is no longer beholden to meeting set carbon emissions reductions.

Among other priorities at odds with the Paris standards, Trump has said he wants to prioritise US production of oil and gas. He promised to quickly expedite permitting and fracking – “We’re drilling, drilling, drilling,” he told Fox News host Sean Hannity last year.

Trump has also criticised the Biden administration’s plans to expand wind energy and increase electric car production, which could be early targets in his new administration.

On the campaign trail, Trump said he could end the war in Ukraine “in a day”. He has also repeatedly criticised the US government’s continued support of Ukraine, casting the war as a drain on resources.

He has not yet given specifics on how he would negotiate the war’s end beyond saying he would help the two countries strike a deal.

Since his re-election, Trump has spoken to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a call that lasted “about half an hour”, with billionaire Elon Musk also taking part. A source told the BBC that “it was not really a conversation to talk about very substantial things”.

The Kremlin denied that Trump held a call with Vladimir Putin, though media reports said Trump warned the Russian president against escalating the war in Ukraine.

The economy is an issue that Trump heavily campaigned on, vowing to end inflation as soon as he takes office.

“We will target everything from car affordability to housing affordability to insurance costs to supply chain issues,” Trump has said.

“I will instruct my cabinet that I expect results within the first 100 days, or much sooner than that.”

He said he would sign an executive order that directs every cabinet secretary and agency head to “use every tool and authority at their disposal” to defeat inflation and to bring consumer prices down.

Trump’s plan includes imposing tariffs on imported goods, especially those coming in from China, arguing that these taxes would keep manufacturing jobs in the US.

It’s still unclear how widespread these tariffs will be, but Trump has raised the prospect of at least a 10% across-the-board tariff on imported goods, as well as a 60% import tax on goods from China.

He also vowed to target Mexico with his tariffs.

“I’m going to inform (the Mexican president) on Day 1 or sooner that if they don’t stop this onslaught of criminals and drugs coming into our country, I’m going to immediately impose a 25% tariff on everything they send into the US,” he has said.

These tariffs would probably not need congressional approval.

Trump already introduced tariffs in his first term, citing Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which empowers a president to impose duties on goods that could affect US national security.

Another promise is to “end the Biden-Harris war on American energy”, Trump has said, vowing to ramp up oil drilling and fracking as a way to lower the cost of energy bills for consumers.

Trump can do this with an executive order that rolls back environmental protections, which would allow him to halt clean energy projects and scrap climate targets set by the Biden administration.

The president-elect has also vowed to fire Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, on day one. Gensler, who was appointed by Biden, pushed for climate disclosure rules and strong enforcement of the cryptocurrency market.

Trump has championed cryptocurrency, and his election saw the value of Bitcoin go up by 30% in the past week due to an expectation that his administration will be more crypto-friendly.

Donald Trump has vowed to undo the changes made by President Biden to Title X, the country’s only national, federally-funded family planning programme.

In 2019, during his first term, Trump’s administration implemented a new rule that prohibited any health provider in the Title X network from mentioning abortion to patients, even if a patient raised questions about it themselves.

The change effectively stripped tens of millions of dollars from organisations such as Planned Parenthood that offer or refer patients for abortions.

But just months later, when Biden took office, he had that policy reversed.

Now, it’s expected that Trump will change the rules again.

The gates outside the Zhuhai sports complex in China were closed. Inside, the stadium was in darkness, as were the grounds around it.

It was here, hours before, where dozens of people were killed when a man drove an SUV into a crowd. Many more were injured.

Only security guards appeared to be moving around behind the fence when the BBC arrived, and they had been ordered to keep an eye out for reporters.

One approached us asking: “Are you journalists?” When I asked why he wanted to know, he replied: “Oh just to understand the situation.”

He and a colleague took photos of us and started making calls, watching us as they did.

Outside the gates people passed by to catch sight of the aftermath. But among them was a group of around a dozen people more interested in us.

A women started calling to the others: “Look, foreigners, foreigners.”

Soon a man who was with her was aggressively interrupting our reporting, grabbing me and shouting.

Often, when sensitive stories like this unfold in China, local Communist Party officials organise groups of cadres to pretend to be outraged locals who have been given the role of targeting foreign reporters and preventing any coverage.

Invariably it doesn’t stop the stories, it just makes China look bad.

After former Premier Li Keqiang died last year, crowds of these loyalists were sent to the street outside his old family home. Any journalist that arrived was surrounded and shouted at, pushed and abused.

Premier Li’s death was sensitive to the party not only because it was sudden and unexpected – but also because he was the last of the old liberal wing. It signalled that the party was now completely stacked with loyalists of President Xi Jinping.

But even for much more minor incidents the same things happen.

Last month, we travelled to a shopping mall in Shanghai where a man had randomly stabbed strangers to death.

The entire location had been cleansed of any evidence within hours of this horrible event taking place. By the morning after, the mall was up and running again as normal: no police crime scene tape, no flowers for the dead.

On one level, you can understand this – many of these inexplicable assaults on the community are copycat in nature. Tuesday’s attack is not an outlier, though it is shocking for its death toll.

But officials here sometimes want these bad things to simply go away as quickly as possible.

Hours after our confrontation outside the site of the Zhuhai attack, carloads of police had arrived to better manage the situation.

A crowd of residents had also gathered to light candles to remember the dead, and videos shared on social media showed lines of volunteers at hospitals offering to donate blood.

President Xi has called on officials to manage society’s problems in order to prevent this type of thing happening again in the future.

But, again, China is left wondering what has driven someone to such inconceivable horror. It is impossibly difficult to find the answers to this one.

Indian women on average hit menopause a few years earlier than their counterparts in the West, studies show. A recent paper found that women experiencing premature menopause, particularly in the age group of 30–39 years, is also on the rise. Yet there are few resources to help them deal with it.

“In some studies, the average age of menopause in India is 47 – meaning some women can hit it by 44-45 while others by 50 and this is considered normal,” says Dr Ruma Satwik, a gynaecologist and obstetrician at Delhi’s Sir Gangaram Hospital.

This is several years earlier than, for example, the US where the average age is 51.

Doctors say the earlier menopause is a result of nutritional and environmental circumstances as well as genetic factors.

But in a country where conversation on menstruation still comes with stigma and taboo, menopause awareness is lagging.

Sangeeta, who goes by one name, is overwhelmed every day as she juggles work, household chores and childcare while enduring severe hot flashes, fatigue, insomnia, backache and abdominal pain.

“What’s the point of living like this?” the 43-year-old asks. “Sometimes I feel my pain will end when I die.”

A janitor at Dr Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, a government-run facility in the capital, Delhi, Ms Sangeeta hit menopause a year ago but did not know until recently that the hospital had a dedicated clinic to address the health concerns it raised.

Hundreds of miles away in the financial capital, Mumbai, Mini Mathur says she felt like she was experiencing “every possible” symptom after she turned 50.

The TV host says she had never had any medical concerns and followed a healthy lifestyle. The onslaught of symptoms reminded her of the advice a friend had given her years ago.

“It’s coming for everyone. Please hit the ground running.”

India’s 2011 Census data showed the country had 96 million women above 45 years. By 2026, that number is projected to reach 400 million, says Dr Anju Soni, president of the Indian Menopause Society.

“Indian women live one-third of their life after menopause,” she says.

Women are considered to have hit menopause when they haven’t menstruated for a year. But this is preceded by perimenopause, a phase of gradual decline in reproductive hormones that can last from anywhere between two to 10 years.

The symptoms are wide ranging: from affecting mood, memory, focus, libido to effects on bone, brain, muscle, skin and hair. Depending on its severity, women may find their quality of life decline.

• The Netflix show putting the spotlight on menopause
• What is the menopause and what are the main symptoms?

Most symptoms are manageable with supplements, changes in diet, exercise and, if necessary, hormone replacement therapy, doctors say. But there are no tests to determine the condition and they usually rely on eliminating other causes for the symptoms.

Doctors say menopause and perimenopause are under-researched across the world with very little taught about it in medical school.

This can make the process of getting a diagnosis quite frustrating for women, Dr Satwik says.

Ms Mathur says it took visits to several healthcare centres across the country and abroad over the past two years before she received the care she needed.

She was stunned to find that a lot of her symptoms – which included brain fog, low mood, joint pain and anxiety – became “vastly better” when she began using progesterone cream topically.

“I had to go to Austria to find a doctor who wouldn’t negate my symptoms and feelings and say ‘sabko hota hai [it happens to everyone]’.”

The refrain is all too familiar for 60-year-old activist Atul Sharma who was so worried about the changes menopause brought in her mood and sex drive that she hid the condition from her husband for nearly six years.

Ms Sharma, who works with women in rural areas on health and economic empowerment in northern Uttar Pradesh state, found there was barely any provision for menopausal women at rural government clinics. Primary healthcare workers who wanted to help did not have any specialised training.

• NICE stresses HRT as first-line menopause treatment
• Bone-building drug coming for post-menopause women

“Even the nurse who comes here says, ‘Ab iske liye bhi davai mangogi [now you will seek medicine for this also]? Just bear it with. It happens to every woman’.”

In 2022-24, Dr Satwik surveyed over 370 women between the ages of 40 and 60 on their symptoms and its severity.

“About 20% experienced nothing at all. The rest experienced one or more symptoms mildly while 15-20% were experiencing it to a severe degree.”

While information within India remains scarce, many women say they are turning to social media and that online resources are often more illuminating than conversations with their doctors.

Many follow American specialists like Dr Mary Claire Haver who shares latest research on social media and celebrities like Hollywood actresses Naomi Watts and Halle Berry who have been promoting the documentary The M Factor: Shredding the Silence on Menopause. Watts is herself writing a book on menopause while Berry is pushing for new legislation to promote its research, training and education.

Ms Mathur says she feels privileged that she was able to get treatment. “How are women who are bringing up families, kids, going to work, travelling in packed local trains dealing with it?

“We are not up to date with the West,” she says. “We don’t have enough brands of oestrogen patches and progesterone creams that we need in India.”

She’s now studying a course in the US, certified by the National Board of Health and Wellness Coaches, hoping to eventually bridge the gap between information, resources and access to specialists for women from all kinds of backgrounds in India.

“The cost of this treatment is out of reach for many poor women in India,” Ms Sharma says. Ms Sangeeta says she is resigned to living with pain.

Increased awareness has to come from the medical fraternity, says Dr Satwik, adding that there need to be as many talks on menopause or perimenopause as there are on fertility and adolescent health.

Dr Soni says the government already has a network of healthcare workers in rural and remote areas.

“They already give supplements and provide health care services to pregnant women. Now extend that to menopausal women.”

The largest restoration of Rembrandt’s masterpiece, The Night Watch, is under way at the Rijksmuseum, in Amsterdam.

Following five years of research using techniques such as digital imaging and artificial intelligence, eight restorers will begin “Operation Night Watch” by removing the varnish from the painting – in full view of the public, within the glass-enclosed space in The Night Watch Room.

“The start of the restoration is thrilling,” Rijksmuseum general director Taco Dibbits said.

“Removing the varnish will reveal The Night Watch’s eventful history. It will be a unique experience for the public to follow this process up close.”

The varnish, applied during a 1975-76 restoration, will be removed using microfibre cloths and cotton swabs.

The process follows years of scientific research, trials on other paintings, and tests on The Night Watch itself.

Made for Amsterdam’s Arquebusiers Guild Hall, Rembrandt van Rijn’s 1642 oil painting is one of the earliest to portray a group in action.

A captain, dressed in black, is telling his lieutenant to start the company marching. And the guardsmen are moving into formation.

Rembrandt uses the light to focus on particular details, such as the captain’s gesturing hand and the young girl, a mascot, in the background.

The painting’s original name is Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq – but it became known as The Night Watch, in the 18th Century.

The artwork was coated with a dark varnish and accumulated dirt over the years, giving the false impression it depicts a night scene.

The Night Watch has been attacked with a knife – in 1911 and again in 1975, when the attacker slashed 12 cuts into the canvas.

And in 1990, a man sprayed acid on to the painting – although, this time, thanks to a guard’s rapid intervention, only the varnish was damaged.

The Night Watch has been treated at least 25 times – but this latest research and restoration project is the most extensive so far.

More than two million visitors come to see the painting, at the museum, in the Netherlands, every year.

The last time Chaw Su saw her husband was in March, when he was forcibly conscripted to fight for the army in Myanmar’s civil war.

Four months later, she found out he had been killed at the frontline.

“We were always poor and struggled,” she says. “But life was much more bearable with him.”

The 25-year-old widow, who had depended on her husband as the breadwinner, now has three young children to care for.

In February, Myanmar’s military regime, known as the junta, announced compulsory conscription, meaning all men aged 18 to 35 and women aged 18 to 27 would be forced to serve for up to two years.

Since launching the 2021 coup that toppled Aung San Suu Kyi’s democratically elected government, the junta has faced an uprising on multiple fronts – including from volunteer People’s Defence Forces (PDFs) and ethnic armed groups. That uprising has since escalated into a full-blown civil war.

Last year marked a turn of the tide, as the junta saw a fresh wave of attacks from insurgents that have since pushed the military government to breaking point. As a result, up to two-thirds of the country, which has had decades of military rule and repression, fell under the control of resistance groups.

The increasingly embattled junta responded in part by pushing forward with mandatory conscription, despite warnings from experts that it could exacerbate the nation’s civil conflict. The first training began in April.

In July, Chaw Su received a call from her husband who was one of two men from their village sent for training.

He told her he had been deployed to Karen state, where some of the most intense fighting between the junta and ethnic armed groups was taking place.

“He said that he would be sent to the frontline for two weeks and that he would call me when he returned to base,” Chaw Su tells the BBC. “It was the first and last message I received from him.”

At the end of July, a military officer called to inform Chaw Su her husband was dead.

“I was completely out of my mind. The officer tried to console me with his words, but I felt that my life was over.”

Like many others, Chaw Su was promised a salary for her husband’s service, but she claimed she only received 70,000 kyats (around $21) from the village official when her husband was first conscripted.

After the initial payment, months went by without any financial support.

The military says conscripts are entitled to salary and compensation upon death in service, as with full-rank soldiers. But junta spokesperson Major General Zaw Min Tun told the BBC “there could be a delay if the necessary documents are incomplete”.

Across Myanmar, conscripted soldiers – often untrained and unprepared – are sent to conflict zones with little support. Their families are often left in the dark about their whereabouts.

Soe Soe Aye, a widow in her 60s, has been left without word from her son, who was conscripted six months ago. She says he had no desire to serve in the military.

“[My son] joined the military to feed his mother,” she adds tearfully. “I regret letting him go.”

Now, she struggles with poor health and depends on her youngest daughter to support their household. But she is trying to remain hopeful.

“I just want to see my son. I don’t have enough strength to face this.”

Many young Burmese have taken drastic measures to resist the conscription order.

Kan Htoo Lwin, a 20-year-old from Myannmar’s commercial hub, Yangon, was conscripted and trained for three months along with 30 others.

He says the training was gruelling and they were threatened that if anyone tried to escape, their homes would be burned.

“After the training, I hated the army even more,” he says.

During a journey to the frontline in the eastern part of the country, Kan Htoo saw a chance to escape with two others when their convoy stopped halfway.

“We ran once it got dark, while they were busy with security checks. We didn’t stop until nightfall,” he recalls. “At some point we were exhausted and stopped to rest. We took turns sleeping and keeping watch.”

At dawn, the three young men hitched a ride from a truck driver and made it to Aung Ban, a township in the southern Shan state. Here, Kan Htoo joined a PDF, one of the many resistance groups that have been growing as more young people, disillusioned with the military junta, take up arms.

The other two men are currently in hiding, Kan Htoo says. For safety reasons, he doesn’t want to reveal what they are doing now.

While men have been the primary focus of the conscription efforts, women have also been affected.

Zue Zue, a 20-year-old from Yangon, abandoned her dream of becoming a Chinese translator to join the Special Operation Force (SOF), a unit within the PDFs.

“Now my goal is to end this era of military dictatorship and make peace for our generation,” she tells the BBC.

While Zue Zue chose to stay, others have fled the country.

Engineer Min Min left for Thailand when conscription began. He’s now staying there on an education visa, but claims he has been struggling to find legal work that suits his qualifications in Bangkok.

Many who flee to Thailand, like Min Min, end up in low-wage jobs. Thai authorities have also become stricter in catching illegal migrants, and many are now facing deportation if caught.

Min Min worries that when his visa expires, he will have to stay illegally in the country.

“I’m worried about the living costs,” says the 28-year-old. “I have no choice but to find manual labour jobs.”

He also says priority is given to Thai nationals, whose rights are protected, while Thai business owners often exploit migrants working illegally.

“I have also seen that Burmese engineers are working illegally and only paid around 12,000 Thai baht ($355), similar to the salary of migrant manual workers,” he says.

Back in Myanmar, Chaw Su now works odd jobs in the village, earning barely enough to feed her children.

“It’s hard to explain to other people the struggle I’m going through,” she says.

Before the east and west coast rap beef of the 1990s boiled over with the murders of Tupac Shakur and Notorious BIG, legendary producer Quincy Jones called a secret meeting at which he appealed for an end to the violence.

As hip-hop rose from the streets to the mainstream in the 90s, the rappers and hustlers that broke through had few role models who had trodden that path before them.

There was one man, though, who had been there, and done pretty much everything.

Quincy Jones had been in gangs and had been stabbed at the age of seven in 1930s Chicago, before becoming a major force in American music thanks to his work with legends like Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra and Michael Jackson.

He was at the heart of revolutions in jazz, swing, soul, funk, disco and pop – but one aspect of his career that got less attention when he died last week at the age of 91 was his place in hip-hop.

Jones was revered in all corners of music, including rap. Unlike most in the old guard and the media, he immediately realised the scene’s artistic and cultural importance.

Hip-hop reminded him of the bebop jazz of his youth. “I feel a kinship there because we went through a lot of the same stuff,” he said.

“Quincy understood it and got it right away,” says pioneering artist, rapper and presenter Fab 5 Freddy.

Jones worked with leading rappers in the 80s, and in the 90s he recognised risks including a volatile rivalry that had begun to erupt between competing labels and stars.

So he brought artists, executives and elder black American statesmen together for a secret summit in 1995, hoping it would be a turning point.

The east coast was hip-hop’s spiritual home. In 1992, Sean Combs – then known as Puffy and later as P Diddy – launched his Bad Boy record label in New York with artists including Notorious BIG, aka Biggie Smalls.

Meanwhile, across America, Los Angeles was coming into its own as the capital of gangsta rap, led by menacing mogul Suge Knight’s Death Row Records, which had Dr Dre and Tupac.

In 1994, Tupac was shot and injured during a robbery in the lobby of a studio. He later implied that his former friend Biggie may have known about the attack in advance. Biggie then released the track Who Shot Ya?, which Tupac thought was about him.

The beef continued at the Source magazine awards on 3 August 1995, when Knight goaded Combs and Bad Boy Records from the stage.

Jones, who had his own magazine, Vibe, held his summit three weeks later.

The brewing east-west beef wasn’t the only reason Jones called it – it was mainly intended to discuss the state of hip-hop and let the new generation hear life and business advice from a group of highly successful black executives.

But rap’s negative image and the burgeoning tensions were a big talking point.

“He knew this was a bubbling issue, and so his idea was to bring together a symposium,” says Fab 5 Freddy, who was hosting Yo! MTV Raps at the time and was the event’s moderator.

Jones told the summit: “The thing that really provoked me to say it’s time to pay attention now is Tupac.”

Tupac was missing, however – he was in jail for sexual assault at the time. Suge and Dre were there, as were Combs and Biggie.

Jones had already experienced his own beef with Tupac – the rapper criticised the producer in a 1993 edition of Source for marrying white women.

“We finally hooked up, even though it was tension conditions in the beginning,” Jones said at the event.

“We finally talked to each other, and he said nobody had talked to him like that before.

“And I said, I can’t take it any more. Because we can no longer afford to be non-political, and I’m talking to the hip-hop nation now.”

About 50 influential artists and executives were in the room, including Public Enemy’s Chuck D, members of A Tribe Called Quest, MC Lyte, Kris Kross, Jermaine Dupri and Boyz n the Hood film-maker John Singleton.

Jones wrote in his now-out-of-print 2001 autobiography: “I had been concerned about the potentially volatile diversity of a group who’d never been in the same room together.”

They were joined by veteran executives Clarence Avant and Ahmet Ertegun, plus Colin Powell, the former national security adviser and head of the US military who would go on to become the first African-American secretary of state.

Powell had presidential ambitions – that was why the summit was held in secret. Jones wanted to save Powell from being associated with the negative publicity that surrounded rap music.

He switched venues at the last minute to throw press off the scent, and confiscated the recordings.

“Rest assured that my discretion is based on a deep respect for you and a valued friendship,” Jones wrote to Powell in an unpublished letter held at Indianapolis University Library.

“I know that we are going to make a difference at this conference. Thanks for the way you handled the situation. Maybe we can turn the battleship an inch or two.”

Jones later wrote in his book: “Some of the younger rappers didn’t even know who he was. When addressing some of the more confrontational comments from the floor, Powell maintained his South Bronx demeanour and authoritative cool throughout.”

Fab 5 Freddy remembers one exchange between Powell and Knight. “There was an encounter where he [Knight] had something to say, and Colin Powell responded.

“Here you have this guy who was a four-star general talking to Suge Knight, and he pretty much put Suge in his place.”

Jones finally released a clip of the event for a 2018 Netflix documentary about his life.

“We’ve got to seriously talk about what you are going to deal with,” he is seen telling the assembled attendees.

“They are not playing, there’s real bullets out there, believe me. Maybe literally and figuratively.

“It’s a very emotional thing,” he added, his voice cracking. “I want to see you guys live to at least my age.”

“Quincy did get emotional,” Fab 5 Freddy recalls, “because he sensed what could happen.

“And the worst, unfortunately, did happen.”

Jones had ended up reconciling with Tupac. After Tupac’s 1993 comments, Jones’s 17-year-old daughter Rashida – who would go on to star in US sitcom The Office – wrote an irate letter to Source attacking the rapper.

When Tupac bumped into one of Jones’s other daughters, Kidada, he apologised, thinking she was Rashida. But Tupac and Kidada hit it off and began a relationship.

“Though we got off to a rocky start, as I came to know and feel him I saw his enormous potential and sensitivity as an artist and as a human being,” Quincy Jones wrote.

There have also been claims that Tupac was planning to leave Death Row for Jones’s record label.

But in September 1996, a year after the summit, Tupac was shot and killed.

A former gang leader, Duane “Keffe D” Davis, was charged with his murder last year. He has pleaded not guilty.

Then in 1997, Notorious BIG was shot dead outside a party thrown by Jones’s record label and magazine. No-one has ever been charged.

Meanwhile, today Knight is in prison for a hit-and-run, while Combs is awaiting trial on charges of racketeering and sex trafficking, which he denies.

The violence in the 90s “wasn’t necessary” and was caused by “wannabes and gang-related troublemakers” on the edges of the music industry, according to Fab 5 Freddy.

“Also, the east/west coast beef was mainly ignited by jealousy. It was an ashtray fire fanned into a big deal by media outlets that led to Biggie and Tupac getting killed.”

Despite his stature, not even Jones could alter the forces of power and pride that were at work and prevent the bloodshed.

Freddy believes some lessons were learned at the summit, however, and that it deserves a place in hip-hop history.

“It was incredible and electric to be in that room.

“It was a thrilling moment. And then it became even more legendary because it was never released, so the only people that really knew about it were the people that were there.”

The mystery as to why a beluga whale appeared off the coast of Norway wearing a harness may finally have been solved.

The tame white whale, which locals named Hvaldimir, made headlines five years ago amidst widespread speculation that it was a Russian spy.

Now an expert in the species says she believes the whale did indeed belong to the military and escaped from a naval base in the Arctic Circle.

But Dr Olga Shpak does not believe it was a spy. She believes the beluga was being trained to guard the base and fled because it was a “hooligan”.

Russia has always refused to confirm or deny that the beluga whale was trained by its military.

But Dr Shpak, who worked in Russia researching marine mammals from the 1990s until she returned to her native Ukraine in 2022, told BBC News: “For me it’s 100% (certain).”

Dr Shpak, whose account is based on conversations with friends and former colleagues in Russia, features in a BBC documentary, Secrets of the Spy Whale, which is now on BBC iPlayer and being shown on BBC Two on Wednesday at 21:00 GMT.

The mysterious whale first came to public attention five years ago when it approached fishermen off the northern coast of Norway.

“The whale starts rubbing against the boat,” Joar Hesten, one of the fishermen, says. “I heard about animals in distress that instinctively knew that they need help from humans. I was thinking that this is one smart whale.”

The sighting was unusual because the beluga was so tame and they’re rarely seen as far south. It was also wearing a harness, which had a mount for a camera, and bore the words, in English, “Equipment St Petersburg”.

Mr Hesten helped to remove the harness from the whale, which then swam to the nearby port of Hammerfest, where it lived for several months.

Seemingly unable to catch live fish to eat, it charmed visitors by nudging at their cameras and even on one occasion returning a mobile phone.

“It was very obvious that this particular whale had been conditioned to be putting his nose on anything that looked like a target because he was doing it each time,” says Eve Jourdain, a researcher from the Norwegian Orca Survey.

“But we have no idea what kind of facility he was in, so we don’t know what he was trained for.”

Captivated by the whale’s story Norway made arrangements for the beluga to be monitored and fed. The name it was given – Hvaldimir – is a nod to hval which is Norwegian for whale, and the name of Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin.

Dr Shpak did not want to name her sources in Russia for their own safety but said she had been told that when the beluga surfaced in Norway, the Russian marine mammal community immediately identified it as one of theirs.

“Through the chain of vets and trainers the message came back – that they were missing a beluga called Andruha,” she says.

According to Dr Shpak, Andruha/Hvaldimir had first been captured in 2013 in the Sea of Okhotsk in Russia’s Far East. A year later it was moved from a facility owned by a dolphinarium in St Petersburg to the military programme in the Russian Arctic, where his trainers and vets remained in contact.

“I believe that when they started to work in open water, trusting this animal (not to swim away), the animal just gave up on them,” she says.

“What I’ve heard from the guys at the commercial dolphinarium who used to have him was that Andruha was smart, so a good choice to be trained. But at the same time, he was kind of like a hooligan – an active beluga – so they were not surprised that he gave up on (following) the boat and went where he wanted to.”

Satellite images from near the Russian naval base in Murmansk show what could have been Hvaldimir/Andruha’s old home. Pens can clearly be seen in the water with what appear to be white whales inside.

“The location of the beluga whales very close to the submarines and the surface vessels might tell us that they are actually part of a guarding system,” says Thomas Nilsen, from Norwegian online newspaper The Barents Observer.

Russia, for its part, has never officially addressed the claim that Hvaldimir/Andruha was trained by its army. But it does have a long history of training marine mammals for military purposes.

Speaking in 2019, a Russian reserve colonel, Viktor Baranets, said: “If we were using this animal for spying, do you really think we’d attach a mobile phone number with the message ‘Please call this number’?”

Sadly, Hvaldimir/Andruha’s incredible story does not have a happy ending.

Having learned to feed himself, it spent several years travelling south along Norway’s coast and in May 2023 was even spotted off the coast of Sweden.

Then on September 1 2024 its body was found floating at sea, near the town of Risavika, on Norway’s south-western coast.

Had the long arm of Putin’s Russia caught up with the reluctant beluga?

It appears not. Despite some activist groups suggesting that the whale had been shot, that explanation has been dismissed by the Norwegian police.

They say there was nothing to suggest that human activity directly caused the beluga’s death. A post-mortem examination revealed that Hvaldimir/Andruha died after a stick became lodged in his mouth.

Pubs, bars and clubs that have signed up for a scheme designed to protect customers who are in fear for their safety are not implementing it, a BBC undercover investigation has found.

The Ask for Angela initiative, a project in place at thousands of venues nationwide, aims to provide a discreet lifeline for people who believe they are in danger.

Those with such fears are advised to use the code word “Angela”, to indicate to staff they are in need of help.

But secret filming by BBC researchers found that in more than half of the London venues they visited, including major chains, staff failed to respond to the code word. The BBC received similar reports from across the UK.

It comes as more councils make participation in the scheme key to granting alcohol licences.

Our investigation found staff at large chains including Greene King, JD Wetherspoon and Simmons were among those who did not recognise the code word.

Greene King said it was concerned about the BBC’s findings and pledged to review how the scheme was communicated to its teams. JD Wetherspoon said it had successfully dealt with many examples of distressed customers using the scheme but would provide additional training if necessary. There was no response from Simmons.

The Ask for Angela initiative, which is aimed mainly at women but can be used by anyone feeling unsafe at a participating establishment, has spread from the UK to countries around the world, including Canada and the Netherlands. The scheme is named after Angela Crompton, who was murdered by her husband.

Staff receive special training to recognise the word Angela as a signal someone needs help.

Upon hearing the code word, employees are meant to discreetly intervene, helping the person get to safety by reuniting them with friends, calling a taxi, or contacting the police if necessary.

Venues often prominently advertise their participation, putting posters and stickers throughout their premises, particularly in women’s toilets, and also advertise online.

Some people say they actively seek out these establishments when arranging dates or nights out, viewing the scheme as a safety net.

One woman, who the BBC is naming only as “Kay”, explained how she had arranged to meet a man for the first time.

“It was fine at first,” she told the BBC. “But then the night just kept getting worse and worse.”

Within minutes of sitting down together, her date began touching her inappropriately. “He started playing with my hand, and I just froze,” she recounted, visibly upset. “I pulled my hand back. I put it behind my neck. And he just kept saying, ‘give me your hand, give me your hand’.”

As she tried to leave, his behaviour worsened. “We got up and then he grabbed me by my waist. And he slid his hand all the way down. I was scared and also just a bit shocked at what’s happening because I’m like, ‘leave me alone’.”

Kay did not know about the Ask for Angela scheme but thinks it could have helped, and says she now seeks out venues that operate it.

Following tip-offs from women and bar staff, BBC researchers posed as a couple on a date to test venues that actively promoted their involvement.

At one establishment, our undercover female researcher approached the bar, as if in distress on a date, and asked: “Is there anyone called Angela working?”

“Who?” came the confused response.

“Angela.”

“Er, no.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

At another participating venue, which the BBC is naming, the White Bear in Hounslow in west London, a man who identified himself as the manager was unaware of the scheme.

He told our researcher: “Nobody called Angela here… 100%, I’m the manager – I know my staff.” When pressed further, he added: “Not in the last four years that I’ve been here.”

The White Bear did not answer our questions but told us that he was not working there any more and that any “insights” from the BBC’s interaction with him were “outdated and misrepresentative”.

These were not isolated incidents – 13 of the 25 venues we visited failed to respond appropriately to the Angela code word.

One of the venues that did demonstrate how the scheme should operate was Hootananny in Brixton, south London. When a female researcher asked for Angela and said she felt uncomfortable, the response was immediate.

“Is everything alright?” the bartender asked without hesitation, before signalling to the manager. Within seconds, our researcher was led to a safe space and was asked: “Is there anything we can help with, or anything you want to talk to us about?”

Similarly, at the White Hart in Drury Lane, central London, staff activated their response protocol when our researcher asked for Angela. The manager, Kristoff, led her outside and even arranged a safe haven at a nearby pub.

“We’re going to keep him inside,” Kristoff told our researcher. “Go to this pub on the right-hand side… Ask for Neville. He’s a friend of mine, he’s the manager over there… Stay over there for half an hour and if you want to come back, come back – we’re going to make sure he’s gone.”

Hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of public money has been spent promoting and implementing Ask for Angela across England and Wales.

In London, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (Mopac) as well as the Greater London Authority and the Met Police are investing thousands while outside the capital, many councils have made use of the Home Office’s Safer Streets Fund.

Westminster City Council, which has the most licensed venues of any local council in the country, includes the operation of Ask for Angela as a consideration in granting licences to sell alcohol, as do Camden Council and Manchester City Council.

Dozens of other councils either require or strongly encourage venues to implement the scheme as part of their licensing conditions.

The BBC’s investigation suggests the findings from London might be indicative of wider problems across the country.

Women’s safety campaigners and bar staff in Oxford, parts of the West Midlands, Manchester, Coventry, Kent and Brighton all reported concerns to the BBC, while women’s safety organisations in Cornwall, Sheffield and Devon said it had failed to be adopted by many venues there.

Reacting to the BBC investigation, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan called the findings “shocking and unacceptable”.

He vowed to follow up with the venues identified in the report, as well as councils, “to make sure we remind business owners the responsibility they have”.

“This epidemic of violence against women and girls demands a whole society approach, and that includes those that run venues across our capital,” Khan added.

Women’s safety campaigners are calling for the scheme to become mandatory, with proper enforcement.

Jamie Klingler from Reclaim These Streets warns: “Women take a lot of risks to go out – a lot of the time for online dates or for meeting someone you don’t know.

“If Ask for Angela is at a bar you’re like, ‘OK, they’ll have my back.’

“To find out [the flaws in the Ask for Angela scheme], it’s more than disappointing – it’s putting women at risk.”

Sylvia Oates, director of Ask for Angela, said: “It’s a real concern that premises have got the poster up and then if somebody asks for Angela, it’s not successful.”

She said high staff turnover in the hospitality industry could make consistent training challenging, but said venues had a responsibility to make sure staff were trained.

She is calling for stronger measures to ensure compliance, such as fines, and will be meeting MPs to discuss ways to strengthen the scheme.

The climate-damaging vapours left behind by jet planes could be easily tackled, aviation experts say, with a new study suggesting they could be eliminated for a few pounds per flight.

Jet condensation trails, or contrails, have spawned wild conspiracy theories alleging mind control and the spreading of disease, but scientists say the real problem is their warming effect.

Researchers argue these smoky trails essentially double the amount of heating that’s caused by aviation’s use of fossil fuels.

The problem will be discussed at the UN climate conference, COP29, in Baku for the first time.

Contrails form in the sky in the same way that your breath goes misty on a chilly morning.

When a plane passes through cold humid air, the contrails form as the vapour from the engines condenses on unburned fuel fragments in the exhaust stream.

While the causes of contrails have been known about for decades, it’s only in recent years that the climate warming impact of these human generated clouds has been recognised.

“They create an artificial layer of clouds, which traps the heat from the Earth that’s trying to escape to outer space,” said Carlos Lopez de la Osa, from the Transport & Environment campaign group, which has carried out a new study on the solutions to contrails.

“The scale of the warming that’s associated with them is roughly having a similar impact to that of aviation carbon emissions.”

Conspiracy theories have grown up around contrails, with some people alleging they are in fact “chemtrails” that contain chemical or biological substances.

The aim of these chemtrails is either vaccinating the population, spreading pandemics or controlling the minds of the masses, the conspiracy theories go on to claim.

All of these ideas are completely untrue.

“It is unfortunate that these conspiracy theories are muddying the water on an issue where we need a lot of consensus, a lot of clarity,” said Matteo Mirolo, from Breakthrough Energy, and one of the organisers of the COP29 discussion about the contrails.

“Chemtrails are an unfounded theory. There’s simply no scientific backing.”

The COP event aims to draw attention to the fact that relatively simple changes to aviation practice could eliminate much of the warming impact of these trails.

According to the Transport & Environment study, some 80% of the warming associated with contrails is generated by just 3% of flights.

Tweaking the flight paths of a handful of aircraft could reduce contrail warming by more than half by 2040, at a cost of less than £4 per flight.

Geography and a flight’s latitude have a strong influence on whether a contrail is warming. Flights over North America, Europe and the North Atlantic region accounted for more than half of global contrail warming in 2019, the report said.

Time of day also influences the climate effects of contrails. Those formed by evening and night flights have the largest warming contribution. Seasonality is also important – the most warming contrails tend to occur in winter.

“Planes are already flying around thunderstorms and turbulence areas,” Mr Lopez de la Osa said.

“We will need to add one more constraint to flight planning, which is avoiding areas of contrail formation.”

“Of the climate solutions which are being discussed at COP29, it’s arguably one of the simplest ones.”

The researchers are hoping that by holding this event at COP they will spread awareness of the problem and the solutions.

They point to the huge amounts of money and research going into developing sustainable aviation fuels.

They believe that tackling contrails could achieve a major win for the climate, at a fraction of the cost.

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

Several airlines have cancelled flights to and from Bali due to dangerous ash clouds from a volcano near the Indonesian holiday island.

Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin Australia advised passengers of the disruptions on Wednesday, saying the ash from Mount Lewotobi Laki-laki made it unsafe to fly.

The volcano spewed a 9km (6.2 miles) ash column into the sky over the weekend, one week after a major eruption killed 10 people.

Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology has also warned that the volcanic ash might drift to parts of the country’s north on Wednesday.

Jetstar said all flights to and from Bali until 12:00 Australian Eastern Daylight Time Thursday (04:00 GMT) have been cancelled. Other airlines which have followed suit include Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific, India’s IndiGo, and Malaysian carrier AirAsia.

Virgin Australia, which cancelled all its flights to and from Bali on Wednesday, said in a statement: “Safety is always our highest priority, and our meteorology team is closely monitoring the situation.”

Singapore Airlines and its low-cost carrier Scoot have similarly cancelled some flights — though Singapore’s airport website shows that other flights to and from Bali have continued to run on Wednesday.

The general manager of Bali’s international airport Ahmad Syaugi Shahab, told Reuters that 22 international flights and 12 domestic ones had been affected on Tuesday, but did not provide details about Wednesday’s flights.

Activities in Indonesia have also been affected by the volcanic ash.

A jazz festival in Labuan Bajo town, some 600km from Mount Lewotaobi Laki-laki, was postponed to next year due to safety concerns.

Indonesia sits on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an area of high seismic activity atop multiple tectonic plates, and has about 130 active volcanoes.

Past volcanic eruptions have disrupted aviation. In 2020, ash clouds from Mount Merapi shut an airport in the city of Solo.

It started as a social media quest for breakfast dumplings, but ended with thousands of cyclists bringing traffic gridlock between two cities in central China.

What should have been a boost to the ancient city of Kaifeng’s economy backfired when the trend went viral – tens of thousands on rented bikes cycled through the night from nearby Zhenghou.

A six-lane expressway between the two cities quickly filled with cyclists as police took to loudspeakers urging them to leave. Bike rental firms warned they would remotely lock bikes taken out of Zhengzhou.

The event is part of a trend where young Chinese are travelling cheaply at a time when the economy is faltering and job prospects are scarce.

It began with four university students who cycled for 50km (30 miles) from Zhengzhou to Kaifeng in June to try guantangbao, a type of soup dumpling.

“You don’t get a second chance at youth, so you must go for a spontaneous trip with friends,” one of the four had told local media.

That message struck a chord with other young people in the city of 12.6 million – China’s young have increasingly been complaining of burnout from an overly-competitive and grinding job market.

Thus was born the social media trend “Night Ride to Kaifeng”.

State media initially praised it as a demonstration of young people’s “passion”. And local government saw it as an opportunity to recreate the instant fame that the town of Zibo enjoyed last year as millions arrived to sample its barbecues.

Before Friday night’s gridlock Kaifeng’s officials even announced discounts and events targeting college students. They also put in place additional traffic control measures to protect the cyclists.

“Everyone was beaming with energy and interacting with people around them. It was like back to my college days,” 27-year-old Ms Li told the BBC.

She rode a motorbike to Kaifeng along with the students on Friday night. She said she decided to join and “live like a young person for once” after she saw a post about the trend.

There was heavy police presence all the way, she added.

“You could see ambulances and traffic police cars on both sides of the road quite often, and there were also drones flying above to monitor the traffic.”

But the happy mood turned as the roads in Zhengzhou began to be overwhelmed by the thousands of bikes.

Pictures circulating online showed serious congestion on the main roads from Zhengzhou to Kaifeng. One witness told the local outlet Jimu News that his drive on that route, which usually took one hour, took three.

Some riders shared on social media that they were forced to get off their bikes and push their way through the crowd.

There was no official estimate of the number of bicycles on the road on Friday night. But reports on social media suggest the number ranged from 100,000 to 200,000.

And many of those who made it to Kaifeng didn’t seem to have enjoyed the experience.

“I really regret going,” said one viral post from a student, who rode more than seven hours. They couldn’t get a taxi or a hotel room as the demand was overwhelming.

“As I sat in a restaurant eating my meal, I heard the owner criticising college students for having nothing else to do… I’m really sorry for affecting the people in Kaifeng,” the student wrote.

Some users criticised the cyclists for “irresponsible” behaviour such as littering.

As the gridlock worsened, three major bike platforms in China issued a joint statement urging students to use trains or buses for long-distance travel and avoid using bikes at night for safety reasons.

By Saturday afternoon, the companies had begun charging those who rode to a different city.

Multiple social media posts suggest some universities in Zhengzhou have asked students to return to their dormitories and imposed restrictions on them leaving the campus.

Traffic police in both Zhengzhou and Kaifeng closed off some of the main cycling lanes between the two cities on Saturday and Sunday.

It is not surprising to see officials in both cities pushing back because Chinese authorities have always cracked down on large gatherings, which they fear can lead to protests or any form of political expression.

Last month, police in Shanghai silenced celebrations for Halloween over fears the revelries might be used to express dissent.

Ms Li says spontaneous gatherings – such as the Night Ride to Kaifeng – will keep happening simply because they appeal to young people.

“People are so stressed these days, so these events are a good thing,” she says. “Because happiness is infectious.”

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has formally apologised to victims of abuse in care homes, following an inquiry into one of the country’s biggest abuse scandals.

The historic apology, delivered in parliament, comes after a report found that 200,000 children and vulnerable adults had suffered abuse while in state and faith-based care between 1950 and 2019.

Many of them included people from the Māori and Pacific communities and those with mental or physical disabilities.

The government has since promised to reform the care system.

“I make this apology to all survivors on behalf of my own and previous governments,” said Luxon on Tuesday.

“It was horrific. It was heartbreaking. It was wrong. And it should never have happened,” he added. “For many of you it changed the course of your life, and for that, the government must take responsibility.”

The inquiry, which Luxon described as the largest and most complex public inquiry ever held in New Zealand, took six years to complete and included interviews with more than 2,300 survivors of abuse in state and faith-based care institutions.

The ensuing report documented a wide range of abuses including rape, sterilisation, and forced labour.

It found that faith-based institutions often had higher rates of sexual abuse than state care; and civil and faith leaders fought to cover up abuse by moving abusers to other locations and denying culpability, with many victims dying before seeing justice.

The findings were seen as vindication for those who found themselves facing down powerful officialdom, the state, and religious institutions – and often struggling to be believed.

Some survivors and advocates arrived in parliament Tuesday to hear the prime minister’s apology, while hundreds of others tuned in through livestreams across the country. Luxon had earlier faced criticism for delivering the apology in parliament, as that meant many survivors could not hear from the prime minister directly.

Survivors have argued that Luxon’s apology rings hollow unless it is accompanied with proper plans for restitution.

“The effects of that trauma came through later on in life,” Tupua Urlich, a Māori survivor who had given his testimony of abuse to the inquiry, told the BBC’s Newsday programme. “It’s not just the physical abuse, it was the disconnection from my family, from my culture.”

“Justice? No, not yet… These words are nothing unless they’re followed by action, and the right kind of action that is informed by survivors.

“The government have proven that alone they’re not trusted, nor capable, of providing the sort of change and service that we need.”

Details on a restitution scheme are not expected until early next year.

Luxon said Tuesday that while the government works on a new financial redress mechanism for survivors, it would pump an additional NZ$32m ($19m, £15m) into its current system.

The inquiry had made over 100 recommendations, including public apologies from New Zealand authorities and religious leaders, as well as legislation mandating suspected abuse to be reported.

Luxon said the government has either completed or is in the process of working on 28 of these recommendations, but did not give specific detail.

A bill aimed at better protecting children in care had its first reading in parliament on Tuesday, after Luxon delivered the apology. The bill proposes, among other things, a ban on strip searches and greater restrictions on people working with young children.

Luxon also announced a National Remembrance Day to be held on 12 November next year to mark the anniversary of Tuesday’s apology.

“It is on all of us to do all we can to ensure that abuse that should never have been accepted, no longer occurs,” he said.

After more than 600 days of denied visits, calls and correspondence, the jailed Belarusian opposition activist Maria Kolesnikova has been allowed to see her father in prison.

A photo, published on social media, shows the activist in what appears to be a prison housecoat hugging her father.

On her face is the smile she became famous for as one of the leaders of a wave of giant protests in 2020 that put the authoritarian regime of Alexander Lukashenko under unprecedented pressure.

It survived by responding with mass arrests, police beatings and torture – all thoroughly documented, but still flatly denied by officials.

A peaceful protester, Maria Kolesnikova was sentenced to 11 years for extremism and supposedly plotting to overthrow the government.

In September, her sister, Tatsiana, told the BBC that she was worried the Belarusian regime was “killing Maria slowly” in jail, where she had been kept in punishing conditions since March 2023, and was not allowed any contact with relatives or lawyers.

Tatsiana called then for more international pressure to secure her sister’s release, and the freedom of the many other political prisoners in Belarus.

Now, she has posted the new prison photo on X with the line: “I cannot believe it!”

The family have not yet shared any information about her health.

In an odd twist the photo was first published on Telegram by the former opposition journalist Roman Protasevich, who was arrested when his Ryanair flight over Belarus was forcibly grounded. He now cooperates with the authorities, after a presidential pardon and early release.

Mr Protasevich has given no details about the picture of Maria and her father, or the circumstances.

• Belarus isolates political prisoners to break their spirit
• ‘I don’t regret anything’, Kolesnikova tells BBC

Alexander Lukashenko, in power since the early 1990s, has called another presidential election in January in which no genuine opposition candidates will be allowed to take part.

Recently, perhaps hoping to improve his image, he began pardoning small groups of prisoners.

More than 70 have been set free since summer, including people jailed for participating in the 2020 protests, but most were close to the end of their sentence or sick.

An announcement last week stated that another group jailed for “extremism” would be pardoned. It promised “big news”, and said two women were on the list.

But Tatsiana told the BBC that she did not believe the sudden reappearance of her sister for a prison visit meant she was about to be set free.

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, now in exile after running for election against Lukashenko, sent a short video on Telegram with greetings for “Masha”, as she called Maria affectionately, and expressed “joy” to see her reunited with her father.

“How happy I am to see the smile that captivated us in 2020 and stays the same despite all you’ve been through,” Tikhanovskaya said.

Writing on X she added: “Now, we must keep up the pressure to break the isolation of other political prisoners & free them all!”

Tikhanovskaya’s husband, Sergei, is one of those still in prison and has also been kept incommunicado for many months, as have other political prisoners including Viktor Babaryko – another would-be presidential candidate locked up in 2020.

Franak Viacorka, an adviser to Tikhanovskaya, told the BBC that Lukashenko’s gesture to Maria was tokenism.

“Lukashenko is afraid right now to make any big moves and changes before his sham election – his self-reappointment. Just showing Maria doesn’t threaten him, but he wants to show it as a big gesture of humanity – which it’s not of course,” Mr Viacorka believes.

He put the gesture down to a recent increase in international attention and pressure.

Lukashenko has been an international pariah for many years, with the European Union condemning the 2020 election results as “falsified”.

As for others still held, Mr Viacorka said: “I dream of the moment my friends and colleagues are released. But I am a realist.”

Donald Trump’s nomination of Congressman Matt Gaetz to be his attorney general arrived like a thunder-clap in Washington DC on Wednesday afternoon.

Of all the president-elect’s picks for his administration so far, this is easily the most controversial – and sends a clear message that Trump intends to shake up the establishment when he returns to power.

The firebrand Florida politician is perhaps best known for spearheading the effort to unseat then-Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy last year. But he has a consistent history of being a flamethrower in the staid halls of Congress.

In 2018, he brought a right-wing Holocaust denier to the State of the Union, and later tried to expel two fathers who lost children in a mass shooting from a hearing after they objected to a claim he made about gun control.

His bombastic approach means he has no shortage of enemies, including within his own party. And so Trump’s choice of Gaetz for this crucial role is a signal to those Republicans, too – his second administration will be staffed by loyalists who he trusts to enact his agenda, conventional political opinion be damned.

Gasps were heard during a meeting of Republican lawmakers when the nomination for America’s top US prosecutor was announced, Axios reported, citing sources in the room.

Republican Congressman Mike Simpson of Idaho reportedly responded with an expletive.

“I don’t think it’s a serious nomination for the attorney general,” Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski said. “This one was not on my Bingo card.”

• Tesla, crypto and jails among trade winners
• What top team picks tell us about Trump 2.0
• Will Trump be sentenced over hush money case?
• Second-term priorities take shape

Gaetz does have some allies on Capitol Hill who share an unwavering loyalty to Trump. The Florida lawmaker has been one of the president-elect’s most aggressive and relentless defenders – at congressional hearings, in press conferences and during television appearances.

On Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson, another devoted Trump loyalist, called Gaetz an “accomplished attorney”.

“He’s a reformer in his mind and heart, and I think that he’ll bring a lot to the table on that,” said Johnson.

In a social media post, Trump spelled out how he intends to use Gaetz as a wrecking ball to radically change the US Department of Justice, which he has regularly blamed for his multiple legal troubles.

“Matt will root out the systemic corruption at the DOJ, and return the department to its true mission of fighting crime and upholding our democracy and constitution,” he wrote.

During the campaign, Trump promised retribution for the numerous investigations launched against him. Now, it appears, Gaetz will be at the frontlines of Trump’s efforts to bring the justice department to heel.

The department also investigated Gaetz himself.

Last year, it declined to bring charges over allegations he violated sex trafficking laws during a trip he took to the Bahamas with paid escorts. He was the subject of an ongoing ethics investigation in the House of Representatives into allegations of sexual misconduct, illicit drug use and misuse of campaign funds.

But on Wednesday evening, Johnson said Gaetz had resigned as a lawmaker, effectively ending the House probe since the committee only investigates members.

Gaetz has denied all the allegations against him.

According to CBS News, Gaetz had asked Trump for a pre-emptive pardon for any related crimes prior to the president leaving office in January 2021.

All this makes him an unlikely choice for a position that typically goes to more senior politicians, well versed in law.

Gaetz, 42, has a law degree and worked for a Florida law firm before his eight years in Congress. Joe Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, was a senior federal appellate court judge. Trump in his first term picked US Senator Jeff Sessions, and later Bill Barr, who had decades of experience in Republican presidential administrations.

The Senate will be responsible for confirming Gaetz’s nomination, and the Florida congressman has ruffled more then a few feathers in that chamber – including among Republicans. While his party has a majority, it would only take four “no” votes, joined by unified Democratic opposition, to sink his chances.

Gaetz himself said last year that he would love to be attorney general while acknowledging it was unlikely.

“The world is not ready, probably,” he told Newsmax in an interview. “Certainly Senate confirmation wouldn’t be, but you know, a boy can dream.”

For the moment, however, Trump’s closest supporters are celebrating his pick.

“The hammer of justice is coming,” Elon Musk posted about Gaetz on X.

Regardless of the ultimate outcome of Gaetz’s bid to be attorney general, Trump has fired a warning shot across the bow of US government. While his second term in office may be more organised than his first, it may end up being even more confrontational.

North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the race for the White House in his twice weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

On election night, Donald Trump repeated the phrase: “Promises made, promises kept.”

Now, Republicans have officially taken control of Congress and his “promises” are a whole lot easier to keep.

In Washington political parlance, it’s called “a governing trifecta”, when the president’s party also controls both chambers of Congress – the House of Representatives and the Senate.

That control is what Donald Trump’s Republican Party now has.

Single-party control was once common, but in recent decades it has become rarer and shorter. Often, the party in power loses seats when midterm congressional elections roll around two years later.

Both Trump and Joe Biden enjoyed trifectas for their first two years in the White House, but they also saw that having such control is no guarantee a president can get their way.

• Seven things Trump says he will do in power
• When does he become president again?
• What happens to his legal cases now
• How he pulled off an incredible comeback

In his first two years, Trump passed a signature tax bill – reducing corporate taxes from 35% to 21%, and cutting some taxes on individuals.

But with some members of his own party resistant to his surprise ascent to the top in 2016, he struggled with other aims.

His plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act (known as Obamacare) failed when a senator from his own party, John McCain, refused to vote for it. He also failed to pass an infrastructure bill as he had promised.

In his first two years, when the Democrats controlled the House and the Senate, Biden succeeded in passing the American Rescue plan, the Investment and Jobs Act, and the Chips and Science Act. But he, too, had to significantly scale back his sending and investment plans – touted as the Build Back Better package – after opposition from one of his own senators.

A major impediment to total control for either party is that Senate bills require a three-fifths majority, or 60 votes, to bypass the filibuster, which enables senators to delay legislation by keeping debate open-ended. That means that when a party has a simple majority in the Senate, it needs to reach across the aisle to get a bill passed.

Even with a healthy majority in the Senate this time around, Trump will not have the magic 60 seats that would allow him to overcome opposition attempts to delay legislation.

And on Wednesday, Republicans in the Senate selected John Thune as their majority leader over Florida’s Rick Scott, the clear favourite in the Trump camp, in a sign some lawmakers may be reasserting their independence (Trump did not officially endorse Scott).

That said, a trifecta, if astutely managed, does open the way for the possibility of major legislative initiatives.

Trump’s power advantage could be key in pushing through his big promises such as the largest deportation of migrants in history, sweeping tariffs on foreign imports, and the rolling back of environmental protections.

Using legislation to achieve these ends will make such plans much harder to overturn in the courts – something Donald Trump was plagued by in his first term when he extensively used executive orders that were regularly and often successfully challenged.

The judicial landscape also has changed in Trump’s favour.

The signature achievement of his first term was putting three conservatives on the Supreme Court – cementing a two-thirds majority for possibly decades to come.

He also named more than four dozen judges to the federal appeals courts, flipping several circuits to a more conservative bent.

The majority Republicans have in the Senate also provides a key advantage.

Trump will be able to get his nominees for administration posts approved more easily, something he struggled with back in 2017 when internal resistance to him in the Republican Party was still significant.

All this bodes for a busy and possibly turbulent next two years. But, as recent history indicates, these trifectas don’t last all that long. The incoming administration will want to get a move on.

Apple is facing a legal claim accusing it of effectively locking 40 million British customers into its iCloud service and charging them “rip off prices.”

Consumer group Which? says the legal action – which it has launched – could result in a £3bn payout if it is successful, equivalent to £70 per customer.

Apple has rejected the suggestion its practices are anti-competitive, saying users are not required to use iCloud, many rely on third-party alternatives and insisting it “works hard to make data transfer as easy as possible.”

It is another example of the “growing tide of large class actions against Big Tech” which has “operated without sufficient constraint”, Toby Starr from legal firm Humphries Kerstetter told the BBC.

Facebook, Google, gaming giant Steam and the UK’s leading mobile providers are among the others facing legal claims at the same court, the the Competition Appeal Tribunal.

“Although most of these claims are in their infancy and take a long time to resolve, there will be more decisions coming out over the next couple of years and there will be settlements – these will start to affect the tech giants’ businesses,” said Mr Starr.

Users of Apple products get a small amount of digital storage for free – and after that are encouraged to pay to use its iCloud service to back up photos, videos, messages, contacts and all the other content which lives on their device.

Prices for this storage range from £0.99 a month for 50GB of space to £54.99 a month for 12TB.

Apple does not allow rival storage services full access to its products.

It says that is for security reasons – but it also contributes to the company’s enormous revenues.

Which? says over a period of nine years dating back to 2015 Apple has been effectively locking people into its services – and then overcharging them.

“By bringing this claim, Which? is showing big corporations like Apple that they cannot rip off UK consumers without facing repercussions,” the body’s chief executive Anabel Hoult said.

“Taking this legal action means we can help consumers to get the redress that they are owed, deter similar behaviour in the future and create a better, more competitive market.”

Apple has strongly denied Which’s accusations.

“We reject any suggestion that our iCloud practices are anti-competitive and will vigorously defend against any legal claim otherwise,” it said in a statement.

Though being launched by Which?, the legal action is being funded and taken forward by international law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher.

Which? said they would be paid fees as the case progressed, getting additional payments if it was successful – but they would not be getting a percentage of any damages.

Alan Davis, from law firm Pinsent Masons, said there were very likely to be more, similar cases in the future.

“It is inevitable that further claims of this nature will continue to be brought given the very high value of the aggregate damages and the role of and incentive for litigation funders to support these claims which might not otherwise be brought without that financial support,” he told the BBC.

He added the absence of any infringement decisions under EU or UK competition law meant it would be down to the claimant to prove the market abuse it was alleging was actually taking place.

However, he pointed out the regulator had announced a wider investigation into cloud services in the UK.

Authorities in Green Lake, Wisconsin, say that a local man who went missing while kayaking this summer may have staged his own death and fled to Europe.

“We believe that he is alive. We know that he’s not in our lake,” Matthew Vande Kolk, Chief Deputy Sheriff for Green Lake County, told the BBC.

Ryan Borgwardt, 45, a married father of three, was last seen on 12 August at Green Lake while on a solo fishing trip.

Officials found evidence that Mr Borgwardt had used his passport after his disappearance and may have travelled to Europe.

Mr Borgwardt had last texted his wife on the night of 11 August. The message said he was turning his kayak around and heading to shore soon.

But when he failed to return home, his family contacted law enforcement who sent out a search-and-rescue team, which found his capsized kayak and life jacket on the lake.

Mr Borgwardt’s car, trailer, fishing rod and wallet were all left at the park nearby.

After 54 days of extensive search efforts of divers, drones, sonar and cadaver dogs, no body was recovered and no evidence turned up.

That caused the sheriff’s office to widen its scope.

The case took a turn in October when investigators discovered Mr Borgwardt’s name had been checked by border officials in Canada on 13 August, the day after he was reported missing.

Investigators then learned that Mr Borgwardt had reported his passport lost or stolen and was issued a new one prior to his disappearance.

His previous passport was later recovered from his wife, indicating he may have travelled on the new document.

Following this lead, officials conducted a digital forensic analysis of Mr Borgwardt’s laptop, and they found that he had taken out a $375,000 life insurance policy, had transferred funds to a foreign bank account, photographed his new passport, and altered his email address before he vanished.

And after doing this, they discovered that Mr Borgwardt had replaced the laptop’s hard drive and cleared his browser history the day he disappeared.

Authorities also found indications that he may have traveled to a location in Europe.

While the investigation continues, the sheriff’s office told the BBC they are evaluating the appropriate criminal charges that could include obstruction and fraudulent activity.

Borgwardt’s family is cooperating and the chief deputy sheriff said his wife has been “extremely strong.”

“She has done everything that we have asked of her in regards to helping us with information, and holding on to information,” Mr Vande Kolk told the BBC. “Unfortunately, we had to keep this quiet for about a month from the time that we started thinking that he was somewhere else, until we had enough information that we could share with the world, and she did that.”

“Our hope is then, at some point we’ll be able to hold Ryan accountable for his actions and request restitution,” he added.

Authorities said that they are continuing to look for Mr. Borgwardt, who they believe is alive and in Eastern Europe, and anyone who may have assisted him in faking his death and fleeing.

The former headteacher of a French school has revealed the shocking sequence of events that led to the beheading of Samuel Paty by a Chechen refugee.

Audrey F told the court in Paris how she had tried to stop a row spiralling out of control that began with a 13-year-old student lying to her parents.

What began with Samuel Paty giving a lesson on freedom of expression in October 2020 escalated when the father of the girl, who had not even been in the class, turned up at the headteacher’s office with a local Islamist activist.

“I didn’t manage to protect him,” Audrey F said of her late colleague – a well-liked history and geography teacher in the Paris suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine.

“It’s such an enormous waste.”

The row tragically ended with Paty’s murder outside the school by 18-year-old Abdoullakh Anzorov, who was shot dead by police at the scene.

• Trial begins over beheading of French teacher
• Beheading of teacher deepens divisions in France

The girl, known in court by the initial Z, had just been suspended by the school for two days for repeated absence and rudeness.

That was not what she had told her parents.

The girl claimed she had confronted Paty in a class she had not attended, falsely alleging that he had told Muslim students to leave the room while he showed “naked” images of the Prophet Muhammad.

Although the mother of another girl had phoned the school in tears, Audrey F said she had called her back, with Samuel Paty also on the call, and said the mother appeared reassured.

In reality, three cartoons published by a French satirical magazine had been discussed in class, and Paty had said anyone who felt they might be offended did not have to stay.

Any depictions of the Prophet Muhammad are considered highly offensive by Muslims. But there had been no attempt to target or exclude Muslims students.

The following morning, Audrey F was told that the excluded student’s father Brahim Chnina was outside the school with another man, Abdelhakim Sefrioui, who wrongly claimed to be acting on behalf of French imams.

The pair were demanding action against Paty, who they condemned as a “thug” and wanted removed.

Audrey F said that while she had tried to focus the conversation on the girl’s exclusion from school, Abdelhakim Sefrioui had taken the lead, refusing to allow freedom of expression to be used by a “thug”.

The murder of Samuel Paty, 47, shocked France and came five years after militant Islamist gunmen murdered 12 people at the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo which published the original cartoons.

Abdelhakim Sefrioui and Brahim Chnina are accused of identifying Samuel Paty as a “blasphemer” in online videos and of involvement in a “criminal terrorist” group and complicity in “terrorist murder”.

They are among eight people on trial at the court in Paris who all deny the charges against them, while not denying their involvement in the case.

The other six include a pair accused of helping the teenage killer and others who are accused of egging him on on social media.

Audrey F, who has left France to teach at an international school in China, told the court that she had felt the next day that the situation had now become a problem and “something is not right at the school”.

Two videos appeared on social media, one from Brahim Chnina in which his daughter repeated her lies about the class, another later from Abdelhakim Sefrioui, naming both Samuel Paty and the school.

“By now I was very worried, not specifically for Mr Paty but for the school,” she told the court.

On the advice of a superior she went to the police with Samuel Paty, where he filed a complaint, and contacted the local authority.

The geography teacher was urged to stay at home until the school holidays which were only days away. He refused to do so and Audrey F did not insist.

Threatening emails were sent to the school and there were anonymous phone-calls too. A police car was parked outside the school for several days.

On the final day of half-term, at 16:45 on Friday 16 October, Samuel Paty was stabbed and decapitated by the 18-year-old Chechen refugee outside the school.

Brahim Chnina’s daughter has already been convicted of making false and slanderous accusations, while five other teenagers have been found guilty of taking part in a group preparing aggravated violence.

When asked in court what Abdelhakim Sefrioui and Brahim Chnina could have done to calm the situation, Audrey F said nothing would have happened if they had not posted videos online.

Regretting that she had been unable to protect her colleague, the former headteacher said: “I tell myself that if there is justice, perhaps I’ll manage to move on.”

The boss of Tesla and the social media site X, Elon Musk, suggested last month at Donald Trump’s rally in New York City that it would be possible to cut “at least $2 trillion” from US government spending by eradicating “waste”.

Musk has now been appointed to co-head a new Department of Government Efficiency by the incoming US president, giving him an opportunity to try to put his plans into action.

In the most recent fiscal year (from October 2023 to September 2024) the US federal government spent $6.75 trillion (£5.3 trillion) according to the US Treasury.

This means Musk’s proposed cuts of $2 trillion would represent around a cut of around 30% of total federal government spending — also known as national spending in other countries.

How realistic is that proposal?

To answer that, it’s helpful to break down the total spending figure.

Around $880bn (13% of total US government spending) goes on interest payments on the national debt, which means that line of expenditure cannot be reduced without putting the US government in default.

Around $1.46 trillion (22%) goes on Social Security, which primarily means pensions for Americans over the retirement age. This is a line of spending which is “mandatory”, meaning it must be spent by law on those eligible.

Other large mandatory lines of government expenditure include Medicare – a government-funded health insurance program primarily serving Americans aged over 65.

So-called “discretionary” US government spending – outlays that are not permanently enshrined in law but have to be voted on annually by US lawmakers – includes defence ($874bn, 13%), transportation ($137bn, 2%) and education, training, employment and social services ($305bn, 5%).

Altogether, discretionary spending accounted for around 25% of the total in the 2023 financial year according to the Congressional Budget Office, with more than half of that going to defence.

In theory, discretionary spending would be easier for the incoming Trump administration to cut than mandatory spending.

Donald Trump has said that Musk – and his co-head at the new Department of Government Efficiency, Vivek Ramaswamy – will achieve the savings from dismantling government bureaucracy, slashing excess regulations and restructuring government agencies. In an interview with the BBC in April 2023 Musk claimed to have reduced the staff of Twitter (now X) from 8,000 to 1,500 after acquiring the social network in 2022.

Yet if all of the $2 trillion in US government expenditure savings now being targeted by Musk were to come from discretionary spending, analysts calculate that entire agencies – from transport, to agriculture, to Homeland Security – would have to be entirely closed down. Discretionary spending accounted for only $1.7 trillion in 2023.

Musk did not specify if he would aim to deliver $2 trillion in savings in a single year, or over a longer period, but many US public finance experts, including those who are in favour in principle of reductions in US government spending, are sceptical savings on such a scale can be found in the near term without either a collapse in the delivery of important government functions or sparking major public resistance.

After taking control of the House of Representatives in 2022, Republican lawmakers have struggled to pass legislation to deliver considerably smaller cuts of $130bn in discretionary government spending after meeting opposition from other Republicans.

It’s also important to note that Donald Trump campaigned on a platform of making Social Security more financially generous, not less, by removing the income tax payable on it. And, on defence, Trump said he would build an “iron dome missile defence shield” around America, implying greater spending in this area, not cuts.

Total US federal government spending as a share of the US economy in 2024 was around 23% according to the US Treasury.

That’s a considerably smaller share than national government spending in other developed countries.

However, a large share of government spending in the US, including almost all school spending, is done at a state rather than a federal level, and states are funded by local sales and property taxes.

The International Monetary Fund has projected that total US “general government expenditure”, which includes spending by individual states, will be around 37.5% of its GDP in 2024.

That compares with 43% in the UK, 48% in Germany and 57% in France.

The US government is currently running an annual deficit – a shortfall between its spending and tax revenues – equal to around 6% of its economy. And America’s national debt held by the public is currently equal to around 97% of the size of the economy.

The non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) think tank has projected that this is currently set to climb to 125% by 2035.

The CRFB has projected that absent major spending reductions, Donald Trump’s planned tax cuts would considerably widen the US deficit in the coming decade and push up the US national debt to 143% by the middle of the next decade.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

South Korean actor Song Jae Lim, known for his breakout role in the K-drama The Moon Embracing the Sun, was found dead on Tuesday in his Seoul home.

The 39-year-old, who began his career as a model, rose to prominence in the period drama in 2012, before going on to star in other variety shows and television series.

Reports say a note was found in the apartment, with police adding that there is no evidence of foul play.

His death has renewed concerns over the immense pressures facing those in South Korea’s entertainment industry.

South Korean stars paid tribute to Song following news of his death.

Fellow actor Yoo Sun, who worked alongside Song in the 2016 series Our Gap Soon, posted a photo of them together on Instagram with the caption: “It’s too sad, it hurts so much… May you find peace and rest.”

Another actor, Park Ho San said in an Instagram post: “Since you were always so cheerful, it’s hard to believe [the news].”

According to news site Yonhap, the actor’s family said they wished to hold a small funeral involving only family members.

South Korea’s entertainment industry is known for its high-pressure environment, where celebrities are held to strict standards over their appearances and behaviour.

The recent deaths of high-profile celebrities — including Parasite actor Lee Sun-kyun, K-pop stars Moonbin, Goo Hara and Sulli — have raised concerns about the toll such pressures may have taken.

For information and support about any issues raised in this story contact the BBC Action Line.

A multiple-missile attack by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on two US warships has been thwarted, the Pentagon has said.

At least eight drones, five anti-ship ballistic missiles and three anti-ship cruise missiles were aimed at the USS Stockdale and the USS Spruance on Monday.

The vessels shot down the projectiles and were “not damaged and no personnel were hurt,” Pentagon press secretary Air Force Major Gen Pat Ryder told reporters on Tuesday.

The attack followed a series of airstrikes made by the US Central Command against Houthi weapons storage bases in Yemen.

• US bombers target underground Houthi weapon sites in Yemen

The attack happened while the Iranian-backed rebel group were travelling through the Bab el-Mandeb strait, a waterway between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

Al-Masirah TV, the main television news outlet run by Yemen’s Houthi movement, said that a series of airstrikes had targeted two US warships and a third vessel in the Arabian Sea.

The group’s military spokesman, Yahya al-Sarea, said in a statement on X that the rebels had “successfully” bombarded the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier with a number of cruise missiles.

Ryder said he was “not aware of any attacks” on the Abraham Lincoln vessel.

“We will continue to make clear to the Houthis there will be consequences for their illegal and reckless attacks,” he said.

The Houthis are part of a network of armed groups in the Middle East backed by Iran that includes Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

They have repeatedly targeted commercial shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden since November 2023. They have sunk two vessels, seized a third of targeted ships and killed crew members.

They say they are acting in support of the Palestinians in the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

They have claimed, often falsely, that they are targeting ships only linked to Israel, the US or the UK.

Earlier this year, the US, UK and 12 other nations launched Operation Prosperity Guardian to protect Red Sea shipping lanes against the Houthis.

In October, the US military said it had launched strikes on 15 Houthi targets in Yemen, with several explosions reported in the capital Sanaa.

It has previously said it aims to degrade the Houthis’ ability to target shipping.

Thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes in the Costa del Sol region of southern Spain as extreme rain and flooding drenches the area.

National weather office Aemet has placed both Malaga and the northeastern Catalonia region on the highest alert for strong rain expected to last until Friday.

The Malaga area, including the tourist resorts of Marbella, Velez and Estepona, is expected to take the brunt of the extreme weather phenomenon known as a “Dana”.

Parts of the eastern Valencia area have also been placed on the highest alert, weeks after the area was devastated by flash floods that killed more than 220 people.

Several other regions in Spain remain braced for more heavy showers and low temperatures.

Up to 180mm of rain could fall in Catalonia in north-eastern Spain in just 12 hours, accompanied by thunderstorms along the coast near Tarragona, forecasters say.

Schools in the entire southern province of Málaga have been closed while many supermarkets have kept shutters down.

Footage circulating on social media showed the city’s normally busy areas deserted as water flooded the streets.

Around 3,000 people living in close proximity to the Guadalhorce River have been told to leave their homes, the Regional Government of Andalusia has said.

Regional government’s Minister of the Presidency Antonio Sanz said: “We have not evacuated entire towns, but rather specific areas linked to the riverbank.

“This decision has been communicated to the government of Spain in order to receive collaboration from the state security forces and bodies.”

The severe weather alert in Málaga has also led to the opening tie of the Billie Jean King Cup between Spain and Poland being postponed, the International Tennis Federation said.

The two nations were set to play in Malaga on Wednesday.

Spain’s meteorological agency Aemet has placed parts of the Andalusia region and the Balearic Islands on orange alert from now until Thursday.

Aemet warns of rainfall and storms that could be “very strong to torrential”.

In other parts of Spain precautions are being taken – with eastern and southern Mediterranean areas the most vulnerable.

That orange alert is the second highest and it signals a significant meteorological event “with a degree of danger for normal activities”.

In Valencia, school classes and sports activities were suspended in some areas and sandbags piled up to protect the centre of the town of Aldaia.

However this second Dana weather system is not expected to be as dramatic as the red alert on 29 October, when the Valencia region in particular suffered an unprecedented loss of lives and material damage.

• Why Valencia floods proved so deadly
• Video shows first wave of flood water gushing through town in Valencia
• Accusations fly in Spain over who is to blame for flood disaster

Elsewhere, rescue teams searching for the bodies of two young brothers who were swept away in the Valencia floods two weeks ago said their bodies had been found.

Izan Matías, 5, and Rubén Matías, 3, were pulled from their father Victor Matías’s arms when the torrent ripped through their home in Valencia on the evening of 29 October.

Their aunt Barabara Sastre confirmed to the BBC the boys had been found. Their bodies were recovered in different locations.

“My little angels, we have finally found you” one family friend, David Garcia, wrote online. “Two stars shine brighter in the sky.”

Yesterday, search teams had focused on part of the River Pollo about 6km (3.7km) from the family home.

The boys’ uncle Iván had told the BBC he was hugely grateful for all the support they had received and hoped his nephews would be found.

Volunteers from the Canary Islands and other parts of Spain had joined recovery specialists from Mexico, who normally work in the aftermath of earthquakes.

On Monday, the family dog was found dead in a garage in the town of Paiporta, more than 12km (7.4 miles) from their house in La Curra, a neighbourhood of Mas del Jutge.

Dana weather systems are formed when an area of low pressure gets “cut off” from the main flow of the jet stream.

This means that instead of moving through a region relatively quickly, they get blocked over the same area leading to persistent rainfall for several days.

Colder air high in the atmosphere meets warmer air flowing in from the Mediterranean which intensifies the storm.

On the first day of the COP29 climate summit on Monday, the Secretary General of the World Meterological Organisation Celeste Saulo said the recent floods in Spain were a strong message to the world.

“The incredible amount of rain in Spain was a wake-up call (about) how much more water a warmer atmosphere can hold,” she said.

Several airlines have cancelled flights to and from Bali due to dangerous ash clouds from a volcano near the Indonesian holiday island.

Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin Australia advised passengers of the disruptions on Wednesday, saying the ash from Mount Lewotobi Laki-laki made it unsafe to fly.

The volcano spewed a 9km (6.2 miles) ash column into the sky over the weekend, one week after a major eruption killed 10 people.

Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology has also warned that the volcanic ash might drift to parts of the country’s north on Wednesday.

Jetstar said all flights to and from Bali until 12:00 Australian Eastern Daylight Time Thursday (04:00 GMT) have been cancelled. Other airlines which have followed suit include Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific, India’s IndiGo, and Malaysian carrier AirAsia.

Virgin Australia, which cancelled all its flights to and from Bali on Wednesday, said in a statement: “Safety is always our highest priority, and our meteorology team is closely monitoring the situation.”

Singapore Airlines and its low-cost carrier Scoot have similarly cancelled some flights — though Singapore’s airport website shows that other flights to and from Bali have continued to run on Wednesday.

The general manager of Bali’s international airport Ahmad Syaugi Shahab, told Reuters that 22 international flights and 12 domestic ones had been affected on Tuesday, but did not provide details about Wednesday’s flights.

Activities in Indonesia have also been affected by the volcanic ash.

A jazz festival in Labuan Bajo town, some 600km from Mount Lewotaobi Laki-laki, was postponed to next year due to safety concerns.

Indonesia sits on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an area of high seismic activity atop multiple tectonic plates, and has about 130 active volcanoes.

Past volcanic eruptions have disrupted aviation. In 2020, ash clouds from Mount Merapi shut an airport in the city of Solo.