If the push to oust Bashar al-Assad was born anywhere, it was born in Deraa, a small city in Syria near the Jordanian border.

Here, on 21 May 2011, the tortured and mutilated body of 13-year-old Hamza al-Khatib was delivered to his family weeks after his arrest at an anti-government rally.

His death, and the torture of other local teenagers for writing anti-Assad graffiti, sparked widespread protests and a harsh crackdown by government forces.

If anyone in Deraa should be celebrating the fall of Assad’s regime, it’s the Khatib family.

But when we visited today, no one in that house was celebrating.

They had just been sent screenshots of documents found in the notorious Saydnaya prison confirming that Hamza’s older brother Omar – also arrested by the police in 2019 – had died in custody.

The boys’ mother, Samira, shaking with grief, told me she had been waiting for Omar to emerge from prison.

“I was thinking maybe he’ll come today or tomorrow,” she said. “Today, I got the news.”

Dressed all in black, and already mourning her husband, who died less than three months ago, she asked for former President Bashar al-Assad himself to experience what she had lived through.

“I hope he will pay the price,” she said. “And that God will take revenge on him, and on his children.”

Her nephew, Hossam al-Khatib, said the documents had been published on social media, by people scouring Saydnaya for information on their relatives. They found Omar’s file and shared it online, knowing that he was Hamza’s brother.

The fall of Assad has lifted the lid on decades of repression in Syria, and much of Deraa was out on the streets on Sunday, giddy with freedom, as rebel fighters took the capital Damascus and Assad fled.

Mobile phone footage shows crowds of men running around Deraa’s central square in a chaotic outpouring of joy – shouting and firing weapons into the air.

This area was a key opposition heartland during the Assad regime – heavy battles are etched onto schools and homes here, village after village corroded by tank rounds and machine gun fire.

The opposition in this southern part of Syria is different to the alliance led by Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which swept down from the north and took the capital last week. But they both converged on the capital on Sunday.

The Free Syria Army (FSA) began fighting here in 2011, when the harsh government crackdowns following Hamza’s death convinced some serving officers in Assad’s army to defect and form a rebel force.

One of them was Ahmed al-Awda, a poet who studied English literature at university before becoming an army officer, and then a rebel leader – now the militia leader of Deraa Province.

“You can’t imagine how happy we are,” he told me in the nearby town of Busra. “We have been crying for days. You can’t imagine what we feel. Everyone here in Syria lost family. Everyone was suffering.”

Mr Awda said he was among the first to enter Damascus on Sunday, along with HTS. The first thing he did, he added, was to go to the embassies and government buildings, to protect the people inside.

“We took many of the civilian government guys to the Four Seasons hotel, and put a very big force there to protect them,” he said.

“You know it will be a mad time, so I did my best to protect everybody there, even the government guys. I don’t want to punish them, they are Syrian.”

But he says he won’t forgive Assad so easily.

“I will do my best to bring him to judgement in court, to take his punishment, because we will not forget what he did to the Syrian people, and how he destroyed Syria.”

Assad’s departure has bestowed a fragile unity on Syria and its diverse opposition forces. But they no longer have a common enemy, and with outside powers still invested here, their differences could come under strain.

There are concerns that Syria could follow the path of Iraq and Libya and splinter into chaos.

“We saw what happened in Iraq and we refuse it,” Mr Awda said.

Assad’s forces weren’t the only ones he was fighting here over the past few years. Islamic State (IS) group cells – still scattered across the east of the country – were also a threat.

Mr Awda says he fought against them, killing a senior IS leader, Abu Ibrahim al-Qurayshi, two years ago.

Now Assad’s powerful backers, Iran and Russia, are no longer acting as a brake on IS, many here are worried about a resurgence.

Mr Awda is adamant this won’t happen. “No,” he insisted. “I kicked them out. We didn’t push Assad out only to live under IS.”

Now he wants free elections, believing that the Syrian people will never again choose anyone who would become a dictator.

In Deraa’s cemetery, the plaque on Hamza’s grave lies in pieces – broken by a government tank shell during fighting with rebel forces here, the family said.

“They kept hitting him even when he was dead,” one cousin remarked.

Neighbours watched in silence as the Syrian opposition flag was tied around Hamza’s headstone.

Behind it, the graves tell a story of 13 years of fighting: an air strike, a battle, a whole family killed in their home.

The war with Assad has ended – but peace in Syria has not yet been won.

North Korea has responded to South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s failed attempt to impose martial law, likening it to a military coup and accusing him of trying to run a “fascist dictatorship”.

Yoon made the shock declaration last week, accusing North Korea sympathisers of trying to undermine his government. His political future is still uncertain, with members of his own party so far refusing to impeach him.

An article on page six of North Korean state newspaper Rodong Sinmun on Wednesday said that Yoon’s “insane act” was “akin to the coup d’etat of the decades-ago military dictatorship era”.

“He brazenly brandished blades and guns of fascist dictatorship at his own people,” the article stated.

The developments have “revealed the weakness in South Korean society, that Yoon’s sudden martial law declaration is an expression of desperation, and that Yoon’s political life can end early”, it read.

The article in Rodong Sinmum had photos of the protests in Seoul, including those of young South Koreans carrying banners and K-pop light sticks.

Yoon’s short-lived martial law plunged the country into political turmoil. He remains in office but has been banned from leaving the country while being investigated for treason. Though it is unclear what, if any, authority he still has.

The leader of Yoon’s party, Han Dong-hoon, said he would no longer be involved in state affairs until his early exit from power is arranged. However, a roadmap for such an early exit is not expected until the end of the week.

The defence ministry said Yoon still has command over the armed forces. But the special warfare commander had earlier said that his men would not follow any new martial law orders.

There were fears North Korea might choose to exploit this crisis, and provoke Seoul, while there are doubts over the President’s command of his army.

An attempt to impeach the President over the weekend had failed, after Yoon’s ruling People Power Party chose to boycott the anonymous vote.

But the opposition Democratic Party, which holds the majority in parliament, has vowed to keep trying to impeach Yoon, with another vote expected on Saturday.

It needs at least eight members of Yoon’s party to cross over and vote to impeach the president with a two-thirds majority of the 300-seat parliament.

A humpback whale has made one of the longest and most unusual migrations ever recorded, possibly driven by climate change, scientists say.

It was seen in the Pacific Ocean off Colombia in 2017, then popped up several years later near Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean – a distance of at least 13,000 km.

The experts think this epic journey might be down to climate change depleting food stocks or perhaps an odyssey to find a mate.

Ekaterina Kalashnikova of the Tanzania Cetaceans Program said the feat was “truly impressive and unusual even for this highly migratory species”.

The photograph below shows the same whale photographed in 2022, off the Zanzibar coast.

Dr Kalashnikova said it was very likely the longest distance a humpback whale had ever been recorded travelling.

Humpback whales live in all oceans around the world. They travel long distances every year and have one of the longest migrations of any mammal, swimming from tropical breeding grounds to feeding grounds in cooler waters.

But this male’s journey was even more spectacular, involving two distant breeding grounds.

One theory is that climate change is altering the abundance of the tiny shrimplike krill humpback whales feed on, forcing them to travel further in search of food.

Alternatively, whales may be exploring new breeding grounds as populations rebound through global conservation efforts.

“While actual reasons are unknown, amongst the drivers there might be global changes in the climate, extreme environmental events (that are more frequent nowadays), and evolutionary mechanisms of the species,” said Dr Kalashnikova.

The wandering male was among a group of humpbacks photographed from a research vessel on the Pacific coast of Colombia in 2013.

He was then identified in a similar area in 2017 – and off Zanzibar in 2022.

The sightings are separated by a 13,046 km great-circle distance – the minimum distance for the route the whale might have taken, the scientists say, though it is likely to be much greater.

Since the earth is a sphere, the shortest path between two points is expressed by the great circle distance, which corresponds to an arc linking two points on a sphere.

The paperʻs findings are based on hundreds of thousands of photos of whales submitted by researchers, whale watchers and members of the public to the citizen science website, happywhale.com.

The database uses artificial intelligence to match the individual shapes and patterns of humpback whale tails, or flukes, thereby mapping their movements around the globe.

The research is published in the journal, Royal Society Open Science.

Find out more about humpback whales in The Secret’s of Antarctica’s Giants on BBC iPlayer.

Families of Syrian detainees have been searching for their missing loved ones since thousands of prisoners were released after the fall of the Assad regime on Sunday.

The family of a Syrian dentist who was arrested along with her six children has told the BBC they are still hoping to find them – as is the sister of a single mother who disappeared mysteriously.

Meanwhile, the daughter of a US-based psychotherapist who was snatched in 2017 and is thought to be dead says she has been buoyed by videos of people who were declared dead being found alive.

As rebel forces swept across the country in recent weeks, they freed thousands of political prisoners held in government jails – including the notorious Saydnaya prison near the capital, Damascus.

But with torture and executions commonplace in these places under Bashar al-Assad’s government, many are still waiting to see if their relatives are among those freed.

Ghinwa Muhammad Azzam was in the port city of Latakia when she went missing in 2017.

Ghinwa’s sister, Sanaa, tearfully told the BBC she did not know how her sister disappeared, or who might have taken her after she left for her job as a rug maker.

Described as a “beautiful” and “very loving” single mother, she was not thought to be political or involved with any opposition parties.

Aside from a single call to her daughter six weeks after her disappearance, saying “just pray for me”, Sanaa said Ms Azzam hasn’t been heard from since.

“I want closure, I want to know if she is dead or hurt,” Sanaa said.

She says a relative made contact with a prison guard two years ago, who said Ms Azzam was in a high-security prison and had an injured leg – “so we think they were torturing her” – but does not know any more than that.

That Ms Azzam’s Facebook profile “vanished” makes Sanaa suspect her sister was taken by the Syrian government.

She added: “We still hope to find her alive”, but after seeing videos of prisoners being released online, “I actually pray she is dead, it is heartbreaking”.

Following the overthrow of the Syrian government, civilians flocked to the notorious Saydnaya prison, north of the capital city of Damascus, in the hope of finding out about missing loved ones thought to be detained there.

The prison, referred to as a “human slaughterhouse” by rights groups, is where thousands of people were believed to have been detained, tortured and executed under the Assad regime.

Those who entered the military jail circulated footage showing the stark conditions inside on social media.

“I have relatives in Aleppo, but it is not easy for them to travel to Damascus to see the prison or look for missing people,” Sanaa, who lives in Texas, said.

“I hope to save my sister.”

Rania Al-Abassi was arrested from her home in Damascus in March 2013 by Syrian military intelligence officers. Her children, aged between two and 14 years old, were taken to prison with her.

Her husband, Abdul Rahman Yasin, was arrested the day before.

Rania’s sister, Naila Al-Abassi, a doctor living in Saudi Arabia, told the BBC “we cannot accept that Rania was killed”.

“Since the fall of the regime, we really hope we can see Rania and her kids again. Especially, we want to see her six children.”

At the time of their arrest, Ms Abassi’s children – Dima, Entisar, Najah, Alaa, Ahmed and Layan – were 14, 13, 11, eight, six and two respectively.

“They took Rania with her kids and since that day we don’t know anything about them,” Naila said.

The family have only received one piece of information about their detainment, which came shortly after the arrest. They believe the family was held at a prison in Damascus, known as the Palestine branch, which was operated by Syrian intelligence.

A female inmate who was released told the family in 2013 that she heard the voices of children in the prison, two weeks after the arrest.

Now that prisoners have been released, family members on the ground have visited the prisons to try to find them.

“We are watching the news and seeing people released from the prisons and looking at the videos to see if we can see them,” Naila said.

“But the prisons have been opened and we haven’t seen Rania yet. It is unbearable.”

“We were waiting for this day for 13 years,” she added. “But our wounds are still fresh now as if it happened yesterday.”

Majd Kamalmaz, a psychotherapist from Texas, disappeared in Syria in 2017. His daughter, Maryam, told the BBC she is still trying to find out what happened to him.

Mr Kamalmaz had travelled to Damascus to visit an elderly family member.

On the second day of his trip, Mr Kamalmaz – who was born in Syria but grew up and lived in the US – was stopped at a Syrian government checkpoint in Damascus, and has not been seen or heard from since that day.

Earlier this year, US intelligence officials told his family they had credible, classified information that he died in prison.

But Maryam Kamalmaz refuses to give up on the idea that her father may still be alive.

“The FBI told us he was dead – but they did not have a body or any concrete information,” she said.

“We are seeing stories of people [who] were declared dead and given death certificates and then they actually turned out to be alive.

“It renews our hope to find him alive. But if we don’t, then at least we want to find his remains and have some sort of closure.”

Maryam added: “We have people inside Syria going to the hospitals with high hopes, as well as to Saydnaya prison.

“I keep looking at the pictures and videos of people coming out of the Saydnaya prison, and thinking maybe I will see him there.”

Maryam said she does not know why her father was kidnapped. Her family believe he may have been being held as leverage by the Assad family because he was American.

South Korea’s former defence minister Kim Yong-hyun, who claimed responsibility for the president’s failed attempt to place the country under martial law last week, has tried to take his own life, an official said.

Authorities found him while making the attempt in his detention centre on Tuesday, Shin Yong-hae, the justice ministry’s correctional agency chief, told lawmakers.

Australian police have launched an investigation after a car was set alight and houses were vandalised with anti-Israel graffiti in Sydney.

The incident has been condemned by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese as a “hate crime”. He told ABC News: “There’s no place for antisemitism in this country, or anywhere for that matter.”

It comes days after a fire engulfed a synagogue in Melbourne, causing minor injuries to one man, in what police there are treating as a probable terror attack.

Authorities in Sydney said they were seeking two people aged between 15 and 20 over the vandalism incident.

The pair had been wearing “face coverings and dark clothing” and were seen running from the scene, New South Wales Police said.

“We need public assistance to come forward and help identify those two people,” Commissioner Karen Webb told reporters.

Police said the car blaze was extinguished shortly after firefighters were called to the scene in Woollahra, a suburb in Sydney’s east, at around 01:00 local time (14:00 GMT).

Anti-Israel messages, including “Kill Israiel” [sic], were found at the scene, scrawled on the fence of two properties and cars.

The vehicle that was set on fire had been driven to the scene by the suspects, police said.

Albanese said he had spoken to the Australian Federal Police (AFP) about the vandalism.

Earlier this week, the law enforcement body established a special taskforce to investigate incidents of antisemitism, including the alleged terror attack in Melbourne, and another vandalism spree that occurred in Woollahra last month. Police do not believe the two incidents in Woollahra are linked.

New South Wales Premier Chris Minns said the latest incident appeared to have been “specifically designed” to “intimidate the Jewish community in Sydney”.

“If the question is can we do more? I think the answer is yes, and I’m not closing the door to changes to the law,” he told reporters, adding that he had spoken with Israel’s Ambassador to Australia Amir Maimon.

The president of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, David Ossip, said his community was “deeply saddened” by what had happened, but that they would “not be cowed”.

Is the world’s fastest-growing big economy losing steam?

The latest GDP numbers paint a sobering picture. Between July and September, India’s economy slumped to a seven-quarter low of 5.4%, well below the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) forecast of 7%.

While it is still robust compared with developed nations, the figure signals a slowdown.

Economists attribute this to several factors. Consumer demand has weakened, private investment has been sluggish for years and government spending – an essential driver in recent years – has been pulled back. India’s goods exports have long struggled, with their global share standing at a mere 2% in 2023.

Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies report tepid sales, while salary bills at publicly traded firms, a proxy for urban wages, shrank last quarter. Even the previously bullish RBI has revised its growth forecast to 6.6% for the financial year 2024-2025.

“All hell seems to have broken loose after the latest GDP numbers,” says economist Rajeshwari Sengupta. “But this has been building up for a while. There’s a clear slowdown and a serious demand problem.”

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman paints a brighter picture. She said last week that the decline was “not systemic” but a result of reducing government spending during an election-focused quarter. She expected third-quarter growth to offset the recent decline. India will probably remain the fastest-growing major economy despite challenges like stagnant wages affecting domestic consumption, slowing global demand and climate disruptions in agriculture, Sitharaman said.

Some – including a senior minister in the federal government, economists and a former member of RBI’s monetary policy group – argue that the central bank’s focus on curbing inflation has led to excessively restrictive interest rates, potentially stifling growth.

High rates make borrowing more expensive for businesses and consumers, and potentially reduce investments and dampen consumption, both key drivers of economic growth. The RBI has kept interest rates unchanged for nearly two years, primarily because of rising inflation.

India’s inflation surged to 6.2% in October, breaching the central bank’s target ceiling (4%) and reaching a 14-month high, according to official data. It was mainly driven by food prices, comprising half of the consumer price basket – vegetable prices, for example, rose to more than 40% in October. There are also growing signs that food price hikes are now influencing other everyday costs, or core inflation.

But high interest rates alone may not fully explain the slowing growth. “Lowering rates won’t spur growth unless consumption demand is strong. Investors borrow and invest only when demand exists, and that’s not the case now,” says Himanshu, a development economist at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University.

However, RBI’s outgoing governor, Shaktikanta Das, believes India’s “growth story remains intact”, adding the “balance between inflation and growth is well poised”.

Economists point out that despite record-high retail credit and rising unsecured loans – indicating people borrowing to finance consumption even amidst high rates – urban demand is weakening. Rural demand is a brighter spot, benefiting from a good monsoon and higher food prices.

Ms Sengupta, an associate professor at Mumbai-based Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, told the BBC that the ongoing crisis was borne out by the fact that India’s economy was operating on a “two-speed trajectory”, driven by diverging performances in its “old economy and new economy”.

The old economy comprising the vast informal sector, including medium and small scale industries, agriculture and traditional corporate sector, are still waiting for long-pending reforms.

In contrast, the new economy, defined by the boom in services exports post-Covid, experienced robust growth in 2022-23. Outsourcing 2.0 has been a key driver, with India emerging as the world’s largest hub for global capability centres (GCCs), which do high-end offshore services work.

According to Deloitte, a consulting firm, over 50% of the world’s GCCs are now based in India. These centres focus on R&D, engineering design and consulting services, generating $46bn (£36bn) in revenue and employing up to 2 million highly skilled workers.

“This influx of GCCs fuelled urban consumption by supporting demand for luxury goods, real estate and SUVs. For 2-2.5 years post-pandemic, this drove a surge in urban spending. With GCCs largely established and consumption patterns shifting, the urban spending lift is fading,” says Ms Sengupta.

So the old economy appears to lack a growth catalyst while the new economy slows. Private investment is crucial, but without strong consumption demand, firms will not invest. Without investment to create jobs and boost incomes, consumption demand cannot recover. “It’s a vicious cycle,” says Ms Sengupta.

There are other confusing signals as well. India’s average tariffs have risen from 5% in 2013-14 to 17% now, higher than Asian peers trading with the US. In a world of global value chains, where exporters rely on imports from multiple countries, high tariffs make goods more expensive for companies to trade, making it harder for them to compete in global markets.

Then there is what economist Arvind Subramanian calls a “new twist in the tale”.

Even as calls grow to lower interest rates and boost liquidity, the central bank is propping up a falling rupee by selling dollars, which tightens liquidity. Since October, the RBI has spent $50bn from its forex reserves to shield the rupee.

Buyers must pay in rupees to purchase dollars, which reduces liquidity in the market. Maintaining a strong rupee through interventions reduces competitiveness by making Indian goods more expensive in global markets, leading to lower demand for exports.

“Why is the central bank shoring up the rupee? The policy is bad for the economy and exports. Possibly they are doing it because of optics. They don’t want to show India’s currency is weak,” Mr Subramanian, a former economic adviser to the government, told the BBC.

Critics warn that the “hyping up the narrative” of India as the fastest-growing economy is hindering essential reforms to boost investment, exports and job creation. “We are still a poor country. Our per capita GDP is less than $3,000, while the US is at $86,000. If you say we are growing faster than them, it makes no sense at all,” says Ms. Sengupta.

In other words, India requires a significantly higher and sustained growth rate to generate more jobs and raise incomes.

Boosting growth and consumption will not be easy in the short term. Lacking private investment, Himanshu suggests raising wages through government-run employment schemes to increase incomes and spur consumption. Others like Ms Sengupta advocate for reducing tariffs and attracting export investments moving away from China to countries like Vietnam.

The government remains upbeat over the India story: banks are strong, forex reserves are robust, finances stable and extreme poverty has declined. Chief economic adviser V Anantha Nageswaran says the latest GDP figure should not be over-interpreted. “We should not throw the baby out with the bathwater, as the underlying growth story remains intact,” he said at a recent meeting.

Clearly the pace of growth could do with some picking up. That is why scepticism lingers. “There’s no nation as ambitious for so long without taking [adequate] steps to fulfill that ambition,” says Ms Sengupta. “Meanwhile, the headlines talk of India’s age and decade – I’m waiting for that to materialise.”

Israel has confirmed it carried out attacks on Syria’s naval fleet, as part of its efforts to neutralise military assets in the country after the fall of the Assad regime.

In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said its ships struck the ports at Al-Bayda and Latakia on Monday night, where 15 vessels were docked.

The BBC has verified videos showing blasts at the port of Latakia, with footage appearing to show extensive damage to ships and parts of the port.

The IDF also said its warplanes had conducted more than 350 air strikes on targets across Syria, while moving ground forces into the demilitarised buffer zone between Syria and the occupied Golan Heights.

Earlier, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said it had documented more than 310 strikes by the IDF since the Syrian government was overthrown by rebels on Sunday.

In a statement, Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz said the IDF was aiming to “destroy strategic capabilities that threaten the State of Israel”.

He added that the operation to destroy the Syrian fleet had been a “great success”.

The IDF said a wide range of targets had been struck – including airfields, military vehicles, anti-aircraft weapons and arms production sites – in the Syrian capital, Damascus, as well as Homs, Tartus and Palmyra.

It also targeted weapon warehouses, ammunition depots and “dozens” of sea-to-sea missiles.

It added that it had done so to prevent them “from falling into the hands of extremists”.

In a video message, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Syrian rebel group that ousted President Bashar al-Assad, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), that Israel would “respond forcefully” if they allow Iran to “re-establish itself in Syria”.

He has previously expressed a desire for peaceful ties with the new Syrian government, and cast its interventions as defensive.

Rami Abdul Rahman, the founder of the SOHR, described the impact of the strikes as destroying “all the capabilities of the Syrian army” and said that “Syrian lands are being violated”.

Meanwhile, the IDF also confirmed it had troops operating in Syrian territory beyond the buffer zone bordering the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

The IDF acknowledged that its troops had entered Syrian territory but told the BBC that reports of tanks approaching Damascus were “false”.

It said some troops had been stationed within the Area of Separation that borders the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights “and then a few additional points”.

“When we say a few additional points, we’re talking the area of the Area of Separation, or the area of the buffer zone in vicinity,” IDF spokesperson Nadav Shoshani told the BBC.

BBC Verify has geolocated an image of an IDF soldier standing just over half a kilometre beyond the demilitarized buffer zone in the Golan Heights, inside Syria on a hillside near the village of Kwdana.

On Monday, the Israeli military released photos of its troops who crossed from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights into the demilitarised buffer zone in Syria where UN peacekeepers are based.

The IDF seizure of Syrian positions in the buffer zone was a “temporary defensive position until a suitable arrangement is found”, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday.

“If we can establish neighbourly relations and peaceful relations with the new forces emerging in Syria, that’s our desire. But if we do not, we will do whatever it takes to defend the State of Israel and the border of Israel,” he said on Monday.

Turkeys foreign ministry condemned Israel’s entry into the buffer zone, accusing it of an “occupying mentality” during a “sensitive period, when the possibility of achieving the peace and stability the Syrian people have desired for many years has emerged”.

This buffer zone, also known as the Area of Separation was set up as part of Israel’s ceasefire agreement with Syria in 1974 to keep Israeli and Syrian forces separated, following Israel’s earlier occupation of the Golan Heights.

Israel unilaterally annexed the Golan in 1981. The move was not recognised internationally, although the US did so unilaterally in 2019.

Asked about the IDF strikes on Monday night, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said Israel was concerned only with defending its citizens.

“That’s why we attack strategic weapons systems like, for example, remaining chemical weapons or long-range missiles and rockets in order that they will not fall into the hands of extremists,” he said.

On Monday, the UN’s chemical watchdog warns authorities in Syria to ensure that suspected stockpiles of chemical weapons are safe.

It is not known where or how many chemical weapons Syria has, but it’s believed former President Assad kept stockpiles.

• Follow here for updates
• What comes next for Syria?
• In maps: How did anti-Assad rebels take control?
• Syria rescuers end search for secret cells in notorious Saydnaya prison

Israel’s attacks come after Syrian rebel fighters captured the capital, Damascus, as Assad fled the country, reportedly for Russia. He, and before him his father, had been in power in the country since 1971.

Forces led by the Islamist opposition group HTS entered Damascus in the early hours of Sunday, before appearing on state television to declare that Syria was now “free”.

The man accused of shooting dead healthcare insurance CEO Brian Thompson in New York jostled with police and shouted at reporters as he was led into court on Tuesday, as more details emerged about a potential motive in the killing.

Luigi Mangione appeared at an extradition hearing in Pennsylvania where his lawyer, Thomas Dickey, said the 26-year-old would contest being moved to New York to face murder charges. “I haven’t seen any evidence that he’s the shooter,” he said.

Wearing an orange jumpsuit, Mr Mangione tried to address reporters as he arrived for the hearing. He was heard shouting “completely unjust” and “insult to the intelligence of the American people” before he was bundled into court by officers.

He was arrested on Monday after he was spotted at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s following a days-long manhunt that spanned several states. He was allegedly found with a gun similar to the murder weapon, a silencer and a fake ID.

Mr Mangione was denied bail for a second time on Tuesday after prosecutors said he was too dangerous to be released.

The judge then gave prosecutors 30 days to seek a warrant from New York Governor Kathy Hochul to secure his extradition to the state.

Hochul later said she would provide one. “I am co-ordinating with the District Attorney’s Office and will sign a request for a governor’s warrant to ensure this individual is tried and held accountable,” she said.

Mr Mangione looked around at the rows of reporters in court and smiled at times. At one point he interrupted his own lawyer who quickly quieted him.

• How the six-day manhunt unfolded
• What is a ghost gun, the weapon allegedly used in shooting?
• Who is the CEO shooting suspect?

Following the hearing on Tuesday afternoon, that lawyer, Mr Dickey, spoke to reporters outside court. “You can’t rush to judgment in this case or any case,” he said. “He’s presumed innocent. Let’s not forget that.”

Mr Mangione has been charged with several offences in Pennsylvania, including providing fraudulent identification to police and possessing an unlicensed firearm. He is being held at a Pennsylvania state prison and will plead not guilty.

In New York, he faces separate charges including murder for Mr Thompson’s killing on 4 December. The UnitedHealthcare CEO was gunned down by a masked man outside a Manhattan hotel in what police have described as a targeted attack.

Mr Thompson was named chief executive of the company, which is the largest private insurer in the US, in April 2021.

He had received threats before his death relating to medical coverage, according to his widow, Paulette Thompson, but a motive for his killing has not been suggested by prosecutors.

On Tuesday, however, as police poured through evidence and worked to piece together Mr Mangione’s movements after the shooting, more details emerged about his alleged grievances with the health insurance industry.

New York Police Department’s Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny told Good Morning America that he had read a three-page handwritten note allegedly found on the suspect when he was arrested.

“He does make some indication that he’s frustrated with the healthcare system in the United States,” he said. “He was writing a lot about his disdain for corporate America and in particular the healthcare industry.”

The note, which has been seen by several US media outlets, reportedly refers to “parasites” that “had it coming”. He also allegedly writes that he acted alone.

Former friends who spoke to the BBC said Mr Mangione had suffered from a back injury. They said he had left a surfing community in Hawaii over the summer of 2023 to undergo spinal surgery.

RJ Martin, a former roommate of the suspect who knew him in Hawaii, said the injury “prohibited him, at times, from just doing many normal things”.

Various details of Mr Mangione’s background have surfaced since his arrest. He was born in Maryland to a wealthy, well-known family, and police say he has ties to San Francisco, California. His last-known address was in Honolulu, Hawaii.

He attended the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League college, where he earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in software engineering.

Local media reported that Mr Mangione’s mother had reported him missing last month, telling authorities in San Francisco that she had not heard from her son since July.

“Our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi’s arrest,” Mr Mangione’s family said in a statement posted on social media by his cousin. “We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for all involved.”

General Motors has announced that it will stop funding the development of the Cruise self-driving taxi.

The company says it will now “refocus autonomous driving development on personal vehicles”.

GM also pointed to the increasingly competitive robotaxi market as a reason for the move.

In October, Tesla boss Elon Musk unveiled the electric car giant’s long-awaited robotaxi, the Cybercab, at the Warner Bros Studios in Burbank, California.

GM attributed the change of strategy to “the considerable time and resources that would be needed to scale the business”.

The company did not say how many Cruise employees could be moved over to GM.

GM, which owns about 90% of Cruise, said it has agreements with other shareholders that will raise its ownership to more than 97%.

In December 2023, Cruise said it would cut 900 jobs, about a quarter of its workforce.

Cruise had earlier pulled all of its US vehicles from testing after California halted its driverless testing permit.

In October 2023, one of its vehicles hit a pedestrian and dragged her for more than 20ft (6m), leaving her seriously injured.

Cruise admitted to submitting a false report to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in connection to that crash, resolving a criminal investigation last month.

Federal prosecutors said Cruise employees did not include a description of the pedestrian being dragged as part of their account on the morning after the incident.

Cruise co-founder Kyle Vogt left the company a few weeks later.

On Tuesday, following GM’s announcement, Mr Vogt posted on the social media platform X “In case it was unclear before, it is clear now: GM are a bunch of dummies.”

The Detroit-based manufacturer’s chief executive Mary Barra has previously predicted that the Cruise business could generate $50bn (£39bn) in annual revenue by 2030.

Rival motor manufacturing firms have also struggled with projects to build autonomous vehicles.

In 2022, Ford and Volkswagen announced that they would shut down Argo AI, their self-driving car joint venture.

Meanwhile, the emerging robotaxi industry has long attracted major players.

As well as Tesla, competitors to create self-driving cabs include Waymo, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet – and technology giant Amazon.

This was a remarkable day for Israel: Benjamin Netanyahu holds the record as its longest-serving prime minister. Now he has become the country’s first serving leader to take to the witness stand as a defendant in a criminal case.

Moreover, he did so amid ongoing war in Gaza and as Israel carries out attacks in Syria during a tumultuous week for the region.

Netanyahu’s lawyer, Amit Hadad, first opened the defence argument, portraying the corruption trial as biased and his client as the victim of a political witch-hunt.

Prosecutors, he said, “weren’t investigating a crime, they were pursuing a man”.

Netanyahu then sought to downplay the significance of the charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, and stress his political legacy. He strongly denies any wrongdoing.

“I have been waiting for eight years for this moment to tell the truth,” the veteran leader told the court in Tel Aviv.

“But I am also a prime minister… I am leading the country through a seven-front war, and I think the two can be done in parallel.”

Over the past four years, prosecutors have alleged that Netanyahu exchanged regulatory favours with media owners in Israel seeking positive press coverage.

They also accuse him of accepting pricey gifts – including cigars and pink champagne – in exchange for advancing the personal interests of a millionaire Hollywood producer.

Netanyahu told the three-judge panel that Israeli media had launched “absurd” attacks on him over the years. He said it was “doubly absurd” to suggest the presents he had received from wealthy friends were illicit.

In a long diatribe, the prime minister, who leads the right-wing Likud party, criticised his country’s media for what he suggested was its leftist stance.

He accused Israeli journalists of hostility towards him over the years because he did not join the push for a Palestinian state.

Standing rather than sitting through his testimony, Netanyahu said: “Had I wanted good coverage all I would have had to have done would be to signal toward a two-state solution… Had I moved two steps to the left I would have been hailed.”

The Israeli PM smiled widely when he first entered the Tel Aviv District Court around 10:00 local time (08:00 GMT) and stayed until proceedings concluded just before 16:00.

The trial was moved from Jerusalem after being delayed for security reasons and convened in a small underground courtroom that also serves as a bomb shelter.

A limited number of accredited journalists were able to enter to report – others had to follow via a live feed from a room on the floor above.

Testifying is expected to take up a large portion of Netanyahu’s time over the coming weeks. Last week, judges ruled that he must appear twice in court this week and then three times a week going forward.

He is expected to shuttle between the courthouse and the war room at the nearby Israeli defence ministry.

Prominent ministers turned up at the courthouse during the morning in a show of support for the veteran leader and to criticise the legal proceedings.

“The court had to humiliate the Prime Minister, has to disgrace the state of Israel and hurt the security of the state,” said the Likud transportation minister, Miri Regev.

“What would have happened if they would have postponed his testimony by a few months?”

Outside the court, a line of security guards kept apart small but noisy crowds of people supporting and protesting Netanyahu.

Eliza Ziv, from Hadera, north of Tel Aviv, said that in times of turmoil, no other Israeli leader came close to the PM’s capabilities.

She added that the “the hatred of the anti-Netanyahu camp, it’s not just hate for him, but for his supporters”.

Meanwhile, standing on the other side of the courthouse entrance, Siviona from Tel Aviv told me she saw the veteran leader as “an enemy of the people” who prioritised his political survival above the best interests of the country.

Some relatives and supporters of Israeli hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza came to press for more to be done to free their loved ones.

Hadas Kalderon’s two children were released as part of a temporary truce last year, while her ex-husband, Ofer, remains in captivity.

She told the BBC that the prime minister “cares more about his own sins, his private sins, more than caring for his citizens”.

“He doesn’t care about the hostages. It’s very sad”.

Prior to the war in Gaza, Netanyahu’s trial opened up deep divisions in Israel and dominated discourse through five successive Israeli elections.

Critics of the prime minister saw his current government’s efforts to curb the powers of the judiciary as linked to his legal troubles, although he denied that.

While the deadly attack by Hamas on 7 October 2023 brought public unity, that has largely fallen apart as the war that it triggered has dragged on.

In recent weeks, Israel has reached a fragile ceasefire in Lebanon with the armed group, Hezbollah.

But at the same time, there have been renewed domestic tensions between key cabinet ministers and the judiciary, with threats to bring back some contentious legal reforms.

This trial is not expected to conclude for more than a year.

Even if the prime minister was found guilty, he could then appeal to the Supreme Court, meaning that these legal proceedings look set to continue to overshadow Israeli politics for the foreseeable future.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is doing “well” after undergoing surgery for a brain bleed, his doctors say.

The 79-year-old was taken to hospital in the capital, Brasília, on Monday after he had complained of a severe headache.

An MRI scan revealed the bleed and Lula was transferred to the renowned Sírio-Libanês hospital in São Paulo to have it drained.

The intracranial haemorrhage was caused by a blow to the head he sustained when he fell in his bathroom at the presidential residence in October, according to a hospital statement.

Doctors said they had performed a craniotomy on the president, a procedure in which part of the bone is surgically removed from the skull to treat the bleed and relieve the pressure. The bone is then replaced.

In a news conference on Tuesday morning local time, the doctors said that the president was in a stable condition following the surgery and was conscious.

They said Lula was “lucid” and conversing with medical staff.

They also insisted that he had not sustained any brain injury and was not experiencing and after-effects from the surgery.

Asked when he would return to the capital, doctors said that if everything went well, they expected Lula to be back in Brasilia “next week”.

Earlier, the presidential spokesman, Paulo Pimenta, had said that Lula would likely remain in the intensive care unit for another 48 hours.

“He is stable, conscious and calm,” Mr Pimenta said.

While Lula is in hospital, Vice-President Geraldo Alckmin will take on some of the president’s commitments, including welcoming Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who is due to arrive in Brazil later today.

The doctors said the bleeding was a result of the fall Lula had sustained in October.

They explained that it was not unusual for problems from a blow to the head to appear “months later”.

Lula had slipped in the bathroom in the Alvorada Palace on 19 October and hit the back of his head.

He had to have five stitches and, on his doctors’ advice, cancelled his planned trip to Russia for a summit of the Brics countries.

He returned to full duties days later.

Lula has been in power since 1 January 2023 after narrowly beating the incumbent, Jair Bolsonaro, in a bitterly fought election.

During the election campaign, he often joked that he had “the energy of a 30-year-old”.

The prime minister of Syria’s new transitional government has said it is time for people to “enjoy stability and calm” after the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad.

Mohammed al-Bashir, the former head of the rebel administration in the north-west, was speaking to Al Jazeera after being tasked with governing until March 2025 by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahir al-Sham (HTS) and its allies.

Bashir chaired a meeting in Damascus on Tuesday attended by members of his new government and those of Assad’s former cabinet to discuss the transfer of portfolios and institutions.

It came as the UN envoy for Syria said the rebels must transform their “good messages” into practice on the ground.

The US secretary of state meanwhile said Washington would recognise and fully support a future Syrian government so long as it emerged from a credible, inclusive process that respected minorities.

In 2011, Assad brutally crushed a peaceful pro-democracy uprising, sparking a devastating civil war in which more than half a million people have been killed and 12 million others forced to flee their homes.

Before this week, Mohammed al-Bashir was little known outside the areas dominated by HTS in the north-western provinces of Idlib and Aleppo.

According to his CV, he trained as an electrical engineer and worked at gas plants before the start of the civil war in 2011.

In January, Bashir was appointed prime minister of the Salvation Government (SG), which HTS established to run the territory under its control.

The SG functioned like a state, with ministries, local departments, judicial and security authorities, while maintaining a religious council guided by Islamic law.

Around four million people, many of them displaced from elsewhere in the country, lived under its rule.

When institutions stopped functioning in Aleppo after HTS and its allies captured the city earlier this month at the start of their lightning offensive, the SG stepped in to restore public services.

Technicians reportedly helped repair local electricity and telecommunications networks, security forces patrolled streets, medics volunteered at hospitals, and charities distributed bread.

“It is true that Idlib is a small region lacking resources, but they [SG officials] have a very high-level of experience after starting with nothing,” HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani was heard telling Assad’s former prime minister, Mohammed al-Jalali, in a video of a meeting in Damascus on Monday.

“We will benefit from your experiences. We certainly won’t ignore you,” he added.

On Tuesday, Bashir was pictured chairing a meeting of former SG ministers and ministers who served under Jalali. He was sat in front of the Syrian opposition and the HTS flags.

“[We] invited members from the old government and some directors from the administration in Idlib and its surrounding areas in order to facilitate all the necessary works for the next two months until we have a constitutional system to be able to serve the Syrian people,” Bashir told Al Jazeera afterwards.

“We had other meetings to restart the institutions to be able to serve our people in Syria,” he added.

Also on Tuesday, rebel commander Hasan Abdul Ghani announced his forces have taken control over the eastern Syrian city of Deir al-Zour. It had previously been captured by Syrian Kurdish troops on Friday.

Meanwhile, life appeared to be slowly returning to normal in the capital Damascus after two days of near-shutdown.

There were many pedestrians and cars out on the streets, and some shops and restaurants were open.

People were also sweeping away spent bullet cases that littered the ground around the central Umayyad Square, where many rebel fighters fired into the air as crowds celebrated the end of Assad’s 24-year rule.

A Muslim cleric there told the BBC that Syrians were looking to the future and wanted a peaceful and united country.

“We want to establish a nation built on principles of nationalism, justice, and the rule of law, a technocratic state where institutions are respected, and equal opportunities are guaranteed for all,” Sheikh Abdul Rahman al-Kouky said.

UN special envoy Geir Pedersen told reporters in Geneva the transition needed to ensure “the representation of the broadest possible spectrum of the Syrian society and the Syrian parties”.

“If this is not happening, then we risk new conflict,” he warned.

Pedersen said the designation of HTS as a terrorist organisation by the UN, US, UK and other countries would be a “complicating factor” in efforts to find a way forward.

HTS’s precursor, al-Nusra Front, pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda in 2013. But three years later, it formally cut ties with the jihadist group.

“The reality is so far that HTS and also the other armed groups have been sending good messages to the Syrian people… of unity, of inclusiveness,” Pedersen noted.

“We gave also seen… reassuring things on the ground” in Aleppo and Hama, another major city that was captured last week, he added.

He said the most important test would be how the transitional arrangements in Damascus were organised and implemented.

“If they are really inclusive of all the different groups and all the communities in Syria… then there is a possibility for a new beginning.”

“And then I do believe that the international community will look at the [terrorist] listing of HTS again,” he added.

Later, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in effect laid out a series of conditions which, if fulfilled, would see Syria enjoy Washington’s full recognition.

“It’s imperative that all actors involved protect civilians; respect human rights, especially of vulnerable minorities; preserve the state’s institutions, its services to help meet the needs of the Syrian; and to build towards inclusive governance,” he said.

“Statements by rebel leaders to these ends are very welcome, but of course, the real measure of their commitment is not just what they say but what they do.”

Across Germany Syrians have been celebrating in the streets the downfall of former president Bashar al-Assad. But now many will be feeling less euphoric, as some politicians question their future in Germany.

There are around a million people with a Syrian passport in Germany. Most of them came from 2015-16, after Angela Merkel’s government made a decision not to close Germany’s borders to refugees fleeing Syria’s civil war.

The mood at the time was that Germany would manage. The climate now is rather different.

Within hours of the news of Assad’s fall, a fierce political debate erupted in Germany over whether Syrian refugees should go back to Syria.

Snap elections are being held in Germany on 23 February. With migration topping surveys of voters’ concerns, some politicians clearly feel talking tough on Syrian refugees will win them votes.

Conservative hardliners and far-right politicians are arguing that if Syrians had fled to Germany to escape Assad, then they can immediately now return back to Syria.

Some right-wingers want to stop granting asylum to people from Syria immediately.

“If the reason for asylum disappears, then there is no longer any legal basis to stay in the country,” said Markus Söder, conservative leader of Bavaria.

Jens Spahn, deputy leader of the conservative CDU parliamentary group, has suggested chartering planes and giving Syrians €1,000 (£825) to leave the country.

“Whoever in Germany celebrates a ‘free Syria’ obviously has no reason any more to have fled,” the leader of the far-right AfD party, Alice Weidel, posted on X. “He should go back to Syria immediately.”

Sahra Wagenknecht, who this year set up a new anti-migrant far-left populist party, echoed the AfD’s rhetoric.

“I expect the Syrians, who are celebrating here the takeover of power of Islamists, to return back to their home country as soon as possible,” she said in an interview with German magazine Stern.

Left-wing and Green politicians meanwhile have expressed outrage, calling such comments irresponsible, populist and inappropriate, particularly given how unclear the situation in Syria is.

“Whoever tries to misuse the the current situation in Syria for their own party political purposes has lost touch with reality in the Middle East,” said Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s Green foreign minister.

“No-one can predict today – and in the next few days – what will happen in Syria and what that means for security policy.”

Some left-wingers have been blunter. “All those who start now talking about deportations to Syria are, and excuse me for the language, quite simply depraved scumbags,” Jan van Aken, leader of the radical left Linke party, told journalists.

On Monday Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees put on hold all pending applications from Syrian asylum seekers.

This affects 47,270 Syrians in Germany, who are waiting for an answer to their application for asylum.

In a written statement to the BBC, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees said it was temporarily postponing decisions on applicants from Syria because the situation in Syria was so unclear. “Based on the current situation and the unforeseeable developments, no final decision can currently be made on the outcome of an asylum procedure.”

If the situation becomes more stable, officials say, applications will be assessed again, possibly using different criteria.

Studies show that the Syrians who arrived a decade ago are young, on average 25 years old, and tend to have higher levels of education and good rates of employment.

The Syrian men who arrived in 2015 have higher rates of employment than native-born German men.

Many Syrians work in healthcare, including 5,000 Syrian doctors. If the situation in Syria is unstable, it is unlikely they would want to leave.

Many have also received German citizenship, meaning they have learnt German and are financially supporting themselves: 143,000 Syrians received German citizenship between 2021 and 2023, forming the largest nationality to get a German passport.

But about 700,000 Syrians are still classed as various types of asylum seekers. Some are registered as refugees, others have been granted political asylum, while many have what is called subsidiary protection, which means their country of origin is unsafe.

The freeze on pending application decisions does not mean Germany will necessarily stop taking in refugees from Syria once the situation becomes clearer.

And it should not at the moment impact those who already have been granted asylum or refugee status. 



But some politicians argue that once the country of origin is no longer dangerous, then refugees can go back home. This could effectively mean in many cases withdrawing the current right to remain.

A decade ago Germany opened its arms to Syrians. Now, the ferocious and polarised political debate will only add to the uncertainty many are already feeling.

Syrian rebel fighters say they have found around 40 bodies showing signs of torture in the mortuary of a military hospital in a suburb of Damascus following the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad.

Video and photos showed bodies wrapped in blood-stained white shrouds piled up inside a refrigerated room at Harasta Hospital on Monday.

Several of the bodies appeared to have wounds and bruising on their faces and torsos. Pieces of adhesive tape bearing numbers and names were also visible.

“I opened the door of the mortuary with my own hands, it was a horrific sight,” Mohammed al-Hajj, a member of a rebel group from southern Syria, told AFP news agency.

He said the rebels had gone to hospital after receiving a tip from a member of staff about bodies being dumped there.

“We informed the [rebel] military command of what we found and co-ordinated with the Syrian Red Crescent, which transported the bodies to a Damascus hospital so that families can come and identify them.”

It was not clear how long the bodies had been stored at the mortuary, but they were at various stages of decomposition.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, says almost 60,000 people were tortured and killed in the Assad government’s prisons.

Human rights groups say more than 100,000 people have disappeared since Assad ordered a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 2011 that triggered the civil war.

A Syrian non-governmental organisation said it was likely that the bodies in Harasta were detainees from the notorious Saydnaya prison, which is just to the north of Damascus.

“Harasta Hospital served as the main centre for collecting the bodies of detainees,” Diab Serriya, a co-founder of the Association of Detainees and the Missing in Sednaya Prison (ADMSP), told AFP.

“Bodies would be sent there from Saydnaya prison or Tishrin Hospital, and from Harasta, they would be transferred to mass graves,” he added.

The discovery of the bodies came as the Syria Civil Defence, whose rescue workers are widely known as the White Helmets, announced that it had concluded a search operation for possible detainees in secret cells or basements at Saydnaya prison without finding anyone.

Five specialised teams assisted by two K9 dog units and individuals familiar with the layout of the prison checked all buildings, basements, courtyards, ventilation shafts, sewage systems, surveillance camera cables and surrounding areas on Monday, as crowds gathered there in the hope of finding their missing relatives.

“The search did not uncover any unopened or hidden areas within the facility,” the Syria Civil Defence said.

“We share the profound disappointment of the families of the thousands who remain missing and whose fates remain unknown,” it added.

The ADMSP meanwhile shared what it said was an official document, dated 28 October, saying that 4,300 detainees were being held at Saydnaya.

They comprised 2,817 judicial detainees held in the prison’s “White Building” and 1,483 detainees held on charges related to terrorism and military tribunals in the “Red Building”.

“This approximate number represents the detainees who were released at the time of the prison’s liberation,” the ADMSP said. The BBC could not immediately verify the information.

Rebel fighters entered Saydnaya prison and Harasta hospital as they advanced into Damascus over the weekend, prompting President Bashar al-Assad to step down and flee the country.

The ADMSP said in a 2022 report that Saydnaya “effectively became a death camp” after the start of Syria’s civil war in 2011.

It estimated that more than 30,000 detainees had either been executed or died as a result of torture, lack of medical care or starvation at the facility between 2011 and 2018.

It also cited released inmates as saying that at least another 500 detainees had been executed between 2018 and 2021.

ADMSP also described how “salt chambers” were constructed to serve as primitive mortuaries to store bodies before they were transferred to Tishreen Hospital for registration and burial in graves on military land.

Amnesty International used the phrase “human slaughterhouse” to describe Saydnaya and alleged that the executions had been authorised at the highest levels of the Assad government, and that such practices amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Assad government dismissed Amnesty’s claims as “baseless” and “devoid of truth”, insisting that all executions in Syria followed due process.

On Monday night, the leader of the Islamist militant group whose offensive led to the end of Assad’s 24-year rule said former senior officials who oversaw the torture of political prisoners would be held accountable.

Abu Mohammed al-Jolani of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) said the officials’ names would be published and repatriation sought for those who had fled abroad. Rewards would also be offered to anyone who provided information about their whereabouts, he added.

In just two weeks, Syrian rebels have swept from their enclave in the north west to capture a string of major cities, before reaching the capital Damascus and toppling President Bashar al-Assad 13 years after the start of the country’s civil war.

In convoys of small vehicles and motorbikes, fighters led by the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) moved rapidly along the north-south highway which forms the country’s main spine to take Damascus without resistance.

But while many in the country are celebrating the downfall of a family dynasty that ruled Syria with an iron fist, the future is uncertain and the situation on the ground remains in flux, with a number of different rebel groups controlling different parts of the country.

• Live updates on the downfall of Assad
• Watch: BBC reports from inside Damascus
• What has just happened in Syria?
• Analysis: End of Assad rule will reshape region’s balance of power

The fall of the Assad regime was brought about by the sudden and unexpected advance by HTS rebels but, although the group controls Syria’s main cities, it does not govern the whole country.

Syria has for years been controlled by a patchwork of rebel groups including HTS in Idlib and Kurdish-led groups in the country’s north east, some of which have also taken territory in recent days and weeks.

None of the rebel groups will mourn the falling of the Assad regime, but finding a consensus over how to run the country could still prove difficult and in the north of the country there have been clashes between competing factions.

After years locked behind frozen frontlines, the rebels mounted a lightning advance, culminating in the toppling of the president and takeover of the capital at the weekend.

After taking Syria’s second city Aleppo at the end of November, the rebels continued their offensive, moving south to take control of the city of Hama last Thursday.

The advance continued at pace, with Syria’s third city, Homs, falling on Saturday shortly before government forces also lost control of the capital.

Syria, with a population of about 22 million people, is located on the east coast of the Mediterranean sea. It borders Turkey to the north, Lebanon and Israel to the west and south west, Iraq to the east and Jordan to the south.

Turkey, Western powers and several Gulf Arab states have backed varying elements of the Syrian opposition to varying degrees during the conflict.

The Lebanon-based Hezbollah movement, backed by Iran, has fought alongside the Syrian regime army but has been severely weakened by its conflict with Israel. This has been seen as a key reason why the rebel advance was so successful.

Israel, concerned by what it calls Iran’s “military entrenchment” in Syria, has launched air strikes against Syria’s military.

Israeli warplanes have reportedly been carrying out hundreds of airstrikes across Syria, targeting Syrian Army military facilities, including weapon warehouses, ammunition depots, airports, naval bases and research centres.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) says it has documented more than 300 strikes by Israel since the fall of the Assad regime on Sunday, including on the capital, Damascus, Aleppo and Hama.

Reports say that many of the facilities hit have been completely destroyed.

Israel says its actions are to prevent weapons falling “into the hands of extremists” as Syria transitions into a post-Assad era.

Israel also says it has temporarily seized control of a demilitarized buffer zone in the Golan Heights, saying the 1974 disengagement agreement with Syria had “collapsed” with the rebel takeover of the country.

It denies reports it has tanks approaching Damascus but says some troops are operating in Syrian territory beyond the buffer zone.

The Golan Heights is a rocky plateau about 60km (40 miles) south-west of Damascus.

Israel seized the territory from Syria in the closing stages of the 1967 Six-Day War and unilaterally annexed it in 1981. The move was not recognised internationally, although the US did so unilaterally in 2019.

In the northern city of Manbij there have been clashes between Turkish-backed forces and Kurdish-led rebels.

Both sides claimed to have taken parts of the city and fighting is reported to be ongoing in some neighbourhoods.

Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War said they could not yet ascertain who was in control of Manbij.

In 2015, Russia sent thousands of troops to Syria to help keep President Assad in power.

In return for this military assistance, Russia was given 49-year leases on two key military bases.

The port at Tartous is Russia’s only major overseas naval base and also its only naval base in the Mediterranean.

Along with the air base at Hmeimim, which is often used to fly Russia’s military contractors in and out of Africa, the two bases play an important role in Russia’s ability to operate as a global power.

The Kremlin has said it will hold discussions with Syria’s new administration on the future of both sites.

A Syrian woman whose grandfather, father and two brothers were detained by the military nearly 12 years ago has told the BBC it is “devastating” that her loved ones remain missing, despite the country’s most notorious prison being emptied.

“Now, miles away from that most brutal prison, we are huddling around screens, our hearts suspended between hope and despair,” Hiba Abdulhakim Qasawaad, a 24-year-old from the city of Homs, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“We are scanning every face in the footage, searching for traces of our loved ones. This is the only thing that we can do.”

On Sunday, when rebel forces swept into the country’s capital and declared an end to Bashar al-Assad’s rule, families rushed to Saydnaya Prison outside Damascus, where political opponents were reportedly held, tortured and executed.

But with rescue workers now ending their search for possible detainees in the prison, some families face renewed anguish.

“Now freedom rings like a bell too loud for ears accustomed to silence,” Ms Qasawaad said.

“Now, our hearts racing, we have this anticipation, joy and pain as we await the moment when we can finally embrace them, free at last, but I don’t know if we can see them again, because now we are torn between finding answers or never knowing at all.”

Ms Qasawaad was 12 years old when she witnessed soldiers drag the males in her family out of their home in the middle of the night on 28 January 2013. They were among 48 members of her family seized in a raid, she said.

Another of her brothers had already been killed fighting Assad’s army in 2012, she said, during a civil war that broke out after the Arab Spring protests in 2011.

“No words can describe the overwhelming anguish that consumed us at that time,” she said.

She has not seen her male family members since then – but released prisoners said they heard their names from inside Saydnaya, she said.

Her grandfather, who was born in 1939, would now be elderly, while her father was born in 1962, and her brothers in 1989 and 1994.

Ms Qasawaad said that after the fall of Assad’s rule and the liberation of prisoners, her family is feeling “a mixture between laughter and tears”.

“We don’t know what will happen next, all we can do is keep searching,” she said. “We hope we have this spark of happiness again in our lives, because it was swept away with the day that they have taken them.”

It wasn’t DNA or facial recognition technology that cracked the case. Nor did amateur online sleuths make the breakthrough.

In the end, it was a McDonald’s restaurant employee – hours away from the scene of the crime – who spotted a man resembling a “person of interest” photo.

The suspect was careful to wear a mask while traveling around New York City, but pulled it down for a second to flirt with a woman behind the desk at a youth hostel, and again to eat at McDonald’s.

That may have been enough.

Police in Altoona, Pennsylvania, swooped into the restaurant and arrested Luigi Mangione, a 26-year-old from a wealthy Baltimore-area family with a private and Ivy League education.

After six dramatic days, the hunt for the man alleged to have gunned down UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson was over.

On Monday morning, a regular at the McDonald’s in Altoona told the BBC that one of his friends spotted Mr Mangione as he entered the restaurant and commented: “There’s that shooter from New York.”

“I thought he was kidding,” the customer said.

Police were called and when officers first approached Mr Mangione and asked him if he’d been in New York, he became “visibly nervous, kind of shaking”, Altoona’s Deputy chief of police Derick Swope told reporters.

As he was being led into a court hearing on Tuesday, Mr Mangione shouted about an “insult to the American people and their lived experience”.

He now faces charges of second-degree murder along with weapons offences.

New York police say the suspect first arrived in the city on 24 November, in the busy run-up to the Thanksgiving holiday. He visited the Hilton Hotel, where the shooting would later happen, and his encounter with a clerk at the hostel, where he stayed, was captured on camera.

Ten days later, on 4 December, Mr Thompson was shot dead on his way to a meeting at about quarter to seven in the morning.

The suspect fled on foot, bike and taxi to a bus station near the George Washington Bridge. From there, he exited the city.

The killing was identified as a targeted attack early on in the investigation. Video showed the suspect ignored several pedestrians on the busy Manhattan pavement and zeroed in on Mr Thompson.

Shell casings at the scene had words written on them, thought to be references to the insurance industry: “delay”, “deny”, “depose”.

Mr Mangione comes from a large and wealthy family in Baltimore, Maryland, with business interests in nursing homes, real estate, a country club and a radio station, according to local news outlet the Baltimore Banner.

He attended the all-male private Gilman School, where he graduated as valedictorian – at the top of his class.

A former classmate, Freddie Leatherbury, told the Associated Press news agency that Mr Mangione came from a wealthy family, even by that private school’s standards. “Quite honestly, he had everything going for him,” Mr Leatherbury said.

Mr Mangione went on to the University of Pennsylvania. There he received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science, according to the school, and founded a video game development club.

A friend who attended the Ivy League college at the same time as Mr Mangione described him as a “super normal” and “smart person”.

He worked as a data engineer and a video game developer, and most recently was living in Hawaii.

Social media posts show that friends and family members had recently been attempting to contact him and asking about his whereabouts.

In a post on X from October, someone asked Mr Mangione: “Hey, are you ok? Nobody has heard from you in months, and apparently your family is looking for you.”

Monday’s arrest ended a dramatic six days in which the alleged killer seemed to disappear, leaving few clues behind and eluding police.

Not only was he able to leave one of the busiest cities in the world using public transport, before Monday his name was not publicly known. It’s also unclear exactly where he was hiding in the days after he left New York.

Juliette Kayyem, former assistant secretary for policy at the US Department of Homeland Security, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that his background in technology may have helped him evade capture for nearly a week.

“This was someone who was studying how law enforcement and how these cities try to protect themselves, which is essentially they have lots of cameras around,” she said.

“Now that we know a little bit about him – that he’s a smart person, he went to great schools, he had higher degrees, he studied engineering technology, he was into electronic gizmos – some of it is beginning to make sense,” Kayyem said.

The suspect also wore a face mask almost constantly, and Mr Mangione was found with a fake driving licence and an untraceable “ghost gun” – a firearm assembled by the owner without a serial number, which police said may have been 3D-printed.

Authorities said he used cash for purchases in New York City and fled the scene of the crime into Central Park, where there are few surveillance cameras.

But he also appeared to make some elementary mistakes – including revealing his face in the hostel, and holding on to the gun and the fake identification card.

The Mr Mangione family released a statement Monday night through Mangione’s cousin, a Maryland state lawmaker.

“Our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi’s arrest,” said Nino Mangione. “We offer prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for all involved.”

Mr Mangione’s online footprint shows few messages about healthcare or the insurance industry. Instead there are comments about artificial intelligence and technology, science and pop philosophy, and reviews of a range of books, including 1984 and the Harry Potter series.

But a number of social media accounts matching his name and picture offer some potential clues about his motivation.

RJ Martin, a former roommate of Mr Mangione in Hawaii, said the suspect had a back injury, but he “never complained” about it.

“His back injury prohibited him, at times, from just doing many normal things,” Mr Martin said.

The banner image on Mr Mangione’s X account shows an X-ray of a spine with hardware in it.

Mr Martin, who eventually lost contact with Mr Mangione, said he believed his former friend “would have never conceived of hurting someone else”.

And Mr Mangione’s account on Goodreads, a user-generated book review website, indicated that he had read several books about managing back pain, one of them called Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry.

Also on the Goodreads site, Mr Mangione gave four stars to a text called Industrial Society and Its Future by Theodore Kaczynski – better known as the Unabomber manifesto.

Starting in 1978, Kaczynski carried out a bombing campaign that killed three people and injured dozens of others.

In his review, Mr Mangione acknowledged Kaczynski was a violent individual who killed innocent people. However, he also argued that the essay should not be dismissed as the manifesto of a lunatic but rather the work of an “extreme political revolutionary”.

He quoted another online commentator who said: “When all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive.”

Mr Mangione wrote that he found this viewpoint “interesting”.

Police said a three-page, handwritten document Mr Mangione had when he was arrested expressed “ill will” towards corporate America.

A senior law enforcement official told the New York Times that the document said: “These parasites had it coming” and “I do apologise for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done”.

Meanwhile, mixed reactions to the shooting and Mr Mangione’s arrest continue – sympathy for Mr Thompson and his family versus anger at the state of America’s expensive, vastly complicated healthcare system.

Online, the shooting prompted some criticism of the medical insurance industry, and Mr Mangione was even hailed as a hero.

Police in Altoona said the department received hundreds of emails and calls, including death threats. Some members of the public called police in support of Mr Mangione, claiming they were actually the killer and that police “have the wrong guy”.

And police are advising McDonald’s employees not to give interviews or statements out of concern for their safety.

The restaurant received hundreds of negative reviews online, calling employees “rats” and criticising them for calling the police.

Similar sentiments have been expressed online, often in posts by anonymous accounts. But others have condemned such sentiments.

“In America, we do not kill people in cold blood to resolve policy differences or express a viewpoint,” Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro told reporters.

“I understand people have real frustration with our healthcare system… But I have no tolerance, nor should anyone, for one man using an illegal ghost gun to murder someone because he thinks his opinion matters most.

“In some dark corners, this killer is being hailed as a hero. Hear me on this: He is no hero,” Shapiro said.

Ghana’s former President John Mahama will be under enormous pressure to meet the expectations of voters following his landslide victory in Saturday’s election.

He swept back to power after eight years in opposition, running what political analyst Nansata Yakubu described as a “masterclass” in campaigning.

He defeated Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia by 56.6% of votes to 41.6% to notch up the biggest margin of victory by a candidate in 24 years.

But voter turnout was lower than in the 2020 election, especially in some of the heartlands of Bwaumia’s New Patriotic Party (NPP), suggesting people there – disillusioned with its performance in government – stayed at home rather than switch sides.

As Mahama’s supporters celebrated his victory, Belinda Amuzu – a teacher in the northern city of Tamale, a stronghold of Mahama – summed up their hopes.

“I’m expecting the new government to change the economy, so that the hardship will come down. He should also prosecute corrupt officials so that it will be a lesson to others,” she told the BBC.

“The hardship” has become a common phrase in Ghana since the economy hit rock-bottom in 2022, causing a cost-of-living crisis that shredded Bawumia’s reputation as an “economic whizz-kid” – and led to his defeat at the hands of Mahama.

Ghanaian economist Prof Godfred Bokpin told the BBC the challenges facing the next government were huge.

“What Ghana needs right now is credible leadership, lean government and efficiency in public service delivery. Without that, there cannot be a future,” he said.

Mahama has promised to bring down the size of the cabinet from more than 80 to around 60, but Prof Bokpin argued it should be smaller while political analyst Dr Kwame Asah-Asante stressed the need for appointments to be on merit rather than loyalty.

Mahama will be flanked by former Education Minister Prof Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, who is set to become Ghana’s first female vice-president when the new government takes office next month.

Dr Yakubu said her appointment was not one of “tokenism” and she was not someone who could be “manipulated”.

“We have a fantastic first female vice-president in Prof Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang,” she told the BBC Focus on Africa podcast.

Mahama served his first four-year term as president after winning in 2012, but lost his re-election bid in 2016 as Nana Akufo-Addo rose to power with Bawumia as his running-mate.

Dr Yakubu said Mahama contested the 2016 election on his track record in building roads, schools and hospitals but voters rejected him, as their mantra then was: “We don’t eat infrastructure.”

But, she said, during the Covid pandemic voters came to appreciate the infrastructure his government had built, especially hospitals.

This – along with the fact that the economy had plunged into a deep crisis under the current government, forcing it to seek a $3bn (£2.4bn) bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – led to Mahama being re-elected, Dr Yakubu added.

She told the BBC that Mahama would now be expected to fulfil his campaign promise to create jobs in order to bring down the unemployment rate of almost 15%, and to ease the cost-of-living crisis by scrapping some taxes – or what Ghanaians call “nuisance taxes”.

Mahama has promised to make Ghana a “24-hour economy” through the creation of night-time jobs in both the public and private sectors. He said he would give businesses tax incentives to stay open at night and reduce electricity prices for them.

But his critics have doubts, pointing out that Ghana plunged into its worst electricity crisis during his first term and the power cuts were so bad that Mahama joked at the time that he was known as “Mr Dumsor” – “dum” means “off” and “sor” means “on” in the local Twi language.

He has also promised to abolish several taxes – including the much-criticised electronic levy on mobile transactions and the one on the carbon emissions produced by petrol or diesel-powered vehicles.

Prof Bokpin said he doubted the Mahama administration would be able to fulfil its promises.

“They have not done the cost benefit analysis. There’s no budgetary space to translate those promises into actuals,” he said.

But Mahama is confident he will prove his critics wrong, saying he intends to renegotiate the conditions of the IMF loan so money is freed up for “social intervention programmes” in a country where 7.3 million people lived in poverty.

In an interview ahead of the election, Mahama told the BBC the IMF wanted “a certain balance” in government finances.

“And so if you’re able to cut expenditure, and you’re able to increase revenue and increase non-tax revenue coming in, you’ll be able to create a balance,” he said.

Dr Asah-Asante said Mahama’s experience as former president held him in good stead to navigate Ghana through choppy waters.

“Of course, he is likely to encounter difficulties, but he has what it takes to turn things around,” the analyst added.

Mahama’s previous stint in government – as vice-president and president – was plagued by corruption allegations, but he has consistently denied any wrongdoing.

In 2020, a UK court had found that aviation giant Airbus had used bribes to secure contracts with Ghana for military planes between 2009 and 2015.

An investigation then got under way in Ghana, but the Office of the Special Prosecutor, in a decision announced just months before the election, concluded there was no evidence that Mahama was involved in any corrupt activities himself.

The outgoing government has also been dogged by corruption allegations, including over the purchase of ambulance spare parts at a cost of $34.9m and a controversial national cathedral project in which $58m has been spent without any progress in building it.

Mahama promised his government would tackle corruption, and ensure that officials were prosecuted for wrongdoing.

“We are thinking about special courts,” he told the BBC.

Dr Asah-Asante said Mahama should demand financial accountability from the outgoing government during a handover phase so that “whatever has gone wrong, he will be able to right” as soon as his government takes office next month.

The analyst added that Mahama, who will be inaugurated next month when President Akufo-Addo steps down after his two terms in office, had no choice but to meet the expectations of Ghanaians – or else they would “punish his government the way they have punished the NPP”.

Mahama succinctly acknowledged this in his victory speech, saying: “Expectations of Ghanaians are very high, and we cannot afford to disappoint them.

“Our best days are not behind us; our best days are ahead of us. Forward ever – backwards never.”

• The former president set to lead Ghana once more
• Ghana becomes fifth African nation to see opposition victory this year
• WATCH: The deadly dig for Ghana’s gold

A nail artist said she cried after seeing the nails she created for Cynthia Erivo for the Wicked movie on the big screen.

Shei Osei, 33 from Basildon, Essex, worked alongside the actress to create nail designs for her character Elphaba, having known each other for 15 years.

She was also asked to do Erivo’s nails for the green carpet when London’s Southbank became the Emerald City for the premiere.

“I was able to watch it amongst everyone else… I cried. There are many bits that I cried at,” she said.

“I’m very hard on myself when it comes to my work and what I do. I was checking to see if I had put it on properly, did I shape it properly and was the ombré good.”

The 33-year-old started learning how to do nails at the age of 14 before pursuing it as a career at the age of 18.

She has built up a celebrity client base including Candice Brathwaite and Maya Jama and has worked on Erivo’s nails before for Netflix film, Luther: The Fallen Sun.

She received the call from Erivo in 2022 and soon started creating designs.

“As the story starts, Elphaba comes across a bit shy and a bit timid and not as out there, but she was able to have these subtle green ombré nails which were still daring,” she said.

“When Elphaba comes into her own and she becomes more confident in who is she when she gets to the Emerald City… she has that confidence and her nails tell that story too. It’s more of a daring design and more ‘this is me, this is who I am and you will accept me for who I want to be’.”

She created more than 35 sets of press on nails, making sure they were all similar in style, colour, shape and design with each set taking up to 90 minutes.

“Cynthia outside of Elphaba is someone who enjoys getting her nails done… in the movie I feel like it tells the story of Elphaba but Cynthia can still feel authentically herself throughout the whole movie,” she said.

“We always knew we wanted the nails to be a part of the film… she’s touching the broom, she’s putting her hat on. You would want your nails to match and look good on camera.”

Since working on the film, she has received an “outpouring of love” and global recognition.

“Everyone says they don’t pay attention to nails, but in Wicked they paid attention to the nails. I’m grateful that my talent is being seen and I hope this can bring hope to other nail techs and other beauticians.

“These things don’t come overnight and if you keep pushing on, you’ll get there in the end,” she said.

“Romania dodged a bullet,” is how a former deputy head of Nato Mircea Geoana puts it. “But it came very close.”

Romanians are still stunned by the eleventh-hour cancellation of their presidential election after allegations of “massive” and “aggressive” meddling by Moscow to warp the vote, which saw a far-right candidate propelled by TikTok come close to victory.

“If Moscow can do this in Romania, which is profoundly anti-Russian, it means they can do it anywhere,” Mircea Geoana warns.

Russia denies any interference in the election. But last week, in a highly unusual move, the intelligence agencies in Bucharest declassified documents detailing a major influence operation using the social media app.

It came after a shock first-round win by Calin Georgescu, a figure from the extreme fringe of Romanian politics. The constitutional court stopped the election on national security grounds.

The whole process will be rerun next year.

But whilst TikTok clearly did amplify Mr Georgescu’s nationalist, religious and often bizarre messaging, it was Romanians themselves who liked what he said.

“The Russians are hugely sophisticated. But it’s hugely mistaken to believe all of this was just because of Russia,” Mr Geoana says.

“There is a whole cocktail of grievances in our society.”

On what should have been election day, Mr Georgescu appeared outside a shuttered polling station to denounce the annulment of the vote as “an abuse and a crime”.

Flanked by bodyguards, he was greeted by a handful of fans and chants of “Georgescu for president”. One man in white smock and flowing beard waved a giant flag; another held a large silver icon above Georgescu’s head.

“People here are not happy with the current regime. They’ve done absolutely nothing for 35 years. Just a few new pavements, that’s it,” retired auditor Adriana complained, as the man she’d wanted as president vanished from view inside a crush of cameras and correspondents.

Adriana’s pension was raised in August but prices in Romania are still climbing at the fastest rate in Europe. “90% of the increase will disappear with inflation,” she told me.

Poverty, particularly the gulf between rural and urban lives, is a major cause of resentment here as well as a perception of corruption among the elite.

“This was a massive protest vote,” believes Sorin Ionita of the Expert Forum in Bucharest. “The question then is: who do you vote for when you want to protest?”

“Somehow, TikTok helped channel that for Georgescu.”

There is real fatigue with the two main parties who have dominated the scene in Romania for years.

So on the streets of Bucharest there’s suspicion that the judges’ ruling to cancel the vote may have been driven as much by politics as security. Even those who feared a President Georgescu – and believe Russia was backing him – now worry about the precedent just set for Romanian democracy.

Mr Georgescu’s own political career began firmly within the mainstream, at the foreign ministry. He then moved to the margins where distrust of ‘The System’ and conspiracy theories swirl. He has denied the existence of Covid, questioned the moon landing and claims that water is something other than H2O.

All that has found a ready audience on social media.

“He’s like a preacher, with a Bible in his hand, and I thought he spoke only the truth,” Ion Godin told me.

It was a nod to the cult leader-like vibe from Mr Georgescu that partly stems from his rare appearances in public. A campaign video of him cantering through fields on a white steed also helps.

But something else also resonates for Mr Godin.

“He talks about rights and dignity,” he said. “Romanians go to other countries for work, but we have so many resources here. Wood, grain – and our soil is very rich. Why should we be vagrants in Italy?”

The promise of returning sovereignty and national pride works well. In the midst of the scandal over the presidency, far-right parties doubled their support in parliament. Calls to cancel that election too were rejected.

Georgescu’s Trump-style pledge to Make Romania Great Again helped him perform particularly strongly among the vast Romanian diaspora. Many who left because life was so tough are now getting by abroad rather than prospering.

“He’s corrupt? He’s with Putin? No, he’s not. He’s with the people. With Romania,” a young woman called Raluca was emphatic, recently back from working in London.

“Georgescu is a patriot. He wants peace, not war, and we want that, too.”

After ten minutes or so, the scrum around the politician parted to set him free and I managed to get close. I wondered whether he was now calling people out onto the streets to demand that the “coup” he has claimed, be reversed?

“I am not here to protest, I was just here to pray,” Mr Georgescu replied mysteriously, without breaking step. His guards then brushed me aside and bundled him back into his car.

There is no sense that Calin Georgescu knew he was being used by Moscow. He laughed at that suggestion when I put it to him a few days ago, in an interview.

But many of his stated positions are useful to Russia.

“You can’t be very pro-Russian in Romania, it doesn’t work,” analyst Sorin Ionita points out. “But every point of Putin’s agenda was part of his campaign.”

On Ukraine, for example, Mr Georgescu told me that he would end all military aid immediately and push for peace but would not say whether this should be on Kyiv’s terms. He called Vladimir Putin a “patriot”.

Romanians are genuinely anxious about being sucked into the war next door: Russian drones have crashed over the border several times and Putin’s escalatory rhetoric is disturbing.

But the Georgescu campaign played on that fear as well as whipping up resentment of refugees.

“All the far-right candidates, including Georgescu, included a slice of Ukraine hate speech in their bubble of propaganda,” Brianna Caradja told me, recalling false claims about refugee children getting huge state handouts, more than locals.

She’s been arranging big aid deliveries to Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion but donations from businesses and shops have dried up as the political climate has become more hostile.

“I get threats. It’s grown since the first round of the elections,” Brianna confides. “There’s language I didn’t hear before, like ‘traitor’. That’s a very heavy word, especially when you realise these people are from the ultra-right.”

The intelligence report on the elections lists “encouraging discontent” with support for Ukraine as one aspect of Russia’s hybrid war on Romania. It comes under “Disinformation and Propaganda”.

Calin Georgescu’s insistence that he spent “zero” to disseminate his election message is also now under investigation.

One man is said to have spent almost $400,000 (£313,000) promoting online content linked to the former candidate, who claims not to know him.

Authorities have searched the house of this mysterious benefactor, Bodgan Peschir, and also called internet influencers in for questioning.

Some have admitted being paid to mention the election in videos where they’d usually promote detergent or lipstick. Those political posts were then flooded with hashtags like #wearevotingcalingeorgescu.

Campaigning without clear identification is banned by both TikTok and Romanian election law.

Sources within the prosecution service suggest making any case stick will be complicated, as Romanian intelligence went public early with their claims of Russian interference. Even Mr Georgescu now appears to have deleted all the videos from his official TikTok account.

But his supporters have gone nowhere.

“Someone wants something good for his country and they won’t allow him to do that,” Raluca believes, sure the candidate she voted for won’t be allowed to run again. “Maybe he’ll be in prison in months and for what? For nothing,” she told me. “We feel lost right now, without hope.”

The shock halt to the election was followed by calls for calm, not street protests, and that’s holding so far.

But Mircea Geoana believes Romania was “on the brink of the precipice” when the constitutional court stepped in.

“We bought ourselves some time. But there is real fury here. And if we don’t do something, we might have a repeat.”

“They look like chocolate truffles, just don’t eat them,” jokes Jean Mason, the curator of the Cook Islands Library and Museum as she reaches into a display cabinet and pulls out a black, knobbly rock.

The “rock” she is holding may well determine the future of this Pacific nation.

It is what scientists call a polymetallic nodule, created over millennia as minerals accumulate on the seabed.

Packed full of cobalt, nickel and manganese, these ancient formations are now valuable: the metals go into batteries that power modern life, from electric cars to mobile phones.

They have become a source of friction in the low-lying Pacific Islands, which are among the nations most vulnerable to climate change.

With rising sea levels, the ocean – or Moana, as it’s called in Māori and many other Polynesian languages – remains their greatest threat, but it is also their biggest provider.

They fish in it and they live off the tourists drawn to their turquoise waters, but now the Cook Islands wants to dig deeper, up to 6,000m (19,685 ft), where the nodules lie.

It’s a pet project for Prime Minister Mark Brown, who believes it will reshape this country of 15 volcanic islands in the southern Pacific.

The hope is that the income from these metals could lead to more prosperity than the islanders had ever imagined.

Except the promise of deep sea mining may carry an environmental price.

Proponents say that harvesting these nodules for use in renewables will help the world transition from fossil fuels. They also believe that it is less invasive than mining on land.

But critics argue so much is still unknown about the impact of extracting what is one of the last untouched parts of the planet. They say there should be a pause on deep sea mining until there is more research on its effects on marine life and the oceanic ecosystem.

When Jean was growing up, she says, the nodules were only thought to be useful for making knife blades.

“We had no idea that cell phones were going to come, and wind turbines and electric cars.”

Nodules are a family conversation here and Jean is firmly in favour of mining them. Her husband is a lawyer for one of the companies given exploration licences by the government.

The library where she works is stacked full of holiday reads left or donated by tourists – tourism is the country’s biggest earner, accounting for more than 70% of its GDP.

It includes a newspaper archive.

Jean shoves a photocopy of an article from the Cook Islands News into my hand. It’s from 1974 and the headline reads “100% concentration of manganese nodules”.

“My point is, we’ve been talking about this for 50-plus years – I think the moratorium time is over.”

The Pacific Ocean covers close to a third of the planet. And the nodules buried in it have been known about since the 19th Century.

But in the 1960s, American geologist John L Mero published a book setting out the case that the seabed could provide many of the world’s mineral needs.

It’s not an easy process – nor a cheap one. But when prices of metals like nickel soared in 2008, it looked more appealing.

Then Covid hit. Tourists left and the money dried up.

Together with the impact of climate change – rising sea levels and unpredictable weather patterns – the country quickly realised it needed something else to rely on.

The Cook Islands’ Seabeds Minerals Authority estimates there are 12 billion wet tonnes of polymetallic nodules in their waters.

Some people argue mining the seabed is not financially viable. With technology moving so fast, these metals may not even be in demand by the time it gets going.

But there are takers. And in 2022, the Cook Islands gave out three licences to companies to start exploring the possibility of deep-sea mining.

They’re now working with scientists in researching the environmental impact.

“Nothing we do in life is risk-free. So, if you want zero risk you need to go and sit in a little room with cotton wool around you,” says Hans Smit, who runs Moana Minerals, one of the firms that has an exploration licence.

“We have this lifestyle, this lifestyle has a price. If we don’t want mining and we don’t want to get all these metals, we need to stop doing just about everything we’re doing.”

Hans is from South Africa and moved here to be part of the community. To him, the deep-sea metals are an “incredible resource” that could benefit the islanders.

While there’s a growing call to delay deep-sea mining until regulations by the International Seabed Authority are drawn up, this only applies to international waters.

The Cook Islands still have huge reserves of their own in their national waters – their Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) – so, they can crack on regardless.

“We’re known as small-island developing states, but we like to call ourselves large ocean states,” says Rima Brown, a young Cook Islander with a geography degree who jokingly calls herself the poster child for deep-sea mining.

Rima works for the Seabed Minerals Authority and much of her time is spent mapping the sea bed.

“While we’re only about 200 square kilometers in land mass, we have an exclusive economic zone of almost 2 million square kilometres,” she says.

That’s the equivalent of Mexico.

“It’s the only resource we’ve got,” Jean says.

“[Industrialised nations] destroy our atmosphere and then they’ve got a nerve to tell us, let’s leave your stuff in the seabed. How dare they tell us we can’t touch our resources?”

But it’s not just outsiders who are opposed to deep-sea mining in the Cook Islands.

Off the coast of Rarotonga, the largest and most populous of the Cook Islands, a crowd of surfers, kayakers and swimmers gather around a large vaka, a traditional Polynesian catamaran.

“Te Moana, Te Moana, Paruru ia ra, Paruru ia ra,” the people on board repeat – “Protect our ocean”, they are chanting in Māori.

“We are asking for more time for robust independent research, more time for our people to be made better aware of what potential risk might look like,” says Alanah Matamaru Smith from the Te Ipukarea Society, an environmental organisation based in Rarotonga.

“We’re seeing infrastructure being put up here on Rarotonga, accommodation for offshore mining companies to reside here, we’ve got draft mining regulations already in place. Actions are speaking a lot louder than words at the moment.”

Prime Minister Mark Brown, who is driving this, also happens to be the tourism minister and the seabed minerals minister. He’s made it clear he wants the Cook Islands to be a leader in the industry.

“It provides the opportunity for our kids to be able to study at any university in the world without having to incur a student loan,” says Brown, who has a vision of following the lead of Norway in establishing a sovereign wealth fund.

“It allows us to have the type of health care that our people have to go to New Zealand or Australia for. It allows our young people the opportunity to live fulfilling lives here in our country, without having to go to other countries to ply their trade in an industry that doesn’t exist here.”

To those who say a country threatened by climate change risks becoming part of the problem, he argues he’s trying to find solutions.

“We know that for the last 20 years we haven’t been able to get the financing from the larger emitting countries, so we’ve got to look for ways to protect ourselves.”

But activist June Hosking isn’t convinced.

She’s from one of the outer islands, Mauke, with a population of just 300 people.

While the government has organised consultations with residents across the islands as well as the large diaspora in New Zealand, she says the potential downsides of the industry are not being discussed.

“People don’t like to rock the boat in the outer islands,” she says. “So, when we have these consultations, there’s only maybe three of us who would speak up.”

June says such is island life, many refer to the PM as just Mark. She also says his wife is married to her husband’s cousin.

But family connections don’t stop her being seen as a bit of a trouble-maker in asking questions.

“When locals say ‘Oh no, I stay neutral on [deep-sea mining]’, I say ‘you can’t drive very far in neutral’,” she laughs.

“There are times in your life when you need to actually make a stand for something – we are talking about our future here.”

Bribery charges by a US court against the Adani Group are unlikely to significantly upset India’s clean energy goals, industry leaders have told the BBC.

Delhi has pledged to source half of its energy needs or 500 gigawatts (GW) of electricity from renewable sources by 2032, key to global efforts to combat climate change.

The Adani Group is slated to contribute to a tenth of that capacity.

The legal troubles in the US could temporarily delay the group’s expansion plans but will not affect the government’s overall targets, analysts say.

India has made impressive strides in building clean energy infrastructure over the last decade.

The country is growing at the “fastest rate among major economies” in adding renewables capacity, according to the International Energy Agency.

Installed clean energy capacity has grown five-fold, with some 45% of the country’s power-generation capacity – of nearly 200GW – coming from non-fossil fuel sources.

Charges against the Adani Group – crucial to India’s clean energy ambitions – are “like a passing dark cloud”, and will not meaningfully impact this momentum, a former CEO of a rival firm said, wanting to remain anonymous.

Gautam Adani has vowed to invest $100bn (£78.3bn) in India’s energy transition. Its green energy arm is the country’s largest renewable energy company, producing nearly 11GW of clean energy through a diverse portfolio of wind and solar projects.

Adani has a target to scale that to 50GW BY 2030, which will make up nearly 10% of the country’s own installed capacity.

Over half of that, or 30GW, will be produced at Khavda, in the western Indian state of Gujarat. It is the world’s biggest clean energy plant, touted to be five times the size of Paris and the centrepiece in Adani’s renewables crown.

But Khavda and Adani’s other renewables facilities are now at the very centre of the charges filed by US prosecutors – they allege that the company won contracts to supply power to state distribution companies from these facilities, in exchange for bribes to Indian officials. The group has denied this.

But the fallout at the company level is already visible.

When the indictment became public, Adani Green Energy immediately cancelled a $600m bond offering in the US.

France’s TotalEnergies, which owns 20% of Adani Green Energy and has a joint venture to develop several renewables projects with the conglomerate, said it will halt fresh capital infusion into the company.

Major credit ratings agencies – Moody’s, Fitch and S&P – have since changed their outlook on Adani group companies, including Adani Green Energy, to negative. This will impact the company’s capacity to access funds and make it more expensive to raise capital.

Analysts have also raised concerns about Adani Green Energy’s ability to refinance its debt, as international lenders grow weary of adding exposure to the group.

Global lenders like Jeffries and Barclays are already said to be reviewing their ties with Adani even as the group’s reliance on global banks and international and local bond issues for long-term debt has grown from barely 14% in financial year 2016 to nearly 60% as of date, according to a note from Bernstein.

Japanese brokerage Nomura says new financing might dry up in the short term but should “gradually resume in the long term”. Meanwhile, Japanese banks like MUFG, SMBC, Mizuho are likely to continue their relationship with the group.

The “reputational and sentimental impact” will fade away in a few months, as Adani is building “solid, strategic assets and creating long-term value”, the unnamed CEO said.

A spokesperson for the Adani Group told the BBC that it was “committed to its 2030 targets and confident of delivering 50 GW of renewable energy capacity”.

Adani stocks have recovered sharply from the lows they hit post the US court indictment.

Some analysts told the BBC that a possible slowdown in funding for Adani could in fact end up benefitting its competitors.

While Adani’s financial influence has allowed it to rapidly expand in the sector, its competitors such as Tata Power, Goldman Sachs-backed ReNew Power, Greenko and state-run NTPC Ltd are also significantly ramping up manufacturing and generation capacity.

“It’s not that Adani is a green energy champion. It is a big player that has walked both sides of the street, being the biggest private developer of coal plants in the world,” said Tim Buckley, director at Climate Energy Finance.

A large entity, “perceived to be corrupt” possibly slowing its expansion, could mean “more money will start flowing into other green energy companies”, he said.

According to Vibhuti Garg, South Asia director at Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), market fundamentals also continue to remain strong with demand for renewable energy outpacing supply in India – which is likely to keep the appetite for big investments intact.

What could in fact slow the pace of India’s clean energy ambitions is its own bureaucracy.

“Companies we track are very upbeat. Finance isn’t a problem for them. If anything, it is state-level regulations that act as a kind of deterrent,” says Ms Garg.

Most state-run power distribution companies continue to face financial constraints, opting for cheaper fossil fuels, while dragging their feet on signing purchase agreements.

According to Reuters, the controversial tender won by Adani was the first major contract issued by state-run Solar Energy Corp of India (SECI) without a guaranteed purchase agreement from distributors.

SECI’s chairman told Reuters that there are 30GW of operational green energy projects in the market without buyers.

Experts say the 8GW solar contract at the heart of Adani’s US indictment also sheds light on the messy tendering process, which required solar power generation companies to manufacture modules as well – limiting the number of bidders and leading to higher power costs.

The court indictment will certainly lead to a “tightening of bidding and tendering rules”, says Ms Garg.

A cleaner tendering process that lowers risks both for developers and investors will be important going ahead, agrees Mr Buckley.

Serhiy Petchenko lost both hands while defending Ukraine from Russian invaders in June 2023.

After surviving the bitter months-long battle for the city of Bakhmut, his injury came in a railway incident further from the front line.

It left the 42-year-old feeling helpless and in despair. After the amputations, his wife, Anna, had to remain by his side 24/7 for six months.

“What helped us survive is our love,” says Serhiy.

But it’s hard to believe he went through such an ordeal when you see him now, standing on the doorstep of a brand-new café, which he is about to open in Lviv, in the west of Ukraine.

He smiles widely, his arms – and hands – by his side.

Serhiy received two prosthetic hands and full rehabilitation at the Superhumans Center, a private clinic for people with war injuries, located outside the city.

At the same time, the couple received the training they needed to open a family business.

Serhiy says the centre gave him a chance to return normal life, while learning to live with a new disability.

At least 50,000 Ukrainians have lost limbs in nearly three years of war according to the Ukrainian Health Ministry – both soldiers and civilians.

“Some people have double, triple, quadruple amputations. All these people will need prosthetics, or some will use wheelchairs,” says Olga Rudnieva, CEO and co-founder of the Superhumans Center.

Many amputations are the result of delays in evacuation from the battlefield. The barrage of incoming fire can be so intense that it may take many hours to get a wounded soldier to hospital.

With more than one million people on the front line, Rudnieva says, Ukraine will become “the country of people with disabilities”.

“We want to normalise disability. OK, that’s how the country is going to look,” she says, describing the thinking behind her centre.

“Most of the people here at the centre shouldn’t be alive. The fact that they are is a miracle in itself.”

Rudnieva co-founded the centre amid the Russian missile attacks that have rained down on the country since February 2022. Some people called her “crazy” but she went ahead anyway.

“If I have an opinion, I’m sharing my opinion. If I know what to do, I just go and do it,” she says.

Her partners and team raised funds all over the world for high-quality prosthetics and reconstructive surgery. Her passionate presentation, explaining how injuries can be empowering, turned some celebrities into Superhumans supporters, including British adventurer Bear Grylls, Virgin boss Richard Branson, singer Sting and actress Trudie Styler.

“We truly believe that you can be empowered by trauma. The trauma can ruin you or it can build your superpower,” she says.

The Superhumans Center supplements Ukraine’s military hospitals and clinics, which are overloaded with the constant flow of wounded soldiers from the 3,200km long front line.

Since it opened in April 2023, more than 1,000 patients have received treatment here – both military and civilian, adults and children. Almost 800 of them have received prosthetic limbs.

“It’s the global headquarters of resilience,” says 47-year-old Rudnieva. walking energetically between patients’ wheelchairs.

• BBC 100 Women names 100 inspiring and influential women around the world every year – Olga Rudnieva is on the 2024 list.
• Meet this year’s 100 Women here

They are waiting for modern prosthetics or are already practising to use their new limbs.

She asks some of the young men around, with double and triple amputations, to show her what they have learnt so far.

Ukrainian soldiers use callsigns instead of names, and Rudnieva has one too – “Mum”.

“They learned to walk with their mothers, and I was the second person they learned how to walk with,” she says proudly.

At the start of the war, Ukraine was not ready to support so many people with disabilities.

“Ukrainian soldiers are less afraid to be killed than to be wounded, because a severe injury means you are going to be disabled for the rest of your life – and the infrastructure is not right, and society is not ready, and the healthcare system is not right,” says Rudnieva.

A few times a day she visits the rehabilitation room where the “superhumans”, as she calls them, are learning to walk again.

Among the battle-hardened men is gentle Olena, a bakery manager from the city of Kostiantynivka in eastern Ukraine. She lost her leg in a Russian rocket strike on the way to her mum’s birthday party.

“The first thing I’ll do when I have my artificial leg, if the weather is fine, is just go for a walk. Without any rush, without an aim. I’ll just take a walk to recall how it feels,” she says.

At present she uses a leg that belongs to the rehabilitation room, but soon she will have one of her own.

Rudnieva remembers Olena’s story in detail, and the stories of her other patients.

She knows about their wives and husbands, parents and pre-war jobs. “Younger guys bring me their girlfriends and ask my opinion,” she says, with a smile.

Couples have even come came to her before taking a decision on whether to divorce or not.

A severe war injury is a challenge not just for the survivor, but for his or her entire family, and it tests relationships.

Showing the newly equipped children’s room, Rudnieva smiles.

“We are waiting today for Nazarchyk, Serhiy and Anna’s son. He is so active. He will turn it upside down.”

Rudnieva says that her work has taught her to value life as never before, and also to stop fearing death.

Once a director of the Olena Pinchuk Foundation, working to halt the spread of HIV/Aids across Ukraine, she was abroad when Russia invaded. For a few months she ran a humanitarian aid hub in Poland, then she returned to Ukraine and founded her life-changing project.

She wasn’t the only one. Ukrainian civil society quickly rallied round, both to support the war effort – fundraising for drones and vehicles, importing medical equipment or clothing – and to keep society going while the country fought for its life.

There are now other private rehabilitation centres, ambulances and taxis that help evacuate people from half-destroyed towns, food services for refugees, and many other initiatives that supplement services provided by the state.

And women have played a key role.

“When the full-scale invasion started, I, as a feminist, was very scared. I thought that it’s the end of feminism, because war is a very masculine thing,” Rudnieva says.

But later on she realised that women have taken over many responsibilities as men have gone away to fight, as well as in some cases becoming fighters too.

“I think that women proved to be absolutely amazing during this war,” says Rudnieva, as some of her words are drowned out by sirens – part of the soundtrack of Ukraine’s new life. “I’m really proud to be among Ukrainian women.”

BBC 100 Women names 100 inspiring and influential women around the world every year. Follow BBC 100 Women on Instagram and Facebook. Join the conversation using #BBC100Women.

The couple who run PinkNews, the world’s largest LGBT news website, have been accused by staff of multiple incidents of sexual misconduct.

Several former staff members told the BBC they saw Anthony James, a director at the UK-based company and husband of its founder, kissing and touching a junior colleague who they say appeared too drunk to consent.

And more than 30 current and former members of staff said a culture of heavy drinking led to instances when founder Benjamin Cohen and his husband behaved inappropriately towards younger male employees.

Representatives for Mr Cohen and Dr James told the BBC they were not able to provide a statement at this time, but that their position is that the allegations are false.

Run by family members of Mr Cohen – his husband and former GP Dr James is chief operating officer, and his father Richard is the chief lawyer – PinkNews says its mission is “to inform, inspire change and empower people to be themselves”.

It played an influential role in the campaign for marriage equality in the UK and its annual awards ceremony has attracted prime ministers and other politicians.

Away from the cameras and red carpets, however, multiple former staff members have told the BBC they had experienced bullying and sexual misconduct which made some of them feel unsafe to be alone around Mr Cohen and Dr James. Allegations of misogyny have also emerged and several people told us that some young female members of staff had been asked to act as the couple’s surrogates.

As well as interviewing 33 people who worked at PinkNews between 2017 and 2024, we have also seen a variety of evidence including official written complaints, private emails and WhatsApp messages sharing staff members’ concerns, plus doctors’ records referring to stress and mental health struggles attributed to the work environment at PinkNews.

Speaking after this story was first published, the Prime Minister’s spokesperson called the reports “very concerning”. While he would not comment on specifics of the case, he said that he believed “everyone should be free” from inappropriate behaviour in the workplace.

“People should always feel confident to come forward in these situations,” he added.

Asked if Mr Starmer would attend the Pink News Awards again, following a previous appearance in 2022, he said he could not comment on the specifics at this stage.

Five former members of staff told the BBC they had witnessed Dr James groping and kissing a junior member of staff, who they said was “too drunk to stand or talk” and “unable to consent”.

The alleged incident happened outside a central London pub, where staff had gathered after a PinkNews event.

A former PinkNews staff member, who we are calling Gary, said Dr James had led the junior colleague behind a tree. “Anthony was just forcing himself on somebody who wasn’t able to make that decision for themselves because of how intoxicated they were,” he said.

People at the event said they helped the alleged victim get home in a taxi.

But several former members of staff who said they witnessed the incident told us they were too scared to complain. One person said: “It’s the CEO’s husband, what are you going to do? Lose your job?”

A complaint about the incident was made later by a staff member, and was shared with several members of the senior leadership team at PinkNews. The BBC has been shown multiple copies of the complaint but has been unable to establish whether any action was taken as a result.

Many of the former employees said staff socials or awaydays often involved drinking until the early hours of the morning and that “Prosecco Friday” – where staff would be given free wine and crisps – was introduced in the office in an effort to boost staff morale.

Another former staff member we are calling Damian said he personally experienced inappropriate behaviour from Mr Cohen during an evening at the pub after work.

“Ben was extremely drunk to the point he fell off his chair, and then asked me out of earshot of my other colleagues whether I wanted to go back to his […] because Anthony his husband wasn’t there,” Damian said.

“He said something along the lines of ‘Anthony is always getting with other men’ and the suggestion was we would do something sexually. I was extremely uncomfortable.”

Damian said after that night, he avoided being alone with Mr Cohen for the rest of his time at PinkNews.

“I never heard about it again, no apology,” he said. “It put me on alert because it made me realise it was a boundary he thought he could cross.”

Stephan Kyriacou, who worked at PinkNews between 2019 and 2021, said the job had started as a “dream come true” where he did not have to “hide who I was or pretend”, but the dream was soon “shattered”.

During a Christmas party, Mr Kyriacou said, Mr Cohen had slapped him on the bottom in front of everyone else.

“I just shut down for a minute. I didn’t know what to say. I was in shock. I remember turning to my friends and saying, ‘What the hell just happened?'”

Mr Kyriacou said he no longer felt comfortable enough to be alone around his boss.

He said: “That just made me completely avoid him. I don’t remember ever speaking to him one-on-one after that.”

Other staff also voiced their concerns about Mr Cohen, Mr Kyriacou said, with several messages in a group chat describing him as a “creep” and staff saying they did not feel comfortable around him.

“None of us really felt like we could complain because we didn’t know what was going to happen to us. Ben is very well-known and we didn’t know whether he was going to badmouth us to people,” Mr Kyriacou said.

Staff have told us they were shouted at and belittled by Mr Cohen, and that there was a “toxic” culture at the company.

“He can be quite brutal in the way he speaks to you,” said Damian. “When things go wrong he’d come down on you like a tonne of bricks and so you were just in this constant state of emotional flux.

“He put extreme pressures on me to the point I would go home and cry. It caused issues in my own personal relationship with my partner, and then [Benjamin] would love-bomb me and I would think everything was alright.”

Cai Wilshaw, former head of external affairs at PinkNews, said: “You had this sort of dark cloud in the office sometimes when Ben was there, that made it really difficult to actually enjoy working there.

“We worked together quite well, but it is clear that he is a very, very difficult character, and sometimes overly so in a way that really impacted people who worked with him.”

Some staff members also said they had witnessed what they called “misogynistic” behaviour.

Several people said that on occasions young, female members of staff had been asked to act as a surrogate for Mr Cohen and Dr James.

They say that often the request was delivered as a joke, but that it had made people feel “awkward and uncomfortable”.

One anonymous staff member called it “creepy and sleazy”, while another called it “part and parcel” of how “misogynistic” PinkNews was.

A spokesperson for the National Union of Journalists said it has reached out to its members following the “deeply disturbing” allegations, which they say “paint a picture of a dysfunctional and wholly unacceptable workplace environment”.

Many of the staff who spoke to the BBC said they hope the culture at PinkNews can change so it can continue to tell stories relevant to the LGBT community.

“It’s important because the mainstream media doesn’t often report on whatever’s happening to trans or queer people,” said Stephan Kyriacou. “I think if it can be overhauled, that will make a massive difference.”

Gary said there was a need for “authentic queer-led journalism and queer-led stories” but said “unfortunately PinkNews has kind of lost its credibility in that arena”.

Damian told us he believed PinkNews’ future could only be secured if Mr Cohen and Dr James took a step back.

“The fact you cannot separate the two is extremely problematic,” he said. “Ben needs to be held to account. Until the day that happens, I don’t know if there’s a future for PinkNews.”

The BBC was informed that Mr Cohen and Dr James were not able to provide a statement at this time, but we understand that their position is that the allegations made against them are false.

The US has given $20bn (£15bn) to Ukraine, funded by the profits of seized Russian assets.

The economic support forms a significant part of a $50bn (£39bn) package agreed by G7 member nations announced in June.

Funding the aid through frozen assets means Russia has to “bear the costs of its illegal war, instead of taxpayers,” US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said.

It comes a matter of weeks before US President Joe Biden is replaced by Donald Trump, who has said he wants to end the war in Ukraine quickly upon taking office.

The president-elect has characterised financial support to Kyiv as a drain on US resources, casting doubt on whether aid will continue under the new administration.

The US Treasury said on Tuesday that it had transferred the $20bn to a World Bank fund, where it will be available for Ukraine to draw from.

Money handled by the World Bank cannot be used for military purposes.

The administration had hoped to dedicate half of the money to military aid, the Reuters news agency reported, but this would have required approval from Congress.

There were months of delay, amid political wrangling in the House of Representatives, before $61bn of military aid for Ukraine was approved in April.

The $20bn will give the country “a critical infusion of support” as it defends itself “against an unprovoked war of aggression,” Yellen said in a statement on Tuesday.

It follows months of discussion among the US and its allies, including the EU, on how to use the approximately $325bn (£276bn) worth of assets that were frozen since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022.

In October, the G7 agreed to use the interest generated by the assets – around $3bn (£2.4bn) a year – to fund $50bn in credit over 30 years. Payments were expected to start by the end of the year.

The EU has committed more than €18bn (£15bn) funded in the same way.

The $50bn is intended to ensure Ukraine has “the resources it needs to sustain emergency services, hospitals, and other foundations of its brave resistance,” Yellen said.

It comes at a critical juncture for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s forces, who have been ceding territory recently.

Moscow has been retaking ground in eastern Ukraine and in Russia’s Kursk – which Ukrainian forces launched an offensive in over the summer – while Ukrainian troops have painted a dismal picture of the war’s frontlines.

Sudan’s military has been accused of carrying out an air strike on a marketplace in the western region of Darfur in which more than 100 people were reportedly killed.

The Emergency Lawyers rights group described the bombing in Kabkabiya town on Monday, the weekly market day, as a “horrific massacre”.

Clashes have intensified in different parts of Sudan in recent weeks between the army and its former ally, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Both sides deny carrying out war crimes during their 19-month power struggle that has caused the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis and forced more than 11 million people from their homes.

• BBC hears of horror and hunger in rare visit to Darfur massacre town
• Sudan war: A simple guide to what is happening

According to Emergency Lawyers, the air strike happened as residents from nearby villages came to shop in Kabkabiya, about 180km (112 miles) west of el-Fasher, the only city still under military control in Darfur and which has been under siege since April.

“This attack on civilians on market day is a flagrant violation of international law,” said Emergency Lawyers, adding that hundreds of people had also been injured in the air strike.

The group has also condemned the RSF for its indiscriminate shelling of Omdurman, the city just across the River Nile from the capital, Khartoum.

Emergency Lawyers said that 14 people had died after a shell hit a bus on Tuesday.

It also condemned the RSF for using civilian infrastructure, such as fuel stations, for military purposes.

On Sunday, an air strike hit a petrol station in an RSF-controlled area of Khartoum, killing at least 28 people.

A volunteer group, the South Belt Emergency Response Room, said that 37 people were also injured.

The army has fighter jets, but it has denied deliberately targeting civilians.

On Tuesday, a military spokesperson said their airstrikes were part of a legitimate exercise to defend the country, adding that the army vowed to continue targeting RSF sites, which it claims are often hidden in residential areas

Campaign group Human Rights Watch (HRW) has appealed to the United Nations and the African Union to urgently deploy troops to Sudan to protect civilians.

In its latest report on atrocities in Sudan, it accuses the RSF and allied Arab militias of killing scores of civilians – and injuring, raping and abducting many others – in waves of attacks in South Kordofan state from December 2023 to March 2024.

The rights group has previously documented similar abuses as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing in West Darfur.

“The Rapid Support Forces’ abuse of civilians in South Kordofan is emblematic of continuing atrocities across Sudan,” said HRW researcher Jean-Baptiste Gallopin.

“These new findings underscore the urgent need for the deployment of a mission to protect civilians in Sudan.”

In May, US special envoy for Sudan Tom Perriello said that some estimates suggested up to 150,000 people had been killed in the conflict.

• Nowhere else on Earth has more children on the run
• ‘Rape me, not my daughter’ – Sudanese women tell BBC of sexual violence
• WATCH: Inside a hospital on Sudan’s hunger front line
• WATCH: BBC reporter’s emotional return to ransacked family home

It’s been quite the wait, but the highly-anticipated follow-up to horror films 28 Days Later (2002) and 28 Weeks Later (2007) is out next summer, with fans getting their first taste of what’s in store, from the trailer for 28 Years Later.

Many were quick to spot what appeared to be a zombie incarnation of Cillian Murphy’s bike courier Jim, from 28 Days Later, who survived an apocalypse against very steep odds.

He seemingly pops up in the latest trailer behind Jodie Comer’s character in a field, looking much the worse for wear – which is hardly surprising if it is indeed him.

There had been speculation and hope among some fans that the Oppenheimer Oscar-winner would return to the franchise.

But Murphy’s name is absent from promotional posters for the latest film, although he is credited as executive producer on the Sony Pictures website.

The latest film stars Killing Eve star Comer, The Fall Guy’s Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Conclave star Ralph Fiennes – with all three seen fighting off zombies in the trailer.

28 Years Later is set nearly three decades after the first film, when a “rage virus” which disastrously infected humans escaped a biological weapons laboratory.

We meet a group of survivors in the third film, living in quarantine on a small island, having managed to avoid becoming infected.

But when one of them leaves the island on a mission to the mainland, he discovers secret horrors that have mutated not only those infected, but survivors as well.

The film’s tagline is: “Time didn’t heal anything.”

The trailer opens with a throwback to popular children’s TV show Teletubbies, which first aired in 1997, with several children gathered around an old TV as the chirpy theme tune plays innocuously – yet menacingly – in the background.

The action soon kicks off with several flashes of fight scenes as an ominous, rhymic recording of Rudyard Kipling’s war poem, Boots, is heard in the background.

A church has its windows smashed in, before the camera descends on a rural island featuring wooden crosses dotted across the earth with rosary beads hanging on them.

Some graffiti is seen on what looks like a farm dwelling: “Behold he is coming with the clouds” – a verse from chapter one of the Bible’s book of Revelation, with “Jimmy” scrawled next to it in white paint.

Could this be a reference to Murphy’s character Jim?

Taylor-Johnson then stalks his way through green fields with a bow and arrow and there are some gory clips which are (thankfully) hard to make out.

A pile of skulls is shown in the middle of a clearing before the zombie figure, which may or may not be Murphy, makes a brief appearance.

Comer is also seen cradling a baby.

Several people on social media joked about Murphy’s possible appearance, with one quipping: “Method acting that would even shame Christian Bale,” while others bemoaned the fact they felt the fleeting shot was a spoiler.

The original film was written by Alex Garland and directed by Danny Boyle, who famously said it was not a zombie film, although it was credited with helping prompt a revival in the genre.

28 Weeks Later, which was directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, who also co-wrote it, starred Jeremy Renner, Rose Byrne and Robert Carlyle.

Garland and Boyle have returned for the third film, with both also producing it as well.

28 Years Later will be released on 20 June.

General Motors has announced that it will stop funding the development of the Cruise self-driving taxi.

The company says it will now “refocus autonomous driving development on personal vehicles”.

GM also pointed to the increasingly competitive robotaxi market as a reason for the move.

In October, Tesla boss Elon Musk unveiled the electric car giant’s long-awaited robotaxi, the Cybercab, at the Warner Bros Studios in Burbank, California.

GM attributed the change of strategy to “the considerable time and resources that would be needed to scale the business”.

The company did not say how many Cruise employees could be moved over to GM.

GM, which owns about 90% of Cruise, said it has agreements with other shareholders that will raise its ownership to more than 97%.

In December 2023, Cruise said it would cut 900 jobs, about a quarter of its workforce.

Cruise had earlier pulled all of its US vehicles from testing after California halted its driverless testing permit.

In October 2023, one of its vehicles hit a pedestrian and dragged her for more than 20ft (6m), leaving her seriously injured.

Cruise admitted to submitting a false report to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in connection to that crash, resolving a criminal investigation last month.

Federal prosecutors said Cruise employees did not include a description of the pedestrian being dragged as part of their account on the morning after the incident.

Cruise co-founder Kyle Vogt left the company a few weeks later.

On Tuesday, following GM’s announcement, Mr Vogt posted on the social media platform X “In case it was unclear before, it is clear now: GM are a bunch of dummies.”

The Detroit-based manufacturer’s chief executive Mary Barra has previously predicted that the Cruise business could generate $50bn (£39bn) in annual revenue by 2030.

Rival motor manufacturing firms have also struggled with projects to build autonomous vehicles.

In 2022, Ford and Volkswagen announced that they would shut down Argo AI, their self-driving car joint venture.

Meanwhile, the emerging robotaxi industry has long attracted major players.

As well as Tesla, competitors to create self-driving cabs include Waymo, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet – and technology giant Amazon.

A witness at the Pennsylvania McDonald’s where Luigi Mangione was arrested said customers had remarked on the 26-year-old’s resemblance to the suspect in the killing of a health insurance CEO last week.

Larry – who did not give his last name to media – said he believed one friend was joking around when he commented on it.

“I thought he was kidding. You know what I mean?” he told BBC News outside the fast-food restaurant.

Mr Mangione was charged on Monday night with murder over last week’s fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City.

Larry said he had gone to the McDonald’s in the town of Altoona for a coffee with a group of “five or six” friends before attending church.

He said his friends noticed Mr Mangione in the restaurant, when he ordered and took a seat in the back.

One of his friends later told him he had noticed similarities between what the young man was wearing and what was worn by the suspect in the widely distributed images released by New York City police during their six-day hunt for the killer.

“I said to Mike this morning: ‘When you said that, were you serious?’ He said: ‘Yeah, I was serious.'”

A restaurant employee also told him she had spotted the likeness. She took particular note of his “eyes and his eyebrows” while taking his order.

• Who is Luigi Mangione, CEO shooting suspect?
• Luigi Mangione charged with murdering healthcare CEO in New York
• Killing of insurance CEO reveals simmering anger at US health system

“It was like she got in her mind: ‘Oh, my God, it’s a guy from New York,'” Larry said on Tuesday.

Mr Mangione was detained by police at 09:58 local time (14:58 GMT) after being recognised by a customer at the fast-food outlet, who flagged their concern to an employee who then called local police.

Officers found him sitting in the restaurant wearing a blue mask and looking at a laptop. They said they recognised him as the suspect after he removed the mask.

When asked whether he had been to New York recently, he “became quiet and started to shake”, according to an affidavit.

He was found in possession of a gun and a handwritten document that expressed “ill will” towards corporate America and a false ID, according to police.

Mr Mangione initially appeared in a Pennsylvania court on Monday charged with possession of an unlicensed firearm and other charges.

In New York, he faces second degree murder charges as well as charges for possession of a false ID and weapons possession charges.

Mr Thompson, 50, was shot and killed last Wednesday morning outside the Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan where the medical insurance giant he led was holding an investors’ meeting.

The reaction to his killing exposed a deep-seated anger against the trillion-dollar industry, and on Tuesday, Altoona police told its officers to be on alert after receiving multiple emails and calls, including death threats from the public.

The McDonald’s also received a flood of negative reviews online.

Police said that they appreciated remarks made on Monday night by Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who criticised those who “have looked to celebrate instead of condemning this killer”.

“He is no hero,” Shapiro said.

Larry, who left the restaurant before the arrest, said he personally thought the young man who went to sit in the back corner after placing his order was an employee.

“They’ll go back there on break and they’ll take a rest, you know, maybe take a little sleep or something,” he said.

Asked for his thoughts on one of the most wanted suspects in the US being arrested at his local fast-food restaurant, Larry said he was “a little bit surprised”.

“But I’m not really surprised, you know?,” he added.

“I mean, the way the world is right now, it’s pretty crazy.”

Acclaimed poet and literary force Nikki Giovanni, who was at the forefront of the Black Arts Movement, and known across the world for her defiant yet endearing prose about race, gender, sex and love, has died.

Giovanni, 81, died on Monday with her lifelong partner, Virginia “Ginney” Fowler, by her side, according to a statement from friend and author Renée Watson.

“We will forever be grateful for the unconditional time she gave to us, to all her literary children across the writerly world,” fellow poet Kwame Alexander told US media.

Known for her work on civil rights and social issues, Giovanni was called “one of the most important artist-intellectuals of the twentieth century” by The New Yorker.

Giovanni – who was born Yolanda Cornelia Giovanni, Jr, in 1943 – received many honours in her decades-long career, including seven NAACP awards.

Her approach to race and gender in the 1960s, though timely, happened on the heels of the Civil Rights Movement, and was not immediately unanimously welcomed.

She self-published her first two books, Black Feeling Black Talk and Black Judgement, in 1968, quickly becoming a leading voice in the black arts movement.

By the early 1970s, she was selling out some of New York City’s most iconic arts performance centres, including the Lincoln Center and the Philharmonic theater.

Many see her interview with James Baldwin on “Soul!” – filmed in London and aired as a two-part special – as a defining moment in Giovanni’s career.

Several people reflected on that interview while paying tribute to Giovanni on social media on Tuesday.

“Nikki Giovanni really gave me a different perspective on what strength was in the Black relationship as well as black masculinity,” one user wrote on X, formerly Twitter, attaching a clip of the Baldwin interview.

“I listen to this conversation with James Baldwin on a weekly basis [because] of her. I’ll miss her a lot.”

Giovanni, whom Oprah Winfrey named one of 25 living legends, spent 35 years as an English professor at Virginia Tech university, before retiring in 2022.

She authored more than 30 books, ranging from poetry to children’s books. Her last work, titled The Last Book, is set to publish in 2025.

Giovanni grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, before graduating from Fisk University, a historically black college in Tennessee, with honours, in 1967.

She is survived by her son, granddaughter, and wife, Virginia Fowler.

Israel has confirmed it carried out attacks on Syria’s naval fleet, as part of its efforts to neutralise military assets in the country after the fall of the Assad regime.

In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said its ships struck the ports at Al-Bayda and Latakia on Monday night, where 15 vessels were docked.

The BBC has verified videos showing blasts at the port of Latakia, with footage appearing to show extensive damage to ships and parts of the port.

The IDF also said its warplanes had conducted more than 350 air strikes on targets across Syria, while moving ground forces into the demilitarised buffer zone between Syria and the occupied Golan Heights.

Earlier, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said it had documented more than 310 strikes by the IDF since the Syrian government was overthrown by rebels on Sunday.

In a statement, Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz said the IDF was aiming to “destroy strategic capabilities that threaten the State of Israel”.

He added that the operation to destroy the Syrian fleet had been a “great success”.

The IDF said a wide range of targets had been struck – including airfields, military vehicles, anti-aircraft weapons and arms production sites – in the Syrian capital, Damascus, as well as Homs, Tartus and Palmyra.

It also targeted weapon warehouses, ammunition depots and “dozens” of sea-to-sea missiles.

It added that it had done so to prevent them “from falling into the hands of extremists”.

In a video message, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Syrian rebel group that ousted President Bashar al-Assad, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), that Israel would “respond forcefully” if they allow Iran to “re-establish itself in Syria”.

He has previously expressed a desire for peaceful ties with the new Syrian government, and cast its interventions as defensive.

Rami Abdul Rahman, the founder of the SOHR, described the impact of the strikes as destroying “all the capabilities of the Syrian army” and said that “Syrian lands are being violated”.

Meanwhile, the IDF also confirmed it had troops operating in Syrian territory beyond the buffer zone bordering the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

The IDF acknowledged that its troops had entered Syrian territory but told the BBC that reports of tanks approaching Damascus were “false”.

It said some troops had been stationed within the Area of Separation that borders the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights “and then a few additional points”.

“When we say a few additional points, we’re talking the area of the Area of Separation, or the area of the buffer zone in vicinity,” IDF spokesperson Nadav Shoshani told the BBC.

BBC Verify has geolocated an image of an IDF soldier standing just over half a kilometre beyond the demilitarized buffer zone in the Golan Heights, inside Syria on a hillside near the village of Kwdana.

On Monday, the Israeli military released photos of its troops who crossed from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights into the demilitarised buffer zone in Syria where UN peacekeepers are based.

The IDF seizure of Syrian positions in the buffer zone was a “temporary defensive position until a suitable arrangement is found”, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday.

“If we can establish neighbourly relations and peaceful relations with the new forces emerging in Syria, that’s our desire. But if we do not, we will do whatever it takes to defend the State of Israel and the border of Israel,” he said on Monday.

Turkeys foreign ministry condemned Israel’s entry into the buffer zone, accusing it of an “occupying mentality” during a “sensitive period, when the possibility of achieving the peace and stability the Syrian people have desired for many years has emerged”.

This buffer zone, also known as the Area of Separation was set up as part of Israel’s ceasefire agreement with Syria in 1974 to keep Israeli and Syrian forces separated, following Israel’s earlier occupation of the Golan Heights.

Israel unilaterally annexed the Golan in 1981. The move was not recognised internationally, although the US did so unilaterally in 2019.

Asked about the IDF strikes on Monday night, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said Israel was concerned only with defending its citizens.

“That’s why we attack strategic weapons systems like, for example, remaining chemical weapons or long-range missiles and rockets in order that they will not fall into the hands of extremists,” he said.

On Monday, the UN’s chemical watchdog warns authorities in Syria to ensure that suspected stockpiles of chemical weapons are safe.

It is not known where or how many chemical weapons Syria has, but it’s believed former President Assad kept stockpiles.

• Follow here for updates
• What comes next for Syria?
• In maps: How did anti-Assad rebels take control?
• Syria rescuers end search for secret cells in notorious Saydnaya prison

Israel’s attacks come after Syrian rebel fighters captured the capital, Damascus, as Assad fled the country, reportedly for Russia. He, and before him his father, had been in power in the country since 1971.

Forces led by the Islamist opposition group HTS entered Damascus in the early hours of Sunday, before appearing on state television to declare that Syria was now “free”.

The man accused of shooting dead healthcare insurance CEO Brian Thompson in New York jostled with police and shouted at reporters as he was led into court on Tuesday, as more details emerged about a potential motive in the killing.

Luigi Mangione appeared at an extradition hearing in Pennsylvania where his lawyer, Thomas Dickey, said the 26-year-old would contest being moved to New York to face murder charges. “I haven’t seen any evidence that he’s the shooter,” he said.

Wearing an orange jumpsuit, Mr Mangione tried to address reporters as he arrived for the hearing. He was heard shouting “completely unjust” and “insult to the intelligence of the American people” before he was bundled into court by officers.

He was arrested on Monday after he was spotted at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s following a days-long manhunt that spanned several states. He was allegedly found with a gun similar to the murder weapon, a silencer and a fake ID.

Mr Mangione was denied bail for a second time on Tuesday after prosecutors said he was too dangerous to be released.

The judge then gave prosecutors 30 days to seek a warrant from New York Governor Kathy Hochul to secure his extradition to the state.

Hochul later said she would provide one. “I am co-ordinating with the District Attorney’s Office and will sign a request for a governor’s warrant to ensure this individual is tried and held accountable,” she said.

Mr Mangione looked around at the rows of reporters in court and smiled at times. At one point he interrupted his own lawyer who quickly quieted him.

• How the six-day manhunt unfolded
• What is a ghost gun, the weapon allegedly used in shooting?
• Who is the CEO shooting suspect?

Following the hearing on Tuesday afternoon, that lawyer, Mr Dickey, spoke to reporters outside court. “You can’t rush to judgment in this case or any case,” he said. “He’s presumed innocent. Let’s not forget that.”

Mr Mangione has been charged with several offences in Pennsylvania, including providing fraudulent identification to police and possessing an unlicensed firearm. He is being held at a Pennsylvania state prison and will plead not guilty.

In New York, he faces separate charges including murder for Mr Thompson’s killing on 4 December. The UnitedHealthcare CEO was gunned down by a masked man outside a Manhattan hotel in what police have described as a targeted attack.

Mr Thompson was named chief executive of the company, which is the largest private insurer in the US, in April 2021.

He had received threats before his death relating to medical coverage, according to his widow, Paulette Thompson, but a motive for his killing has not been suggested by prosecutors.

On Tuesday, however, as police poured through evidence and worked to piece together Mr Mangione’s movements after the shooting, more details emerged about his alleged grievances with the health insurance industry.

New York Police Department’s Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny told Good Morning America that he had read a three-page handwritten note allegedly found on the suspect when he was arrested.

“He does make some indication that he’s frustrated with the healthcare system in the United States,” he said. “He was writing a lot about his disdain for corporate America and in particular the healthcare industry.”

The note, which has been seen by several US media outlets, reportedly refers to “parasites” that “had it coming”. He also allegedly writes that he acted alone.

Former friends who spoke to the BBC said Mr Mangione had suffered from a back injury. They said he had left a surfing community in Hawaii over the summer of 2023 to undergo spinal surgery.

RJ Martin, a former roommate of the suspect who knew him in Hawaii, said the injury “prohibited him, at times, from just doing many normal things”.

Various details of Mr Mangione’s background have surfaced since his arrest. He was born in Maryland to a wealthy, well-known family, and police say he has ties to San Francisco, California. His last-known address was in Honolulu, Hawaii.

He attended the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League college, where he earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in software engineering.

Local media reported that Mr Mangione’s mother had reported him missing last month, telling authorities in San Francisco that she had not heard from her son since July.

“Our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi’s arrest,” Mr Mangione’s family said in a statement posted on social media by his cousin. “We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for all involved.”

A humpback whale has made one of the longest and most unusual migrations ever recorded, possibly driven by climate change, scientists say.

It was seen in the Pacific Ocean off Colombia in 2017, then popped up several years later near Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean – a distance of at least 13,000 km.

The experts think this epic journey might be down to climate change depleting food stocks or perhaps an odyssey to find a mate.

Ekaterina Kalashnikova of the Tanzania Cetaceans Program said the feat was “truly impressive and unusual even for this highly migratory species”.

The photograph below shows the same whale photographed in 2022, off the Zanzibar coast.

Dr Kalashnikova said it was very likely the longest distance a humpback whale had ever been recorded travelling.

Humpback whales live in all oceans around the world. They travel long distances every year and have one of the longest migrations of any mammal, swimming from tropical breeding grounds to feeding grounds in cooler waters.

But this male’s journey was even more spectacular, involving two distant breeding grounds.

One theory is that climate change is altering the abundance of the tiny shrimplike krill humpback whales feed on, forcing them to travel further in search of food.

Alternatively, whales may be exploring new breeding grounds as populations rebound through global conservation efforts.

“While actual reasons are unknown, amongst the drivers there might be global changes in the climate, extreme environmental events (that are more frequent nowadays), and evolutionary mechanisms of the species,” said Dr Kalashnikova.

The wandering male was among a group of humpbacks photographed from a research vessel on the Pacific coast of Colombia in 2013.

He was then identified in a similar area in 2017 – and off Zanzibar in 2022.

The sightings are separated by a 13,046 km great-circle distance – the minimum distance for the route the whale might have taken, the scientists say, though it is likely to be much greater.

Since the earth is a sphere, the shortest path between two points is expressed by the great circle distance, which corresponds to an arc linking two points on a sphere.

The paperʻs findings are based on hundreds of thousands of photos of whales submitted by researchers, whale watchers and members of the public to the citizen science website, happywhale.com.

The database uses artificial intelligence to match the individual shapes and patterns of humpback whale tails, or flukes, thereby mapping their movements around the globe.

The research is published in the journal, Royal Society Open Science.

Find out more about humpback whales in The Secret’s of Antarctica’s Giants on BBC iPlayer.

If the push to oust Bashar al-Assad was born anywhere, it was born in Deraa, a small city in Syria near the Jordanian border.

Here, on 21 May 2011, the tortured and mutilated body of 13-year-old Hamza al-Khatib was delivered to his family weeks after his arrest at an anti-government rally.

His death, and the torture of other local teenagers for writing anti-Assad graffiti, sparked widespread protests and a harsh crackdown by government forces.

If anyone in Deraa should be celebrating the fall of Assad’s regime, it’s the Khatib family.

But when we visited today, no one in that house was celebrating.

They had just been sent screenshots of documents found in the notorious Saydnaya prison confirming that Hamza’s older brother Omar – also arrested by the police in 2019 – had died in custody.

The boys’ mother, Samira, shaking with grief, told me she had been waiting for Omar to emerge from prison.

“I was thinking maybe he’ll come today or tomorrow,” she said. “Today, I got the news.”

Dressed all in black, and already mourning her husband, who died less than three months ago, she asked for former President Bashar al-Assad himself to experience what she had lived through.

“I hope he will pay the price,” she said. “And that God will take revenge on him, and on his children.”

Her nephew, Hossam al-Khatib, said the documents had been published on social media, by people scouring Saydnaya for information on their relatives. They found Omar’s file and shared it online, knowing that he was Hamza’s brother.

The fall of Assad has lifted the lid on decades of repression in Syria, and much of Deraa was out on the streets on Sunday, giddy with freedom, as rebel fighters took the capital Damascus and Assad fled.

Mobile phone footage shows crowds of men running around Deraa’s central square in a chaotic outpouring of joy – shouting and firing weapons into the air.

This area was a key opposition heartland during the Assad regime – heavy battles are etched onto schools and homes here, village after village corroded by tank rounds and machine gun fire.

The opposition in this southern part of Syria is different to the alliance led by Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which swept down from the north and took the capital last week. But they both converged on the capital on Sunday.

The Free Syria Army (FSA) began fighting here in 2011, when the harsh government crackdowns following Hamza’s death convinced some serving officers in Assad’s army to defect and form a rebel force.

One of them was Ahmed al-Awda, a poet who studied English literature at university before becoming an army officer, and then a rebel leader – now the militia leader of Deraa Province.

“You can’t imagine how happy we are,” he told me in the nearby town of Busra. “We have been crying for days. You can’t imagine what we feel. Everyone here in Syria lost family. Everyone was suffering.”

Mr Awda said he was among the first to enter Damascus on Sunday, along with HTS. The first thing he did, he added, was to go to the embassies and government buildings, to protect the people inside.

“We took many of the civilian government guys to the Four Seasons hotel, and put a very big force there to protect them,” he said.

“You know it will be a mad time, so I did my best to protect everybody there, even the government guys. I don’t want to punish them, they are Syrian.”

But he says he won’t forgive Assad so easily.

“I will do my best to bring him to judgement in court, to take his punishment, because we will not forget what he did to the Syrian people, and how he destroyed Syria.”

Assad’s departure has bestowed a fragile unity on Syria and its diverse opposition forces. But they no longer have a common enemy, and with outside powers still invested here, their differences could come under strain.

There are concerns that Syria could follow the path of Iraq and Libya and splinter into chaos.

“We saw what happened in Iraq and we refuse it,” Mr Awda said.

Assad’s forces weren’t the only ones he was fighting here over the past few years. Islamic State (IS) group cells – still scattered across the east of the country – were also a threat.

Mr Awda says he fought against them, killing a senior IS leader, Abu Ibrahim al-Qurayshi, two years ago.

Now Assad’s powerful backers, Iran and Russia, are no longer acting as a brake on IS, many here are worried about a resurgence.

Mr Awda is adamant this won’t happen. “No,” he insisted. “I kicked them out. We didn’t push Assad out only to live under IS.”

Now he wants free elections, believing that the Syrian people will never again choose anyone who would become a dictator.

In Deraa’s cemetery, the plaque on Hamza’s grave lies in pieces – broken by a government tank shell during fighting with rebel forces here, the family said.

“They kept hitting him even when he was dead,” one cousin remarked.

Neighbours watched in silence as the Syrian opposition flag was tied around Hamza’s headstone.

Behind it, the graves tell a story of 13 years of fighting: an air strike, a battle, a whole family killed in their home.

The war with Assad has ended – but peace in Syria has not yet been won.

US President-elect Donald Trump took a light jab at his Canadian counterpart on Tuesday, referring to Justin Trudeau as the “governor” of the “Great State of Canada”.

In an early morning social media post on Tuesday, he references a dinner the pair had in late November at Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago.

Prime Minister Trudeau travelled to meet Trump following a threat by the president-elect to impose a blanket 25% tariff on Canadian goods when he takes office in January.

Trump says in the post he hopes the pair can “continue our in depth talks on Tariffs and Trade, the results of which will be truly spectacular for all”.

Canada, a country of 40 million people, 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.

On Monday, Trudeau told the Halifax Chamber of Commerce that Canada will respond to the tariffs if the Trump administration moves ahead with the threat following Trump’s 20 January inauguration.

• Canada’s oil patch rattled by Trump’s tariff threat
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Trudeau noted Canada is still considering the “right” way to respond, but referenced retaliatory tariffs Ottawa imposed when the first Trump administration slapped levies on steel and aluminum.

“Our responses to the unfair steel and aluminum tariffs were what ended up lifting those tariffs last time,” he said.

Ottawa placed tariffs on both metals, as well as over 250 US goods including beer kegs, whiskey and orange juice – designed to politically pressure the US and make it take notice of the affect on cross-border trade.

Trudeau on Monday called those counter-measures “carefully targeted” and “politically impactful to the president’s party and colleagues”.

It allowed Canada – which is economically much smaller than the US – to “punch back in a way that was actually felt by Americans”, he said.

The president-elect’s threatened the blanket tariff against Mexico as well unless the two nations secured their shared borders with the US.

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, as is the amount of fentanyl seized.

Trudeau said while he takes the potentially economically devastating tariff threat seriously, Canadians should not “freak out”.

The president-elect’s approach is often to “destabilise a negotiating partner”, he said.

Trudeau is set to meet the leaders of Canada’s provinces and territories for a second time on Wednesday to discuss the plan to approach negotiations with the US.

Tuesday’s “governor” quip is not the first time Trump has needled Canada.

At Mar-a-Lago, Trump remarked that Canada should become the 51st US state – something that was “in no way a serious comment”, said Public Safety Minister Dominic Leblanc, who accompanied Trudeau to the dinner.

“The president was telling jokes, the president was teasing us,” he told reporters early this month.

Is the world’s fastest-growing big economy losing steam?

The latest GDP numbers paint a sobering picture. Between July and September, India’s economy slumped to a seven-quarter low of 5.4%, well below the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) forecast of 7%.

While it is still robust compared with developed nations, the figure signals a slowdown.

Economists attribute this to several factors. Consumer demand has weakened, private investment has been sluggish for years and government spending – an essential driver in recent years – has been pulled back. India’s goods exports have long struggled, with their global share standing at a mere 2% in 2023.

Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies report tepid sales, while salary bills at publicly traded firms, a proxy for urban wages, shrank last quarter. Even the previously bullish RBI has revised its growth forecast to 6.6% for the financial year 2024-2025.

“All hell seems to have broken loose after the latest GDP numbers,” says economist Rajeshwari Sengupta. “But this has been building up for a while. There’s a clear slowdown and a serious demand problem.”

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman paints a brighter picture. She said last week that the decline was “not systemic” but a result of reducing government spending during an election-focused quarter. She expected third-quarter growth to offset the recent decline. India will probably remain the fastest-growing major economy despite challenges like stagnant wages affecting domestic consumption, slowing global demand and climate disruptions in agriculture, Sitharaman said.

Some – including a senior minister in the federal government, economists and a former member of RBI’s monetary policy group – argue that the central bank’s focus on curbing inflation has led to excessively restrictive interest rates, potentially stifling growth.

High rates make borrowing more expensive for businesses and consumers, and potentially reduce investments and dampen consumption, both key drivers of economic growth. The RBI has kept interest rates unchanged for nearly two years, primarily because of rising inflation.

India’s inflation surged to 6.2% in October, breaching the central bank’s target ceiling (4%) and reaching a 14-month high, according to official data. It was mainly driven by food prices, comprising half of the consumer price basket – vegetable prices, for example, rose to more than 40% in October. There are also growing signs that food price hikes are now influencing other everyday costs, or core inflation.

But high interest rates alone may not fully explain the slowing growth. “Lowering rates won’t spur growth unless consumption demand is strong. Investors borrow and invest only when demand exists, and that’s not the case now,” says Himanshu, a development economist at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University.

However, RBI’s outgoing governor, Shaktikanta Das, believes India’s “growth story remains intact”, adding the “balance between inflation and growth is well poised”.

Economists point out that despite record-high retail credit and rising unsecured loans – indicating people borrowing to finance consumption even amidst high rates – urban demand is weakening. Rural demand is a brighter spot, benefiting from a good monsoon and higher food prices.

Ms Sengupta, an associate professor at Mumbai-based Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, told the BBC that the ongoing crisis was borne out by the fact that India’s economy was operating on a “two-speed trajectory”, driven by diverging performances in its “old economy and new economy”.

The old economy comprising the vast informal sector, including medium and small scale industries, agriculture and traditional corporate sector, are still waiting for long-pending reforms.

In contrast, the new economy, defined by the boom in services exports post-Covid, experienced robust growth in 2022-23. Outsourcing 2.0 has been a key driver, with India emerging as the world’s largest hub for global capability centres (GCCs), which do high-end offshore services work.

According to Deloitte, a consulting firm, over 50% of the world’s GCCs are now based in India. These centres focus on R&D, engineering design and consulting services, generating $46bn (£36bn) in revenue and employing up to 2 million highly skilled workers.

“This influx of GCCs fuelled urban consumption by supporting demand for luxury goods, real estate and SUVs. For 2-2.5 years post-pandemic, this drove a surge in urban spending. With GCCs largely established and consumption patterns shifting, the urban spending lift is fading,” says Ms Sengupta.

So the old economy appears to lack a growth catalyst while the new economy slows. Private investment is crucial, but without strong consumption demand, firms will not invest. Without investment to create jobs and boost incomes, consumption demand cannot recover. “It’s a vicious cycle,” says Ms Sengupta.

There are other confusing signals as well. India’s average tariffs have risen from 5% in 2013-14 to 17% now, higher than Asian peers trading with the US. In a world of global value chains, where exporters rely on imports from multiple countries, high tariffs make goods more expensive for companies to trade, making it harder for them to compete in global markets.

Then there is what economist Arvind Subramanian calls a “new twist in the tale”.

Even as calls grow to lower interest rates and boost liquidity, the central bank is propping up a falling rupee by selling dollars, which tightens liquidity. Since October, the RBI has spent $50bn from its forex reserves to shield the rupee.

Buyers must pay in rupees to purchase dollars, which reduces liquidity in the market. Maintaining a strong rupee through interventions reduces competitiveness by making Indian goods more expensive in global markets, leading to lower demand for exports.

“Why is the central bank shoring up the rupee? The policy is bad for the economy and exports. Possibly they are doing it because of optics. They don’t want to show India’s currency is weak,” Mr Subramanian, a former economic adviser to the government, told the BBC.

Critics warn that the “hyping up the narrative” of India as the fastest-growing economy is hindering essential reforms to boost investment, exports and job creation. “We are still a poor country. Our per capita GDP is less than $3,000, while the US is at $86,000. If you say we are growing faster than them, it makes no sense at all,” says Ms. Sengupta.

In other words, India requires a significantly higher and sustained growth rate to generate more jobs and raise incomes.

Boosting growth and consumption will not be easy in the short term. Lacking private investment, Himanshu suggests raising wages through government-run employment schemes to increase incomes and spur consumption. Others like Ms Sengupta advocate for reducing tariffs and attracting export investments moving away from China to countries like Vietnam.

The government remains upbeat over the India story: banks are strong, forex reserves are robust, finances stable and extreme poverty has declined. Chief economic adviser V Anantha Nageswaran says the latest GDP figure should not be over-interpreted. “We should not throw the baby out with the bathwater, as the underlying growth story remains intact,” he said at a recent meeting.

Clearly the pace of growth could do with some picking up. That is why scepticism lingers. “There’s no nation as ambitious for so long without taking [adequate] steps to fulfill that ambition,” says Ms Sengupta. “Meanwhile, the headlines talk of India’s age and decade – I’m waiting for that to materialise.”

The prime minister of Syria’s new transitional government has said it is time for people to “enjoy stability and calm” after the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad.

Mohammed al-Bashir, the former head of the rebel administration in the north-west, was speaking to Al Jazeera after being tasked with governing until March 2025 by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahir al-Sham (HTS) and its allies.

Bashir chaired a meeting in Damascus on Tuesday attended by members of his new government and those of Assad’s former cabinet to discuss the transfer of portfolios and institutions.

It came as the UN envoy for Syria said the rebels must transform their “good messages” into practice on the ground.

The US secretary of state meanwhile said Washington would recognise and fully support a future Syrian government so long as it emerged from a credible, inclusive process that respected minorities.

In 2011, Assad brutally crushed a peaceful pro-democracy uprising, sparking a devastating civil war in which more than half a million people have been killed and 12 million others forced to flee their homes.

Before this week, Mohammed al-Bashir was little known outside the areas dominated by HTS in the north-western provinces of Idlib and Aleppo.

According to his CV, he trained as an electrical engineer and worked at gas plants before the start of the civil war in 2011.

In January, Bashir was appointed prime minister of the Salvation Government (SG), which HTS established to run the territory under its control.

The SG functioned like a state, with ministries, local departments, judicial and security authorities, while maintaining a religious council guided by Islamic law.

Around four million people, many of them displaced from elsewhere in the country, lived under its rule.

When institutions stopped functioning in Aleppo after HTS and its allies captured the city earlier this month at the start of their lightning offensive, the SG stepped in to restore public services.

Technicians reportedly helped repair local electricity and telecommunications networks, security forces patrolled streets, medics volunteered at hospitals, and charities distributed bread.

“It is true that Idlib is a small region lacking resources, but they [SG officials] have a very high-level of experience after starting with nothing,” HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani was heard telling Assad’s former prime minister, Mohammed al-Jalali, in a video of a meeting in Damascus on Monday.

“We will benefit from your experiences. We certainly won’t ignore you,” he added.

On Tuesday, Bashir was pictured chairing a meeting of former SG ministers and ministers who served under Jalali. He was sat in front of the Syrian opposition and the HTS flags.

“[We] invited members from the old government and some directors from the administration in Idlib and its surrounding areas in order to facilitate all the necessary works for the next two months until we have a constitutional system to be able to serve the Syrian people,” Bashir told Al Jazeera afterwards.

“We had other meetings to restart the institutions to be able to serve our people in Syria,” he added.

Also on Tuesday, rebel commander Hasan Abdul Ghani announced his forces have taken control over the eastern Syrian city of Deir al-Zour. It had previously been captured by Syrian Kurdish troops on Friday.

Meanwhile, life appeared to be slowly returning to normal in the capital Damascus after two days of near-shutdown.

There were many pedestrians and cars out on the streets, and some shops and restaurants were open.

People were also sweeping away spent bullet cases that littered the ground around the central Umayyad Square, where many rebel fighters fired into the air as crowds celebrated the end of Assad’s 24-year rule.

A Muslim cleric there told the BBC that Syrians were looking to the future and wanted a peaceful and united country.

“We want to establish a nation built on principles of nationalism, justice, and the rule of law, a technocratic state where institutions are respected, and equal opportunities are guaranteed for all,” Sheikh Abdul Rahman al-Kouky said.

UN special envoy Geir Pedersen told reporters in Geneva the transition needed to ensure “the representation of the broadest possible spectrum of the Syrian society and the Syrian parties”.

“If this is not happening, then we risk new conflict,” he warned.

Pedersen said the designation of HTS as a terrorist organisation by the UN, US, UK and other countries would be a “complicating factor” in efforts to find a way forward.

HTS’s precursor, al-Nusra Front, pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda in 2013. But three years later, it formally cut ties with the jihadist group.

“The reality is so far that HTS and also the other armed groups have been sending good messages to the Syrian people… of unity, of inclusiveness,” Pedersen noted.

“We gave also seen… reassuring things on the ground” in Aleppo and Hama, another major city that was captured last week, he added.

He said the most important test would be how the transitional arrangements in Damascus were organised and implemented.

“If they are really inclusive of all the different groups and all the communities in Syria… then there is a possibility for a new beginning.”

“And then I do believe that the international community will look at the [terrorist] listing of HTS again,” he added.

Later, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in effect laid out a series of conditions which, if fulfilled, would see Syria enjoy Washington’s full recognition.

“It’s imperative that all actors involved protect civilians; respect human rights, especially of vulnerable minorities; preserve the state’s institutions, its services to help meet the needs of the Syrian; and to build towards inclusive governance,” he said.

“Statements by rebel leaders to these ends are very welcome, but of course, the real measure of their commitment is not just what they say but what they do.”

In just two weeks, Syrian rebels have swept from their enclave in the north west to capture a string of major cities, before reaching the capital Damascus and toppling President Bashar al-Assad 13 years after the start of the country’s civil war.

In convoys of small vehicles and motorbikes, fighters led by the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) moved rapidly along the north-south highway which forms the country’s main spine to take Damascus without resistance.

But while many in the country are celebrating the downfall of a family dynasty that ruled Syria with an iron fist, the future is uncertain and the situation on the ground remains in flux, with a number of different rebel groups controlling different parts of the country.

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• Analysis: End of Assad rule will reshape region’s balance of power

The fall of the Assad regime was brought about by the sudden and unexpected advance by HTS rebels but, although the group controls Syria’s main cities, it does not govern the whole country.

Syria has for years been controlled by a patchwork of rebel groups including HTS in Idlib and Kurdish-led groups in the country’s north east, some of which have also taken territory in recent days and weeks.

None of the rebel groups will mourn the falling of the Assad regime, but finding a consensus over how to run the country could still prove difficult and in the north of the country there have been clashes between competing factions.

After years locked behind frozen frontlines, the rebels mounted a lightning advance, culminating in the toppling of the president and takeover of the capital at the weekend.

After taking Syria’s second city Aleppo at the end of November, the rebels continued their offensive, moving south to take control of the city of Hama last Thursday.

The advance continued at pace, with Syria’s third city, Homs, falling on Saturday shortly before government forces also lost control of the capital.

Syria, with a population of about 22 million people, is located on the east coast of the Mediterranean sea. It borders Turkey to the north, Lebanon and Israel to the west and south west, Iraq to the east and Jordan to the south.

Turkey, Western powers and several Gulf Arab states have backed varying elements of the Syrian opposition to varying degrees during the conflict.

The Lebanon-based Hezbollah movement, backed by Iran, has fought alongside the Syrian regime army but has been severely weakened by its conflict with Israel. This has been seen as a key reason why the rebel advance was so successful.

Israel, concerned by what it calls Iran’s “military entrenchment” in Syria, has launched air strikes against Syria’s military.

Israeli warplanes have reportedly been carrying out hundreds of airstrikes across Syria, targeting Syrian Army military facilities, including weapon warehouses, ammunition depots, airports, naval bases and research centres.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) says it has documented more than 300 strikes by Israel since the fall of the Assad regime on Sunday, including on the capital, Damascus, Aleppo and Hama.

Reports say that many of the facilities hit have been completely destroyed.

Israel says its actions are to prevent weapons falling “into the hands of extremists” as Syria transitions into a post-Assad era.

Israel also says it has temporarily seized control of a demilitarized buffer zone in the Golan Heights, saying the 1974 disengagement agreement with Syria had “collapsed” with the rebel takeover of the country.

It denies reports it has tanks approaching Damascus but says some troops are operating in Syrian territory beyond the buffer zone.

The Golan Heights is a rocky plateau about 60km (40 miles) south-west of Damascus.

Israel seized the territory from Syria in the closing stages of the 1967 Six-Day War and unilaterally annexed it in 1981. The move was not recognised internationally, although the US did so unilaterally in 2019.

In the northern city of Manbij there have been clashes between Turkish-backed forces and Kurdish-led rebels.

Both sides claimed to have taken parts of the city and fighting is reported to be ongoing in some neighbourhoods.

Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War said they could not yet ascertain who was in control of Manbij.

In 2015, Russia sent thousands of troops to Syria to help keep President Assad in power.

In return for this military assistance, Russia was given 49-year leases on two key military bases.

The port at Tartous is Russia’s only major overseas naval base and also its only naval base in the Mediterranean.

Along with the air base at Hmeimim, which is often used to fly Russia’s military contractors in and out of Africa, the two bases play an important role in Russia’s ability to operate as a global power.

The Kremlin has said it will hold discussions with Syria’s new administration on the future of both sites.

The scion of a prominent Maryland family who came top of his class at an elite private school before graduating from an Ivy League college, Luigi Mangione seemed to have everything going for him, according to friends.

They have been left stunned by the 26-year-old’s arrest for the murder of UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive Brian Thompson, who was fatally shot last week in New York City. Mr Mangione will plead not guilty, his lawyer says.

According to a law enforcement bulletin seen by US media, Mr Mangione was allegedly motivated by resentment at what he called “parasitic” health insurance companies.

He had spent time in a surfing community in Hawaii, but left owing to debilitating back pain, say those who remember him. It is unclear, however, to what extent his own health troubles shaped his views of the medical industry.

He was arrested on Monday at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and was allegedly in possession of a gun, bullets, multiple fake IDs and cash.

Mr Mangione also had a handwritten document that expressed “ill will” towards corporate America and included passages such as “frankly, these parasites had it coming”, according to police.

Investigators say the words “deny”, “defend” and “depose” were written on shell casings found at the scene of Mr Thompson’s murder.

Law enforcement sources say this may be a reference to the “three Ds of insurance” – tactics used by companies to reject payment claims by patients.

Mr Mangione comes from a prominent family in the Baltimore area who are known for businesses including country clubs, nursing homes and a radio station according to local media.

The suspect’s paternal grandparents, Nicholas and Mary Mangione, were real estate developers who purchased the Turf Valley Country Club in 1978 and Hayfields Country Club in Hunt Valley in 1986.

Shortly after Mr Mangione was charged, his cousin, Republican state lawmaker Nino Mangione, released a statement saying the family was “shocked and devastated”.

“We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for all involved”, the statement read.

Thomas Maronick, a defence attorney who knows members of the family, told the BBC of his shock at the charges.

“You wouldn’t think someone of privilege or means from a family that’s known for doing so much for the community would do something like this,” he said.

Mr Mangione attended the private, all-boys Gilman School in Baltimore. He was valedictorian, an accolade usually bestowed on the student with the highest academic achievements.

Speaking to the BBC’s US partner, CBS News, one of his classmates said Mr Mangione “didn’t have any enemies” and was a “valedictorian for a reason”.

Mr Mangione went on to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania, where he gained a bachelor’s and master’s degree in computer science, according to the school, and founded a video game development club.

A friend who attended the Ivy League college at the same time as Mr Mangione described him as a “super normal” and “smart person”.

Mr Mangione was employed as a data engineer for TrueCar, a digital retailing website for new and used cars, according to his social media profiles. A company spokesman told the BBC he had not worked there since 2023.

He also spent time in a co-living surfing community in Hawaii called Surfbreak. Sarah Nehemiah, who knew him then, told CBS he left due to his back injury, which had worsened from surfing and hiking.

Friends have told US media he had surgery on his back. The background image on an X account believed to belong to Mr Mangione shows an x-ray of a spine with hardware in it.

A former roommate, RJ Martin, told the BBC that while Mr Mangione “never complained”, his back pain at times “prohibited him” from doing “many normal things”, such as surfing or playing volleyball.

Mr Martin – who eventually lost contact with Mr Mangione – said that he believed his former friend “would have never conceived of hurting someone else”.

“There’s no making sense of it,” he added.

A person matching his name and photo had an account on Goodreads, a user-generated book review site, where he read two books about back pain in 2022, one of them called Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry.

He also gave four stars to a text called Industrial Society and Its Future by Theodore Kaczynski – also known as the Unabomber manifesto.

Starting in 1978, Kaczynski carried out a bombing campaign that killed three people and injured dozens of others, until he was arrested in 1996.

In his review, Mr Mangione acknowledged Kaczynski was a violent individual, but also described him as a political revolutionary.

According to local media reports, Mr Mangione’s mother had reported him missing last month to San Francisco authorities, telling them she had not heard from her son since July.

North Korea has responded to South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s failed attempt to impose martial law, likening it to a military coup and accusing him of trying to run a “fascist dictatorship”.

Yoon made the shock declaration last week, accusing North Korea sympathisers of trying to undermine his government. His political future is still uncertain, with members of his own party so far refusing to impeach him.

An article on page six of North Korean state newspaper Rodong Sinmun on Wednesday said that Yoon’s “insane act” was “akin to the coup d’etat of the decades-ago military dictatorship era”.

“He brazenly brandished blades and guns of fascist dictatorship at his own people,” the article stated.

The developments have “revealed the weakness in South Korean society, that Yoon’s sudden martial law declaration is an expression of desperation, and that Yoon’s political life can end early”, it read.

The article in Rodong Sinmum had photos of the protests in Seoul, including those of young South Koreans carrying banners and K-pop light sticks.

Yoon’s short-lived martial law plunged the country into political turmoil. He remains in office but has been banned from leaving the country while being investigated for treason. Though it is unclear what, if any, authority he still has.

The leader of Yoon’s party, Han Dong-hoon, said he would no longer be involved in state affairs until his early exit from power is arranged. However, a roadmap for such an early exit is not expected until the end of the week.

The defence ministry said Yoon still has command over the armed forces. But the special warfare commander had earlier said that his men would not follow any new martial law orders.

There were fears North Korea might choose to exploit this crisis, and provoke Seoul, while there are doubts over the President’s command of his army.

An attempt to impeach the President over the weekend had failed, after Yoon’s ruling People Power Party chose to boycott the anonymous vote.

But the opposition Democratic Party, which holds the majority in parliament, has vowed to keep trying to impeach Yoon, with another vote expected on Saturday.

It needs at least eight members of Yoon’s party to cross over and vote to impeach the president with a two-thirds majority of the 300-seat parliament.