A charred lorry, empty tear gas shells and posters of former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan – it was all that remained of a massive protest led by Khan’s wife, Bushra Bibi, that had sent the entire capital into lockdown.

Just a day earlier, faith healer Bibi – wrapped in a white shawl, her face covered by a white veil – stood atop a shipping container on the edge of the city as thousands of her husband’s devoted followers waved flags and chanted slogans beneath her.

“My children and my brothers! You have to stand with me,” she cried on Tuesday afternoon, her voice cutting through the deafening roar of the crowd.

“But even if you don’t,” she continued, “I will still stand firm.

“This is not just about my husband. It is about this country and its leader.”

It was, noted some watchers of Pakistani politics, her political debut.

But as the sun rose on Wednesday morning, there was no sign of Bushra Bibi, nor the thousands of protesters who had marched through the country to the heart of the capital, demanding the release of their jailed leader.

Exactly what happened to the so-called “final march”, and Bushra Bibi, when the city went dark is still unclear.

All eyewitnesses like Samia* can say for certain is that the lights went out suddenly, plunging D Chowk, the square where they had gathered, into blackness.

As loud screams and clouds of tear gas blanketed the square, Samia describes holding her husband on the pavement, bloodied from a gun shot to his shoulder.

“Everyone was running for their lives,” she later told BBC Urdu from a hospital in Islamabad, adding it was “like doomsday or a war”.

“His blood was on my hands and the screams were unending.”

But how did the tide turn so suddenly and decisively?

Just hours earlier, protesters finally reached D Chowk late afternoon on Tuesday. They had overcome days of tear gas shelling and a maze of barricaded roads to get to the city centre.

Many of them were supporters and workers of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the party led by Khan.

He had called for the march from his jail cell, where he has been for more than a year on charges he says are politically motivated.

Now Bibi – his third wife, a woman who had been largely shrouded in mystery and out of public view since their unexpected wedding in 2018 – was leading the charge.

“We won’t go back until we have Khan with us,” she declared as the march reached D Chowk, deep in the heart of Islamabad’s government district.

Insiders say even the choice of destination – a place where her husband had once led a successful sit in – was Bibi’s, made in the face of other party leader’s opposition, and appeals from the government to choose another gathering point.

Her being at the forefront may have come as a surprise. Bibi, only recently released from prison herself, is often described as private and apolitical. Little is known about her early life, apart from the fact she was a spiritual guide long before she met Khan. Her teachings, rooted in Sufi traditions, attracted many followers – including Khan himself.

Was she making her move into politics – or was her sudden appearance in the thick of it a tactical move to keep Imran Khan’s party afloat while he remains behind bars?

For critics, it was a move that clashed with Imran Khan’s oft-stated opposition to dynastic politics.

There wasn’t long to mull the possibilities.

After the lights went out, witnesses say that police started firing fresh rounds of tear gas at around 21:30 local time (16:30 GMT).

The crackdown was in full swing just over an hour later.

At some point, amid the chaos, Bushra Bibi left.

Videos on social media appeared to show her switching cars and leaving the scene. The BBC couldn’t verify the footage.

By the time the dust settled, her container had already been set on fire by unknown individuals.

By 01:00 authorities said all the protesters had fled.

Eyewitnesses have described scenes of chaos, with tear gas fired and police rounding up protesters.

One, Amin Khan, said from behind an oxygen mask that he joined the march knowing that, “either I will bring back Imran Khan or I will be shot”.

The authorities have have denied firing at the protesters. They also said some of the protesters were carrying firearms.

The BBC has seen hospital records recording patients with gunshot injuries.

However, government spokesperson Attaullah Tarar told the BBC that hospitals had denied receiving or treating gunshot wound victims.

He added that “all security personnel deployed on the ground have been forbidden” from having live ammunition during protests.

But one doctor told BBC Urdu that he had never done so many surgeries for gunshot wounds in a single night.

“Some of the injured came in such critical condition that we had to start surgery right away instead of waiting for anaesthesia,” he said.

While there has been no official toll released, the BBC has confirmed with local hospitals that at least five people have died.

Police say at least 500 protesters were arrested that night and are being held in police stations. The PTI claims some people are missing.

And one person in particular hasn’t been seen in days: Bushra Bibi.

“She abandoned us,” said one PTI supporter.

Others defended her. “It wasn’t her fault,” insisted another. “She was forced to leave by the party leaders.”

Political commentators have been more scathing.

“Her exit damaged her political career before it even started,” said Mehmal Sarfraz, a journalist and analyst.

But was that even what she wanted?

Khan has previously dismissed any thought his wife might have her own political ambitions – “she only conveys my messages,” he said in a statement attributed to him on his X account.

Speaking to BBC Urdu, analyst Imtiaz Gul calls her participation “an extraordinary step in extraordinary circumstances”.

Gul believes Bushra Bibi’s role today is only about “keeping the party and its workers active during Imran Khan’s absence”.

It is a feeling echoed by some PTI members, who believe she is “stepping in only because Khan trusts her deeply”.

Insiders, though, had often whispered that she was pulling the strings behind the scenes – advising her husband on political appointments and guiding high-stakes decisions during his tenure.

A more direct intervention came for the first time earlier this month, when she urged a meeting of PTI leaders to back Khan’s call for a rally.

Pakistan’s defence minister Khawaja Asif accused her of “opportunism”, claiming she sees “a future for herself as a political leader”.

But Asma Faiz, an associate professor of political science at Lahore University of Management Sciences, suspects the PTI’s leadership may have simply underestimated Bibi.

“It was assumed that there was an understanding that she is a non-political person, hence she will not be a threat,” she told the AFP news agency.

“However, the events of the last few days have shown a different side of Bushra Bibi.”

But it probably doesn’t matter what analysts and politicians think. Many PTI supporters still see her as their connection to Imran Khan. It was clear her presence was enough to electrify the base.

“She is the one who truly wants to get him out,” says Asim Ali, a resident of Islamabad. “I trust her. Absolutely!”

Rebel forces in Syria have taken control of several neighbourhoods in the country’s second-largest city, Aleppo, according to the UK-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).

As of Friday evening, SOHR said rebels were in control of more than half of the city.

The move is the biggest offensive against the Syrian government in years and the first time rebels fighting the forces of President Bashar al-Assad have reached Aleppo since being forced out by the army in 2016.

Video posted on a channel affiliated with the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) appears to show rebel fighters in vehicles inside the city.

BBC Verify has geolocated the footage to a western suburb of Aleppo.

Government forces meanwhile say they have regained positions in a number of towns in Aleppo and Idlib provinces, following an offensive launched by HTS and allied factions on Wednesday.

More than half a million people have been killed in the civil war that erupted after the government cracked down on pro-democracy protests in 2011.

An array of armed groups opposed to the Assad government – including jihadists – took advantage of the turmoil to seize swathes of territory.

The Syrian government – with help from Russia and other allies – later retook most the areas it had lost.

Idlib, the last remaining opposition stronghold, is mostly controlled by HTS, but Turkish-backed rebel factions and Turkish forces are also based there.

On Friday a statement posted on the rebel-affiliated channel said: “Our forces have begun entering the city of Aleppo.”

Videos verified by the BBC show armed men running in a street about seven kilometres (4.3 miles) from Aleppo’s medieval citadel in the centre of the city.

Another clip verified by the BBC showed large groups of people carrying luggage walking away from an area near Aleppo University. That video was recorded 3km away from a location where HTS-affiliated media claim rebel forces have entered the city.

The government says reinforcements have now reached Aleppo and it is driving the rebels out.

All flights out of Aleppo have been cancelled and the airport has been closed, a military source told Reuters news agency.

SOHR, which uses a network of sources on the ground in Syria, reported that Syrian and Russian planes carried out 23 air strikes on the Aleppo region on Friday.

The SOHR said 255 people had been killed in the fighting, the deadliest between rebels and pro-government forces in Syria for years.

Fighting in Idlib had largely wound down since 2020, when Turkey and Russia, Syria’s key ally, brokered a ceasefire to halt a push by the government to retake the province.

But on Wednesday HTS and its allies said they had launched their offensive to “deter aggression”, accusing the government and allied militias of escalation in the region.

It came as the Syrian government and its allies were preoccupied with other conflicts.

In neighbouring Lebanon, an Israeli military campaign has devastated the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, whose fighters helped turned the tide of the Syrian civil war.

Israel has also stepped up its air strikes inside Syria on targets linked to Iran and Iran-backed groups.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is in Florida to meet Donald Trump as Canada seeks to head off the president-elect’s threat to impose a 25% tariff on Canadian goods, a source has confirmed to the BBC.

Canadian media reported that Trudeau landed in Palm Beach International Airport on Friday evening to visit Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

The two spoke by phone earlier in the week after Trump announced that, upon taking office in January, he would slap an across-the-board tariff on all products entering the US from Mexico and Canada.

Neither the prime minister’s office nor Trump’s team have responded to a request for comment on the visit.

The trip was not included on Trudeau’s public itinerary for Friday. The two men will have dinner, the source said.

Trump has been at his Mar-a-Lago estate meeting with his transition team. Trudeau is reported to be the first G7 leader to visit the president-elect since the election.

Trudeau has often underscored that the two countries were able to successfully renegotiate a major trade pact during Trump’s first term, though the relationship between the two leaders has occasionally been rocky.

On Friday, speaking at an event in Prince Edward Island, Trudeau said the two countries “rolled up our sleeves and were able to create jobs on both sides of the border”.

He said looked forward to having many “great” conversations with Trump.

The Florida visit is the latest move by Canada as it seeks to avoid the hefty tariffs, which could have wide-reaching economic impacts.

It remains unclear whether the incoming Trump administration will actually move ahead with the threatened tariffs, as analysts note that the president-elect has been known to use such threats in the past as a negotiating tactic to achieve his goals.

Trump – who has also threatened the same levy against Mexico – has signalled that they would remain in place until both countries work to secure their shared borders with the US.

Trudeau said on Friday that “when Trump makes statements like that, he plans on carrying them out”.

He said his goal was to point out the tariff would not just harm Canadians but also raise prices for Americans and hurt that country’s economy.

Trudeau was accompanied on the trip by Dominic LeBlanc, the minister in charge of border security.

US media reported that Trudeau and Trump were joined at dinner by Howard Lutnick, Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary; Doug Burgum, tapped to lead the Department of the Interior; and Mike Waltz, who has been selected as the next national security adviser.

Canada is one of America’s largest trading partners and it sends about 75% of its total exports to the US. The two countries also share deeply integrated supply chains.

After the phone call with Trump, Trudeau held an emergency meeting on Wednesday with the leaders of Canada’s provinces and territories over how to manage the US-Canada relationship.

Trudeau is promising to present a united “Team Canada” approach to working with the US to make the case against the levy.

Several leaders of Canadian provinces have criticised Trump’s plan, saying it would be devastating to the country’s economy, including the oil and gas and automotive industries.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum also had a phone call with Trump this week.

• Canada’s oil patch rattled by Trump’s tariff threat
• ‘It’s going to be hard’: US firms race to get ahead of Trump tariffs

The number of crossings at the US-Canada border is significantly lower than that at the southern border, according to US Border Patrol data on migrant encounters.

During the 2024 fiscal year, there were around 23,700 apprehensions at the northern land border, while the southern border saw more than 1.53 million apprehensions.

But Canadian officials have said in recent days there is still joint work to be done to improve border security.

Airspace around US airbases in Norfolk and Suffolk has been under scrutiny following multiple recent drone incursions. Those responsible for the aircraft have yet to be found and nearby residents have questioned how and why the incidents have been allowed to happen.

Drone incursions were initially reported at three US airbases – RAF Mildenhall and RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, and RAF Feltwell in Norfolk – between 20 and 22 November, and the aircraft has since reappeared.

In the village of Beck Row, Suffolk, which is situated next to RAF Mildenhall, residents reported brightly lit aerial vehicles hovering above their houses and over the base itself.

Casseem Campell, 28, said he had seen objects above his house in Beck Row.

He described seeing a triangle-shaped aerial vehicle, which was “a grey, dark colour”, in one of two evening sightings of drones he had made in the past week.

“They were really noisy and had lights. They looked official to be honest,” he added.

“If they are a threat, why aren’t they being shot down? Why let them fly over if they’re sinister?”

It has since emerged that a drone came within 273.40 yards (250m) of HMS Queen Elizabeth, the Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, as it entered the Port of Hamburg on 22 November.

RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, where US B-52 bombers had recently deployed, also reported a recent sighting.

British troops have been deployed to assist US efforts to track down those responsible.

Chrystal Mason, 28, said she had seen two drones in the past week in Beck Row.

The step-daughter of a RAF pilot, she described an orange ball in the sky at night and increased activity at the US airbase.

“In the last 10 days I have seen military jeeps around the village. There has been a much higher police presence than usual – military and UK police,” she said.

Mrs Mason also described what she believed was a drone being intercepted, though the BBC has not been able to verify this.

“There was a big orange light in the sky and all of a sudden it was gone. I heard people shouting ‘wow’,” the mother-of-one added.

Johnny Whitfield, who also lives in Beck Row, described seeing “lots of activity”.

“I’ve seen the drones three or four times,” he said, before confirming the sightings had taken place at night in the past week.

He also described the flying objects being lit up and hovering over the airbase, although he said he could not detect a noise, while he said the objects were large.

“All you see is light, but it’s a big, big light,” he added.

He said he felt the US military was being reticent about what was going on.

“You don’t know if they’re foreign or local. [The US Air Force] don’t give out much information.

“You get more information off Facebook than the base.”

All the residents of Beck Row that the BBC spoke to described increased military activity in the area with an apparent uptick of planes in the skies.

The BBC has also seen evidence that agents from the US Air Force Office of Special Investigations have been in the Suffolk area and have spoken to local people about what they have seen.

Roger Smith, a Suffolk-based military aviation enthusiast, told the BBC that he believed the US Air Force pilots had reverted to more secure communication methods in recent days.

“They’re now using an encrypted data link instead of radios when speaking to the ground,” he said.

This was supported by another member of the local aircraft spotter community who also claimed a US Air Force KC-46A Pegasus air refuelling aircraft was diverted to Glasgow Prestwick Airport in Scotland as it approached RAF Mildenhall because of drone activity.

Neither the Glasgow Prestwick Airport or the US Air Force would comment on the claims.

Defence sources have told the BBC that suspicion had fallen on a “state actor” being responsible for the incursions.

So far neither the US or UK authorities would be drawn on who might be responsible.

Defence minister Lord Coaker told the House of Lords on Thursday: “The Ministry of Defence is aware of these reports and working closely with the US visiting forces, Home Office police forces and other partners to respond to recent events.

“We take any safety issue seriously and maintain robust measures at Ministry of Defence sites. This includes counter-drone capabilities.”

The minister told Parliament: “It is illegal for drones to be flown or within the vicinity of these military sites and people should be aware of that.”

“This remains a live criminal investigation.”

Previously the Ministry of Defence, which owns the bases, said: “We take threats seriously and maintain robust measures at defence sites.”

The US Air Force in Europe said: “To date, installation leaders have determined that none of the incursions impacted base residents, facilities or assets.

“The Air Force is taking all appropriate measures to safeguard the aforementioned installations and their residents”.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has suggested that the parts of Ukraine under his control should be taken “under the Nato umbrella” to try and stop the “hot phase” of the war.

In a long, wide-ranging interview with Sky News, the Ukrainian president was asked whether he would accept Nato membership, but only on the territory that Kyiv currently holds.

Zelensky said he would, but only if Nato membership was offered to the whole of Ukraine, within its internationally recognised borders, first.

Ukraine could then attempt to negotiate the return of territory currently under Russian control “in a diplomatic way”, he said.

But the suggestion is highly theoretical. As Zelensky pointed out, no-one has yet made such an offer.

Whether Nato would ever consider such a move is highly doubtful.

“Ukraine has never considered such a proposal, because no-one has officially offered it to us,” Zelensky said.

Nato would need to offer membership to the whole country, including those parts currently under Russian control, he said.

“You can’t give [an] invitation to just one part of a country,” the president said, according to a translation provided by Sky News. “Why? Because thus, you would recognise that Ukraine is only that territory of Ukraine, and the other one is Russia.”

Lots of people were proposing ceasefires, he said, but without a mechanism to prevent Russia from attacking again, ceasefires were simply too dangerous.

Only NATO membership, he said, could offer that kind of guarantee.

The Ukrainian president has already said that he thinks the war could end in the coming year if Ukraine’s allies show sufficient resolve.

Reports suggest that discussion of the so-called West German model (Nato membership offered to a divided country) has been going on in Western circles for more than a year.

But no formal proposals have yet been made.

It is also worth noting that so far Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has given absolutely no indication that he’s abandoned his desire to subjugate Ukraine entirely.

The idea that he would be willing to allow any part of Ukraine to join Nato is, for now, unthinkable.

All the indications so far suggest that any involvement of Nato is a complete non-starter.

“It’s not just about brewing a good cup of coffee but connecting with customers on a deeper level.”

It was this one thought that made Harmanpreet Singh leave his family bakery to open a specialty coffee shop in the northern Indian city of Jalandhar.

It was an unexpected decision – coffee has always been popular in southern states, traditionally served strong and frothy in a steel tumbler. But it’s still not the first choice of beverage in the vast swathes of north India, where drinking tea is an intrinsic part of the culture.

For Mr Singh, the journey began in 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic when he saw a growing demand for specialty coffee, particularly among the city’s youth and the overseas residents who returned to the country at that time.

Recognising this shift, he moved to the southern city of Bengaluru to learn brewing techniques. “I studied everything – from the way coffee is served to the role things like decor, cutlery, music and even packaging played in the overall experience,” he said.

Three months later, Mr Singh put his learnings to test and opened Buland Café in Jalandhar.

Today, the cafe has 40 outlets across the city and has become a favourite spot for the city’s youth, who come here to relax or work over piping cups of coffee.

The beans, roasted in various blends, are sourced from the famed coffee estates of Karnataka. Mr Singh says he personally trained his staff on how to brew the perfect cuppa and take care of the coffee machine.

“It’s a thriving scene,” he says.

Mr Singh is among a crop of young entrepreneurs that are benefitting from a wave of specialty coffee consumption in small north Indian towns and cities.

India has had a vibrant cafe culture for years – but it has been largely restricted to big cities where homegrown specialty and international coffee chains dominate the market.

However, post-Covid, several tier-two cities are also seeing a boom in demand for such spaces as people embrace practices like remote working and look for new places to meet their friends and families.

Cafe owners say more Indians are now willing to pay more for coffee that’s roasted in smaller batches and customised as per their preferences.

“Clients have become more knowledgeable about the roasts and are interested in the origins of their coffee,” says Bharat Singhal, the founder of Billi Hu roasteries.

In fact, more than 44% of the Indian population now drinks coffee, a 2023 report by CRISIL, a marketing analytical company, shows.

While a lot of it comes from home consumption, the growing demand for specialty coffee in small cities plays a big part, says Bhavi Patel, a coffee consultant and dairy technologist.

Roastery owners say the growth is also evident in numbers. “Subscription based orders have surged by 50% in one year,” says Sharang Sharma, the founder of Bloom Coffee Roasters. “Customers have moved from French presses to pour-over or espresso machines, adopting more sophisticated brewing methods.”

While India is often associated with tea, it also has a long coffee-drinking history.

The culture took shape in the 1900s when Indian Coffee Houses emerged as a hangout spot for the intellectual and elite class. Housed in colonial-styled buildings, these cafes served English breakfasts with steaming hot coffee and offered a space to discuss politics and mobilise support during pivotal periods in history.

A shift occurred in the 1990s when economic reforms opened India to the world, allowing entrepreneurs to open private coffee shops frequented by young peeople, who saw it as a hip experience.

Café Coffee Day (CCD), which opened in 1996, quickly became one of India’s most popular and widespread coffee chains. At its peak, CCD boasted over 1,700 outlets, serving as a popular gathering spot for students and young adults. But mounting debt, management issues and the untimely death of its founder led to a closure of most of its outlets across India.

In 2012, the arrival of international giant Starbucks spurred the rise of homegrown specialty coffee brands like Blue Tokai Roasters, Third Wave Coffee and Subko Coffee.

Mr Singhal says that while big cities like Delhi, Jaipur, Mumbai, and Bengaluru still dominate the scene, smaller cities are quickly catching up.

However, it’s not just changing palettes that’s driving consumption. “Often it’s social media,” Mr Singh says. “People want good coffee but they also want to be in a space that’s trendy and which they can post online.”

Nishant Sinha from Lucknow city is among those who understood the trend early on.

His Roastery Coffee House offers trendy ambience, free wi-fi and cosy seating options along with an array of coffee roasts. While the beans are sourced from coffee estates in the south, the food is distinctively north Indian.

Others like Jatin Khurana in the northern city of Ludhiana are experimenting with flavours.

At his Urban Buhkkad cafe, Mr Khurana serves the “Shadi Wali Coffee [the wedding coffee]” – a wedding favourite in the 1990s, which became famous for its blend of instant coffee, milk, sugar, and a sprinkle of chocolate powder.

But instead of coffee powder, Mr Khurana uses freshly grounded beans, available in different roasts and varieties, to enhance its flavours. “The idea is to capture the essence of the beverage that many Indians grew up drinking,” he says.

It’s an exciting time to be in the business – but growth comes with its own set of challenges.

“Demand is growing, but a smaller coffee shop owners tend to cut corners, whether it’s by opting for substandard machines, serving weaker coffee shots, or hiring inexperienced baristas,” Mr Singhal says.

And running the business is not always profitable given the high price of coffee and the infrastructural costs involved in running such spaces.

When Neha Das and Nishant Ashish opened The Eden’s café in Ranchi in 2021, they wanted to create a safe and relaxed space for young students to get together in the city.

Today, their hazelnut coffee and cold brews have become a favourite of many.

“It took some time but longevity requires more than profit,” Ms Das says.

“It’s about dedication, crafting local flavours, and understanding customers, even if it means working with slim profit margins for the long haul.”

An exit poll in the Republic of Ireland suggests that Sinn Féin has 21.1% of first preference votes with Fine Gael having 21%, making the result of the general election too close to call.

The poll indicates Fianna Fáil has 19.5% of first preference votes.

It also suggests that 20% of the second preference votes goes to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, with Sinn Féin at 17%.

The exit poll was published at 22:00 local time and was carried out by Ipsos B&A for RTÉ, The Irish Times, TG4 and Trinity College Dublin. It has a margin of error of 1.4%.

In the 2020 Irish general election, Sinn Féin secured 24.53% first preference votes, while Fianna Fáil obtained 22.18% and Fine Gael got 20.86%.

Friday’s poll indicates Green Party first preference support stands at 4%; Labour at 5%; the Social Democrats at 5.8%; People Before Profit-Solidarity at 3.1% and Independents at 12.7%, Independent Ireland 2.2% with others on 1.9%.

The poll is based on 5,018 completed interviews that were carried out immediately after people voted at polling stations in 43 constituencies across the Republic of Ireland.

The results from this poll set the scene for the official counting of votes which starts at 09:00 local time on Saturday and is expected to continue across the weekend.

It is possible that some of the 43 constituencies may not have a final result until the beginning of next week.

Successful candidates are known as Teachtaí Dála (TDs) and there are 174 seats to fill, but the Ceann Comhairle (speaker) is returned automatically.

More than 680 candidates competed for the remaining 173 seats.

The number of seats required for an overall majority is 88 but no single party is fielding enough candidates to win a majority on its own.

The first meeting of the new Dáil (lower house of parliament) is on 18 December but it is unlikely coalition negotiations will have finished by then.

A government will be officially formed when the Dáil passes a vote to install a new taoiseach (Irish prime minister).

Few expect the new government to be in place before 2025.

It took four months after the last general election, in 2020, before Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, and the Green Party, reached a deal to form the previous Irish government.

Sinn Féin became the leading opposition party, and both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have both already ruled them out as a potential coalition partner in the event of a similar outcome this election.

The three largest parties are joined in the Dáil by a number of smaller parties and a significant number of independent candidates.

Politics in the Republic was traditionally dominated by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

Both parties emerged following a split in nationalist opinion over the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty.

Fianna Fáil was once seen as more centrist, Fine Gael as more conservative, but differences have blurred and both are now seen as centre-right parties.

This year’s election is the first major electoral test for the Fine Gael leader and Taoiseach Simon Harris.

He was new to the role in April, when he became the youngest person to lead the Republic of Ireland at 37 after his predecessor Leo Varadkar stepped down.

Sinn Féin is an Irish republican and democratic socialist party and the main opposition party.

Mary Lou McDonald took over leadership of the party in 2018, and since then the Dublin politician has sought to distance her party from criticism about its historic links to IRA violence.

Sinn Féin made significant gains in 2020 and topped the popular vote, winning 37 seats.

Since then it has become the largest party across Northern Ireland’s councils, as well as in its assembly and at Westminster.

Other parties putting forward candidates for the election include Labour, Social Democrats, PBP-Solidarity, Aontú and the newly-formed Independent Ireland.

The exit poll suggests there was a gender divide when it comes to first preference votes.

Figures show 22% of Sinn Féin voters were male, while 20% were female.

The share of male Fine Gael voters in the poll was 20%, while 22% of voters were female.

Fianna Fáil had 19% of male votes, while 20% were female.

In terms of transfers, 39% of Fianna Fáil’s second preferences went to a second party candidate, whereas 30% went to a Fine Gael candidate. About 5% of transfers went to Sinn Féin.

The poll also found that about 37% of Fine Gael transfers went to a second candidate, with 32% going to a Fianna Fáil candidate.

Analysis by BBC News NI’s political editor, Enda McClafferty

Exit polls are far from an exact science, but they are a good indicator of where the votes go.

In 2020, it correctly predicted a close battle between Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin and in the end, only three seats separated the parties

If the exit poll is right this time, then Sinn Féin will be pleased with its performance.

Coming in slightly ahead of Fine Gael, but short of the almost 25% Sinn Féin secured in 2020.

The party limped into the election campaign of the back of a series of damaging controversies and poor European and local council elections in June when it secured just 12% of the vote.

Over the three-week campaign, it managed to recover the lost ground with the promise of bringing change.

But delivering on that pledge could be a challenge if the exit poll is right.

It suggests Fine Gael on 21% and Fianna Fáil on 19.5% could return to the government benches, with the help of two smaller parties and some independents.

While Sinn Féin’s path to power is more challenging as it had hoped to lead a coalition of left-leaning parties, it may struggle to get the numbers with the performance of those smaller parties.

But the true picture will only become clear when all results are in.

Earlier, Fine Gael leader Simon Harris was the first major party leader to vote.

Harris and his family travelled to Delgany National School in County Wicklow shortly after polls opened at 07:00 local time.

Micheál Martin, the tánaiste (Irish deputy prime minister) and leader of Fianna Fáil, voted with his family at St Anthony’s Boys National School in Ballinlough, County Cork.

Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald voted at Deaf Village Ireland on the Navan Road in Dublin.

Things looked a little different for Holly Cairns, leader of the Social Democrats, who gave birth on polling day.

Elsewhere, officials went the extra mile for island inhabitants on polling day.

Presiding Officer Caroline Sharkey and Garda (Irish police officer) Ronan Steede set sail to Gola Island, off the County Donegal coast on the west of Ireland, where 31 registered voters were able to submit their ballots in the living room of one of the islanders.

Thousands of protesters have returned to the streets of Tbilisi to protest against the government’s decision to suspend accession talks with the European Union.

On Friday demonstrators were seen shouting “traitors” and holding photographs of journalists who they say were beaten by police in the previous night’s protests.

For the second night running, police deployed tear gas and made heavy use of water cannon against the demonstrators.

Earlier, more than 100 diplomats and civil servants in Georgia signed an open letter saying the government’s decision does not align with Georgia’s strategic interests.

Defending his decision, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze accused the EU of “blackmail” after EU legislators called for last month’s parliamentary elections in Georgia to be re-run. They cited “significant irregularities”.

Since 2012, Georgia has been governed by Georgian Dream, a party which critics say has tried to move the country away from the EU and closer to Russia.

The party claimed victory in last month’s election but opposition MPs are boycotting the new parliament, alleging fraud, while the country’s President Salome Zourabichvili has called the one-party parliament “unconstitutional”.

On Thursday, the European Parliament backed a resolution describing the election as the latest stage in Georgia’s “worsening democratic crisis” and saying that the ruling party was “fully responsible”.

It expressed particular concern about reports of voter intimidation, vote-buying and manipulation, and harassment of observers.

The European Parliament also urged sanctions against Georgia’s prime minister and other high-level officials including the billionaire founder of the governing party Bidzina Ivanishvili.

Following the resolution, Georgia’s prime minister said his government had “decided not to bring up the issue of joining the European Union on the agenda until the end of 2028”.

He said Georgia would still seek EU membership but with “dignity” and on its own terms.

Kobakhidze also lashed out at European politicians for “hurling a cascade of insults” at the Georgian government.

In response, thousands of pro-EU protesters started demonstrating outside Georgian Dream offices in the cities of Tbilisi and Kutaisi on Thursday.

Protesters see the government’s U-turn as a betrayal of a national aspiration.

The goal of European integration is enshrined in Georgia’s constitution.

During the first night of protests, police used batons, tear gas and water cannon after demonstrators barricaded some streets in Tbilisi.

Georgia’s interior ministry said protesters resorted to provocations on many occasions, damaging infrastructure and “badly injuring” 32 police officers.

The precise number of injured protesters is unknown, but a member of the opposition group Coalition for Change said one if its members, Nana Malashkhia, had their nose broken.

“During the crackdown, we took shelter in a pharmacy, but the special forces stormed in after us. If it was not for the presence of the media, they might have beaten us to death,” Giorgi Butikashvili told the BBC.

Footage on social media also showed a journalist from the opposition Formula TV station being severely beaten by the police.

Other media representatives wearing clearly marked press labels were also targeted.

On Friday, the EU’s ambassador to Georgia called the government’s suspension sad and heartbreaking.

Pawel Herczynski said it contradicted the policy of previous governments and the wishes of the vast majority of the population. Public polling has shown more than 80% of Georgians see their country’s future as being part of the European Union.

“Georgian Dream didn’t win the elections. It staged a coup,” 20-year-old Shota Sabashvili told AFP news agency.

“There is no legitimate parliament or government in Georgia. We will not let this self-proclaimed prime minister destroy our European future.”

Ana, a student, said Georgian Dream was “going against Georgian people’s will and want to drag us back to USSR”.

“That will never happen because Georgian people will never let this happen,” she told the Associated Press.

Uta, a protester, told the BBC that Georgians want a “better future” as part of the European Union.

“We don’t want to be part of Russia anymore”, he said.

Another protester, Vakho, said the government’s actions were disappointing and not representative of the “Georgian people’s will”.

Georgia has had official EU candidate status since 2023. However Brussels had already halted the accession process earlier this year over a Russia-style law targeting organisations accused of “pursuing the interests of a foreign power”.

Kobakhidze said Georgia would continue to implement the reforms required for accession and that it still planned to join by 2030, but added that it was “crucial for the EU to respect our national interests and traditional values”.

Former Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili told the BBC the country was at an “unprecedented” turning point.

“Since we were independent 30 years ago, we were clearly pro-Western, we were clearly pro-Nato and clearly pro-EU and this was uniting any government that was in place.”

But now, he added, there was an effort “by the bunch of people who are controlling power in Tbilisi and the Kremlin to basically bring Georgia as fast as this is possible to Russian orbit”.

Georgia’s ambassador to Bulgaria also resigned in protest. Otar Berdzenishvili said he had over a two-decade career worked extensiely on progressing Georgia’s EU integration.

“Our tireless efforts must not be shaken or compromised under any circumstances. No, violence against the free will of peaceful protesters, full solidarity with them.”

MPs have backed proposals to legalise assisted dying in England and Wales in a historic vote which paves the way for a change in the law.

In the first Commons vote on the issue in nearly a decade, MPs supported a bill which would allow terminally ill adults expected to die within six months to seek help to end their own life by 330 to 275, a majority of 55.

It followed an emotional debate in the chamber, where MPs from both sides shared personal stories which had informed their decisions.

The bill will now face many more months of debate and scrutiny by MPs and peers, who could choose to amend it, with the approval of both Houses of Parliament required before it becomes law.

• What is assisted dying and how could the law change?

• Bill must pass many hurdles before it becomes law
• How does it work in other countries?
• Chris Mason: A momentous day in Parliament, whatever happens next
• How did my MP vote?

Supporters gathered outside Parliament wept and hugged each other as the result was announced.

Campaign group Dignity in Dying said the vote was a “historic step towards greater choice and protection for dying people”.

Dame Esther Rantzen, one of the most high-profile campaigners for assisted dying, said she was “absolutely thrilled”.

The broadcaster, who has terminal lung cancer, said any change in the law would probably come too late to affect her personally.

But she said “future generations will be spared the ordeals we have to suffer at the moment” if the bill becomes law.

Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, who put forward the bill, told the BBC she was “a bit overwhelmed” following the vote and it meant “a huge amount” to be able to tell campaigners the bill had passed its first parliamentary hurdle.

However, Conservative Danny Kruger, a leading opponent of the bill, said it could be defeated at a later stage if MPs’ concerns were not properly addressed.

He said many of his colleagues believed the bill was “very dangerous” and he hoped that if safeguards in the legislation were not strengthened they would choose to vote against it in the future.

MPs were given a free vote, meaning they could make a decision based on their own conscience rather than having to follow a party line.

A higher percentage of female MPs backed the bill compared to their male counterparts.

Of the 258 female MPs able to express their preference, 143 – or 55% – were in favour, while 188 (49%) of the 381 male MPs backed the bill.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and his Conservative predecessor Rishi Sunak voted in favour, while Tory leader Kemi Badenoch voted against.

The PM, who previously supported a change in the law in 2015, did not speak in the debate or reveal how he planned to vote in advance, saying he did not want to influence the decisions of MPs.

The government has taken a neutral stance on the bill and has said it will work to ensure it is effective if Parliament backs a change in the law.

The vote followed more than four hours of passionate debate in a packed Commons chamber.

More than 160 MPs requested to speak but far fewer got an opportunity to do so due to time constraints.

Opening the debate, Leadbeater said the current law was “failing” and needed to change to give terminally ill people choice at the end of their life.

The MP for Spen Valley said too many people were experiencing “heartbreaking” suffering as a result of the “cruel reality” of the status quo.

She gave examples of terminally ill people who had died “screaming for assistance” or taken their own lives because they were in uncontrollable pain.

Opponents of the bill raised concerns that terminally ill people, particularly the elderly, disabled or vulnerable, could be pressurised into ending their own lives.

They also argued the focus should be on improving end-of-life care rather than introducing assisted dying.

Leadbeater insisted her bill included “the most robust and strongest set of safeguards and protections in the world”, with strict eligibility criteria.

To be eligible for assisted dying under Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, someone must have the mental capacity to make a choice about ending their life and express a “clear, settled and informed” wish, free from coercion or pressure, at every stage of the process.

Two independent doctors and a High Court judge must be satisfied someone is eligible and has made their decision voluntarily.

However, Labour’s Diane Abbott was among those who argued these safeguards were not sufficient.

The longest serving female MP said she feared the role of the judge could be only “a rubber stamp”.

She told MPs some terminally ill people may also feel under pressure to end their lives as they don’t “want to be a burden” or because of the cost of their care.

Cabinet ministers are divided over the issue, with Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood – the two ministers who would have overall responsibility for implementing any change in the law – voting against.

Overall 15 cabinet members, including Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, voted in favour, while eight voted against.

Current laws across the UK prevent people from asking for medical help to die.

A separate bill to legalise assisted dying in Scotland has been proposed by a Liberal Democrat member of the Scottish Parliament and is expected to be voted on by MSPs next year.

A former Chinese state media journalist has been sentenced on Friday to seven years in prison for espionage, his family has confirmed to the BBC.

Dong Yuyu, 62, who has been detained since 2022, was active in academic and journalism circles in the US and Japan and met regularly with foreign diplomats.

He was having lunch with a Japanese diplomat in Beijing when he was arrested by police.

At the time of his detention, Dong had been a senior staff member of the Guangming Daily, one of the five major newspapers linked to the Chinese Communist Party.

In February 2022, Dong was arrested while having lunch with a Japanese diplomat the day after the Winter Olympics ended in Beijing, at a restaurant where he had often met foreign friends.

The diplomat was also detained – then released several hours later amid protests from the Japanese government.

Dong met regularly with other journalists and foreign diplomats as part of his job.

His family said in a statement that according to a court judgement, two other Japanese diplomats Dong met with were named as “agents of an espionage organisation”, which is the Japanese embassy.

“We are shocked that the Chinese authorities would blatantly deem a foreign embassy an ‘espionage organization'”, said his family’s statement.

“Today’s verdict is a grave injustice not only to Yuyu and his family but also to every freethinking Chinese journalist and every ordinary Chinese committed to friendly engagement with the world,” they added.

The Beijing court where Dong was sentenced on Friday had a strong security presence, Reuters reported, as journalists were asked to leave and a diplomat said they were not allowed to attend the hearing.

“In the past, the Chinese court system has selected Western holidays to release news as it is a time when the public is focused on other matters,” the US National Press Club said in a statement on Tuesday, ahead of Dong’s sentencing on Thanksgiving night in the US.

While Dong’s trial had been completed in July 2023, he was held with no verdict and barred from seeing his family, the press club said.

Rights groups and advocates have criticised his conviction and called for him to be released.

“Chinese authorities must reverse this unjust verdict, and protect the right of journalists to work freely and safely in China,” Beh Lih Yi, Asia programme manager at the Committe to Protect Journalists told Reuters.

“Dong Yuyu should be reunited with his family immediately.”

Dong joined the Guangming Daily after graduating from Peking University’s law school in 1987.

In 1989, he was one of tens of thousands of students who participated in the Tiananmen Square protests. He was later sentenced to hard labour, but kept his job at the newspaper, according to a family statement.

He eventually rose to become deputy head of the editorial department, and was among the most pro-reform voices at Guangming Daily, the statement added.

A Nieman fellow at Harvard University in 2007, Dong had also written several articles for the New York Times and was previously a visiting fellow and professor at several Japanese universities.

French President Emmanuel Macron has toured Paris’s Notre-Dame cathedral live on TV, giving the public a first look inside the building since much of it was destroyed or damaged in a huge fire in 2019.

From the spire to the stained glass, it has been completely transformed. It is not just a renovation after the fire, but a complete overhaul including removing decades of crud and soot built up since the last restoration.

Here we take a look at some of the key features of the repair work and how it was achieved.

The collapse of the spire was the climax of the 2019 fire. Many people thought it was medieval, but in fact the original was taken down in the 1790s because it was deemed dangerous.

Its replacement, which burned down five years ago, was put up decades later as part of a neo-Gothic reconstruction conducted by architect Eugène Viollet-Le-Duc.

This time, carpenters used a mix of the traditional and the computerised to design and build the massive wooden base.

It was lifted into place by Europe’s largest crane, then a scaffolding shell was mounted allowing workers to assemble the steadily rising structure.

Like the rest of the roof, the spire is lined with lead. At the top a new gilded cock has been fitted to replace the original that fell in the fire. It was recovered but was too damaged to go back.

Inside the new cock are holy relics including a thorn from the cathedral’s Crown of Thorns, and a parchment with the names of 2,000 people who worked on the renovation.

The most striking feature of the renovated cathedral is the luminosity of the stonework. This is because all the limestone blocks have been cleaned, or in some parts replaced.

Replacement stone was sourced in quarries in northern France. Experts were able to detect tiny features in the original stone – like certain fossils – that helped them to determine the geographical origin.

The vast majority of the masonry was undamaged, but it was covered not just in age-old accretions of dust and dirt from the past, but also in a layer of soot and lead powder from the fire. It was cleaned with high-power vacuums, and then with a spray which peeled off to remove the dirt.

Overall some 40,000 square metres of stone were cleaned.

To rebuild the vaulted ceiling beneath where the spire had stood, masons had to relearn the principles of Gothic architecture – using a wooden frame to put the stones in place and crowning it all with the keystone.

It was the wooden roof that burned – all 100 metres of it. None of the 800-year-old timbers survived. But the decision was quickly made to replace them as faithfully as possible – with oak from the forests of France.

By happy coincidence an architect called Remi Fromont had conducted an in-depth study of the timber frame as part of his university thesis. This served as a template for carpenters.

Some 1,200 oak trees had to be found, with the stipulation that they be straight, free from knots and a condition called “frost-crack”, and 13 metres long.

Much of the wood was hand-sawn then hewed into shape with axes, just as the beams were in the 13th century.

Altogether there are 35 “fermes” (the triangular structures that take the weight) running the length of the building.

Many of the exterior sculptures – including the famous (but not medieval) gargoyles and chimaeras – were damaged by high-pressure hoses used to fight the fire. Many were already in poor condition because of pollution.

A workshop was set up in front of the cathedral to repair and where necessary replace these statues. Five of the gargoyles (products of Viollet-le-Duc’s imagination) were scanned by computer, and then re-made in limestone.

Inside the cathedral, the most famous sculptures – such as The Virgin of the Pillar and The Vow of Louis XIII – emerged unscathed. But they have all been cleaned and given minor repairs.

The cathedral’s many paintings have also been cleaned. These include the “Mays” – massive scenes from the life of Christ which were an annual gift to the cathedral in the 17th Century from the goldsmiths of Paris.

One of the most remarkable changes to the cathedral is the return of colour to the choir and many of the side-chapels.

Here again, the fire offered an opportunity to rediscover the glories that lay beneath decades of crud and soot. Blues, reds and golds have re-emerged, combining with the creaminess of the rejuvenated limestone to create a lightness that must be much closer to the original experience.

The same is true of the stained-glass windows. These were undamaged, but filthy. They were dismantled, removed, cleaned, and returned. The big rose-windows were left alone.

Again, much of what the visitor sees today is not actually medieval – but the product of the medieval imagination of Viollet-le-Duc.

The great organ – built in the 18th Century – was unaffected by either heat or water on the night of the fire. What did for it was the accumulation of a yellow dust – lead monoxide – in its pipes.

The whole structure – 12 metres high, six keyboards, 7,952 pipes, 19 wind-chests – was disassembled and taken to workshops outside Paris.

Sheep-leather linings were replaced and new electronic controls were added. After reinstallation the instrument was re-tuned – a task which takes several months as each pipe is minutely altered.

On 7 December, the Archbishop of Paris’s first words on entering the reclaimed cathedral will be: “Awake oh organ, Let God’s praise be heard!”

The eight bells of the north tower were also removed in 2023 – a massive operation given their size. They were cleaned and treated, and then returned a few weeks ago. The biggest of the bells is called Emmanuel.

Visitors will also notice a change to the liturgical lay-out of the cathedral, whose altar, lectern and seating were all destroyed. A simple bronze altar has been created, with new chalices for the sacraments.

There are 1,500 new wooden chairs for the congregation, and a new reliquary behind the choir to hold the Crown of Thorns.

New vestments have also been created for clergy by designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac.

Renovation work at Notre-Dame has been a boon for archaeologists, who have been able to access underground areas that date back to hundreds of years before the cathedral was built.

Among the many sets of bones they discovered are those believed to belong to the Renaissance poet Joachim du Bellay.

Another major discovery was the carefully buried remains of the medieval rood-screen, which originally separated the sacred part of the church from the congregation.

This 11-metre stone partition, built in the 13th Century, contained rich and colourful sculptures depicting the life of Christ. It was dismantled in the 18th Century following a change in church rules.

But clergy clearly hoped the remains would be rediscovered because the parts appear to have been lain with great care beneath the ground. It is hoped they can be pieced together and put on display.

Despite the success of the renovation, work is not complete. There is still scaffolding around much of the eastern end, and in coming years the outside walls of the apse and sacristy will need treatment.

There are also plans to redesign the esplanade, and to create a museum in the neighbouring Hôtel-Dieu hospital.

Shaun Flores was 11 years old when he first started watching porn, after being introduced to it by a friend.

“I was hooked almost immediately,” the now 30-year-old says.

“It was just like, wow, what is this that people are doing where they look like they’re just having the time of their lives.”

Shaun’s curiosity quickly turned into something that he found difficult to stop.

He describes watching porn morning, noon and night, saying it became as “common as brushing your teeth”.

Shaun has shared his story in a new BBC iPlayer series, Sex After.

“I realised there was an issue when I had no energy to do anything,” he says. “I didn’t want to play football, I just wanted to be inside.

“But there was the guilt and the shame that came with it, and no matter what I tried to do, I couldn’t stop watching it.

“That’s when I knew there was something up.”

While not everyone who watches porn will develop an unhealthy relationship with it, Shaun isn’t alone in his viewing habits.

Ofcom’s Online Nation 2024 report suggests 29% of UK adults accessed online porn in May 2024. Additionally, new research from addiction treatment centre, UKAT, suggests that millions of Britons are viewing pornography regularly – with 1.8 million watching daily, some multiple times a day.

According to treatment providers, more people are seeking help for problematic porn use.

Dr Paula Hall, a UKCP-accredited sexual and relationship psychotherapist at The Laurel Centre, in London, specialises in helping people affected by sex addiction and porn addiction.

“The numbers of clients seeking help with pornography problems at The Laurel Centre have doubled over recent years, as have our requests from health professionals for further training,” she tells the BBC.

Dr Hall explains that they have also seen a growing number of younger people seeking help.

“Ten years ago the majority of our clients would have been married men in their 40s and 50s who were seeking help because their partner had discovered their use of sex workers,” she says.

“But increasingly, our clients are in their 20s and 30s, many of whom are single, who are recognising the growing toll of porn use on their lives and on their ability to get or maintain a relationship.”

Lee Fernandes, lead therapist at the UKAT Group, also says the number of people they treat for problematic porn use has risen “significantly” in recent years.

They now receive multiple enquiries for help from people struggling with their porn use every single day. Prior to 2020, it was one or two enquiries a week

Fernandes explains that advancements in technology and the subsequent easy accessibility of porn is making it easier for people of all ages to access sexual content online. He believes his is contributing to the increase in people seeking help that he has experienced.

“It’s not very hard for someone to pull out their phone, go onto a site and look at porn, whether they’re 12 years old or 60 years old,” he says. “It is quite troubling.”

According to Fernandes, other reasons for people watching porn online include curiosity, boredom, stress relief and lack of sexual satisfaction.

While porn use might start for these reasons, Fernandes describes it as being “very addictive”.

“It fulfils that dopamine reward system,” he explains. “Once you start it’s quite difficult to stop.”

However, while problematic porn use might mimic an addiction, it isn’t diagnostically recognised as such.

Instead, it is categorised as problematic online pornography use (POPU), or compulsive behaviour.

For people who develop this relationship with porn, the effects can be negative.

And for the youngest in society who are growing up with free, hardcore content at their fingertips, the impact of early overexposure can be far reaching.

The Children’s Commissioner for England promotes and protects the rights of children.

Recent research from their office found that, in 2023, 10% of children had seen porn by the age of nine and 27% had seen it by age 11.

“Young people tell me their exposure to pornography is widespread and normalised – with the average age at which children first seeing pornography being 13 years old,” Dame Rachel de Souza, the current Children’s Commissioner, tells the BBC.

“Pornography is no longer confined to dedicated adult sites – children tell me they can see violent content, depicting coercive, degrading or pain-inducing sexual acts on social media.

“The implications of seeing this kind of material are vast – my research has found that frequent users of pornography are more likely to engage in physically aggressive sex acts.”

De Souza adds that it is “vital” for high-quality relationship and sex education to be given parity of importance with other subjects to help young people understand that pornography is unrealistic.

Silva Neves, a psychotherapist who specialises in the treatment of compulsive sexual behaviours, agrees that viewing porn at a young age can have a negative impact.

However, he emphasises that the lack of quality sex education for young people leads to them looking for information elsewhere.

“They’re then going to see hairless vulvas,” he says. “They’re going to see 9in penises.

“They’re going to see hard intercourse lasting for 30 minutes and choking, and all these things, and they’re going to think, ‘ok, so this is sex’.

“But it’s much easier to point the finger at porn and say porn is the problem.”

Courtney Daniella Boateng, 26, first started watching porn when she was at primary school.

For her, it was partly driven by the lack of proper sex education available to her. She explains that her classes at school were focussed on the biology of reproduction, rather than the experience of sex.

She says that the taboo that seemed to exist around it made it even more fascinating to try and understand it.

“I ended up searching for sex videos,” she explains. “It was a very wide door that had just blown open into a whole new world.”

Courtney started off watching sporadically, sometimes on the weekends or occasionally before school. But then, she says, it turned into almost every day.

“That was when I started to realise this is having a negative effect on me because I’m doing this way too often,” she says.

Courtney lost her virginity when she was 18 – a moment she describes as “terrible”.

“It never felt like real life matched up to the hype…that I got from watching porn or masturbating,” she says.

Courtney eventually realised that she had an unhealthy dependency on porn.

“I would always find myself fighting whether I could actually stop and it would literally just leave me feeling so powerless,” she said.

She stopped watching porn in her early 20s and decided to become celibate. Along with her fiancé, they have committed to abstinence until after their wedding.

For Shaun, his excessive porn habit led to him being “exhausted” from masturbating.

“I think the role that it [porn] had to play was that it distorted my sense of self, and gave me a dysmorphia around sex, or my body, or my penis,” he says.

However, experts say it is important to recognise that, for many people, it is possible to have a healthy relationship with porn. For some, there may even be benefits.

For example, research conducted by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) suggests that porn provides a way for young people unsure of their sexuality to understand themselves better.

‘’We must remember that an unhealthy relationship with porn only occurs when the individual has lost the power of choice; they cannot function normally in their day to day lives without watching porn,” concludes Fernandes.

“We would urge anyone who thinks they fall into this category to seek professional help.”

“It’s left me with a lot of unlearning to do,” says Courtney. “I have had to learn what realistic sex was.

“I have had to learn to love my body and not compare it to other women’s bodies.

“I have had to learn to love and not objectify people, men and women. And not just see them as sexual objects, but actually see them as people.

“If I could rewind the clock, I wouldn’t have started it.”

For Shaun, giving up is one of the “best decisions” he’s ever made.

“The addiction made me lose connections and now I’m trying to be connected to people that I generally love and I really care about,” he says.

A hitman offered C$100,000 ($71,400; £56,000) for the assassination of a crime reporter at Montreal newspaper La Presse, the outlet has reported.

Convicted killer Frédérick Silva confessed to La Presse that he had offered the contract to anyone willing to carry out the hit on Daniel Renaud, who was covering his trial for three murders and an attempted murder in 2021.

Silva was convicted in 2022 and became a police informant.

Quebec Premier François Legault condemned the plot. “It makes no sense that in Quebec – we are not in a movie – there is a contract placed on the head of a journalist because he does his job,” he said.

“This is not the Quebec we want,” he said, adding that the province’s police must continue to target organised crime.

In order to become an informant for the authorities, Silva had to confess his entire criminal history, La Presse reported. The outlet said it had learned of the plot against Mr Renaud after reviewing the confession Silva had made to police.

Silva admitted to contacting two influential organised crime figures about assassinating Mr Renaud while being held on trial in 2021.

According to Silva, the figures were hesitant, saying it was a bad idea to target a journalist.

The “contract” was in place for roughly two months, but was never carried out, La Presse reported. Silva eventually cancelled the order, he said, because he had “more important issues to deal with”.

Silva is now serving a life sentence in prison.

Mr Renaud told La Presse he was “shaken” by the revelations.

“I don’t censor myself, but I always exercise restraint so I don’t reveal details about the private lives of criminals and avoid putting lives in danger. So I never thought that I could have ended up the subject of a contract like this,” he said.

Vincent Marissal, a former colleague of Mr Renaud’s who is now an elected provincial politician with the left-wing Québec Solidaire, called the journalist a “very rigorous person – not the type of guy who makes a lot of noise in the newsroom but apparently he can cause a lot of bother.

“That means he’s doing his job, but that’s certainly no reason to see a price put on his head.”

In Kibbutz Menara in northern Israel, the sound of gunfire from across the border marked the first day of the ceasefire with Hezbollah.

Menara sits face to face with the Lebanese village of Meiss el-Jabal. It was one of several places where the Israeli military said it fired towards suspects spotted nearby.

They were not gun battles with Hezbollah fighters, it said, but warning shots to push the suspects back. Four of them were arrested.

The handover of control on the Lebanese side of the border, from Israeli troops to the Lebanese army, has not yet begun.

And Lebanese residents have been told not to return there yet.

In Menara, the ceasefire bought Meitel and her 13-year-old daughter Gefen back their first visit home in more than a year.

“This is unbelievable. It’s like a nightmare,” Meitel said, as they inspected a damaged building.

They left the kibbutz on 8 October 2023, when Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel the day after Hamas’s deadly attack on southern Israel triggered the war in Gaza.

Israel’s government said its intense bombardment and ground invasion in Lebanon would ensure the tens of thousands of northern Israeli residents of the evacuated from their homes would be able to return safely.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised that would happen during a speech on Tuesday in which he said he had agreed to the ceasefire because the war had set Hezbollah back “tens of years”, destroyed most of its rockets, and demolished its infrastructure next to the border.

However, Meitel said she had little trust in the ceasefire, noting the gunfire that echoed through Menara’s empty streets during her visit.

“They want to come back. We need to keep them away,” she said.

Three quarters of the buildings in Menara have been destroyed in almost 14 months of fighting, along with the electricity, sewage and gas supplies.

The roof of the communal kitchen, caved in from a direct hit, lies tangled in hills of concrete and metal on the floor.

In house after house, the tell-tale tattoos of shrapnel damage, and rough-edged holes from anti-tank missiles have left homes burned out and unsafe.

Through the burned-out windows, the many shattered houses of their Lebanese neighbours are also visible.

Orna has lived in Menara through two previous wars but she said this ceasefire was different.

“Our forces will not leave these villages and will not allow terrorists to come back here. You can hear it yourself. Whenever someone tries to come back, they will be shot,” she explained.

“I personally will be come and be here regardless of what goes on there. But I’m a crazy, stubborn old lady. Families will not come back here. It’s impossible.”

The ceasefire is triggering the first discussions of what it would take for residents to return.

Repairing Menara will take months, but rebuilding a sense of security could take longer still.

The damage, a practical challenge, is also a reminder of what Hezbollah weapons can do.

Early in the morning they grabbed what they could – bags with clothes, blankets, and mattresses – and headed south.

Families who had been forced to flee because of the war did not wait to see if the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah would hold.

Just hours after it came into effect they were driving back home on the main road from Beirut.

Some waved the yellow and green flag of Hezbollah, others carried posters with images of the group’s former leader Hassan Nasrallah, killed in an Israeli air strike two months ago.

For many this was a moment of celebration.

“What happened is very good. This is a victory for the resistance,” said Abu Ali, referring to the ceasefire that had been brokered by the US and France.

“May God have mercy on our martyrs. The resistance is a source of honour and pride for us. Without its existence, there would be no homeland, no south, nothing.”

His plan was to return to the village Houla, right next to the border. But Israeli troops were still there, he said.

“We don’t know whether our house is still standing or has been destroyed,” Ali said. “But we’ll go there.”

The 60-day ceasefire will see the gradual withdrawal of the Israeli military, and of Hezbollah fighters and weapons, from Lebanon’s south.

The Lebanese army said it was already strengthening its presence there, as part of the deployment of an additional 5,000 soldiers under the deal. Both Israel and Hezbollah have said they are ready to respond to any violations.

The ceasefire is the main hope to bring an end to over a year of conflict, that intensified in September with widespread Israeli air strikes, assassinations of top Hezbollah officials and a ground invasion.

Israel’s stated goal was to move the group away from the border and stop the attacks on its northern communities.

In Lebanon, more than one million people were displaced, mostly from Shia Muslim areas in the south, the eastern Bekka Valley and Dahieh in Beirut – which are essentially controlled by Hezbollah, the powerful militia and political party supported by Iran.

They started to return despite warnings from Israeli and Lebanese authorities that it was not yet safe to do so.

“It doesn’t matter if the house is still intact or not, the important thing is that we are returning, thanks to the blood of our martyr, Nasrallah,” said Fatma Balhas, who was travelling to the town of Seddiqine.

Hezbollah-allied media also said this was a sign the group had been victorious in the war.

Near Sidon, the first big city on the coast south of Beirut, cars drove on the opposite carriageway, as a traffic jam formed just outside a military checkpoint.

Soldiers handed out leaflets telling people to not touch unexploded ordnance. “Don’t get close, don’t touch it, report it immediately”.

As night fell on Wednesday the truce appeared to be holding, with UN chief Antonio Guterres describing it as the “first ray of hope for peace amid the darkness of the past months”.

The war has devastated this country, and recovery will be long and difficult. And what will happen with Hezbollah is not clear. The group has been diminished, but it still enjoys significant support.

For Lebanon, it means this crisis is not over.

A ceasefire has come into effect between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon after a deal was agreed to end 13 months of fighting.

In October 2023, Hezbollah began firing rockets at Israel in support of its ally Hamas in Gaza and Israel launched retaliatory air strikes in Lebanon.

The conflict escalated in late September 2024, when Israel launched an intense air campaign and ground invasion of southern Lebanon.

In Lebanon, more than 3,800 people have been killed since October 2023, according to Lebanese authorities, with one million people forced to flee their homes.

On the Israeli side, at least 82 soldiers and 47 civilians have been killed, while 60,000 people have been displaced, Israeli authorities say.

• Follow live updates on this story
• What we know about Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire deal
• Questions over Hezbollah’s future after ceasefire
• Israeli anger at ‘irresponsible and hasty’ ceasefire
• Watch: People in Israel and Lebanon react to ceasefire deal

Lebanon is a small country with a population of about 5.5 million people, which borders Syria to the north and east, Israel to the south, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. It is about 170km (105 miles) away from Cyprus.

Under the terms of the ceasefire, Hezbollah must end its armed presence in the area of southern Lebanon between the Blue Line – the unofficial border between Lebanon and Israel – and the Litani River, about 30km (20 miles) to the north.

Over the next 60 days, Israel will gradually withdraw its forces from southern Lebanon and thousands of Lebanese army troops will move into the vacated positions in parallel, the agreement says.

The Lebanese army will ensure that Hezbollah’s infrastructure or weaponry is removed and that it cannot be rebuilt, according to a senior US official.

Under UN Security Council resolution 1701, which ended the last war in 2006, the area south of the Litani should be free of any armed personnel or weapons other than those of the Lebanese state and the UN peacekeeping force (Unifil). However, both sides claimed violations of the resolution.

The US and France will join the existing tripartite mechanism, involving Unifil, Lebanon and Israel, which will be charged with monitoring violations, the senior US official said.

The agreement also says that “these commitments do not preclude either Israel or Lebanon from exercising their inherent right of self-defence, consistent with international law”. Israel’s prime minister insisted it would “maintain full freedom of military action” to attack Hezbollah if it violated the agreement.

Tens of thousands of Lebanese civilians displaced by the war have started returning to their homes in the south, despite being warned by the Israeli military that it was not safe to return to areas where its soldiers were still deployed.

Israel launched its ground invasion of southern Lebanon on the night of 30 September 2024, with troops and tanks crossing the border in several locations.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was carrying out “limited, localised, and targeted ground raids” to dismantle what it called Hezbollah’s “terrorist infrastructure”.

Analysis by experts at the Institute for the Study of War suggests Israeli ground operations were limited to areas within a few kilometres of the border, as shown in the map below.

The IDF warned people living in dozens of towns and villages in southern Lebanon to leave their homes and head north of the Awali River, which meets the coast about 50km (30 miles) from the border with Israel.

Lebanese civilians were also told by the IDF not to use vehicles to travel south of the Litani River.

The IDF carried out air strikes in Lebanon throughout the conflict.

But it sharply escalated the air campaign on 23 September 2024, when it launched an operation targeting what it said were Hezbollah infrastructure sites and weapons in all areas of the country where the group has a strong presence.

However, Lebanese authorities say more than 700 women and 200 children have been killed since the start of the conflict, as well as another 200 people working in the country’s health sector.

As the chart below shows, the intensity of the strikes stepped up significantly in the weeks before the Israeli ground invasion in late September and peaked in October.

The majority of Israeli strikes were in southern Lebanon, where about a million people lived before the conflict escalated over a year ago.

The map below – using analysis of satellite data by Corey Scher of CUNY Graduate Center and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University – shows which areas of Lebanon sustained the most concentrated damage during the conflict.

As the following map shows, Beirut was also heavily targeted by Israeli air strikes.

There were some strikes close to central Beirut but the majority of them hit the southern suburbs of the city – densely populated areas that were home to hundreds of thousands of civilians.

These areas, close to the international airport, have a strong Hezbollah presence and it was a series of strikes on buildings there that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on 27 September.

There were several dozens air strikes in the southern suburbs and central Beirut on 26 November hours before the ceasefire deal was agreed.

Israel has a decades-long history of conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon but it is just one of the fronts that it is currently engaged in hostilities.

The others include armed forces and non-state armed groups in several countries in the Middle East, including Iran, Syria and Iran-backed groups operating in Gaza, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

“It’s not just about brewing a good cup of coffee but connecting with customers on a deeper level.”

It was this one thought that made Harmanpreet Singh leave his family bakery to open a specialty coffee shop in the northern Indian city of Jalandhar.

It was an unexpected decision – coffee has always been popular in southern states, traditionally served strong and frothy in a steel tumbler. But it’s still not the first choice of beverage in the vast swathes of north India, where drinking tea is an intrinsic part of the culture.

For Mr Singh, the journey began in 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic when he saw a growing demand for specialty coffee, particularly among the city’s youth and the overseas residents who returned to the country at that time.

Recognising this shift, he moved to the southern city of Bengaluru to learn brewing techniques. “I studied everything – from the way coffee is served to the role things like decor, cutlery, music and even packaging played in the overall experience,” he said.

Three months later, Mr Singh put his learnings to test and opened Buland Café in Jalandhar.

Today, the cafe has 40 outlets across the city and has become a favourite spot for the city’s youth, who come here to relax or work over piping cups of coffee.

The beans, roasted in various blends, are sourced from the famed coffee estates of Karnataka. Mr Singh says he personally trained his staff on how to brew the perfect cuppa and take care of the coffee machine.

“It’s a thriving scene,” he says.

Mr Singh is among a crop of young entrepreneurs that are benefitting from a wave of specialty coffee consumption in small north Indian towns and cities.

India has had a vibrant cafe culture for years – but it has been largely restricted to big cities where homegrown specialty and international coffee chains dominate the market.

However, post-Covid, several tier-two cities are also seeing a boom in demand for such spaces as people embrace practices like remote working and look for new places to meet their friends and families.

Cafe owners say more Indians are now willing to pay more for coffee that’s roasted in smaller batches and customised as per their preferences.

“Clients have become more knowledgeable about the roasts and are interested in the origins of their coffee,” says Bharat Singhal, the founder of Billi Hu roasteries.

In fact, more than 44% of the Indian population now drinks coffee, a 2023 report by CRISIL, a marketing analytical company, shows.

While a lot of it comes from home consumption, the growing demand for specialty coffee in small cities plays a big part, says Bhavi Patel, a coffee consultant and dairy technologist.

Roastery owners say the growth is also evident in numbers. “Subscription based orders have surged by 50% in one year,” says Sharang Sharma, the founder of Bloom Coffee Roasters. “Customers have moved from French presses to pour-over or espresso machines, adopting more sophisticated brewing methods.”

While India is often associated with tea, it also has a long coffee-drinking history.

The culture took shape in the 1900s when Indian Coffee Houses emerged as a hangout spot for the intellectual and elite class. Housed in colonial-styled buildings, these cafes served English breakfasts with steaming hot coffee and offered a space to discuss politics and mobilise support during pivotal periods in history.

A shift occurred in the 1990s when economic reforms opened India to the world, allowing entrepreneurs to open private coffee shops frequented by young peeople, who saw it as a hip experience.

Café Coffee Day (CCD), which opened in 1996, quickly became one of India’s most popular and widespread coffee chains. At its peak, CCD boasted over 1,700 outlets, serving as a popular gathering spot for students and young adults. But mounting debt, management issues and the untimely death of its founder led to a closure of most of its outlets across India.

In 2012, the arrival of international giant Starbucks spurred the rise of homegrown specialty coffee brands like Blue Tokai Roasters, Third Wave Coffee and Subko Coffee.

Mr Singhal says that while big cities like Delhi, Jaipur, Mumbai, and Bengaluru still dominate the scene, smaller cities are quickly catching up.

However, it’s not just changing palettes that’s driving consumption. “Often it’s social media,” Mr Singh says. “People want good coffee but they also want to be in a space that’s trendy and which they can post online.”

Nishant Sinha from Lucknow city is among those who understood the trend early on.

His Roastery Coffee House offers trendy ambience, free wi-fi and cosy seating options along with an array of coffee roasts. While the beans are sourced from coffee estates in the south, the food is distinctively north Indian.

Others like Jatin Khurana in the northern city of Ludhiana are experimenting with flavours.

At his Urban Buhkkad cafe, Mr Khurana serves the “Shadi Wali Coffee [the wedding coffee]” – a wedding favourite in the 1990s, which became famous for its blend of instant coffee, milk, sugar, and a sprinkle of chocolate powder.

But instead of coffee powder, Mr Khurana uses freshly grounded beans, available in different roasts and varieties, to enhance its flavours. “The idea is to capture the essence of the beverage that many Indians grew up drinking,” he says.

It’s an exciting time to be in the business – but growth comes with its own set of challenges.

“Demand is growing, but a smaller coffee shop owners tend to cut corners, whether it’s by opting for substandard machines, serving weaker coffee shots, or hiring inexperienced baristas,” Mr Singhal says.

And running the business is not always profitable given the high price of coffee and the infrastructural costs involved in running such spaces.

When Neha Das and Nishant Ashish opened The Eden’s café in Ranchi in 2021, they wanted to create a safe and relaxed space for young students to get together in the city.

Today, their hazelnut coffee and cold brews have become a favourite of many.

“It took some time but longevity requires more than profit,” Ms Das says.

“It’s about dedication, crafting local flavours, and understanding customers, even if it means working with slim profit margins for the long haul.”

Don’t put away your strappy top and bic lighter just yet – Charli XCX’s Brat arena tour has just landed in the UK.

Kicking off in Manchester on Wednesday, the gigs will be hoping to keep the mania of Brat summer alive well into the winter months.

But could the mega tour give the UK’s club scene the boost it desperately needs?

“The clubbing landscape right now, I would say honestly it’s quite terrifying,” London DJ Moxie tells BBC Newsbeat.

More than 100 music venues in the UK stopped putting on live music last year according to the Music Venue’s Trust – with more than half of those fully closing.

“We rely on a lot of students and a lot of students are not going out,” Moxie says.

“They’re prioritising staying in because they can’t quite afford to go out.

“Everything has gone up and that’s had such a knock on effect on venues.”

The venues that are closing or struggling to stay open are the types of places where Charli XCX honed her craft.

Charli’s spoken before about getting her parents to take her to raves when she was a teenager and before she was selling out arenas, she was working warehouse gigs.

“She has been around for such a long time and she used to go out – I would be at raves that she was at when she was like 15,” says Moxie.

“She is opening up the conversation about the sorts of places that have inspired her.”

And as those places start to disappear, Moxi’s hopeful that Charli’s fanbase will discover a love of club music that has been on the wane.

“Especially if someone like Charli XCX is telling them: ‘This is where I’ve come from, the clubs have made me, it’s part of my DNA’.”

It’s not just Charli bringing club music to the mainstream either – Fred Again headlined Reading and Leeds festival over the summer and Peggy Gou’s had a string of sold out shows.

Brat is Charli’s sixth album and it’s up for an armful of awards including three Grammys and the Mercury Prize.

Hot on its heels was the remix album, Brat And It’s Completely Different But Also Still Brat, and an arena tour.

And for top artists headlining arenas, fans are used to paying above the odds.

But at Charli’s show in Manchester on Wednesday, friends Niamh and Freya say they were “really surprised” to only pay £40 each to see Charli XCX.

“We thought it would be more expensive,” they say.

“It wasn’t bad at all – it was really affordable.”

Compare that to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour where, on average, fans spent £206 on a ticket.

Regular standing tickets for Beyoncé Renaissance shows cost up to £410 and tickets for Billie Eilish’s upcoming UK dates could set you back up to £398.

More than half of people in the UK have said high prices have stopped them going to gigs in the last five years.

For people under 34, two thirds of them have said that’s meant they’ve reduced the number they go to.

Tasha and Lucas also spent £40 on their tickets and are hoping Charli XCX will give a boost to the clubbing scene.

They travelled from Chester where Lucas says “there’s not a huge club scene” but they often go to other towns and cities to support artists and venues.

Tasha says they’ve always enjoyed the club scene and are excited Charli’s brought it more into the mainstream.

“She’s the first in our first generation to make that crossover,” she says.

“She’s breaking boundaries,” adds Lucas.

Other fans who spoke to Newsbeat at the gig told us they were new to clubbing and Charli’s music had brought them into the scene.

“Party culture died out a bit,” says fan Amara. “I hope this revives it.”

Music journalist and critic Shaad D’Souza tells Newsbeat he “has to hope and pray” that lots of Charli’s fans are as excited as Amara about getting into clubbing and going out.

He’s particularly excited about what Brat could mean for the future of the genre – as well as people going out dancing and supporting venues.

“It’s refreshing that someone’s going to the underground for new sounds,” he says.

“Because what we see a lot lately is pop musicians’ direct reference points are the history of pop.”

He points to Tate McRae throwing back to Britney Spears as an example, compared to artists like Madonna and Prince taking inspiration from different styles outside of pop in previous decades and bringing them into the mainstream.

“I think that’s what Charli is doing here and I think that’s something that’s been missing,” Shaad says.

“We lose something when pop references itself.”

As for what the Brat tour can do for the clubbing scene, Shaad believes that, while there’s a growing market for big ticket events like festivals and the Eras tour, huge gigs can happily co-exist with a smaller club scene.

“I don’t think the big pop tour is eating the small club landscape,” he says.

“What’s closing clubs near me is property development and council regulations – no one pop star is not responsible for clubs closing.”

Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays – or listen back here.

When a sitting vice-president says she has hired assassins to kill the president, and dreams of cutting off his head, you might think that country was in serious trouble.

But then this is the Philippines, where politics and melodrama go hand in hand.

“I have talked to a person,” Vice-president Sara Duterte said on her Facebook page last weekend. “I said, if I get killed, go kill BBM [President Marcos], [First Lady] Liza Araneta, and [House Speaker] Martin Romualdez. No joke. No joke. I said, do not stop until you kill them, and then he said yes.”

Last month she told reporters her relationship with President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos had become toxic, and she dreamed of cutting off his head.

She also threatened to dig up the body of the president’s father from the Heroes’ Cemetery in Manila and dump the ashes in the sea.

Behind all this drama is a once powerful political alliance which has spectacularly unravelled.

The decision by the Marcos and Duterte clans to join forces in the 2022 presidential election was a marriage of convenience. Both candidates were the offspring of presidents – Sara Duterte’s father Rodrigo was the incumbent then – and had strong support in different regions of the Philippines. Both had populist appeal.

However, having both run for president risked dividing their supporters and losing to a third candidate.

So she agreed that Marcos would go for president, while she went for vice-president – the two posts are elected separately – but that they would form one team on the campaign trail.

The assumption was that the younger Duterte would then be in prime position to contest the next presidential election in 2028.

It proved a very effective strategy. The UniTeam, as they branded themselves, won by a landslide.

However, as any of her predecessors could have told Duterte, the vice-presidency is largely ceremonial, and has few powers.

The Dutertes had wanted the influential defence portfolio; President Marcos instead gave her Education, an early sign he was wary of letting his vice-president build up her power base.

He also made an abrupt turn away from the politics of his predecessor.

He ordered the Philippines navy and coastguard to stand up to China in disputed areas of the South China Sea. This was a marked contrast to President Rodrigo Duterte who had refused to challenge China’s dominant presence there, and even declared that he loved Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Marcos also toned down President Duterte’s infamous war on drugs, in which thousands of suspected drug dealers were gunned down.

He has hinted at the possibility of rejoining the International Criminal Court, which has issued an indictment for crimes against humanity against Rodrigo Duterte. The former president has also found himself in front of the Philippines Senate being grilled about the extrajudicial killings that happened during his presidency.

Relations between the two camps soured further when Marcos’s allies in the lower house launched an investigation into Sara Duterte’s use of the confidential funds she was allocated when she got the job.

In July, the vice-president resigned as education secretary, and her language became increasingly inflammatory.

Sara Duterte is no stranger to controversy. Thirteen years ago, when she was mayor of Davao City, she was filmed repeatedly punching a court official.

She comes from the same political mould as her outspoken father, both of them known for tough talking. He called the Pope a “son of a whore” and boasted of having killed people.

He describes her as the “alpha” character of the family who always gets her way; she says he is hard to love. Like her father she likes riding big motorbikes.

Her latest threats to her one-time ally President Marcos, though, may prove to be one verbal indiscretion too far.

Marcos has responded by calling Duterte’s comments “reckless” and “troubling”. The Philippines National Bureau of Investigation – its equivalent of the American FBI – has summoned the vice-president to explain her threats on Friday.

She has now walked them back, denying they were real. “This is a plan without flesh,” she explained, accusing Marcos of being a liar who was leading the country to hell.

Perhaps it was inevitable that two such powerful families would become rivals in the maelstrom of Filipino politics, which is still largely about personalities, big families and regions.

Political loyalties are fluid; senators and members of congress constantly shift their party allegiances. Power inevitably concentrates around the president, with his authority to dispense government funds. Former presidents are routinely investigated for corruption or abuses of power once they leave office.

President Marcos wants to rehabilitate the reputation of his family, after his father’s shameful ejection by a popular uprising in 1986, and will be keen to influence the choice of his successor in 2028. The Dutertes have their own dynastic ambitions.

For now Sara Duterte is still vice-president. She could be removed through impeachment by the Senate, but that would be a risky move for President Marcos.

She enjoys strong popular support in the south, and among the millions of overseas Filipino workers, and getting sufficient support in the Senate for impeachment could be difficult.

Mid-term elections are due in May next year, in which the entire lower house and half of the 24 senatorial seats will be contested. They will be seen as a test of the strength for each of the rival camps.

Duterte’s explosive break with the president is an opportunity for her to back her own candidates, and present herself as an alternative to a government which has lost popularity over the lacklustre performance of the economy.

That could give her a better launching pad for the 2028 presidential race than staying shackled to the Marcos administration.

But after her incendiary comments of the past few weeks, Filipinos must be wondering: what will she say next?

Can a navigation app be held responsible if a user gets into an accident?

That is the question being asked in India after three men died when their car veered off an unfinished bridge and fell on to a riverbed in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

Police are still investigating the incident, which took place on Sunday, but they believe that Google Maps led the group to take that route.

A part of the bridge had reportedly collapsed earlier this year because of floods and while locals knew this and avoided the bridge, the three men were not aware of this and were from outside the area. There were no barricades or sign boards indicating that the bridge was unfinished.

Authorities have named four engineers from the state’s road department and an unnamed official from Google Maps in a police complaint on charges of culpable homicide.

A spokesperson from Google told BBC Hindi that it was co-operating with the investigation.

The tragic accident has spotlighted India’s poor road infrastructure and sparked a debate on whether navigation apps like Google Maps share responsibility for such incidents.

Some blame the app for not providing accurate information while others argue that it is a larger failure on the part of the government for not cordoning off the place.

Google Maps is the most popular navigation app in India and has become synonymous with GPS (Global Positioning System), a satellite-based radio navigation system.

It also powers the services of many ride-sharing, e-commerce and food delivery platforms. The app reportedly has around 60 million active users and witnesses around 50 million searches in a day.

But the app has frequently come under scrutiny for providing incorrect directions, sometimes leading to fatal accidents.

In 2021, a man from Maharashtra state drowned after he drove his car into a dam, allegedly while following directions on the app.

Last year, two young doctors in Kerala state died after they drove their car into a river. Police said that they had been following a route shown by the app and cautioned people against relying on it too much when roads were flooded.

But how does Google Maps learn about changes on a road?

GPS signals from users’ apps track traffic changes along routes – an increase signals congestion, while a decrease suggests a road is less used. The app also receives updates from governments and users about traffic jams or closures.

Complaints related to high traffic, or the ones notified by authorities are given priority, as Google does not have the manpower to deal with the millions of complaints streaming in daily, says Ashish Nair, the founder of mapping platform Potter Maps and a former Google Maps employee.

“A map operator then uses satellite imagery, Google Street View and government notifications to confirm the change and update the map.”

According to Mr Nair, navigating apps cannot be held responsible for mishaps as their terms of services make it clear that users must apply their own judgement on the road and that the information provided by the app might differ from actual conditions.

Besides, it is simply very difficult for a platform like Google, which manages maps across the world, to keep across every change that happens on a road, he adds.

Unlike other countries, India also does not have a robust system for reporting such issues on time.

“Data remains a big challenge in India. There is no system for infrastructural changes to be logged into a web interface, which can then be used by apps like Google Maps. Countries like Singapore have such a system,” Mr Nair says.

He adds that India’s vast population and fast-paced development make it even more challenging to get accurate, real-time data. “In other words, bad maps are here to stay until governments become more proactive about collecting and sharing data.”

Lawyers are divided on whether GPS apps can be held legally responsible for road accidents.

Advocate Saima Khan says that since India’s Information Technology (IT) Act gives digital platforms like Google Maps the status of an ‘intermediary’ (a platform that merely disseminates information provided by a third party) it is protected against liability.

But she adds that if it can be proven that the platform did not rectify its data despite being given correct, timely information, then it might be held liable for negligence.

A young Palestinian couple in Jerusalem have produced a range of perfumes to embody the heritage of their people. Despite the horror of the war in Gaza, they hope their scents can still summon memories of a better time, as Sebastian Usher reports from Jerusalem.

Out in the fields of the Jordan valley, Palestinian women still sing old folk songs as they harvest the olive groves. One tells the story of how a fabled ship carrying a life-saving cargo of food heads to port during a terrible famine that swept the Levant in the dying days of Ottoman rule. While in the Old City of Jerusalem, the scents of leather, spices and livestock fuse into a fragrance that evokes thousands of years of history.

“We’re trying to send a message to people through our perfumes, revealing our heritage and the scent of our land,” Qassem Abu Khalaf says as he explains the motivation behind the Mejana fragrance line that he’s set up with his wife, Malak Hijazi.

The young couple are Palestinians from the Beit Hanina district in occupied East Jerusalem. He is an advanced materials engineer and she is an English and special needs teacher. Their fragrance line grew from a passion Qassem developed over the years for producing the best quality perfumes. He worked at night on his ideas, building up a library of hundreds of ingredients.

In a restaurant in East Jerusalem amid the ongoing war in Gaza, he says the five scents he’s so far produced are intended to let people hold a piece of Palestinian history in their hands. While for Palestinians themselves, he hopes that it’s a way to reconnect with their roots in a Proustian rush of memory triggered by an aroma.

He and Malak chose the name Mejana, as it’s a word that describes the old songs that Palestinians sing as they are working.

“Mejana has a special rhythm when you sing it,” Malak says. “It means joy and happiness. We chose it, because when you smell a special fragrance, you feel good, you feel happy in the same sort of way.”

Palestinian folk memory also influenced the naming of their first two scents. Zaref Atool is a dark, heavy fragrance – very much what people expect from an oriental style. Qassem says it’s intended to conjure up the feel of the ancient, labyrinthine alleyways of the Old City of Jerusalem. It’s named after the main character in a popular old song – in which the singer laments that a tall, handsome young man is leaving his Palestinian homeland to travel far away.

The other fragrance is called Rozana, after a ship that was feverishly anticipated by people starving across Palestine, Lebanon and Syria after failed wheat harvests 100 years ago. It was meant to deliver salvation, but only brought further bitter disappointment and loss – as its cargo contained almost nothing to eat. Again, there’s a famous song inspired by the story that’s been sung by many of the great Arab singers, such as Fairouz and Sabah.

“I love our identity, our heritage, our folklore and I’m proud of it,” says Malak.

If the past is their inspiration, then the present has complicated their efforts to create and launch a brand that celebrates Palestinian identity.

“We launched our brand on 27 September last year,” Malak says. “We went to two bazaars in Jerusalem but then the war began and put a stop to everything for many months.”

The souks and shops in the Old City and elsewhere in Israel and the occupied West Bank are denuded of tourists, as shopkeepers try to survive on the still bustling local market.

Qassem and Malak have had some success selling their fragrances to the Palestinian diaspora – in Australia in particular. And they have continued undeterred, producing a second range of three perfumes, beautifully presented in a box painted by a Palestinian artist with local flowers and wildlife.

The perfumes themselves are contained in wooden capsules with a key embossed on one side, which opens up the gold dispenser when turned. A large old key is a symbol of all the Palestinian homes lost when hundreds of thousands were expelled or fled during the war in 1948 that established the State of Israel.

“When we chose the key, it was about our memories,” Malak say. “It’s designed a little bit differently from the traditional Palestinian key, but it is related to it. When you smell a particular scent, it brings back beautiful memories. So, it is the key to our ancestors and our childhood memories.”

The couple have not only just produced their new range of perfumes – with combinations such as tuberose and berry, and coconut and agarwood – but also their first child – a daughter, Sadeel.

Qassem and Malak say it is a difficult time to bring new life into a world in such conflict. Malak says she feels guilty about it but she had to stop watching news about Gaza during her pregnancy as it was causing her so much stress – and she feared it might negatively affect her baby.

“It’s not easy,” Qassem says. “But we hope everything will come to an end and we’ll have peace. A little peace of mind, too.”

In Beatles ’64, the new documentary which charts the impact of the band’s first US tour and how it catapulted them to global superstardom, Paul McCartney makes a suggestion as to why they achieved so much so quickly.

“When we came, it was quite shortly after Kennedy had been assassinated,” he said.

“Maybe America needed something like The Beatles to be lifted out of sorrow.”

Beatles scholars and cultural historians have long remarked upon how much of a lift the band gave to an America in mourning.

But was McCartney right? Was the rise of the world’s most famous band partly down to the murder of the 35th president of the United States?

Did The Beatles crack America because Kennedy was killed?

When The Beatles landed at the recently-renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport on 7 February 1964, it was just 70 days after the the 46-year-old Democrat had been murdered.

Kennedy was shot as his motorcade drove through Dallas, Texas, on 22 November 1963 and his death threw his country into a period of mourning.

Dr Patrick Andelic, assistant professor of American History at Northumbria University, said it was a moment that shook the nation to its core, partially because of JFK’s own pop culture persona.

“In a sense, Kennedy was the first TV president, which was relatively new at this point,” he said.

“By the beginning of the ’60s, 90% of American families had TVs, so the way news and media was consumed totally changed.”

He said the president was, like The Beatles, “young, handsome, witty and energetic, which translated really well to TV”.

“He embraced television and was well suited to it,” he said.

“And that makes the shock and trauma of his death sharper in the aftermath.

“It was the first killing of a sitting president in 60 years.”

It was, of course, TV which also helped The Beatles become a phenomenon in their homeland.

Settling on their now final line-up of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr in 1962, the Liverpool four-piece had already scored two number one albums in 1963 with Please Please Me and With The Beatles.

When that success was coupled with the famous 1963 Royal Variety Performance appearance during which Lennon asked “the people in the cheaper seats to clap their hands” and the rest to just “rattle their jewellery” they became a national sensation.

Senior music industries lecturer Dr Holly Tessler, from the University of Liverpool, said it was that show that “made them stars overnight”.

“At this point, The Beatles were an unstoppable force in the UK,” she said.

The Beatles’ youthful exuberance was central to their success, chiming with the legions of British teenagers that had begun to follow them.

Dr Andelic said in America, JFK had a similar appeal.

“Kennedy projected youth and vitality and in his inaugural address, he spoke of the torch being passed to a new generation of Americans,” he said.

“His death cut that short in a shocking way.”

He said in the aftermath, the nation started “to look for more positive things, stability and reassurance”.

“When The Beatles arrive, I think they represented that.

“They were also young, vital, and [in the footage] of them getting off the plane, they were being silly.

“So, for a nation shattered by a trauma, The Beatles represented an opportunity to laugh and have fun again.”

Winning over a portion of America’s youth was one thing, but cracking the national market was another.

Many British acts had tried and failed to mirror the transatlantic appeal of their US counterparts, who had seen great chart success in the UK, and crack the American market.

There had been limited success for those that came before The Beatles.

Lonnie Donegan, the titular “King of Skiffle”, had two top ten hits, while Cliff Richard, then the biggest act in Britain, had only made it into the US top 40 on one occasion.

Spencer Leigh, author of many books on The Beatles, said the trend of British acts failing to “make it” in the United States, had seen Capitol, one of the country’s biggest record companies, even refuse to distribute The Beatles’ music for fear of the same result.

“Artists from the UK didn’t sell well in America and it seemed Capitol looked down its nose at the British work,” he said.

Capitol’s concerns were understandable. The singles Please Please Me, From Me To You and She Loves You had all been released in the US in 1963 and seen limited success, so they were reluctant to put out I Want To Hold Your Hand.

The band’s manager Brian Epstein and Capitol’s parent company EMI managed to change the label’s minds and on Boxing Day 1963, about a month after Kennedy’s assassination, the single hit America’s stores.

Its impact was huge and by the first week of February, it was at the top of the US charts, a position it would hold for seven weeks.

The success meant more than 3,000 fans and a large press pack were at the airport when the band touched down.

For Spencer Leigh, it was what came next, not what had happened before, that led to their global success.

“My view is the people screaming for The Beatles at the airport were young and didn’t know much about politics,” he said.

“For me, the turning point was the Ed Sullivan Show.”

At 20:00 on 9 February 1964, The Beatles made the first of three appearances on the programme, which was one of America’s most popular TV variety shows.

The TV channel CBS reportedly received more than 50,000 requests for seats at its 700-capacity studio ahead of the band’s visit and those who failed to get their hands on any huddled excitedly around TVs at home.

“More than 70 million people watched the first one and they performed so well,” Leigh said.

He said one of the moments that really caught the audience’s attention was when cameras panned to each band member, flashing their names on the screen.

“They put a caption on John Lennon saying ‘sorry girls he’s married’,” he said.

“I’m not sure how much [the band] appreciated that.”

About a month after those first three performances, The Beatles made US chart history by becoming the first act to hold the top five slots simultaneously.

Beatlemania had now gone global and the rest was history.

For Dr Tessler, the notion that America went down with the death of JFK and back up with the arrival of The Beatles is too simplistic.

For her too, it was the Ed Sullivan Show appearances, rather than the assassination aftermath that set The Beatles on the road to pop immortality.

“I really struggle with the idea that The Beatles owe their US success to JFK being shot,” she said.

“Their manager Brian Epstein had already been to America and done the deal to get them on the Sullivan show weeks before Kennedy was killed, and there was so much hype when the band finally landed in the US.

“America might have wanted a distraction from that feeling of ‘what’s next’ after the assassination, but The Beatles became the story so quickly that the connection to Kennedy was only fleeting at best.”

A selection of news photographs from around the world.

One of Africa’s best known musicians – the Malian singer Rokia Traoré – has reportedly been imprisoned in Belgium as part of an ongoing child custody dispute.

The 50-year-old is being held after being extradited from Italy, over an outstanding two-year prison sentence, according to the AFP news agency.

The long-running saga dates back to 2020 when Traoré was initially detained in France on a Belgian arrest warrant after failing to heed a court order to hand over her daughter to the girl’s Belgian father.

Months after she was conditionally released, Traoré flew out to Mali on a private flight, defying a ban from leaving France until her extradition to Belgium.

• Malian singer detained in Italy in child custody row

Last October, Traoré was sentenced in absentia to two years in prison by a court in Belgium on charges of parental abduction for “failing to hand over a child to the person entitled to custody”.

In June, Traoré’s was arrested at Fiumicino airport in Rome as she flew in for a concert, over the outstanding child custody conviction, for which there was a European arrest warrant. Two months later, a court in the Italian capital approved her extradition.

An appeal by the singer was rejected last week, paving the way for the extradition to take place. Traoré has been held in prison since her arrest, the Reuters news agency reported.

Her daughter, who is now aged nine years, has lived in Mali since turning four.

A lawyer for the child’s father, Traoré’s former partner Jan Goossens, reportedly said he had not had any contact with his daughter since then.

When she was initially arrested in 2020, she had been travelling from Mali to Brussels intending to appeal against the custody ruling, her lawyers had said.

Mali’s government previously came out in support of the singer, saying that she had a diplomatic passport.

Traoré’s lawyer, Vincent Lurquin, is reported to have told AFP that the singer plans to appeal the two-year prison sentence, which would trigger a new trial.

He also said both Traoré and Goossens were hoping to “find an agreement in the interests of the child”, thus averting a new prison sentence.

AFP reported that the state prosecutor’s office in Belgium confirmed that Traoré would remain in detention throughout the new trial.

Traoré is one of Africa’s best known vocalists. She has won several awards, including the BBC Award for World Music in 2004 and the 2009 World Music Album of the year in the Victoires de la Musique, the French equivalent of the Grammys.

She is also known for her advocacy work for refugees, becoming a goodwill ambassador for the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees in 2015 in West and Central Africa.

A coalition of Canada’s biggest news outlets is suing OpenAI, the maker of artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, alleging the company is illegally using news articles to train its software.

News organisations including the Toronto Star, Metroland Media, Postmedia, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press and CBC have all joined the suit, reportedly the first of its kind in the country.

“Journalism is in the public interest. OpenAI using other companies’ journalism for their own commercial gain is not. It’s illegal,” the media organisations said in a joint statement.

OpenAI says its models are “trained on publicly available data”.

The software is “grounded in fair use and related international copyright principles that are fair for creators and support innovation”, the company said in an statement to the BBC.

“We collaborate closely with news publishers, including in the display, attribution and links to their content in ChatGPT search, and offer them easy ways to opt out should they so desire.”

In its 84-page filing, the Canadian media coalition accuses OpenAI of ignoring safeguards like paywalls or copyright disclaimers meant to prevent the unauthorised copying of content.

“OpenAI regularly breaches copyright and online terms of use by scraping large swaths of content from Canadian media to help develop its products, such as ChatGPT,” the companies said.

The group, which includes the publishers of Canada’s top newspapers, is seeking punitive damages of C$20,000 ($14,300; £11,000) per article they allege was used to illegally train ChatGPT – a sum that could add up to billions of dollars in compensation.

The news organisations are also requesting an order that would force the company to share profits made from using their articles, as well as an injunction prohibiting OpenAI from using them in future.

While the lawsuit against OpenAI is a first for Canadian publishers, it follows a similar action in the US launched by the New York Times and other publishers last year. In April, lawyers for the Times accused OpenAI of erasing evidence they needed for trial.

In another case, the Authors Guild and a group of major writers including John Grisham also claimed copyright infringement.

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI was valued at C$219bn after its latest round of fundraising from investors.

A Canadian territory has changed its rules for elected municipal officials, allowing them to take an oath pledging allegiance to the country’s constitution instead of the British Crown when they are sworn in.

The change comes after the newly-elected council of Dawson City, Yukon, refused to take the King’s oath in solidarity with an indigenous council member who raised concerns about the Crown’s history in Canada.

The protest delayed their confirmation and placed the town’s governance at a standstill.

On Friday, the territory announced that they have adjusted the law to give the option of taking one of the two oaths.

Richard Mostyn, Yukon’s minister of community services, said the change “allows elected municipal officials to take the Oath of Allegiance in a way that aligns with society’s broader values and cultural identities”.

In Canada – a Commonwealth country and former British colony – most elected officials have to take an oath in which they swear or affirm they “will be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty King Charles III” and his “heirs and successors according to law”.

Questions had swirled about whether Dawson City’s new council, which was elected in late October, would be able to sit if they refused to take the oath.

Under Yukon law, a newly- elected official must take it within 40 days of their election or else their win “shall be considered null”.

This gave officials a 9 December deadline to come up with a solution.

Councillor Darwyn Lynn, a member of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation, said he was hesitant to take the oath because of Canada’s fraught history with indigenous peoples.

“I read it probably about 15 times, and it didn’t get any easier to do,” said Lynn at the press conference announcing the change.

“With the history that the Crown has had in Canada and other places, I thought that there may be another option.”

By questioning the requirement, a “wonderful conversation” on Canada’s history was sparked in Dawson City, a town of 2,400 people, as well as in the broader Yukon territory, he said.

That conversation was “very balanced”, he said, with some people supporting an alternative and others hesitant over its removal.

“Everybody has the right to have their opinion and option, and that is the great part of our country,” said Lynn.

He and the other Dawson City councillors will take the oath of their choice in the coming days.

This is not the first time that a Canadian province or territory had amended the requirement of the Oath of Allegiance.

In 2022, the French-speaking province of Quebec passed legislation that ended the requirement to have elected officials take an oath to the monarchy. One lawmaker called it “a relic from the past”.

The oath, however, remains a requirement for members of Canada’s national parliament and for most members of provincial legislative assemblies.

Uniqlo is facing an online backlash in China after the boss of its parent company said the Japanese clothing retailer does not source cotton from Xinjiang.

Fast Retailing’s chief executive Tadashi Yanai said Uniqlo was “not using” cotton from the western Chinese province in a BBC interview broadcast this week.

Commentators in China picked up on the comment and urged a boycott of the retailer.

Cotton from Xinjiang is controversial because China has been accused of using forced labour by people from the Muslim Uyghur minority in its production. Beijing has consistently denied these allegations.

Following the BBC report, commentators took to social media platform Weibo calling for a boycott of Uniqlo.

Millions of people read posts with hashtags related to the topic: “Controversy over Uniqlo founder’s remarks”.

Related trending hashtags included: “Xinjiang cotton is the best in the world”, “I support Xinjiang cotton”, and “Uniqlo’s results in China sees a slump”.

One user wrote: “With this kind of attitude from Uniqlo, and their founder being so arrogant, they’re probably betting that mainland consumers will forget about it in a few days and continue to buy. So, can we stand firm this time?”

The online reaction came after Mr Yanai told the BBC: “We’re not using [cotton from Xinjiang].”

“By mentioning which cotton we’re using…” he continued, before pausing and ending his answer with: “Actually, it gets too political if I say anymore so let’s stop here”.

China is very important for Uniqlo not only as a huge market but also as a major manufacturing hub.

Beijing has consistently denied allegations of forced labour made by organisations including the US government.

The BBC has published reports of forced labour allegations.

In June 2022, firms started to have to prove that imports into the US are not produced using forced labour.

Sweden’s H&M saw its clothing pulled from major e-commerce stores in China after it refused to source cotton from Xinjiang.

Many global brands such as Nike, Burberry, Esprit and Adidas were boycotted after getting caught up in the controversy.

Part of the reason Uniqlo avoided the controversy was because Mr Yanai declined to take a stance at the time.

Western firms continue to get embroiled in the controversial topic.

In September, China’s commerce ministry launched an investigation into the parent company of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, PVH, saying it was suspected of “unjustly boycotting” Xinjiang cotton and other products “without factual basis”.

PVH has said it will respond in accordance with relevant regulations, according to media reports.

Shaun Flores was 11 years old when he first started watching porn, after being introduced to it by a friend.

“I was hooked almost immediately,” the now 30-year-old says.

“It was just like, wow, what is this that people are doing where they look like they’re just having the time of their lives.”

Shaun’s curiosity quickly turned into something that he found difficult to stop.

He describes watching porn morning, noon and night, saying it became as “common as brushing your teeth”.

Shaun has shared his story in a new BBC iPlayer series, Sex After.

“I realised there was an issue when I had no energy to do anything,” he says. “I didn’t want to play football, I just wanted to be inside.

“But there was the guilt and the shame that came with it, and no matter what I tried to do, I couldn’t stop watching it.

“That’s when I knew there was something up.”

While not everyone who watches porn will develop an unhealthy relationship with it, Shaun isn’t alone in his viewing habits.

Ofcom’s Online Nation 2024 report suggests 29% of UK adults accessed online porn in May 2024. Additionally, new research from addiction treatment centre, UKAT, suggests that millions of Britons are viewing pornography regularly – with 1.8 million watching daily, some multiple times a day.

According to treatment providers, more people are seeking help for problematic porn use.

Dr Paula Hall, a UKCP-accredited sexual and relationship psychotherapist at The Laurel Centre, in London, specialises in helping people affected by sex addiction and porn addiction.

“The numbers of clients seeking help with pornography problems at The Laurel Centre have doubled over recent years, as have our requests from health professionals for further training,” she tells the BBC.

Dr Hall explains that they have also seen a growing number of younger people seeking help.

“Ten years ago the majority of our clients would have been married men in their 40s and 50s who were seeking help because their partner had discovered their use of sex workers,” she says.

“But increasingly, our clients are in their 20s and 30s, many of whom are single, who are recognising the growing toll of porn use on their lives and on their ability to get or maintain a relationship.”

Lee Fernandes, lead therapist at the UKAT Group, also says the number of people they treat for problematic porn use has risen “significantly” in recent years.

They now receive multiple enquiries for help from people struggling with their porn use every single day. Prior to 2020, it was one or two enquiries a week

Fernandes explains that advancements in technology and the subsequent easy accessibility of porn is making it easier for people of all ages to access sexual content online. He believes his is contributing to the increase in people seeking help that he has experienced.

“It’s not very hard for someone to pull out their phone, go onto a site and look at porn, whether they’re 12 years old or 60 years old,” he says. “It is quite troubling.”

According to Fernandes, other reasons for people watching porn online include curiosity, boredom, stress relief and lack of sexual satisfaction.

While porn use might start for these reasons, Fernandes describes it as being “very addictive”.

“It fulfils that dopamine reward system,” he explains. “Once you start it’s quite difficult to stop.”

However, while problematic porn use might mimic an addiction, it isn’t diagnostically recognised as such.

Instead, it is categorised as problematic online pornography use (POPU), or compulsive behaviour.

For people who develop this relationship with porn, the effects can be negative.

And for the youngest in society who are growing up with free, hardcore content at their fingertips, the impact of early overexposure can be far reaching.

The Children’s Commissioner for England promotes and protects the rights of children.

Recent research from their office found that, in 2023, 10% of children had seen porn by the age of nine and 27% had seen it by age 11.

“Young people tell me their exposure to pornography is widespread and normalised – with the average age at which children first seeing pornography being 13 years old,” Dame Rachel de Souza, the current Children’s Commissioner, tells the BBC.

“Pornography is no longer confined to dedicated adult sites – children tell me they can see violent content, depicting coercive, degrading or pain-inducing sexual acts on social media.

“The implications of seeing this kind of material are vast – my research has found that frequent users of pornography are more likely to engage in physically aggressive sex acts.”

De Souza adds that it is “vital” for high-quality relationship and sex education to be given parity of importance with other subjects to help young people understand that pornography is unrealistic.

Silva Neves, a psychotherapist who specialises in the treatment of compulsive sexual behaviours, agrees that viewing porn at a young age can have a negative impact.

However, he emphasises that the lack of quality sex education for young people leads to them looking for information elsewhere.

“They’re then going to see hairless vulvas,” he says. “They’re going to see 9in penises.

“They’re going to see hard intercourse lasting for 30 minutes and choking, and all these things, and they’re going to think, ‘ok, so this is sex’.

“But it’s much easier to point the finger at porn and say porn is the problem.”

Courtney Daniella Boateng, 26, first started watching porn when she was at primary school.

For her, it was partly driven by the lack of proper sex education available to her. She explains that her classes at school were focussed on the biology of reproduction, rather than the experience of sex.

She says that the taboo that seemed to exist around it made it even more fascinating to try and understand it.

“I ended up searching for sex videos,” she explains. “It was a very wide door that had just blown open into a whole new world.”

Courtney started off watching sporadically, sometimes on the weekends or occasionally before school. But then, she says, it turned into almost every day.

“That was when I started to realise this is having a negative effect on me because I’m doing this way too often,” she says.

Courtney lost her virginity when she was 18 – a moment she describes as “terrible”.

“It never felt like real life matched up to the hype…that I got from watching porn or masturbating,” she says.

Courtney eventually realised that she had an unhealthy dependency on porn.

“I would always find myself fighting whether I could actually stop and it would literally just leave me feeling so powerless,” she said.

She stopped watching porn in her early 20s and decided to become celibate. Along with her fiancé, they have committed to abstinence until after their wedding.

For Shaun, his excessive porn habit led to him being “exhausted” from masturbating.

“I think the role that it [porn] had to play was that it distorted my sense of self, and gave me a dysmorphia around sex, or my body, or my penis,” he says.

However, experts say it is important to recognise that, for many people, it is possible to have a healthy relationship with porn. For some, there may even be benefits.

For example, research conducted by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) suggests that porn provides a way for young people unsure of their sexuality to understand themselves better.

‘’We must remember that an unhealthy relationship with porn only occurs when the individual has lost the power of choice; they cannot function normally in their day to day lives without watching porn,” concludes Fernandes.

“We would urge anyone who thinks they fall into this category to seek professional help.”

“It’s left me with a lot of unlearning to do,” says Courtney. “I have had to learn what realistic sex was.

“I have had to learn to love my body and not compare it to other women’s bodies.

“I have had to learn to love and not objectify people, men and women. And not just see them as sexual objects, but actually see them as people.

“If I could rewind the clock, I wouldn’t have started it.”

For Shaun, giving up is one of the “best decisions” he’s ever made.

“The addiction made me lose connections and now I’m trying to be connected to people that I generally love and I really care about,” he says.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has suggested that the parts of Ukraine under his control should be taken “under the Nato umbrella” to try and stop the “hot phase” of the war.

In a long, wide-ranging interview with Sky News, the Ukrainian president was asked whether he would accept Nato membership, but only on the territory that Kyiv currently holds.

Zelensky said he would, but only if Nato membership was offered to the whole of Ukraine, within its internationally recognised borders, first.

Ukraine could then attempt to negotiate the return of territory currently under Russian control “in a diplomatic way”, he said.

But the suggestion is highly theoretical. As Zelensky pointed out, no-one has yet made such an offer.

Whether Nato would ever consider such a move is highly doubtful.

“Ukraine has never considered such a proposal, because no-one has officially offered it to us,” Zelensky said.

Nato would need to offer membership to the whole country, including those parts currently under Russian control, he said.

“You can’t give [an] invitation to just one part of a country,” the president said, according to a translation provided by Sky News. “Why? Because thus, you would recognise that Ukraine is only that territory of Ukraine, and the other one is Russia.”

Lots of people were proposing ceasefires, he said, but without a mechanism to prevent Russia from attacking again, ceasefires were simply too dangerous.

Only NATO membership, he said, could offer that kind of guarantee.

The Ukrainian president has already said that he thinks the war could end in the coming year if Ukraine’s allies show sufficient resolve.

Reports suggest that discussion of the so-called West German model (Nato membership offered to a divided country) has been going on in Western circles for more than a year.

But no formal proposals have yet been made.

It is also worth noting that so far Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has given absolutely no indication that he’s abandoned his desire to subjugate Ukraine entirely.

The idea that he would be willing to allow any part of Ukraine to join Nato is, for now, unthinkable.

All the indications so far suggest that any involvement of Nato is a complete non-starter.

A charred lorry, empty tear gas shells and posters of former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan – it was all that remained of a massive protest led by Khan’s wife, Bushra Bibi, that had sent the entire capital into lockdown.

Just a day earlier, faith healer Bibi – wrapped in a white shawl, her face covered by a white veil – stood atop a shipping container on the edge of the city as thousands of her husband’s devoted followers waved flags and chanted slogans beneath her.

“My children and my brothers! You have to stand with me,” she cried on Tuesday afternoon, her voice cutting through the deafening roar of the crowd.

“But even if you don’t,” she continued, “I will still stand firm.

“This is not just about my husband. It is about this country and its leader.”

It was, noted some watchers of Pakistani politics, her political debut.

But as the sun rose on Wednesday morning, there was no sign of Bushra Bibi, nor the thousands of protesters who had marched through the country to the heart of the capital, demanding the release of their jailed leader.

Exactly what happened to the so-called “final march”, and Bushra Bibi, when the city went dark is still unclear.

All eyewitnesses like Samia* can say for certain is that the lights went out suddenly, plunging D Chowk, the square where they had gathered, into blackness.

As loud screams and clouds of tear gas blanketed the square, Samia describes holding her husband on the pavement, bloodied from a gun shot to his shoulder.

“Everyone was running for their lives,” she later told BBC Urdu from a hospital in Islamabad, adding it was “like doomsday or a war”.

“His blood was on my hands and the screams were unending.”

But how did the tide turn so suddenly and decisively?

Just hours earlier, protesters finally reached D Chowk late afternoon on Tuesday. They had overcome days of tear gas shelling and a maze of barricaded roads to get to the city centre.

Many of them were supporters and workers of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the party led by Khan.

He had called for the march from his jail cell, where he has been for more than a year on charges he says are politically motivated.

Now Bibi – his third wife, a woman who had been largely shrouded in mystery and out of public view since their unexpected wedding in 2018 – was leading the charge.

“We won’t go back until we have Khan with us,” she declared as the march reached D Chowk, deep in the heart of Islamabad’s government district.

Insiders say even the choice of destination – a place where her husband had once led a successful sit in – was Bibi’s, made in the face of other party leader’s opposition, and appeals from the government to choose another gathering point.

Her being at the forefront may have come as a surprise. Bibi, only recently released from prison herself, is often described as private and apolitical. Little is known about her early life, apart from the fact she was a spiritual guide long before she met Khan. Her teachings, rooted in Sufi traditions, attracted many followers – including Khan himself.

Was she making her move into politics – or was her sudden appearance in the thick of it a tactical move to keep Imran Khan’s party afloat while he remains behind bars?

For critics, it was a move that clashed with Imran Khan’s oft-stated opposition to dynastic politics.

There wasn’t long to mull the possibilities.

After the lights went out, witnesses say that police started firing fresh rounds of tear gas at around 21:30 local time (16:30 GMT).

The crackdown was in full swing just over an hour later.

At some point, amid the chaos, Bushra Bibi left.

Videos on social media appeared to show her switching cars and leaving the scene. The BBC couldn’t verify the footage.

By the time the dust settled, her container had already been set on fire by unknown individuals.

By 01:00 authorities said all the protesters had fled.

Eyewitnesses have described scenes of chaos, with tear gas fired and police rounding up protesters.

One, Amin Khan, said from behind an oxygen mask that he joined the march knowing that, “either I will bring back Imran Khan or I will be shot”.

The authorities have have denied firing at the protesters. They also said some of the protesters were carrying firearms.

The BBC has seen hospital records recording patients with gunshot injuries.

However, government spokesperson Attaullah Tarar told the BBC that hospitals had denied receiving or treating gunshot wound victims.

He added that “all security personnel deployed on the ground have been forbidden” from having live ammunition during protests.

But one doctor told BBC Urdu that he had never done so many surgeries for gunshot wounds in a single night.

“Some of the injured came in such critical condition that we had to start surgery right away instead of waiting for anaesthesia,” he said.

While there has been no official toll released, the BBC has confirmed with local hospitals that at least five people have died.

Police say at least 500 protesters were arrested that night and are being held in police stations. The PTI claims some people are missing.

And one person in particular hasn’t been seen in days: Bushra Bibi.

“She abandoned us,” said one PTI supporter.

Others defended her. “It wasn’t her fault,” insisted another. “She was forced to leave by the party leaders.”

Political commentators have been more scathing.

“Her exit damaged her political career before it even started,” said Mehmal Sarfraz, a journalist and analyst.

But was that even what she wanted?

Khan has previously dismissed any thought his wife might have her own political ambitions – “she only conveys my messages,” he said in a statement attributed to him on his X account.

Speaking to BBC Urdu, analyst Imtiaz Gul calls her participation “an extraordinary step in extraordinary circumstances”.

Gul believes Bushra Bibi’s role today is only about “keeping the party and its workers active during Imran Khan’s absence”.

It is a feeling echoed by some PTI members, who believe she is “stepping in only because Khan trusts her deeply”.

Insiders, though, had often whispered that she was pulling the strings behind the scenes – advising her husband on political appointments and guiding high-stakes decisions during his tenure.

A more direct intervention came for the first time earlier this month, when she urged a meeting of PTI leaders to back Khan’s call for a rally.

Pakistan’s defence minister Khawaja Asif accused her of “opportunism”, claiming she sees “a future for herself as a political leader”.

But Asma Faiz, an associate professor of political science at Lahore University of Management Sciences, suspects the PTI’s leadership may have simply underestimated Bibi.

“It was assumed that there was an understanding that she is a non-political person, hence she will not be a threat,” she told the AFP news agency.

“However, the events of the last few days have shown a different side of Bushra Bibi.”

But it probably doesn’t matter what analysts and politicians think. Many PTI supporters still see her as their connection to Imran Khan. It was clear her presence was enough to electrify the base.

“She is the one who truly wants to get him out,” says Asim Ali, a resident of Islamabad. “I trust her. Absolutely!”

Rebel forces in Syria have taken control of several neighbourhoods in the country’s second-largest city, Aleppo, according to the UK-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).

As of Friday evening, SOHR said rebels were in control of more than half of the city.

The move is the biggest offensive against the Syrian government in years and the first time rebels fighting the forces of President Bashar al-Assad have reached Aleppo since being forced out by the army in 2016.

Video posted on a channel affiliated with the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) appears to show rebel fighters in vehicles inside the city.

BBC Verify has geolocated the footage to a western suburb of Aleppo.

Government forces meanwhile say they have regained positions in a number of towns in Aleppo and Idlib provinces, following an offensive launched by HTS and allied factions on Wednesday.

More than half a million people have been killed in the civil war that erupted after the government cracked down on pro-democracy protests in 2011.

An array of armed groups opposed to the Assad government – including jihadists – took advantage of the turmoil to seize swathes of territory.

The Syrian government – with help from Russia and other allies – later retook most the areas it had lost.

Idlib, the last remaining opposition stronghold, is mostly controlled by HTS, but Turkish-backed rebel factions and Turkish forces are also based there.

On Friday a statement posted on the rebel-affiliated channel said: “Our forces have begun entering the city of Aleppo.”

Videos verified by the BBC show armed men running in a street about seven kilometres (4.3 miles) from Aleppo’s medieval citadel in the centre of the city.

Another clip verified by the BBC showed large groups of people carrying luggage walking away from an area near Aleppo University. That video was recorded 3km away from a location where HTS-affiliated media claim rebel forces have entered the city.

The government says reinforcements have now reached Aleppo and it is driving the rebels out.

All flights out of Aleppo have been cancelled and the airport has been closed, a military source told Reuters news agency.

SOHR, which uses a network of sources on the ground in Syria, reported that Syrian and Russian planes carried out 23 air strikes on the Aleppo region on Friday.

The SOHR said 255 people had been killed in the fighting, the deadliest between rebels and pro-government forces in Syria for years.

Fighting in Idlib had largely wound down since 2020, when Turkey and Russia, Syria’s key ally, brokered a ceasefire to halt a push by the government to retake the province.

But on Wednesday HTS and its allies said they had launched their offensive to “deter aggression”, accusing the government and allied militias of escalation in the region.

It came as the Syrian government and its allies were preoccupied with other conflicts.

In neighbouring Lebanon, an Israeli military campaign has devastated the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, whose fighters helped turned the tide of the Syrian civil war.

Israel has also stepped up its air strikes inside Syria on targets linked to Iran and Iran-backed groups.

“It’s not just about brewing a good cup of coffee but connecting with customers on a deeper level.”

It was this one thought that made Harmanpreet Singh leave his family bakery to open a specialty coffee shop in the northern Indian city of Jalandhar.

It was an unexpected decision – coffee has always been popular in southern states, traditionally served strong and frothy in a steel tumbler. But it’s still not the first choice of beverage in the vast swathes of north India, where drinking tea is an intrinsic part of the culture.

For Mr Singh, the journey began in 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic when he saw a growing demand for specialty coffee, particularly among the city’s youth and the overseas residents who returned to the country at that time.

Recognising this shift, he moved to the southern city of Bengaluru to learn brewing techniques. “I studied everything – from the way coffee is served to the role things like decor, cutlery, music and even packaging played in the overall experience,” he said.

Three months later, Mr Singh put his learnings to test and opened Buland Café in Jalandhar.

Today, the cafe has 40 outlets across the city and has become a favourite spot for the city’s youth, who come here to relax or work over piping cups of coffee.

The beans, roasted in various blends, are sourced from the famed coffee estates of Karnataka. Mr Singh says he personally trained his staff on how to brew the perfect cuppa and take care of the coffee machine.

“It’s a thriving scene,” he says.

Mr Singh is among a crop of young entrepreneurs that are benefitting from a wave of specialty coffee consumption in small north Indian towns and cities.

India has had a vibrant cafe culture for years – but it has been largely restricted to big cities where homegrown specialty and international coffee chains dominate the market.

However, post-Covid, several tier-two cities are also seeing a boom in demand for such spaces as people embrace practices like remote working and look for new places to meet their friends and families.

Cafe owners say more Indians are now willing to pay more for coffee that’s roasted in smaller batches and customised as per their preferences.

“Clients have become more knowledgeable about the roasts and are interested in the origins of their coffee,” says Bharat Singhal, the founder of Billi Hu roasteries.

In fact, more than 44% of the Indian population now drinks coffee, a 2023 report by CRISIL, a marketing analytical company, shows.

While a lot of it comes from home consumption, the growing demand for specialty coffee in small cities plays a big part, says Bhavi Patel, a coffee consultant and dairy technologist.

Roastery owners say the growth is also evident in numbers. “Subscription based orders have surged by 50% in one year,” says Sharang Sharma, the founder of Bloom Coffee Roasters. “Customers have moved from French presses to pour-over or espresso machines, adopting more sophisticated brewing methods.”

While India is often associated with tea, it also has a long coffee-drinking history.

The culture took shape in the 1900s when Indian Coffee Houses emerged as a hangout spot for the intellectual and elite class. Housed in colonial-styled buildings, these cafes served English breakfasts with steaming hot coffee and offered a space to discuss politics and mobilise support during pivotal periods in history.

A shift occurred in the 1990s when economic reforms opened India to the world, allowing entrepreneurs to open private coffee shops frequented by young peeople, who saw it as a hip experience.

Café Coffee Day (CCD), which opened in 1996, quickly became one of India’s most popular and widespread coffee chains. At its peak, CCD boasted over 1,700 outlets, serving as a popular gathering spot for students and young adults. But mounting debt, management issues and the untimely death of its founder led to a closure of most of its outlets across India.

In 2012, the arrival of international giant Starbucks spurred the rise of homegrown specialty coffee brands like Blue Tokai Roasters, Third Wave Coffee and Subko Coffee.

Mr Singhal says that while big cities like Delhi, Jaipur, Mumbai, and Bengaluru still dominate the scene, smaller cities are quickly catching up.

However, it’s not just changing palettes that’s driving consumption. “Often it’s social media,” Mr Singh says. “People want good coffee but they also want to be in a space that’s trendy and which they can post online.”

Nishant Sinha from Lucknow city is among those who understood the trend early on.

His Roastery Coffee House offers trendy ambience, free wi-fi and cosy seating options along with an array of coffee roasts. While the beans are sourced from coffee estates in the south, the food is distinctively north Indian.

Others like Jatin Khurana in the northern city of Ludhiana are experimenting with flavours.

At his Urban Buhkkad cafe, Mr Khurana serves the “Shadi Wali Coffee [the wedding coffee]” – a wedding favourite in the 1990s, which became famous for its blend of instant coffee, milk, sugar, and a sprinkle of chocolate powder.

But instead of coffee powder, Mr Khurana uses freshly grounded beans, available in different roasts and varieties, to enhance its flavours. “The idea is to capture the essence of the beverage that many Indians grew up drinking,” he says.

It’s an exciting time to be in the business – but growth comes with its own set of challenges.

“Demand is growing, but a smaller coffee shop owners tend to cut corners, whether it’s by opting for substandard machines, serving weaker coffee shots, or hiring inexperienced baristas,” Mr Singhal says.

And running the business is not always profitable given the high price of coffee and the infrastructural costs involved in running such spaces.

When Neha Das and Nishant Ashish opened The Eden’s café in Ranchi in 2021, they wanted to create a safe and relaxed space for young students to get together in the city.

Today, their hazelnut coffee and cold brews have become a favourite of many.

“It took some time but longevity requires more than profit,” Ms Das says.

“It’s about dedication, crafting local flavours, and understanding customers, even if it means working with slim profit margins for the long haul.”

An exit poll in the Republic of Ireland suggests that Sinn Féin has 21.1% of first preference votes with Fine Gael having 21%, making the result of the general election too close to call.

The poll indicates Fianna Fáil has 19.5% of first preference votes.

It also suggests that 20% of the second preference votes goes to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, with Sinn Féin at 17%.

The exit poll was published at 22:00 local time and was carried out by Ipsos B&A for RTÉ, The Irish Times, TG4 and Trinity College Dublin. It has a margin of error of 1.4%.

In the 2020 Irish general election, Sinn Féin secured 24.53% first preference votes, while Fianna Fáil obtained 22.18% and Fine Gael got 20.86%.

Friday’s poll indicates Green Party first preference support stands at 4%; Labour at 5%; the Social Democrats at 5.8%; People Before Profit-Solidarity at 3.1% and Independents at 12.7%, Independent Ireland 2.2% with others on 1.9%.

The poll is based on 5,018 completed interviews that were carried out immediately after people voted at polling stations in 43 constituencies across the Republic of Ireland.

The results from this poll set the scene for the official counting of votes which starts at 09:00 local time on Saturday and is expected to continue across the weekend.

It is possible that some of the 43 constituencies may not have a final result until the beginning of next week.

Successful candidates are known as Teachtaí Dála (TDs) and there are 174 seats to fill, but the Ceann Comhairle (speaker) is returned automatically.

More than 680 candidates competed for the remaining 173 seats.

The number of seats required for an overall majority is 88 but no single party is fielding enough candidates to win a majority on its own.

The first meeting of the new Dáil (lower house of parliament) is on 18 December but it is unlikely coalition negotiations will have finished by then.

A government will be officially formed when the Dáil passes a vote to install a new taoiseach (Irish prime minister).

Few expect the new government to be in place before 2025.

It took four months after the last general election, in 2020, before Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, and the Green Party, reached a deal to form the previous Irish government.

Sinn Féin became the leading opposition party, and both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have both already ruled them out as a potential coalition partner in the event of a similar outcome this election.

The three largest parties are joined in the Dáil by a number of smaller parties and a significant number of independent candidates.

Politics in the Republic was traditionally dominated by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

Both parties emerged following a split in nationalist opinion over the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty.

Fianna Fáil was once seen as more centrist, Fine Gael as more conservative, but differences have blurred and both are now seen as centre-right parties.

This year’s election is the first major electoral test for the Fine Gael leader and Taoiseach Simon Harris.

He was new to the role in April, when he became the youngest person to lead the Republic of Ireland at 37 after his predecessor Leo Varadkar stepped down.

Sinn Féin is an Irish republican and democratic socialist party and the main opposition party.

Mary Lou McDonald took over leadership of the party in 2018, and since then the Dublin politician has sought to distance her party from criticism about its historic links to IRA violence.

Sinn Féin made significant gains in 2020 and topped the popular vote, winning 37 seats.

Since then it has become the largest party across Northern Ireland’s councils, as well as in its assembly and at Westminster.

Other parties putting forward candidates for the election include Labour, Social Democrats, PBP-Solidarity, Aontú and the newly-formed Independent Ireland.

The exit poll suggests there was a gender divide when it comes to first preference votes.

Figures show 22% of Sinn Féin voters were male, while 20% were female.

The share of male Fine Gael voters in the poll was 20%, while 22% of voters were female.

Fianna Fáil had 19% of male votes, while 20% were female.

In terms of transfers, 39% of Fianna Fáil’s second preferences went to a second party candidate, whereas 30% went to a Fine Gael candidate. About 5% of transfers went to Sinn Féin.

The poll also found that about 37% of Fine Gael transfers went to a second candidate, with 32% going to a Fianna Fáil candidate.

Analysis by BBC News NI’s political editor, Enda McClafferty

Exit polls are far from an exact science, but they are a good indicator of where the votes go.

In 2020, it correctly predicted a close battle between Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin and in the end, only three seats separated the parties

If the exit poll is right this time, then Sinn Féin will be pleased with its performance.

Coming in slightly ahead of Fine Gael, but short of the almost 25% Sinn Féin secured in 2020.

The party limped into the election campaign of the back of a series of damaging controversies and poor European and local council elections in June when it secured just 12% of the vote.

Over the three-week campaign, it managed to recover the lost ground with the promise of bringing change.

But delivering on that pledge could be a challenge if the exit poll is right.

It suggests Fine Gael on 21% and Fianna Fáil on 19.5% could return to the government benches, with the help of two smaller parties and some independents.

While Sinn Féin’s path to power is more challenging as it had hoped to lead a coalition of left-leaning parties, it may struggle to get the numbers with the performance of those smaller parties.

But the true picture will only become clear when all results are in.

Earlier, Fine Gael leader Simon Harris was the first major party leader to vote.

Harris and his family travelled to Delgany National School in County Wicklow shortly after polls opened at 07:00 local time.

Micheál Martin, the tánaiste (Irish deputy prime minister) and leader of Fianna Fáil, voted with his family at St Anthony’s Boys National School in Ballinlough, County Cork.

Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald voted at Deaf Village Ireland on the Navan Road in Dublin.

Things looked a little different for Holly Cairns, leader of the Social Democrats, who gave birth on polling day.

Elsewhere, officials went the extra mile for island inhabitants on polling day.

Presiding Officer Caroline Sharkey and Garda (Irish police officer) Ronan Steede set sail to Gola Island, off the County Donegal coast on the west of Ireland, where 31 registered voters were able to submit their ballots in the living room of one of the islanders.

Airspace around US airbases in Norfolk and Suffolk has been under scrutiny following multiple recent drone incursions. Those responsible for the aircraft have yet to be found and nearby residents have questioned how and why the incidents have been allowed to happen.

Drone incursions were initially reported at three US airbases – RAF Mildenhall and RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, and RAF Feltwell in Norfolk – between 20 and 22 November, and the aircraft has since reappeared.

In the village of Beck Row, Suffolk, which is situated next to RAF Mildenhall, residents reported brightly lit aerial vehicles hovering above their houses and over the base itself.

Casseem Campell, 28, said he had seen objects above his house in Beck Row.

He described seeing a triangle-shaped aerial vehicle, which was “a grey, dark colour”, in one of two evening sightings of drones he had made in the past week.

“They were really noisy and had lights. They looked official to be honest,” he added.

“If they are a threat, why aren’t they being shot down? Why let them fly over if they’re sinister?”

It has since emerged that a drone came within 273.40 yards (250m) of HMS Queen Elizabeth, the Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, as it entered the Port of Hamburg on 22 November.

RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, where US B-52 bombers had recently deployed, also reported a recent sighting.

British troops have been deployed to assist US efforts to track down those responsible.

Chrystal Mason, 28, said she had seen two drones in the past week in Beck Row.

The step-daughter of a RAF pilot, she described an orange ball in the sky at night and increased activity at the US airbase.

“In the last 10 days I have seen military jeeps around the village. There has been a much higher police presence than usual – military and UK police,” she said.

Mrs Mason also described what she believed was a drone being intercepted, though the BBC has not been able to verify this.

“There was a big orange light in the sky and all of a sudden it was gone. I heard people shouting ‘wow’,” the mother-of-one added.

Johnny Whitfield, who also lives in Beck Row, described seeing “lots of activity”.

“I’ve seen the drones three or four times,” he said, before confirming the sightings had taken place at night in the past week.

He also described the flying objects being lit up and hovering over the airbase, although he said he could not detect a noise, while he said the objects were large.

“All you see is light, but it’s a big, big light,” he added.

He said he felt the US military was being reticent about what was going on.

“You don’t know if they’re foreign or local. [The US Air Force] don’t give out much information.

“You get more information off Facebook than the base.”

All the residents of Beck Row that the BBC spoke to described increased military activity in the area with an apparent uptick of planes in the skies.

The BBC has also seen evidence that agents from the US Air Force Office of Special Investigations have been in the Suffolk area and have spoken to local people about what they have seen.

Roger Smith, a Suffolk-based military aviation enthusiast, told the BBC that he believed the US Air Force pilots had reverted to more secure communication methods in recent days.

“They’re now using an encrypted data link instead of radios when speaking to the ground,” he said.

This was supported by another member of the local aircraft spotter community who also claimed a US Air Force KC-46A Pegasus air refuelling aircraft was diverted to Glasgow Prestwick Airport in Scotland as it approached RAF Mildenhall because of drone activity.

Neither the Glasgow Prestwick Airport or the US Air Force would comment on the claims.

Defence sources have told the BBC that suspicion had fallen on a “state actor” being responsible for the incursions.

So far neither the US or UK authorities would be drawn on who might be responsible.

Defence minister Lord Coaker told the House of Lords on Thursday: “The Ministry of Defence is aware of these reports and working closely with the US visiting forces, Home Office police forces and other partners to respond to recent events.

“We take any safety issue seriously and maintain robust measures at Ministry of Defence sites. This includes counter-drone capabilities.”

The minister told Parliament: “It is illegal for drones to be flown or within the vicinity of these military sites and people should be aware of that.”

“This remains a live criminal investigation.”

Previously the Ministry of Defence, which owns the bases, said: “We take threats seriously and maintain robust measures at defence sites.”

The US Air Force in Europe said: “To date, installation leaders have determined that none of the incursions impacted base residents, facilities or assets.

“The Air Force is taking all appropriate measures to safeguard the aforementioned installations and their residents”.

French President Emmanuel Macron has toured Paris’s Notre-Dame cathedral live on TV, giving the public a first look inside the building since much of it was destroyed or damaged in a huge fire in 2019.

From the spire to the stained glass, it has been completely transformed. It is not just a renovation after the fire, but a complete overhaul including removing decades of crud and soot built up since the last restoration.

Here we take a look at some of the key features of the repair work and how it was achieved.

The collapse of the spire was the climax of the 2019 fire. Many people thought it was medieval, but in fact the original was taken down in the 1790s because it was deemed dangerous.

Its replacement, which burned down five years ago, was put up decades later as part of a neo-Gothic reconstruction conducted by architect Eugène Viollet-Le-Duc.

This time, carpenters used a mix of the traditional and the computerised to design and build the massive wooden base.

It was lifted into place by Europe’s largest crane, then a scaffolding shell was mounted allowing workers to assemble the steadily rising structure.

Like the rest of the roof, the spire is lined with lead. At the top a new gilded cock has been fitted to replace the original that fell in the fire. It was recovered but was too damaged to go back.

Inside the new cock are holy relics including a thorn from the cathedral’s Crown of Thorns, and a parchment with the names of 2,000 people who worked on the renovation.

The most striking feature of the renovated cathedral is the luminosity of the stonework. This is because all the limestone blocks have been cleaned, or in some parts replaced.

Replacement stone was sourced in quarries in northern France. Experts were able to detect tiny features in the original stone – like certain fossils – that helped them to determine the geographical origin.

The vast majority of the masonry was undamaged, but it was covered not just in age-old accretions of dust and dirt from the past, but also in a layer of soot and lead powder from the fire. It was cleaned with high-power vacuums, and then with a spray which peeled off to remove the dirt.

Overall some 40,000 square metres of stone were cleaned.

To rebuild the vaulted ceiling beneath where the spire had stood, masons had to relearn the principles of Gothic architecture – using a wooden frame to put the stones in place and crowning it all with the keystone.

It was the wooden roof that burned – all 100 metres of it. None of the 800-year-old timbers survived. But the decision was quickly made to replace them as faithfully as possible – with oak from the forests of France.

By happy coincidence an architect called Remi Fromont had conducted an in-depth study of the timber frame as part of his university thesis. This served as a template for carpenters.

Some 1,200 oak trees had to be found, with the stipulation that they be straight, free from knots and a condition called “frost-crack”, and 13 metres long.

Much of the wood was hand-sawn then hewed into shape with axes, just as the beams were in the 13th century.

Altogether there are 35 “fermes” (the triangular structures that take the weight) running the length of the building.

Many of the exterior sculptures – including the famous (but not medieval) gargoyles and chimaeras – were damaged by high-pressure hoses used to fight the fire. Many were already in poor condition because of pollution.

A workshop was set up in front of the cathedral to repair and where necessary replace these statues. Five of the gargoyles (products of Viollet-le-Duc’s imagination) were scanned by computer, and then re-made in limestone.

Inside the cathedral, the most famous sculptures – such as The Virgin of the Pillar and The Vow of Louis XIII – emerged unscathed. But they have all been cleaned and given minor repairs.

The cathedral’s many paintings have also been cleaned. These include the “Mays” – massive scenes from the life of Christ which were an annual gift to the cathedral in the 17th Century from the goldsmiths of Paris.

One of the most remarkable changes to the cathedral is the return of colour to the choir and many of the side-chapels.

Here again, the fire offered an opportunity to rediscover the glories that lay beneath decades of crud and soot. Blues, reds and golds have re-emerged, combining with the creaminess of the rejuvenated limestone to create a lightness that must be much closer to the original experience.

The same is true of the stained-glass windows. These were undamaged, but filthy. They were dismantled, removed, cleaned, and returned. The big rose-windows were left alone.

Again, much of what the visitor sees today is not actually medieval – but the product of the medieval imagination of Viollet-le-Duc.

The great organ – built in the 18th Century – was unaffected by either heat or water on the night of the fire. What did for it was the accumulation of a yellow dust – lead monoxide – in its pipes.

The whole structure – 12 metres high, six keyboards, 7,952 pipes, 19 wind-chests – was disassembled and taken to workshops outside Paris.

Sheep-leather linings were replaced and new electronic controls were added. After reinstallation the instrument was re-tuned – a task which takes several months as each pipe is minutely altered.

On 7 December, the Archbishop of Paris’s first words on entering the reclaimed cathedral will be: “Awake oh organ, Let God’s praise be heard!”

The eight bells of the north tower were also removed in 2023 – a massive operation given their size. They were cleaned and treated, and then returned a few weeks ago. The biggest of the bells is called Emmanuel.

Visitors will also notice a change to the liturgical lay-out of the cathedral, whose altar, lectern and seating were all destroyed. A simple bronze altar has been created, with new chalices for the sacraments.

There are 1,500 new wooden chairs for the congregation, and a new reliquary behind the choir to hold the Crown of Thorns.

New vestments have also been created for clergy by designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac.

Renovation work at Notre-Dame has been a boon for archaeologists, who have been able to access underground areas that date back to hundreds of years before the cathedral was built.

Among the many sets of bones they discovered are those believed to belong to the Renaissance poet Joachim du Bellay.

Another major discovery was the carefully buried remains of the medieval rood-screen, which originally separated the sacred part of the church from the congregation.

This 11-metre stone partition, built in the 13th Century, contained rich and colourful sculptures depicting the life of Christ. It was dismantled in the 18th Century following a change in church rules.

But clergy clearly hoped the remains would be rediscovered because the parts appear to have been lain with great care beneath the ground. It is hoped they can be pieced together and put on display.

Despite the success of the renovation, work is not complete. There is still scaffolding around much of the eastern end, and in coming years the outside walls of the apse and sacristy will need treatment.

There are also plans to redesign the esplanade, and to create a museum in the neighbouring Hôtel-Dieu hospital.

Former Harry Potter star Rupert Grint has been ordered to pay £1.8m in tax after losing a legal battle with HM Revenue & Customs.

Grint, who played Ron Weasley in the films, was originally told to pay the sum in 2019 after an HMRC investigation disputed one of his tax returns.

Lawyers for the 36-year-old appealled, arguing that money he received from a company had been correctly taxed as a capital asset, but HMRC said it should have been taxed as income at a higher rate.

However, Grint’s argument has been dismissed by a tax tribunal judge.

During the 2011-2012 tax year, Grint received £4.5m from a company that managed his business, and of which he was the only shareholder.

This payment was described as being for “likely residual income and bonuses” resulting from the Harry Potter films.

He argued he could pay capital gains tax on it at a rate of 10% rather than income tax and national insurance at a top rate of 52%.

In the ruling, tribunal judge Harriet Morgan dismissed Grint’s appeal and said the money “derived substantially the whole of its value from the activities of Mr Grint”, which was “otherwise realised” as income.

He previously lost another, separate court case in 2019 that involved a £1m tax refund.

Grint appeared in all eight Harry Potter films from 2001 until 2011.

Since then, he has appeared in the films Into the White and Knock at the Cabin, and also appeared on TV and in theatre.

He has starred in Apple TV series Servant for the last four years.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is in Florida to meet Donald Trump as Canada seeks to head off the president-elect’s threat to impose a 25% tariff on Canadian goods, a source has confirmed to the BBC.

Canadian media reported that Trudeau landed in Palm Beach International Airport on Friday evening to visit Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

The two spoke by phone earlier in the week after Trump announced that, upon taking office in January, he would slap an across-the-board tariff on all products entering the US from Mexico and Canada.

Neither the prime minister’s office nor Trump’s team have responded to a request for comment on the visit.

The trip was not included on Trudeau’s public itinerary for Friday. The two men will have dinner, the source said.

Trump has been at his Mar-a-Lago estate meeting with his transition team. Trudeau is reported to be the first G7 leader to visit the president-elect since the election.

Trudeau has often underscored that the two countries were able to successfully renegotiate a major trade pact during Trump’s first term, though the relationship between the two leaders has occasionally been rocky.

On Friday, speaking at an event in Prince Edward Island, Trudeau said the two countries “rolled up our sleeves and were able to create jobs on both sides of the border”.

He said looked forward to having many “great” conversations with Trump.

The Florida visit is the latest move by Canada as it seeks to avoid the hefty tariffs, which could have wide-reaching economic impacts.

It remains unclear whether the incoming Trump administration will actually move ahead with the threatened tariffs, as analysts note that the president-elect has been known to use such threats in the past as a negotiating tactic to achieve his goals.

Trump – who has also threatened the same levy against Mexico – has signalled that they would remain in place until both countries work to secure their shared borders with the US.

Trudeau said on Friday that “when Trump makes statements like that, he plans on carrying them out”.

He said his goal was to point out the tariff would not just harm Canadians but also raise prices for Americans and hurt that country’s economy.

Trudeau was accompanied on the trip by Dominic LeBlanc, the minister in charge of border security.

US media reported that Trudeau and Trump were joined at dinner by Howard Lutnick, Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary; Doug Burgum, tapped to lead the Department of the Interior; and Mike Waltz, who has been selected as the next national security adviser.

Canada is one of America’s largest trading partners and it sends about 75% of its total exports to the US. The two countries also share deeply integrated supply chains.

After the phone call with Trump, Trudeau held an emergency meeting on Wednesday with the leaders of Canada’s provinces and territories over how to manage the US-Canada relationship.

Trudeau is promising to present a united “Team Canada” approach to working with the US to make the case against the levy.

Several leaders of Canadian provinces have criticised Trump’s plan, saying it would be devastating to the country’s economy, including the oil and gas and automotive industries.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum also had a phone call with Trump this week.

• Canada’s oil patch rattled by Trump’s tariff threat
• ‘It’s going to be hard’: US firms race to get ahead of Trump tariffs

The number of crossings at the US-Canada border is significantly lower than that at the southern border, according to US Border Patrol data on migrant encounters.

During the 2024 fiscal year, there were around 23,700 apprehensions at the northern land border, while the southern border saw more than 1.53 million apprehensions.

But Canadian officials have said in recent days there is still joint work to be done to improve border security.