A local fire brigade has paid tribute to a nine-year-old killed in an attack on a German Christmas market.

André Gleißner died after a car drove into a crowd of shoppers at the market in Magdeburg on Friday evening, according to the Schöppenstedt fire department.

In a statement they said he was a member of the children’s fire brigade in Warle, which is about an hour’s drive from Magdeburg.

Four women, aged 45, 52, 67 and 75, also died in the attack. Authorities are holding a suspect in pre-trial detention on counts of murder, attempted murder and dangerous bodily harm.

The Saudi authorities, I am told, are currently working flat out to collate everything they have on the Magdeburg market suspect, Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, and to share it with Germany’s ongoing investigation “in every way possible”.

Inside the imposing sand coloured and fortress-like walls of the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Riyadh there is a perhaps justifiable sense of pique.

The ministry previously warned the German government about al-Abdulmohsen’s extremist views.

It sent four so-called “Notes Verbal”, three of them to Germany’s intelligence agencies and one to the foreign ministry in Berlin. There was, the Saudis say, no response.

Part of the explanation for this may lie in the fact that Taleb al-Abdulmohsen was granted asylum by Germany in 2016, one year after the former Chancellor Angela Merkel threw open her country’s borders to let in more than a million migrants from the Middle East, and 10 years after al-Abdulmohsen had taken up residence in Germany.

Coming from a country where Islam is the only religion permitted to be practiced in public, al-Abdulmohsen was a very unusual citizen.

He had turned his back on Islam, making himself a heretic in the eyes of many.

Born in the Saudi date palm oasis town of Hofuf in 1974, little is known about his early life before he decided to leave Saudi Arabia and move to Europe aged 32.

Active on social media, on his Twitter (later X) account he labels himself as both a psychiatrist and founder of Saudi rights movement, together with the tag @SaudiExMuslims.

He founded a website aimed at helping Saudi women flee their country to Europe.

The Saudis say he was a people trafficker and the Ministry of Interior’s investigators, the Mabaatheth, are said to have an extensive file on him.

There have been reports in recent years of dissident Saudis coming under hostile surveillance from Saudi government agents, in Canada, the US and in Germany.

There is no question that the German authorities, both federal and state, have made some serious errors of omission in the case of al-Abdulmohsen.

Whatever their reasons for not responding, as the Saudis claim, to the repeated warnings about his extremism, he was clearly a danger to his adopted host country.

There is also, separately, the failure to close off, or at least guard, the emergency access route to Magdeburg Alter Markt that allowed him to allegedly drive his BMW into the crowds.

German authorities have defended the market’s layout and said an investigation into the suspect’s past is ongoing.

But a complicating factor here is that Saudi Arabia, although considered a friend and ally of the West, has a poor human rights record.

Until June 2018 Saudi women were forbidden to drive and even those women who publicly called for that ban to be lifted before then have been persecuted and imprisoned.

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, still only in his 30s, just, is immensely popular in his own country.

While Western leaders largely distanced themselves from him after his alleged involvement in the grisly murder of the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, which the crown prince denies, at home his star is still in the ascendant.

Under his de-facto rule, Saudi public life has transformed for the better, with men and women allowed to associate freely, and cinemas reopening, along with big, spectacular sports and entertainment events, even gigs performed by Western artists like David Guetta and the Black Eyed Peas.

But there is a paradox here.

While Saudi public life has flourished there has been a simultaneous crackdown on anything that even hints at more political or religious freedom.

Harsh prison sentences of 10 years or more have been handed down for simple tweets.

No-one is permitted to even question the way the country is run.

It is against this backdrop that Germany appears to have dropped the ball with Taleb al-Abdulmohsen.

Magdeburg’s Christmas market is a sad sight. This should have been the busiest weekend of the season, but the whole area has been cordoned off and all the stands are shut.

Police are the only people walking around the boarded-up mulled wine and gingerbread stalls.

On the pavement, red candles flicker, tributes laid for the victims.

Lukas, a truck driver, told me he felt compelled to come to pay his respects. “I wasn’t there when it happened,” he told me.

“But I work here in Magdeburg. I’m here every day. I’ve driven by here a thousand times.”

“It’s a tragedy for everyone here in Magdeburg. The perpetrator should be punished.”

“We can only hope that the victims and their families find the strength to deal with it.”

There is sorrow here – but there is anger too.

Many people here see this attack as a terrible lapse in security. That is a claim the authorities reject, although they have admitted the attacker entered the market using a route planned for emergency responders.

Michael, who also came to pay tributes to the victims, said “there should’ve been better security”.

“We should have been prepared better but that was not done properly.”

• Investigation: Police probe market security and warnings about suspect
• Explained: What we know so far about Magdeburg Christmas market attack
• From the scene: Eyewitness heard rumbling and shattering glass

Standing at the security cordon, I heard a group of locals complaining loudly about Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz and regional politicians.

“They are wasting our tax money, they are just looking out for themselves. They are not interested in us. We just hear empty promises,” one man said.

“They are turning what happened here around and want to put the blame on the opposition and use it for their election campaign,” he said.

On Saturday evening, around the same time as the square in front of Magdeburg’s Gothic cathedral was filled with mourners watching a memorial service, a demonstration took place nearby.

Protesters held a banner that read “Remigration now!” – a concept popular among the far-right – and shouted “those who do not love Germany should leave Germany”.

It is not clear yet what impact this attack may have on Germany’s upcoming election.

Germany has been hit by a number of deadly Islamist attacks in the past, but investigators said the evidence they have gathered so far suggests a different picture in this case.

Germany’s Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said the suspect appears to have been “Islamophobic”.

The suspect, Taleb Al-Abdulmohsen, is from Saudi Arabia, and his social media posts suggest he had been critical of Islam.

He also expressed sympathy on social media for Germany’s far-right political party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), re-tweeting posts from the party’s leader and a far-right activist.

Ukrainian sniper Oleksandr Matsievsky was captured by Russians in the first year of the full-scale invasion. Later, a video emerged showing him smoking his last cigarette in a forest, apparently next to a grave he had been forced to dig.

“Glory to Ukraine!” he says to his captors. Moments later, shots ring out and he falls dead.

His execution is one of many.

In October this year, nine captured Ukrainian soldiers were reportedly shot dead by Russian forces in Kursk region. Ukrainian prosecutors are investigating the case including a photo showing half-naked bodies lying on the ground. This photo was enough for one of the victims, drone operator Ruslan Holubenko, to be identified by his parents.

“I recognised him by his underwear,” his distraught mother told local broadcaster Suspilne Chernihiv. “I bought it for him before a trip to the sea. I also knew that his shoulder had been shot through. You could see that in the picture.”

The list of executions goes on. Ukrainian prosecutors are investigating reports of beheadings and a sword being used to kill a Ukrainian soldier with his hands tied behind his back.

In another instance, a video showed 16 Ukrainian soldiers apparently being lined up and then mowed down with automatic gunfire after emerging from a woods to surrender.

Some of the executions were filmed by Russian forces themselves, while others were observed by Ukrainian drones hovering above.

The killings captured on such videos usually take place in woods or fields lacking distinctive features, which makes confirming their exact location difficult. BBC Verify, however, has been able to confirm in several cases – such as one beheading – that the victims wear Ukrainian uniforms and that the videos are recent.

The Ukrainian prosecution service says that at least 147 Ukrainian prisoners of war have been executed by Russian forces since the start of the full-scale invasion, 127 of them this year.

“The upward trend is very clear, very obvious,” says Yuri Belousov, the head of the War Department at the Ukrainian Prosecutor-General’s Office.

“Executions became systemic from November last year and have continued throughout all of this year. Sadly, their number has been particularly on the rise this summer and autumn. This tells us that they are not isolated cases. They are happening across vast areas and they have clear signs of being part of a policy – there is evidence that instructions to this effect are being issued.”

International humanitarian law – particularly the Third Geneva Convention – offers protection to prisoners of war, and executing them is a war crime.

Despite this, Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman leader of Russia’s Chechnya, briefly ordered his commanders involved in the Ukraine war “to take no prisoners”.

Rachel Denber, Deputy Director of the Europe and Central Asia Division at Human Rights Watch, says there is no shortage of evidence supporting allegations of Ukrainian prisoners of war being executed by Russian troops. According to her, impunity plays a key part, and the Russian army has some serious questions to answer.

“What instructions do these units have, either formally or informally from their commanders? Are their commanders being quite clear about what the Geneva Conventions say about the treatment of prisoners of war? What are Russian military commanders telling their units about their conduct? What steps is the chain of command taking to investigate these instances? And if higher ups are not investigating, or not taking steps to prevent that conduct, are they aware that they too are criminally liable and can be held accountable?” she asks.

So far, there has been nothing to suggest that Russia is formally investigating claims that its forces have been executing Ukrainian prisoners of war. Even mentioning similar allegations is punishable by lengthy prison sentences in Russia.

According to Vladimir Putin, Russian forces have “always” treated Ukrainian prisoners of war “strictly in line with international legal documents and international conventions”.

Ukrainian forces have also been accused of executing Russian prisoners of war, but the number of such claims has been much smaller.

Yuri Belousov says that the Ukrainian prosecution service treats such accusations “very seriously” and is investigating them – but so far no one has been charged.

According to Human Rights Watch, since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022 the Russian forces have committed “a litany of violations, including those which should be investigated as war crimes or crimes against humanity”.

The Russian army’s record of abuses is such that some Ukrainian soldiers prefer death to capture.

“He told me: Mum, I’ll never surrender, never. Forgive me, I know you’ll cry, but I don’t want to be tortured,” Ruslan Holubenko’s mother says. Her son is still officially classed as missing in action, and she hopes against hope.

“I’ll do everything that’s possible and impossible to get my child back. I keep looking at this photo. Maybe he is just unconscious? I want to believe, I don’t want to think that he’s gone.”

When a court declared Iwao Hakamata innocent in September, the world’s longest-serving death row inmate seemed unable to comprehend, much less savour the moment.

“I told him he was acquitted, and he was silent,” Hideko Hakamata, his 91-year-old sister, tells the BBC at her home in Hamamatsu, Japan.

“I couldn’t tell whether he understood or not.”

Hideko had been fighting for her brother’s retrial ever since he was convicted of quadruple murder in 1968.

In September 2024, at the age of 88, he was finally acquitted – ending Japan’s longest running legal saga.

Mr Hakamata’s case is remarkable. But it also shines a light on the systemic brutality underpinning Japan’s justice system, where death row inmates are only notified of their hanging a few hours in advance, and spend years unsure whether each day will be their last.

Human rights experts have long condemned such treatment as cruel and inhuman, saying it exacerbates prisoners’ risk of developing a serious mental illness.

And more than half a lifetime spent in solitary confinement, waiting to be executed for a crime he didn’t commit, took a heavy toll on Mr Hakamata.

Since being granted a retrial and released from prison in 2014, he has lived under Hideko’s close care.

When we arrive at the apartment he is on his daily outing with a volunteer group that supports the two elderly siblings. He is anxious around strangers, Hideko explains, and has been in “his own world” for years.

“Maybe it can’t be helped,” she says. “This is what happens when you are locked up and crammed in a small prison cell for more than 40 years.

“They made him live like an animal.”

A former professional boxer, Iwao Hakamata  was working at a miso processing plant when the bodies of his boss, the man’s wife and their two teenage children were found. All four had been stabbed to death.

Authorities accused Mr Hakamata of murdering the family, setting their house in Shizuoka alight and stealing 200,000 yen (£199; $556) in cash.

“We had no idea what was going on,” Hideko says of the day in 1966 when police came to arrest her brother.

The family home was searched, as well as the homes of their two elder sisters, and Mr Hakamata was taken away.

He initially denied all charges, but later gave what he came to describe as a coerced confession following beatings and interrogations that lasted up to 12 hours a day.

Two years after his arrest, Mr Hakamata was convicted of murder and arson and sentenced to death. It was when he was moved to a cell on death row that Hideko noticed a shift in his demeanour.

One prison visit in particular stands out.

“He told me, ‘there was an execution yesterday – it was a person in the next cell’,” she recalls. “He told me to take care – and from then on, he completely changed mentally and became very quiet.”

Mr Hakamata is not the only one to be damaged by life on Japan’s death row, where inmates wake each morning not knowing if it will be their last.

“Between 08:00 and 08:30 in the morning was the most critical time, because that was generally when prisoners were notified of their execution,” Menda Sakae, who spent 34 years on death row before being exonerated, wrote in a book about his experience.

“You begin to feel the most terrible anxiety, because you don’t know if they are going to stop in front of your cell. It is impossible to express how awful a feeling this was.”

James Welsh, lead author of a 2009 Amnesty International report into conditions on death row, noted that “the daily threat of imminent death is cruel, inhuman and degrading”. The report concluded that inmates were at risk of “significant mental health issues”.

Hideko could only watch as her own brother’s mental health deteriorated as the years went by.

“Once he asked me ‘Do you know who I am?’ I said, ‘Yes, I do. You are Iwao Hakamata’. ‘No,’ he said, ‘you must be here to see a different person’. And he just went back [to his cell].”

Hideko stepped up as his primary spokesperson and advocate. It wasn’t until 2014, however, that there was a breakthrough in his case.

A key piece of evidence against Mr Hakamata were red-stained clothes found in a miso tank at his workplace.

They were recovered a year and two months after the murders and the prosecution said they belonged to him. But for years Mr Hakamata’s defence team argued that the DNA recovered from the clothes did not match his – and alleged that the evidence was planted.

In 2014 they were able to persuade a judge to release him from prison and grant him a retrial.

Prolonged legal proceedings meant it took until last October for the retrial to begin. When it finally did, it was Hideko who appeared in court, pleading for her brother’s life.

Mr Hakamata’s fate hinged on the stains, and specifically how they had aged.

The prosecution had claimed the stains were reddish when the clothes were recovered – but the defence argued that blood would have turned blackish after being immersed in miso for so long.

That was enough to convince presiding judge Koshi Kunii, who declared that “the investigating authority had added blood stains and hid the items in the miso tank well after the incident took place”.

Judge Kunii further found that other evidence had been fabricated, including an investigation record, and declared Mr Hakamata innocent.

Hideko’s first reaction was to cry.

“When the judge said that the defendant is not guilty, I was elated; I was in tears,” she says. “I am not a tearful person, but my tears just flowed without stopping for about an hour.”

The court’s conclusion that evidence against Mr Hakamata was fabricated raises troubling questions.

Japan has a 99% conviction rate, and a system of so-called “hostage justice” which, according to Kanae Doi, Japan director at Human Rights Watch, “denies people arrested their rights to a presumption of innocence, a prompt and fair bail hearing, and access to counsel during questioning”.

“These abusive practices have resulted in lives and families being torn apart, as well as wrongful convictions,” Ms Doi noted in 2023.

David T Johnson, a professor of sociology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, whose research focuses on criminal justice in Japan, has followed the Hakamata case for the last 30 years.

He said one reason it dragged on is that “critical evidence for the defence was not disclosed to them until around 2010”.

The failure was “egregious and inexcusable”, Mr Johnson told the BBC. “Judges kept kicking the case down the road, as they frequently do in response to retrial petitions (because) they are busy, and the law allows them to do so.”

Hideko says the core of the injustice was the forced confession and the coercion her brother suffered.

But Mr Johnson says false accusations don’t happen because of a single mistake. Instead, they are compounded by failings at all levels – from the police right through to the prosecutors, courts and parliament.

“Judges have the last word,” he added. “When a wrongful conviction occurs, it is, in the end, because they said so. All too often, the responsibility of judges for producing and maintaining wrongful convictions gets neglected, elided, and ignored.”

Against that backdrop, Mr Hakamata’s acquittal was a watershed – a rare moment of retrospective justice.

After declaring Mr Hakamata innocent, the judge presiding over his retrial apologised to Hideko for how long it took to achieve justice.

A short while later, Takayoshi Tsuda, chief of Shizuoka police, visited her home and bowed in front of both brother and sister.

“For the past 58 years… we caused you indescribable anxiety and burden,” Mr Tsuda said. “We are truly sorry.”

Hideko gave an unexpected reply to the police chief.

“We believe that everything that happened was our destiny,” she said. “We will not complain about anything now.”

After nearly 60 years of anxiety and heartache, Hideko has styled her home with the express intention of letting some light in. The rooms are bright and inviting, filled with pictures of her and Iwao alongside family friends and supporters.

Hideko laughs as she shares memories of her “cute” little brother as a baby, leafing through black-and-white family photos.

The youngest of six siblings, he seems to always be standing next to her.

“We were always together when we were children,” she explains. “I always knew I had to take care of my little brother.  And so, it continues.”

She walks into Mr Hakamata’s room and introduces their ginger cat, which occupies the chair he normally sits in. Then she points to pictures of him as a young professional boxer.

“He wanted to become a champion,” she says. “Then the incident happened.”

After Mr Hakamata was released in 2014, Hideko wanted to make the apartment as bright as possible, she explains. So she painted the front door pink.

“I believed that if he was in a bright room and had a cheerful life, he would naturally get well.”

It’s the first thing one notices when visiting Hideko’s apartment, this bright pink statement of hope and resilience.

It’s unclear whether it has worked – Mr Hakamata still paces back and forth for hours, just as he did for years in a jail cell the size of three single tatami mats.

But Hideko refuses to linger on the question of what their lives might have looked like if not for such an egregious miscarriage of justice.

When asked who she blames for her brother’s suffering, she replies: “no-one”.

“Complaining about what happened will get us nowhere.”

Her priority now is to keep her brother comfortable. She shaves his face, massages his head, slices apples and apricots for his breakfast each morning.

Hideko, who has spent the majority of her 91 years fighting for her brother’s freedom, says this was their fate.

“I don’t want to think about the past. I don’t know how long I’m going to live,” she says. “I just want Iwao to live a peaceful and quiet life.”

Sega is considering launching its own Netflix-like subscription service for video games, a move which would accelerate gaming’s transition towards streaming.

There are already a number of similar services on the market – such as Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus – which see gamers pay a monthly fee for access to a range of titles rather than owning them outright.

Sega’s president Shuji Utsumi told the BBC such subscription products were “very interesting”, and his firm was “evaluating some opportunities”.

“We’re thinking something – and discussing something – we cannot disclose right now,” he said.

Some in the industry have expressed concern about the move however telling the BBC it could see gamers “shelling out more money” on multiple subscription services.

It is not just Sony and Microsoft who offer game subscriptions – there are now countless players in the space, with rivals such as Nintendo, EA and Ubisoft all offering their own membership plans.

Currently, various Sega games are available across multiple streaming services.

The amount these services individually charge vary depending on the features and games made available. For example, Xbox Game Pass prices range from £6.99 to £14.99 a month, while PlayStation Plus ranges from £6.99 to £13.49 a month.

So it would make financial sense for Sega for people who are playing its titles to pay it subscription fees rather its rivals.

It could also be attractive for people who mostly want to play Sega games – but for everyone else it could result in higher costs.

Rachel Howie streams herself playing games on Twitch, where she is known as DontRachQuit to her fans, and said she was “excited and worried” about another subscription service

“We have so many subscriptions already that we find it very difficult to justify signing up for a new one,” she told the BBC.

“I think that SEGA will definitely have a core dedicated audience that will benefit from this, but will the average gamer choose this over something like Game Pass?”

And Sophie Smart, Production Director at UK developer No More Robots, agreed.

“As someone whose first console was the Sega Mega Drive, what I’d love more than anything is to see Sega thriving and this feels like a step in a modern direction,” she said.

But she wondered if Sega did create a rival subscription service if this would lead to their games being removed from other services.

“If so, it could mean that consumers are shelling out more money across owning multiple subscription services,” she said.

Shuji Utsumi spoke to the BBC ahead of the premiere of the film Sonic 3 on Saturday, after a year in which he oversaw the launch of Metaphor: ReFantazio, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, and the latest Sonic the Hedgehog game.

Our conversation started in an unexpected way.

The very first thing Mr Utsumi said to me seemed to suggest that the firm, which dominated gaming in the 1990s with a rivalry between Sonic the Hedgehog and Nintendo’s Super Mario, may have lost its way.

“I want to make Sega really shiny again,” he said.

He said Sega had been putting too much focus on domestic success in Japan, and needed to re-establish itself on a global stage, which would mean expanding past its base.

“Sega has been somehow losing confidence,” he said.

“But why? Sega has a great RPG group, Sega has amazing IPs, Sega is a really well-known brand.

“So I was like, hey, now is not the time to be defensive – but more offensive.”

He said the company was too concerned about controlling costs when he took over, and he wants to “bring a rock and roll mentality” to gaming.

When I told him that sounded familiar – Sega’s marketing in the 90s often tried to position Sonic the Hedgehog as the cool alternative to Mario – he agreed.

He said the firm now simply must “make a great game” in the series.

“The next one is going to be a quite challenging, quite exciting game that we are working on,” he said.

But he would not divulge whether Sega was considering a follow up to the much-loved Sonic Adventure series.

“Sonic Adventure was kind of a game-changer for Sonic,” he said.

“When we release it, it should be good, it should be impressive – we need to meet or even exceed people’s expectations, so it takes some time.”

Part of the series which fans have been clamouring to see return is the Chao Garden – a much-loved virtual pet synonymous with Sonic Adventure.

Mr Utsumi said “we’ve been talking about it” – but would not go into further detail, only that he could not “say too much about it”.

Mr Utsumi unsurprisingly talked up the firm’s successes this year, which have included winning multiple gaming awards with new IP Metaphor: ReFantazio, made by the team behind the Persona series.

But it hasn’t all been positive for the firm, with job cuts in March, and Football Manager 2025 being delayed to next year.

“It was a hard decision,” he said of the cuts which saw 240 people lose their jobs.

“But when you reset the initiative, you have to make that hard decision.”

And he said Football Manager had been delayed over “a quality issue”.

“I mean, financially, maybe providing the game at an early stage can be the better choice.

“But we decided to keep having the quality level – to keep that discipline.”

And he also spoke of how Sega’s year has gone outside of gaming, with several film and television adaptations being capped off with the third Sonic the Hedgehog movie releasing on Saturday.

“I just saw the movie – it’s so much fun. It’d be nice if that kind of excitement goes on.”

In 1915, 29-year-old Indian entrepreneur Jhamandas Watumull arrived in Hawaii’s O’ahu island to set up a retail shop of his import business with his partner Dharamdas.

The two registered Watumull & Dharamdas as a business on Honolulu’s Hotel Street, selling exotic goods like silks, ivory crafts, brassware and other curios from the East.

Dharamdas died of cholera in 1916, prompting Jhamandas Watumull to send for his brother Gobindram to manage their Honolulu store while he took care of their business in Manila. Over the next several years, the brothers would travel between India and Hawaii as they solidified their business.

Today, the Watumull name is ubiquitous on the islands – from garment manufacturing and real estate to education and arts philanthropy, the family is inextricably linked with Hawaii’s rich history.

The first South Asians to move to the island from India, they are now one of its wealthiest families.

“Slowly, slowly, that’s how we did it,” Jhamandas told a local Hawaiian publication in 1973.

Born in pre-independent India, Jhamandas was the son of a brick contractor in Sindh province’s Hyderabad (now in Pakistan). The family was educated but not wealthy. After an accident paralysed his father, Jhamandas’ mother bought his passage to the Philippines where he began working in textile mills. In 1909, he began his own trading business in Manila with his partner Dharamdas.

His grandson JD Watumull says Jhamandas and Dharamdas moved to Hawaii after a drop in their Manila business after the US, which occupied Philippines at the time, curtailed ties with foreign businesses.

Their Hawaii business was renamed East India Store soon after Jhamandas’ brother Gobindram began managing it. In the following years, the business expanded into a major department store with branches in several parts of Asia as well as Hawaii, says SAADA, a digital archive of South Asian American history.

In 1937, Gobindram built the Watumull Building in Honolulu’s Waikiki neighbourhood to house the company’s headquarters. According to SAADA, the multi-million-dollar business had expanded to 10 stores, an apartment house and assorted commercial developments by 1957.

The Star-Bulletin newspaper describes products at the store – linens, lingerie, brass and teak wood curios – as woven with “romance and mystery” that transported one “to distant lands and fascinating scenes”.

As Hawaii emerged as a popular destination for wealthy tourists in the 1930s, shirts in bold colours with island motifs called the ‘Aloha shirt’ became a sought-after souvenir.

According to Dale Hope, an expert in Hawaiian textile and patterns, the Watumull’s East India Store was one of the first on the island to carry designs with Hawaiian patterns.

The designs were first commissioned in 1936 by Gobindram from his artist sister-in-law Elsie Jensen.

“Instead of Mount Fuji, she’d have Diamond Head, instead of koi [she’d] have tropical fish, instead of cherry blossoms [she’d] have gardenias and hibiscus and all the things we know here,” Hope said.

The designs were sent to Japan where they were handblocked onto raw silk, Nancy Schiffer writes in the book Hawaiian Shirt Designs.

“These subtle floral patterns, modern and dynamic in concept, were the first Hawaiian designs to be produced commercially,” Schiffer notes.

“They were sold by the boat load and were exhibited as far away as London,” William Devenport says in the book Paradise of the Pacific.

Gobindram’s daughter Lila told Hope that the Watumull’s Waikiki store had American movie stars Loretta Young, Jack Benny, Lana Turner and Eddie “Rochester” Anderson coming to buy these shirts.

“More and more we are finding out that Watumull has become a synonym for Hawaiian fashions,” Gulab Watumull said in a 1966 interview in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

The Watumulls soon bought the Royal Hawaiian Manufacturing Company, where the first matching family aloha wear was created.

Despite their success, it would be decades before the Watumull brothers – Jhamandas and Gobindram – received US citizenship. Their early years in the country were marred by discrimination and difficult immigration laws, the Hawaii Business Magazine wrote.

In 1922, Gobindram married Ellen Jensen, an American, whose citizenship was stripped under the Cable Act for marrying an immigrant who was not eligible for US citizenship. Jensen would go on to work with the League of Women Voters to reform the law and regain citizenship in 1931.

Gobindram would become a citizen in 1946 when a law allowing Indians to gain citizenship through naturalisation was enacted.

His brother Jhamandas, meanwhile, continued to split much of his time between India and Hawaii.

During India’s 1947 partition, the Watumull family moved from Sindh to Bombay (now Mumbai), leaving much of their property behind, SAADA says.

Jhamandas’ son Gulab eventually arrived in Hawaii to work in the family business and become its head.

In 1955, the brothers split the business with Jhamandas and Gulab keeping its retail portion while Gobindram’s family took over its real estate section.

Jhamandas moved permanently to Hawaii In 1956, a few years after the death of his wife and one of their sons, and in 1961, became a US citizen.

Over the years, the family remained invested in the welfare of India and its people. Gobindram was an active member of the Committee for India’s Freedom and often travelled to Washington to support the country’s case for independence, Elliot Robert Barkan writes in Making it in America.

Gobindram’s home in Los Angeles was “a Mecca for people concerned with Indian independence”, Sachindra Nath Pradhan notes in the book India in the United States.

The Watumull Foundation in 1946 sponsored a series of lectures by Dr S Radhakrishnan – who later served as India’s president – at American universities.

Gobindram’s wife Ellen was instrumental in bringing an international parenthood conference to Delhi in 1959, leading to the establishment of the country’s first birth control clinics.

The family’s philanthropy has and continues to include funding for educational institutions in Hawaii and in India, endowments for Honolulu-based art programmes and promoting Indian-Hawaiian exchange.

Many of the Watumull brothers’ grandchildren now work in and around Hawaii.

In the past few years, as the family business shifted focus to real estate, the last Watumull retail store closed in 2020. The company thanked its customers “for years of good business and good memories”.

Watumull Properties purchased a 19,045 sq m (205,000 sq ft) marketplace in Hawaii last year. JD Watumull, the president of the company, said, “The Hawaiian Islands continue to be our family’s focus today and in the future.”

Driving into Mezzeh 86, a working-class neighbourhood in the west of Damascus, we are waved through a checkpoint manned by fighters from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

Buildings are rundown and in need of repairs.

This area is dominated by people from Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shia Islam whose members make up one of Syria’s biggest religious minorities.

Alawites controlled power in the predominantly Sunni Muslim country for the 50 years of the Assad family’s rule, holding top positions in the government, military and intelligence services.

Now, many from the community fear reprisals following the overthrow of the Assad regime by rebels led by HTS, a Sunni Islamist group that was once al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria.

Dozens of Alawites who we had contacted by phone had refused to speak to us, with many saying they were scared.

In Mezzeh 86, the presence of HTS fighters at a checkpoint did not appear to be a source of anxiety.

Many Alawites did come up and speak with us – keen to distance themselves from Assad’s regime.

“During the Assad regime, the stereotype about the Alawites is that they got all the work opportunities and that they are wealthy. But, in fact, most Alawites are poor and you’ll only find one among a thousand who is rich,” said Mohammad Shaheen, a 26-year-old pharmacy student.

“Even when HTS went to Alawite villages near the coast, they found all villages were poor. Only the Assad family amassed wealth,” he added, referring to the Alawite heartland in the country’s west.

Hasan Dawood, a shopkeeper, chimed in: “We were slaves for him – drivers, cooks and cleaners.”

There’s also a sense of betrayal.

“Bashar was a traitor. And the way he fled was cowardly. He should have at least addressed people and told us what was happening. He left without a word, which made the situation chaotic,” said Mohammad.

But people from the Alawite community, and indeed from this neighbourhood, did serve in Assad’s brutal security forces. Do they fear reprisals against them, we asked.

“Those who were in the military and did bad things have fled. No-one knows where they are. They are afraid of revenge,” said Thaier Shaheen, a construction worker.

“But people who don’t have blood on their hands, they are not scared, and have stayed back.”

There have been reports of a few reprisal killings in parts of the country, but so far there is no evidence to suggest they were carried out by HTS.

“Until now, we are OK. We are talking to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and they are respectful. But there are people who aren’t from HTS but pretend to be them who are making threats. They want our society to fail and they are the ones we are scared of,” said Mohammad.

After taking control of Damascus, HTS and its allies said those from the deposed regime who had been involved in torture and killings would be held to account, although it is unclear so far what form that justice will take.

HTS also said that the rights and freedoms of religious and ethnic minorities would be protected.

The group has a jihadist past which it has distanced itself from. But it has an Islamist present, and many are asking what that will mean for Syria’s plural society.

“I’m so happy because the Assad regime fell. This is like a dream come true. No-one wants to live under dictatorship. But there is concern. I have to be realistic,” said Youssef Sabbagh, a Christian lawyer.

“HTS are here now, and they are an Islamic militia. That’s what they are. I wish, I pray they will be a modern Islamic militia.”

“I speak not just as a Christian, a lot of Syrians, Muslims and everyone, we don’t want Syria to become another Afghanistan, we don’t want to become a new Libya. We have already suffered a lot.”

Syria’s Christian community is one of the oldest in the world, with the country home to some renowned holy sites.

When the uprising against Assad began in 2011, Christians were initially cautious about taking sides, but eventually members from the community fought on both sides of the conflict.

In the past week, the Archbishop of Homs, Jacques Murad, told the BBC there had already been three meetings with HTS, and they had been able to express their views and concerns honestly.

So far, the signs are re-assuring for many Christians.

Bars and restaurants serving alcohol are open in the Christian quarter of Old Damascus and in other parts of the city. Christmas decorations are also up in many places.

At a restaurant in the Old City, we met lawyer Ouday al-Khayat, who is a Shia Muslim.

“There’s no doubt that there’s anticipation and anxiety. The signs that come from HTS are good, but we must wait and watch,” he said.

“It’s not possible to know the opinions of all Shia but there is a concern about a scenario similar to Libya or Iraq. I believe, though, that Syria is different. Syrian society has been diverse for a very long time.”

We drove around 110km (70 miles) south-east of Damascus, through black volcanic hills, to the city of Suweida, which is home to most of Syria’s Druze population.

The Druze faith is another offshoot of Shia Islam, but has its own unique identity and beliefs.

Many Druze were loyal to the Assad regime, who they believed would protect minorities.

But opposition grew steadily during the war, and there were frequent protests in recent years.

The latest started in Suweida’s central square in August 2023 and continued until the day the regime fell.

Activist Wajiha al-Hajjar believes that the protests were not brutally cracked down on like others in Syria, because Assad wanted to show the world and his foreign allies that he was protecting minorities.

“They did try to suppress our protest but in a different way – not through weapons or shelling, but by depriving us of passports and civil rights, and access to official documents. It became difficult to leave Suweida and a kind of siege was imposed,” she said.

Hundreds still gather at the square every day. When we visited, there was an air of celebration. Songs were blaring on a loudspeaker, and young girls and boys were doing a gymnastics performance, their families clapping and cheering for them.

“We are celebrating the fall of the regime, but this gathering is also a show of strength. In the event that there is an extreme regime with extreme laws, we are prepared to stay in this square and demand our rights and demand equality,” Wajiha said.

Suweida had a quasi-autonomous status under Assad, and the Druze want that to continue.

It is just one example of the diversity and complexity of Syrian society, and the challenges facing the country’s new government.

Cyclone Chido has killed 94 people in Mozambique since it made landfallin the east African country last week, local authorities have said.

The country’s National Institute of Risk and Disaster Management (INGD) said 768 people were injured and more than 622,000 people affected by the natural disaster in some capacity.

Chido hit Mozambique on 15 December with winds of 260 km/h (160mph) and 250mm of rainfall in the first 24 hours.

The same cyclone had first wreaked havoc in the French Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte, before moving on to Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe.

In Mozambique, the storm struck northern provinces that are regularly battered by cyclones. It first reached Cabo Delgado, then travelled further inland to Niassa and Nampula.

The country’s INGD said the cyclone impacted the education and health sector. More than 109,793 students were affected, with school infrastructure severely damaged.

Some 52 sanitary units were damaged, the INGD said, which further risks access to essential health services. This is exacerbated further in areas where access to healthcare facilities were already limited before the cyclone.

Daniel Chapo, leader of Mozambique’s ruling party, told local media the government is mobilising support on “all levels” in response to the cyclone.

Speaking during a visit to Cabo Delgado on Sunday, one of the most badly affected areas, Chapo said the government is working alongside the INGD to ensure those affected in the provinces of Mecúfi, Nampula, Memba and Niassa can rebuild.

In Mayotte, Chido was the worst storm to hit the archipelago in 90 years, leaving tens of thousands of people reeling from the catastrophe.

The interior ministry in its latest update confirmed 35 people had died.

Mayotte’s prefect previously told local media the death toll could rise significantly once the damage was fully assessed, warning it would “definitely be several hundred” and could reach thousands.

More than 1,300 officers were deployed to support the local population.

One week on, many residents still lack basic necessities, while running water is making a gradual return to the territory’s capital. The ministry has advised people to boil water for three minutes before consuming it.

Around 100 tonnes of equipment are being delivered each day, the ministry said, as an air bridge was built between Mayotte, Reunion and mainland France.

In a statement on Friday, interior minister Bruno Retailleau said 80 tonnes of food and 50 tonnes of water had been distributed across Mayotte that day.

Tropical cyclones are characterised by very high wind speeds, heavy rainfall, and storm surges, which are short-term rises to sea-levels. This often causes widespread damage and flooding.

The cyclone, the INGD said, “highlights once again, the vulnerability of social infrastructures to climate change and the need for resilient planning to mitigate future impacts”.

Assessing the exact influence of climate change on individual tropical cyclones can be challenging due to the complexity of these storm systems. But rising temperatures do affect these storms in measurable ways.

The UN’s climate body, the IPCC, previously said there is “high confidence” that humans have contributed to increases in precipitation associated with tropical cyclones, and “medium confidence” that humans have contributed to the higher probability of a tropical cyclone being more intense.

An American fighter jet has been shot down over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, the US military has said.

Both crew from the US Navy F/A-18 Hornet ejected safely, with one suffering minor injuries, according to Central Command.

The incident came after the US carried out a series of air strikes against a missile storage site and command facilities in the Yemeni capital Sanaa operated by Iran-backed Houthi militants.

US Central Command added it also hit multiple Houthi drones and an anti-ship cruise missile over the Red Sea.

In a statement, US Central Command confirmed a “friendly fire” incident over the Red Sea.

“The guided missile cruiser USS Gettysburg, which is part of the USS Harry S Truman Carrier Strike Group, mistakenly fired on and hit the F/A-18, which was flying off the USS Harry S Truman,” the statement said.

It is not clear whether the downed aircraft had been involved in the Yemen operation.

Earlier Central Command said the strikes against targets in Sanaa aimed to “disrupt and degrade Houthi operations, such as attacks against US Navy warships and merchant vessels in the Southern Red Sea, Bab al-Mandeb, and Gulf of Aden”.

The US military also said it struck “multiple Houthi one-way attack uncrewed aerial vehicles, or drones, and an anti-ship cruise missile over the Red Sea” using “US Air Force and US Navy assets, including F/A-18s”.

• Who are the Houthis and why are they attacking Red Sea ships?

The Houthis, an Iran-backed rebel group that controls north-western Yemen, began attacking Israeli and international shipping shortly after the start of the Gaza war in October 2023, saying they were acting in solidarity with Palestinians.

Since November 2023, Houthi missile attacks have sunk two vessels in the Red Sea and damaged others. They have claimed, often falsely, that they are targeting ships only linked to Israel, the US or the UK.

Last December, the US, UK and 12 other nations launched Operation Prosperity Guardian to protect Red Sea shipping lanes against the attacks.

On Saturday, Israel’s military said its attempts to shoot down a projectile launched from Yemen were unsuccessful and the missile struck a park in Tel Aviv.

Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency medical service, said it treated 16 people who were “mildly injured” by glass shards from shattered windows in nearby buildings.

Another 14 people suffered minor injuries on their way to protected areas were also treated, it said.

A Houthi spokesman said the group hit a military target using a hypersonic ballistic missile.

Earlier this week, Israel conducted a series of strikes against what it said were Houthi military targets, hitting ports as well as energy infrastructure in the Yemeni capital Sanaa.

Houthi-run Al Masirah TV reported that nine people were killed in the port of Salif and the Ras Issa oil terminal.

The Houthis have vowed to continue their attacks until the war in Gaza ends. The US says its latest strike is part of a commitment to protect itself and its allies.

Blake Lively has filed a legal complaint against It Ends With Us co-star Justin Baldoni, alleging sexual harassment and a campaign to “destroy” her reputation.

According to the legal filing, she accuses Mr Baldoni and his team of attacking her public image following a meeting in which she brought along her actor husband, Ryan Reynolds, to address “repeated sexual harassment and other disturbing behavior” by Mr Baldoni and a producer on the movie.

Mr Baldoni’s legal team told the BBC the allegations are “categorically false” and said they hired a crisis manager because Ms Lively had threatened to derail the film unless her demands were met.

In the romantic drama, Ms Lively plays a woman who finds herself in a relationship with a charming but abusive boyfriend, played by Mr Baldoni.

The meeting between Ms Lively and Mr Baldoni, together with others involved in the movie’s production, took place on 4 January this year, and it aimed to address “the hostile work environment” on set, says the legal filing.

Ms Lively’s husband, Deadpool star Mr Reynolds, who did not appear in It Ends With Us, joined her at the showdown, according to the legal complaint, which is one step before a lawsuit.

Mr Baldoni, 40, attended the meeting in his capacity as co-chairman and co-founder of the company that produced the film, Wayfarer Studios. He was also the film’s director.

In the legal complaint, Ms Lively’s lawyers allege that both Mr Baldoni and the Wayfarer chief executive officer, Jamey Heath, engaged in “inappropriate and unwelcome behavior towards Ms Lively and others on the set of It Ends With Us”.

In the filing to the California Civil Rights Department, a list of 30 demands relating to the pair’s alleged misconduct was made at the meeting to ensure they could continue to produce the film.

Among them, Ms Lively, 37, requested that there be no more mention of Mr Baldoni and Mr Heath’s previous “pornography addiction” to Ms Lively or to other crew members, no more descriptions of their own genitalia to Ms Lively, and “no more adding of sex scenes, oral sex, or on camera climaxing by BL [Blake Lively] outside the scope of the script BL approved when signing onto the project”, says the complaint.

Ms Lively also demanded that Mr Baldoni stop saying he could speak to her dead father.

Ms Lively’s legal team further accuse Mr Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios of leading a “multi-tiered plan” to wreck her reputation.

She alleges this was “the intended result of a carefully crafted, coordinated, and resourced retaliatory scheme to silence her, and others from speaking out about the hostile environment that Mr Baldoni and Mr Heath created”.

Responding to the legal complaint, Mr Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, said on Saturday: “It is shameful that Ms Lively and her representatives would make such serious and categorically false accusations against Mr Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios and its representatives.”

Mr Freedman accused Ms Lively of making numerous demands and threats, including “threatening to not show up to set, threatening to not promote the film”, which would end up “ultimately leading to its demise during release, if her demands were not met”.

He alleged that Ms Lively’s claims were “intentionally salacious with an intent to publicly hurt and rehash a narrative in the media”.

In a statement via her attorneys to the BBC, Ms Lively said: “I hope that my legal action helps pull back the curtain on these sinister retaliatory tactics to harm people who speak up about misconduct and helps protect others who may be targeted.”

She also denied that she or any of her representatives had planted or spread negative information about Mr Baldoni or Wayfarer.

The film was a box-office hit, although some critics said it romanticised domestic violence.

Soon after the release date in August, another co-star, Brandon Sklenar, hinted in an Instagram post at rumours of a rift between Ms Lively and Mr Baldoni.

Speculation of a falling out only grew when they did not appear together on the red carpet.

It Ends With Us tells the story of Boston florist Lily Bloom, played by Ms Lively, as she navigates a love triangle between her charming but abusive boyfriend, Ryle Kincaid, played by Mr Baldoni, and her compassionate first love, Atlas Corrigan, played by Mr Sklenar.

It is based on a best-selling novel by Colleen Hoover. The 45-year-old author has previously said her inspiration was domestic abuse her mother endured.

In an interview with the BBC at the film’s premiere in August, Ms Lively said she had felt the “responsibility of servicing the people that care so much about the source material”.

“I really feel like we delivered a story that’s emotional and it’s fun, but also funny, painful, scary, tragic and it’s inspiring and that’s what life is, it’s every single colour,” said the actress.

Ms Lively, who is also credited as a producer, told the BBC she felt the film had been made “with lots of empathy”.

“Lily is a survivor and a victim and while they are huge labels, these are not her identity,” said Ms Lively. “She defines herself and I think it’s deeply empowering that no one else can define you.”

On Friday evening, a man ploughed a car into a crowd of shoppers at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg.

The attack killed five people, including a nine-year-old boy, and left more than 200 injured, with many in a critical condition.

A judge has ordered the pre-trial detention of a 50-year-old man arrested on suspicion of carrying out the attack.

Police believe he acted alone.

• Eyewitness account: Witness saw car hit boyfriend in attack

• Investigation ongoing: Police probe market security and warnings about suspect

At 19:02 local time (18:02 GMT), the first call to emergency services was made.

The caller reported that a car had driven into a crowd at a Christmas market in the middle of town.

The caller assumed it was an accident, police said, but it soon became clear this was not the case.

The driver, police said, had used traffic lights to turn off the road and onto a pedestrian crossing, leading him through an entry point to the market which was reserved for emergency vehicles, injuring a number of people on the way.

Unverified footage on social media showed the driver speeding the vehicle through a pedestrian walkway between Christmas stalls.

Eyewitnesses described jumping out of the car’s path, fleeing or hiding.

Police said the driver then returned to the road the way he came in and was forced to stop in traffic. Officers already at the market were able to apprehend and arrest the driver here.

Footage showed armed police confronting and arresting a man who can be seen lying on the ground next to a stationary vehicle – a black BMW with significant damage to its front bumper and windscreen.

The entire incident was over in three minutes, police said.

A nine-year-old boy and four women aged 45, 52, 67 and 75 are confirmed to have died in the attack.

More than 200 people have been injured and at least 41 of those are in a critical condition.

The toll had earlier been reported as two dead and 68 injured, but was revised to the much higher totals on Saturday morning.

The Schöppenstedt fire department paid tribute to the child who died, André Gleißner, in a Facebook post.

The fire department said the nine-year-old was a member of the children’s fire brigade in Warle – about an hour’s drive from Magdeburg.

The suspect has been identified in local media reports as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, the BBC understands.

He is a 50-year-old Saudi-born psychiatrist who lives in Bernburg, around 40km (25 miles) south of Magdeburg.

He has been remanded in custody on suspicion of five counts of murder, multiple attempted murders and dangerous bodily harm, police say.

The motive behind the attack remains unclear but authorities have reported that they believe he carried out the attack alone.

Al-Abdulmohsen arrived in Germany in 2006 and in 2016 was recognised as a refugee.

The suspect ran a website that aimed to help other former Muslims flee persecution in their Gulf homelands, and was interviewed about it by the BBC in 2019.

Germany’s Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told reporters that it was “clear to see” that the suspect holds “Islamophobic” views.

On social media, he is an outspoken critic of Islam, and has promoted conspiracy theories regarding an alleged plot by German authorities to Islamicise Europe.

He also expressed sympathy on social media for Germany’s far-right political party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), re-tweeting posts from the party’s leader and a far-right activist.

Magdeburg police chief Tom-Oliver Langhans said police had previously conducted an evaluation as to whether the suspect might have posed a potential threat, “but that discussion was one year ago”.

Faeser told German newspaper Bild that investigators would examine “in detail” what information authorities had on al-Abdulmohsen in the past and how he had been investigated.

The German Office for Migration and Refugees announced in a post on social media that it had fielded a complaint about the suspect, which it had “taken seriously”, but as the office is not an investigative body, had referred the complainant to other authorities.

One tip-off received by authorities is believed to have come from Saudi Arabian authorities.

A source close to the Saudi government told the BBC it sent four official notifications known as “Notes Verbal” to German authorities, warning them about what they said were “the very extreme views” held by al-Abdulmohsen.

However, a counter-terrorism expert told the BBC the Saudis may have been mounting a disinformation campaign to discredit someone who tried to help young Saudi women seek asylum in Germany.

The head of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), Holger Münch, told public broadcaster ZDF that his office had received a notice from Saudi Arabia in November 2023. He said local police took appropriate investigative measures, but the matter was unspecific.

He added that the suspect “had various contacts with authorities, insulted them and even made threats, but he was not known for violent acts”.

“The reports from Magdeburg raise the worst fears,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on social media platform X.

Magdeburg’s city councillor for public order, Ronni Krug, said the Christmas market will stay closed and that “Christmas in Magdeburg is over”, according to German public broadcaster MDR.

That sentiment was echoed on the market’s website, which in the wake of the attack featured only a black screen with words of mourning, announcing that the market was over.

The Saudi government expressed “solidarity with the German people and the families of the victims”, in a statement on X, and “affirmed its rejection of violence”.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said he was “horrified by the atrocious attack in Magdeburg”, adding that his thoughts were with “the victims, their families and all those affected” in a post on X on Friday night.

When Syrian rebel leader Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in Damascus and gave a victory speech on the heels of a lightning military campaign that swept through the country and toppled Bashar al-Assad’s regime, one remark went widely unnoticed. That was his reference to an illegal narcotic that has flooded the Middle East over the past 10 years.

“Syria has become the biggest producer of Captagon on earth,” he said. “And today, Syria is going to be purified by the grace of God.”

Mostly unknown outside of the Middle East, Captagon is an addictive, amphetamine-like pill, sometimes called “poor man’s cocaine”.

Its production has proliferated in Syria amid an economy broken by war, sanctions and the mass displacement of Syrians abroad. Authorities in neighbouring countries have struggled to cope with the smuggling of huge quantities of pills across their borders.

All the evidence pointed to Syria being the main source of Captogan’s illicit trade with an annual value placed at $5.6bn (£4.5bn) by the World Bank.

At the scale that the pills were being produced and dispatched, the suspicion was that this was not simply the work of criminal gangs – but of an industry orchestrated by the regime itself.

Weeks on from the speech by al-Sharaa (previously known by his nom de guerre of Abu Mohammed al-Jolani), spectacular images have emerged that suggest the suspicion was correct.

Videos filmed by Syrians raiding properties allegedly owned by relatives of Assad show rooms full of pills being made and packaged, hidden in fake industrial products.

Other footage shows piles of pills found in what appears to be a Syrian military airbase, set on fire by the rebels.

I spent a year investigating Captagon for a BBC World Service documentary and saw how the drug became as popular among the wealthy youth of Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia as it was among the working class in countries like Jordan.

“I was 19 years old, I started taking Captagon and my life started to fall apart,” Yasser, a young male addict in a rehab clinic told us in Jordan’s capital, Amman. “I started hanging out with people who take this thing. You work, you live without food, so the body is a wreck.”

So how will al-Sharaa and his group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), deal with the large number of people in Syria and around the Middle East addicted to Captagon who may suddenly find themselves without a supply?

Caroline Rose, an expert on Syrian drug trafficking at the New Lines Institute, has concerns around this. “My fear is that they will really crack down on supply and not necessarily try to do any sort of demand reduction.”

But there is a broader question at play too: that is, what effect will the loss of such a lucrative trade have on Syria’s economy? And as those behind it move aside, how will al-Sharaa keep at bay any other criminals waiting in the wings to replace them?

The proliferation of Captagon pushed the Middle East into a genuine narco-war.

While filming with the Jordanian army on their desert border with Syria, we saw how the soldiers had reinforced their fences and learned about their comrades who had been killed in shoot-outs with Captagon smugglers. They accused the Syrian soldiers across the border of aiding the smugglers.

Other countries in the region have been just as disturbed by the trade.

For a while, Saudi Arabia suspended imports of fruit and vegetables from Lebanon because authorities were frequently finding shipping containers full of produce like pomegranates which had been hollowed out and filled with bags of Captagon pills.

We filmed in five countries, including in regime-held and rebel-held Syria, consulted well-placed sources, and gained access to confidential records from court cases in Germany and Lebanon.

We were able to name two major parties as having their hands in the trade – Assad’s extended family and the Syrian armed forces, in particular its Fourth Division, led by Assad’s brother, Maher.

Maher al-Assad was perhaps the most powerful man in Syria aside from his brother.

He was sanctioned by many Western powers for the violence he wrought against protesters during the pro-democracy uprising in 2011 that precipitated the bloody civil war. The French judiciary has also issued an international arrest warrant for him and his brother for their alleged responsibility in chemical weapons attacks in Syria in 2013.

Gaining access to the WhatsApp chats of a Captagon trader imprisoned in Lebanon, we were able to implicate Maher al-Assad’s Fourth Division and his second-in-command, General Ghassan Bilal.

The revelation was a huge milestone in confirming the role of Syria’s armed forces and Bashar al-Assad’s inner circle in the trade.

Seeing the recent images of demoralised Syrian army troops fleeing without a fight as the rebels advanced, I was reminded of an interview we conducted with a regime soldier last year.

He told us his monthly army pay of $30 (£24) barely covered three days of food for his family, so his unit became involved in criminality and Captagon.

“It’s what brings most of the money now,” he said.

In May 2023, the Arab League agreed to re-admit Syria 12 years after it was expelled for violently suppressing the popular uprising. It was seen as a diplomatic coup for Assad, using promises to tackle the Captagon trade as leverage to be rehabilitated.

Now, as Syria’s rebel leaders consolidate their power over the organs of state, it seems they are fully aware of positive signals they are sending to wary neighbouring states when they promise to crack down on the Captagon trade.

But it might be a steeper task for them to wrest the country away from a lucrative criminal enterprise after so many years when it was encouraged by the state itself.

Issam Al Reis was a major engineer in the Syrian army until he defected at the beginning of the uprising against the Assad regime, and has spent time investigating the Captagon trade. He believes that HTS will not need to do much to stop the trade initially “because the main players have left” and there’s already been a dramatic drop in Captagon exports – but he warns that “new guys” might be waiting in the wings to take over.

This will be particularly problematic if the demand side isn’t tackled too. There is little evidence of investment in rehabilitation from the time HTS controlled Idlib province in north-west Syria, according to Ms Rose. “[There was a] very poor picture for trying to address Captagon consumption,” she says.

She also says there has already been an uptick in another drug being trafficked through Syria.

“I think many users will seek out crystal meth as an alternative, especially users who have already established a tolerance to Captagon and need something that’s a bit more strong.”

The other problem, as Mr Al Reis points out, is a financial one. As he puts it: “Syrians need the money.”

His hope is that the international community will help prevent people entering the drug trade through humanitarian aid and easing sanctions.

But Ms Rose argues the new leaders will need to identify “new and alternative economic pathways to encourage Syrians to participate in the licit formal economy.”

While the kingpins have fled, many of those involved in manufacturing and smuggling the drug remain inside the country, she said.

“And old habits die hard.”

Jamil Hassan, one of the most feared men in Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime, wanted for the torture and killing of civilians, was shaking as he walked down the stairs of his apartment block.

Outside, the 72-year-old climbed into a car in a small convoy with his family and a handful of security guards, just a few suitcases between them.

His neighbour and her teenage son watched.

“I knew the moment I saw them flee that Assad had fallen,” she says.

When we entered Hassan’s apartment a few days later, signs of the family’s hasty departure were everywhere.

In the fridge was a half-eaten carrot cake with a knife still on the plate. The beds were strewn with clothes and empty shoeboxes. Flowers wilted in a vase in the dining room, and cups and plates had been left to dry by the sink.

A framed photo of a smiling Hassan and Assad hung on the wall of the study, with text reading: “Our skies are for us and forbidden to others”.

Hassan, referred to as “the butcher” by many civilians on his street, was one of Assad’s most menacing enforcers. He led the Air Force Intelligence and oversaw a network of detention facilities including the notorious Mezzeh Prison, where detainees were routinely tortured.

He is one of many senior regime figures wanted or sanctioned around the world who have abandoned their homes in affluent areas of Damascus and vanished.

Finding these men who ruled Syria with an iron fist will be difficult. Some fear they will strike political deals abroad and evade justice.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which led the campaign to topple the regime, has vowed to search for them inside Syria. Rebels aligned with the group now occupy Hassan’s apartment and a handwritten note on the front door warns people not to enter.

When we asked them where Hassan might have gone, one grinned and replied: “I don’t know – to Hell.”

Many apartment shutters on Hassan’s quiet street in central Damascus are now closed. Knocks on doors go unanswered.

Those who will speak tell us about their fear at living on a street with a wanted war criminal. “We were so afraid to talk,” says the woman who watched him flee. “It was terrifying to live next to them.”

Hassan is wanted in the US for “engaging in conspiracy to commit cruel and inhuman treatment of civilian detainees, including US citizens”. He was convicted in absentia earlier this year in France for his role in imprisoning, disappearing and torturing two Syrian-French nationals. Germany wants him too. An Interpol Red Notice shows a photograph of Hassan alongside a note that he is wanted for “conspiracy to commit war crimes”.

He was placed under travel bans and had his assets frozen over the repression of civilian protesters. In April 2011 the US says Air Force Intelligence personnel fired tear gas and live ammunition at protesting crowds in Damascus and other cities, killing at least 43.

People on the street describe a formidable figure who was unapproachable and always surrounded by guards.

A makeshift security post outside Hassan’s apartment building was constantly staffed by military personnel. The night before the regime collapsed, the men simply took off their uniforms and discarded their weapons, according to another neighbour.

“It was the first time I’d seen this post with no lights, no sounds, no noise,” says 27-year-old Amr al-Bakri, a filmmaker who lives with his family in the building next door.

He said locals “knew what he did to the Syrians – outside of Damascus and in Damascus – so we know it but we can’t say anything, just ‘good morning sir’. He’d say nothing back.”

Amr says his family had to give away their pet dog after Hassan’s guards threatened to kill it if it didn’t stop barking. When Amr’s family asked for the guard post to be moved from outside their home, they were told they should move house instead, he says.

The guards would run regular inspections on the street and check the bags of visitors.

“Sometimes if I had a plumber or handyman to come and fix something one of the guards would come and check if there was really something that needed to be fixed,” says the woman living in Hassan’s building.

Neighbours also say Hassan had a “golden line” for electricity that meant his family’s lights were always on, while other homes in the neighbourhood were in darkness.

The electrician called to fix any problems at the apartment says he knew Hassan over many years “but only from a distance”. “[Hassan] was very strict – a military personality,” the man says. “He was a butcher… He had no mercy.”

The man told BBC News he had been in prison – not at Mezzeh but elsewhere – and was tortured there.

A local shopkeeper, Mohammed Naoura, says he didn’t like Hassan but that you had to appear to support him.

“We are happy now,” he adds. “Nobody believed this would ever happen.”

Hussam Luka, head of the General Security Directorate (GSD), was less well-known among residents but had an apartment underneath Hassan.

His “ruthless, smooth-talking nature” reportedly earned him the nickname “the spider” – and he’s under sanctions in the EU, US and UK.

A UK sanctions list says he was “responsible for the torture of opponents in custody”, while the US Treasury Department says he “reportedly committed a number of massacres” while working in Homs.

The White House has said he is one of a small group of officials who might have information about missing American journalist Austin Tice.

At his home on Monday, rebels were dismantling furniture to be put into storage. They said they arrived after looters had already taken many of the most expensive items.

A photo of Luka and Assad remained, printed in different sizes and styles, alongside documents from security and intelligence events, and ceremonial medals and certificates from the foreign spy service in Russia – where the deposed Syrian leader Assad has fled.

“This award is to the coordinator of the mukhabarat [intelligence service] organ in the southern provinces of the Syrian Arab Republic,” one certificate naming Luka says. “You showed the utmost professionalism and put in huge effort to fulfil the duties entrusted to you for the good of the Syrian people.”

As rebels clear the apartment, a neighbour wanders in to see what’s happening.

When asked what she knows about the regime official, she replies: “We keep to ourselves, they keep to themselves. No one in this building interacts with each other.” She walks away.

In other affluent areas more homes have been abandoned. Fridges are fully stocked, wardrobes full and in some cases travel documents left behind.

The rebels who have taken over the homes are using them as bases, and say they are also preventing further looting.

At one lavish apartment, men say they are sleeping on blankets on marble floors beneath giant chandeliers and cooking on a camp stove in its modern kitchen. Guns are propped against plush sofas and arm chairs.

“We don’t need any of this,” a rebel says, gesticulating around the room.

At another, a child peeks through the curtain of a sprawling ground-floor apartment with an outdoor swimming pool. A large family say they are occupying the space.

Perhaps the grandest home in the area is the modern labyrinthine underground dwelling of one of the country’s best-known businessmen – Khodr Taher Bin Ali, better known as Abu Ali Khodr.

Bin Ali has been sanctioned by the US, UK and EU for his role in supporting and benefiting from the Syrian regime.

His home has a lift, a full-size gym, an indoor swimming pool, hot tub and sauna, and an industrial kitchen.

In the master bedroom, there are two golden safes, with space for dozens of watches – in a drawer there is a forgotten warranty card for luxury brand Audemars Piguet. A gun case and jewellery boxes in the wardrobe are empty.

The children’s ensuite bedrooms still have toys and a Louis Vuitton handbag on the floor and homework and school reports are in the cupboards. A Quran rests on a work top with the words “A gift from the president Bashar al-Assad” inscribed on the side.

Around the corner from Bin Ali is the home of Ali Mamlouk, one of Assad’s closest associates and among the most senior and notorious members of the regime. He was reportedly given the nickname “black box” because of his control over sensitive information.

He was sentenced alongside Hassan by French judges this year for war crimes, and is also wanted in Lebanon for two explosions in 2012 in the city of Tripoli that killed and wounded dozens.

Like Luka, the White House believes Mamlouk is one of few men who could have information about Tice.

His home is padlocked shut, and rebels are more reluctant to grant entry there.

In a guard booth outside, there are notes on visitors to the property before Assad’s fall – people delivering chocolates, water and vegetables, and coming to fix the electricity.

“No one could see, no one could walk, no one could pass by this area. It’s actually the first time I’m seeing this place from up close,” says 17-year-old Mo Rasmi Taftaf, whose family own a house nearby.

“Whenever he came in or out, guards would cut the roads off,” one neighbour says.

Shouting down from a second-floor balcony, another gestures towards Mamlouk’s large home when asked about the wanted regime figure.

“It felt like there was a strange atmosphere” on the street the night before news broke that Assad had fled, he says, without elaborating.

“His security was here at the time but I saw them leave on Sunday morning – a lot of cars. Ali Mamlouk wasn’t here,” he adds, before returning inside.

Another man, who declines to give his name, says he doesn’t want to talk about the regime men.

“I just want to live in peace. I don’t want to open this book or explore all of these crimes – there would be a lot of blood.”

Many, though, do want justice.

The leader of HTS has vowed to pursue the senior regime figures in Syria and asked other countries to hand over those who fled. Those wanted elsewhere have limited places to run.

Finding the men will be a challenge.

“While there is no confirmed information on the current whereabouts of senior regime figures like Jamil Hassan, Ali Mamlouk, and others, there are concerns that such individuals could benefit from political deals that enable them to evade justice,” the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM) tells the BBC.

“Some are likely to have sought refuge in allied countries, complicating future extradition efforts, while others may still be in Syria, living discreetly.”

On Hassan’s street, neighbours speculate about where the vanished war criminal has gone.

His family left few clues in the apartment. But in the office is a certificate for Hassan’s daughter signed by Hassan Nasrallah, the late leader of Lebanon-based Shia militant group Hezbollah, thanking her for her “help and support for this honourable resistance”.

Several neighbours suggest he may be hiding in Lebanon or has transited through there, while the local shopkeeper says he thinks Hassan headed for the coast, perhaps to Latakia in the north – the heartland of the minority Alawite sect to which Assad and many of his closest allies belong.

Meanwhile, Lebanese newspaper Nida al-Watan reports that Mamlouk was smuggled across the border and into the Lebanese capital Beirut by Hezbollah – a long-time ally of Syria’s Ba’ath government.

Hezbollah has not confirmed offering assistance to any regime figures, and the Lebanese government has said no Syrian officials targeted by international warrants were authorised to enter through legal crossings. Lebanese security services say Mamlouk is not in the country.

Syrian-British barrister Ibrahim Olabi says regime officials may have acquired new identities and passports, as they were powerful people backed by state institutions.

When it comes to getting justice, he adds, a lack of evidence is not the problem. It is more about finding them and getting them to a place where they can be held accountable.

The SCM says doing this will “require considerable resources, sustained political will, and international collaboration”.

Failing to do so will send a “dangerous message that crimes, including war crimes and crimes against humanity, can go unpunished”, it adds.

Ibrahim Olabi says he is hopeful that justice will be served.

“It will absolutely be a hunt,” he says, but “the world now is a small place through social media, private investigators, political leverages”.

Hassan’s neighbours who were willing to talk say they hope he will one day be returned to Syria, far away from their street, to be punished.

Throughout December, Instagram feeds are flooded with pictures of Christmas trees, snaps from festive work parties – and screenshots of people’s most-listened-to songs of the year.

That’s because at the end of every year, since 2016, Spotify releases Wrapped. The campaign pulls together what users listened to the most and usually includes their top songs, artists, and genres.

It’s now “plastered across every possible social media platform known to man,” says Dr Gillian Brooks, a senior lecturer in strategic marketing at King’s College London.

She says its Wrapped feature works so well because music is personal and people enjoy the nostalgia of seeing the songs that marked their lives over the past year.

Since Wrapped goes viral annually, other businesses have joined in, from language learning app Duolingo to bank Monzo, all creating their own personalised “year in review” summaries – alongside other music streaming apps such as Apple Music and Amazon Music.

Prof Jonathan Wilson, a professor of brand strategy and culture at Regent’s University London, thinks there is an ulterior motive for people sharing these end-of-year-reviews – especially on apps that people use to track their virtuous activities, like fitness and education.

“It’s like bragging but without the selfie,” he explains. “Lots of people don’t want to take selfies for various reasons but one of them is that people feel a bit cringe, that it’s a bit narcissistic.”

People share information on social media if it “enhances the image we wish to portray publicly of who we are and what we want to align ourselves with”, he says.

Apps like Strava will tot up how far you have run or cycled this year, while Duolingo will tell you how many hours you’ve spent learning another language.

Goodreads provides you with images you can share on social media displaying the books you have read this year, with details about the average page length and your top genres.

“Data is a really good way to humblebrag, as opposed to actually taking selfies in all of your best clothes surrounded by all of your best people and belongings,” Prof Wilson adds.

“It’s less like bragging and a bit more evidence-based,” agrees Prof Caroline Wiertz, a professor in marketing at City, University of London.

“This is a thing now in the calendar,” Prof Wiertz says. “We wait for the John Lewis Christmas ad, we also wait to receive our Spotify Wrapped.”

Other brands jumping on the bandwagon include Tesco and Sainsbury’s for your favourite groceries, Trainline and Uber for your most frequent journeys, Monzo and Lloyds for your spending habits, Xbox and Nintendo for your gaming.

Prof Wilson tells the BBC this copycat behaviour was inevitable – the prospect of people promoting a company or product seems like too good an opportunity to miss.

As Dr Brooks says: “It’s free advertising for them.”

Some year in review features are more tongue in cheek, which brands hope can make them more relatable, and shareable, to their customers, these experts say.

People typically don’t post information about their financial situation on social media. But Monzo has found a way to make its year in review sharable, by telling people whether they’re among the top spenders at Greggs.

Reddit tells users the distance they’ve scrolled, measured in bananas.

And though Prof Wilson says that people typically don’t want to post mundane things on social media, like “which kind of bread roll they bought,” Sainsbury’s shows shoppers whether they were the top buyers of certain products in their local area.

It has led to people boasting online about being the top consumer of paprika, toilet cleaner or pickled gherkins.

Year in review features can raise questions about just how much data companies collect. It is widely understood that the vast majority of apps and websites someone might use are collecting huge reams of data, which they use for marketing purposes.

Dr Brooks suggests “people blindly accept privacy preferences online” because they want to get on with whatever they visited the website to do.

Data privacy is “not as huge of an issue as it used to be”, she says. “If we get more targeted adverts as a result, most people I’ve spoken to are okay with that.”

And though people like to keep some information about themselves private, they seem to have few qualms about sharing their hobbies and leisure activities online.

“Paradoxically, when you share a selfie you are sharing far less information about yourself than you do with data showing what you do,” Prof Wilson says. “People seem more comfortable with doing that than sharing a picture of themselves.”

Pascual Andreu points proudly to a black-and-white photograph stuck to the wall of the premises of his chocolate-making business. Staring out from it is his grandfather, who started the company in 1914.

But, as he looks around him and remembers the destruction caused by the flash floods which struck the eastern Spanish region of Valencia on 29 October, tears well up in Andreu’s eyes.

“The water came in and water and mud covered everything,” he says. “And when it had gone, it left a terrible sight. All the stock we had was ruined, the machinery was useless.”

He adds: “All my life working. And for what?”

The floodwater left a six-feet-high (1.8m) mark on the wall, and although the water has now gone, mud still clings to the machines. Miraculously, the photo of his grandfather was not washed away.

But, now in his sixties, and still waiting to see how much insurance money he might receive, Andreu is too disheartened to start over.

The flash flood killed more than 220 people in the Valencia region, many of them caught in their cars, or on the ground floors of buildings when the tsunami-like waters hit. But as well as claiming lives, the disaster also devastated livelihoods. Valencia’s chamber of commerce estimated that 48,000 companies have been affected.

The towns and industrial belt surrounding the Mediterranean city of Valencia, which itself avoided the impact of the floods, were the worst hit. In total, the province of Valencia represents 5% of Spain’s GDP, according to CaixaBank Research, which estimates that the disaster could reduce national economic output by one to two percentage points in the fourth quarter of 2024.

Much of the damage has been caused on industrial estates. Diego Romá, executive president of the federation of industrial estates in the Valencia region (Feteval), says that “thousands and thousands of jobs are in the air” and that a total of 58 industrial estates were affected by the flood water.

“Most companies are working hard to resume production, but unfortunately there are maybe 10 to 20% of companies which are going to close,” he said.

The legacy of 29 October is still visible on the industrial estates. Abandoned cars sit on the side of the road covered in mud, debris has been pushed up against walls and the shutters of many businesses remain closed.

Electro Fernández, an electricity installation company, is one of the few which has reopened, having lost €40,000 ($42,000; £33,000) worth of tools in the floods.

“We were immediately affected 100% because we lost our tools and vehicles,” said Patricia Muñoz, who co-owns the company with her husband. She says that they are currently working at 10% of their capacity.

“We’ve cleaned the place, we’ve got all our employees here, and we’ve taken action to get going again,” she says. “But a lot of the companies on this industrial estate, and on others are nowhere near that, they are still cleaning up.

“This has been an absolute disaster. You only realise the scale of it when you see it for yourself.”

Not far away is a car storage area, where hundreds of the 120,000 or so vehicles damaged or destroyed by the flooding have been removed from roads and piled one on top of the other. As part of a €17bn relief plan announced by the government in the first month after the tragedy, it promised to provide up to 10,000 euros to car owners to replace their vehicles.

Businesses and self-employed workers are also due to benefit, with compensation for damage caused to homes and corporate premises. A furlough scheme is also in place.

The Socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, told congress in late November that his government was “making a titanic effort” to ensure that the promised funds reach those in need as soon as possible. However, not everyone is convinced.

“I think that official financial aid is badly managed,” says Toni Milla, president of a local business association in the town of Alfafar, which was heavily affected. He says that a lot of the relief for businesses promised during the Covid pandemic did not reach its destination.

“I think this time the same thing is going to happen,” he says.

Valencians’ faith in their authorities has already been severely shaken by the immediate response to the disaster. Protesters have been demanding the resignation of regional president Carlos Mazón, who, it emerged, was absent from his office for several hours on the day the floods struck because he was having lunch with a journalist. Many believe his administration’s delay in issuing an alert to the phones of people in the region cost lives.

Mazón has rejected such claims. “We did the best we could with the information available,” he says.

Others criticise the central government for failing to deploy the military and other resources more forcefully. Sánchez, however, has insisted that his administration “fulfilled its duties and did so from the very beginning” of the crisis.

Meanwhile, help has been provided by the private sector. Alcem-se, a charity platform set up by local supermarket entrepreneur Juan Roig, says it has distributed €35m euros in non-refundable aid to 4,600 businesses.

However, for many, including Mr Milla, the relief may not be enough. He owned a local TV channel, an estate agency and a bar and he has only managed to reopen the latter – partially – in the wake of the October floods.

He lists several nearby businesses – including a petrol station, a gym, a beautician and an optician – which he says will not reopen.

But it is not just urban areas which were hit on 29 October. The Valencia region is part of an agricultural heartland in south-eastern Spain, which exports large quantities of fruit and vegetables to the rest of Europe.

Twenty-five miles (40km) south of Valencia city, José España visits his orange trees. Beneath them, oranges which were washed off their branches by the floodwater lie rotting on the ground.

“Farmers always say ‘next year things will get better’, but right now, the mood among farmers is very pessimistic,” he said. The agricultural association he is a member of, AVA-ASAJA, estimates that well over €1bn euros worth of damage was caused on 29 October to crops alone.

“Farmers have had a few years now in which we’ve been abandoned, and the floods might end up causing a few more farmers than usual to leave the industry,” he says. “In order to get things back to how they were before the flooding, it’s going to take two or three years.”

Russia says five people have been killed in a Ukrainian strike in the western Kursk region.

Ukrainian officials reported earlier that Moscow had launched a fresh missile attack on Kyiv, damaging a building hosting several embassies.

In Russia, the acting governor of the Kursk region said in addition to those killed, nine had been taken to hospital following the attack on the town of Rylsk.

Alexander Khinshtein said a cultural centre, a fitness complex, a school and homes had been damaged in the strike which took place at 15:30 local time (12:30 GMT) on Friday.

Russian officials earlier reported six killed, including a child, in Rylsk, about 25km (16 miles) from the Ukrainian border.

But in an audio message on Telegram on Saturday morning, Khinshtein gave the latest update, saying there were five fatalities.

“There were no children among those [killed],” he said.

Ukrainian troops still hold parts of the Kursk region after launching a surprise cross-border offensive in early August.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry said Russia’s strike on Kyiv had affected the diplomatic missions of Albania, Argentina, North Macedonia, Palestine, Portugal and Montenegro. It is unclear whether the building housing them was directly targeted in the Ukrainian capital.

At least one person was killed and nine others were injured in the strike which damaged a number of buildings in the city, Ukraine’s military said. It is not thought that any of the embassy diplomats were injured.

In a verified video filmed in the Pecherskyi District, Kyiv’s second oldest Roman Catholic church, St Nicholas Cathedral. is shown with windows shattered following a nearby blast.

Ukraine’s military said Russia had launched 65 drones and missiles across the country overnight, with most shot down.

One man in Kyiv, who said he was the owner of a restaurant that suffered extensive damage following the attack, was filmed cursing the Russians as “beasts” as he surveyed the charred shell of a building in front of him.

The video was widely shared on social media.

Oksana, another resident, sent the BBC photos of her destroyed apartment, with the windows blown in and glass and brickwork strewn across the floors.

“I don’t understand how I survived,” she said.

“My balcony flew away, half my walls are gone. My neighbour is in such shock she can’t even speak. I have no words for the people who did this.”

A local journalist at the scene told the BBC that one of the buildings nearby had been used by the Ukrainian Security Service, the SBU, and was likely to have been the target of the strikes, although much of the damage seen by the BBC had affected residential buildings.

In a statement confirming the attack, the Russian defence ministry said missiles had been launched at an SBU “command post” in response to a strike on a chemical plant in Russia’s Rostov Region two days ago.

But there is also speculation in Kyiv that Friday’s attack could be linked to the killing of a Russian general, Lt-Gen Igor Kirillov, in Moscow on Tuesday.

Friday’s attack come one day after Vladimir Putin’s end-of-year press conference and phone-in show, in which he threatened to launch more ballistic missiles at the Ukrainian capital.

There is concern in Ukraine that Russia could use a so-called Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile to hit Kyiv. Moscow test-fired the missile on the central city of Dnipro earlier this month.

Earlier on Friday morning, the Ukrainian authorities issued an air alert linked to the possible launch of an Oreshnik missile, and urged people in Kyiv to urgently seek shelter. It turned out to be a false alarm.

A Church of England priest at the centre of a sexual abuse case was twice reappointed to a senior role during the Archbishop of York’s time as Bishop of Chelmsford, the BBC can reveal.

A BBC investigation previously revealed how David Tudor remained in post nine years after Stephen Cottrell was first told of concerns about him.

New information shows Tudor’s contract as area dean in Essex was renewed in 2013 and 2018, at which times Mr Cottrell knew he had paid compensation to a woman who says she was abused by him as a child.

The Archbishop of York said he regrets his handling of the case, with a spokesperson saying “he acknowledges this could have been handled differently”.

They added that “all the risks around David Tudor were regularly reviewed” and that was the “main focus”.

The pressure on Mr Cottrell comes at a time of turmoil in the Church of England following a damning report into how it covered up prolific abuse by the barrister John Smyth.

The report led to the resignation of the Church’s most senior figure, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby. Mr Cottrell will take over his role temporarily for a few months in the New Year.

Rachel Ford, who told the investigation she was groomed by Tudor as a child, said the renewal of his contract as area dean was “an insult to all of his victims”.

Ms Ford added that if responsibility for that lay with Mr Cottrell, it strengthened her feeling that he should resign.

The BBC investigation showed Mr Cottrell was briefed in his first week as Bishop of Chelmsford about serious safeguarding issues surrounding Tudor.

These included that Tudor was convicted of indecently assaulting three underage girls and was jailed for six months in 1988, although the conviction was quashed on technical grounds. Mr Cottrell would also have known Tudor served a five-year ban from ministry.

By 2012, Mr Cottrell also knew Tudor had paid a £10,000 settlement to a woman who says she was sexually abused by him from the age of 11. In 2018, the Church of England issued an apology and a six-figure pay-out to another alleged victim.

Yet the priest was suspended only in 2019 when a police investigation was launched after another woman came forward alleging Tudor had abused her in the 1980s.

When first responding to the BBC’s investigation, the Archbishop of York said he was “deeply sorry that we were not able to take action earlier”, insisting he had acted at the first opportunity that was legally available to him.

Mr Cottrell also said he had been faced with a “horrible and intolerable” situation and that it was “awful to live with and to manage”.

When Mr Cottrell became bishop in 2010, Tudor was into the second year of a five-year term as an area dean, a role overseeing 12 parishes in Essex.

His appointment to that post, under a different bishop, happened despite him working under a safeguarding agreement that barred him from being alone with children and entering schools.

The title was renewed twice under Mr Cottrell – in 2013 and 2018 – and he lost the title only when the term of office expired in 2020. It was not taken from him.

A spokesperson for the Archbishop said he “accepts responsibility for David Tudor remaining as area dean”.

“No-one advised him that David Tudor should not continue as an area dean,” said the Archbishop’s office.

Bishop of Newcastle Helen-Ann Hartley posted on X that Mr Cottrell’s expressions of regret did not “square” with his actions.

“I don’t know how you can find a situation ‘horrible and intolerable’ and then square that with what is reported here.

“Answer is, you can’t and be expected to be a credible voice as the leadership of the Church of England.”

The Reverend Lucy Winkett, Rector of St James’s Piccadilly, told the BBC that the Church’s credibility is “in serious trouble”.

“The credibility of the church, yes it’s in… we’re in serious trouble in terms of our credibility, but the job of the leaders in the church like me is to keep reminding ourselves who we’re here for”, she told BBC Radio 4’s The World This Weekend on Sunday.

The programme also spoke to the Bishop of Gloucester, the Right Reverend Rachel Treweek, who said she felt “shock and dismay” upon hearing the latest findings about the Archbishop of York.

Pushed for a direct answer on whether she supports Mr Cottrell’s role in Church, she said: “I want the proper process to take place, in order that we shape ourselves as the right sort of Church going forward, and that for me is the big question”.

Another of Tudor’s victims, who does not want to be identified, said she was “shocked and disappointed” to hear his tenure as area dean was twice renewed during Mr Cottrell’s time as Bishop of Chelmsford.

“These are not the actions of a bishop dealing with a situation that was intolerable to him, in fact, quite the opposite. I call on him to do the honourable thing for the sake of the Church and resign,” she says.

In 2015, under Mr Cottrell, Tudor was also made honorary canon of Chelmsford Cathedral.

The Archbishop’s office insisted it happened because of a change in Church policy during Mr Cottrell’s time as Bishop of Chelmsford, meaning area deans were automatically made honorary canons.

It was “not a promotion and not a personal reward”.

However, a social media post from Tudor’s Canvey Island parish in July 2015 suggests it was seen there as a reward.

Tudor’s “hard work, determination and commitment to this place have been recognised by the diocese and this new position in the Church is very well-deserved,” it said.

The BBC has also seen evidence – in leaked minutes from internal Church meetings in 2018 and 2019 – that Tudor’s titles of area dean and honorary canon were discussed and there had been a suggestion Mr Cottrell could immediately have taken them away.

In October 2018, a meeting at Church House – the London headquarters of the Church of England – heard that Chelmsford diocese took the view that if Tudor “can be a parish priest, he can undertake the other roles”.

A bishop from another diocese said “the Bishop of Chelmsford could remove DT’s [David Tudor’s] canon and area dean titles straight away”.

But in a follow-up discussion in November 2018, Chelmsford diocese advised it would not be appropriate because of “the difficulty of removing those titles without explaining why.”

We asked Mr Cottrell’s office why he had not followed the suggestion to remove Tudor’s titles. We were told “it would not be appropriate to comment on any notes or decisions from a core group process which are confidential”.

The investigation also highlighted the significant role played by former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey in the case.

We revealed Lord Carey had agreed to Tudor’s return to priesthood after being suspended in 1989, and had also agreed to have Tudor’s name removed from the list of clergy that had faced disciplinary action. He had also advocated for the priest.

After the BBC put this information to the former Archbishop of Canterbury, he wrote to give up his “permission to officiate”, ending more than 65 years of ministry in the Church of England. Lord Carey made the announcement on Tuesday.

In October 2024, Tudor admitted sexual misconduct and was sacked by the Church. At no point has he responded to the BBC’s attempts to speak with him.

When Charli XCX recorded her sixth album, Brat, she thought her prickly, abrasive dance anthems were “not going to appeal to a lot of people”.

In the end, the record topped the charts and became a cultural phenomenon. It was nominated for seven Grammys, referenced in the US presidential election, turned into a paint swatch, and named “word of the year” by Collins Dictionary.

Now the album has been named the best new release of 2024 in a “poll of polls” compiled by BBC News.

In multiple end of year lists, critics called Brat “brilliant from start to finish” and “pop music for the future“, praising the way its “painfully relatable” lyrics captured Charli’s insecurities, anxieties and obsessions.

In the star’s own words, the record is “chaos and emotional turmoil set to a club soundtrack”.

“The louder you play it, the more honest it gets,” said the Los Angeles Times.

The BBC’s poll is a “super-ranking” compiled from 30 year-end lists published by the world’s most influential music magazines – including the NME, Rolling Stone, Spain’s Mondo Sonoro and France’s Les Inrockuptibles.

Records were assigned points based on their position in each list – with the number one album getting 20 points, the number two album receiving 19 points, and so on.

Brat was the runaway winner with a score of 486 points, nearly twice as many as the number two album, Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter.

In total, the critics named 184 records among their favourites, from the The Cure’s long-awaited comeback, Songs Of A Lost World, to the kaleidoscopic rap of Doechii’s Alligator Bites Never Heal.

Here’s the top 25 in full.

Charli was born Emma Aitchison in Essex, UK, and has been chipping away at the coalface of pop for more than a decade.

At the start of her career, she scored hits with shiny pop anthems such as Fancy, I Love It and Boom Clap – but over the years, her music has become more volatile and aggressive.

Underground anthems like Vroom, Vroom and Track 10 turned her into a cult star but, as she confessed on Brat: “.

With that in mind, she entered 2024 with a new sense of purpose.

“Before we’d even done much writing, she had a masterplan of all the stuff she wanted to write about, and all the things she wanted to say,” producer AG Cook tells the BBC. “She had a real vision for the album, right from the start.”

“Even the name Brat was in play for about two years,” adds co-producer Finn Keane.

Released in June, Brat became the soundtrack to the summer; and Charli extended her success with a remix album that rewrote many of the songs and added an array of guest stars, from Billie Eilish and Robyn to The 1975 and Lorde.

The remix project was “really, off-the-cuff and last minute”, says Cook, “but that’s been part of the fun of Brat”.

“Charli is just incredibly quick and open to ideas,” adds Keane. “You can give her kind of any kind of crazy track, and she’ll instantly be able to come up with something super hooky, with a twist that’s very memorable and elaborate.

“She’s just incredibly musical.”

Billboard: “Charli XCX pulled off one of the most exciting and culturally significant album launches in modern memory… And best of all? It was all on Charli’s own terms. Drawing inspiration primarily from club culture and hyperpop, Charli pulled once-niche spaces in music into the mainstream.”

The Forty Five: “In making a club record to ignite the underground, she’s reached the world’s biggest stages. Musically, Charli is at her peak.”

Frequently mis-labelled as a country album, Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter is so much more. A racial reckoning with the black roots of American folk music, its 27 tracks embrace everything from line-dancing to psychedelic rock, with guest appearances from Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson and Post Malone.

The Times: “The pop hoedown single Texas Hold ‘Em remains the best piece, but the acoustic guitar-driven sexy ode Bodyguard is another highlight. Will this finally win Beyoncé her best album Grammy?”

NME: “A masterclass in creativity from an artist who never forgets her roots.”

The fourth album by Dublin’s Fontaines DC saw the quintet take their scratchy, sinister sound and run it through a technicolor filter. The results include everything from stadium-sized sing-alongs (Favourite) to panic-inducing punk anthems (Starburster).

Allmusic: “When all is said and done, they remain fantastic songwriters, able to convey a variety of emotions without relying on the trappings of punk. The corners may have been sanded off, but it has only revealed new and interesting textures underneath.”

Mojo magazine: “Fontaines D.C. are now, in terms of risk-taking potential, the Arctic Monkeys’ closest rivals.”

The title says it all. None of the songs on Billie Eilish’s exquisite third album are content to sit still, moving from hushed intimacy to emotional volatility as the singer navigates the murky waters of her early 20s.

The Telegraph: “Eilish has made something rich, strange, smart, sad and wise enough to stand comparison with Joni Mitchell’s Blue. A heartbreak masterpiece for her generation, and for the ages.”

The Guardian: “An album that keeps wrongfooting the listener, Hit Me Hard and Soft is clearly intended as something to gradually unpick: A bold move in a pop world where audiences are usually depicted as suffering from an attention deficit that requires instant gratification.”

Billed by one publication as the “poet laureate of indie rock“, MJ Lenderman’s breakthrough album is tender, melancholy and wryly funny, populated by a cast of flawed, disappointed and disappointing characters he observed around his hometown of Asheville, North Carolina.

New York Times: “An ace guitarist with a keen ear for jangly tones, he lends even his most pathetic characters a bit of warm-blooded humanity.”

The Line Of Best Fit: “How he gets you to care about nobodies from nowhere and their very strange plights is in part to do with his knack for universal empathy, but more importantly, the fact that he sings everything like he was just robbed at gunpoint by his 8th grade bully who he later watched win the lottery. You feel bad for things you don’t necessarily even understand.”

Sixteen years in the making, The Cure’s 14th studio album didn’t disappoint. Written during a period where frontman Robert Smith lost his mother, father and brother, it is simultaneously dark and fragile.

Speaking to the BBC, Smith said making the record had been “hugely cathartic” in escaping the “doom and gloom” he felt.

Time magazine: “It’s no exaggeration that this is an album haunted by death, so it’s almost ironic that, musically speaking, there hasn’t been this much life in The Cure for decades.”

Pitchfork: “It feels like a record whose time is right, delivering a concentrated dose of The Cure and cutting the fat that dogged their later albums.”

A sprawling, two-hour opus of dreamy pop and psychedelia, this is one of the year’s most mysterious records. You can’t buy the CD or vinyl, and it’s not available on Spotify or Apple Music. At the time of writing, it’s only available as a continuous, ad-free stream on YouTube, or as a download from Bandcamp.

But the seventh album by Cyndi Lee (the drag alter-ego of rock musician Patrick Flegel) is definitely worth your seeking out – like the lost transmissions of a ghostly 1960s pirate radio station.

Uncut: “Cindy Lee has managed to buck just about every trend, convention and expectation of what releasing music in the digital age is supposed to look and like. And, even more crucially, it sounds just as refreshing.”

Stereogum: “Diamond Jubilee is two hours of unrushed wandering through a lo-fi escape, catchy to the point of sticky, tarnishing in its abrasiveness yet sun-baked to perfection.”

On her sixth album as Waxahatchee, singer-songwriter Katie Crutchfield tackles everything from anxiety and self-doubt, to her ongoing struggle with sobriety, with piercing insight and a laid-back country-rock feel.

Pitchfork: “Her mind is alive and humming, and her language leaps out at you with its hunger.”

Consequence of Sound: “Crutchfield is still growing, both personally and artistically, and we’re just glad she’s invited us along for the ride.”

After landing the decisive blow in his rap beef with Drake, Compton rapper Kendrick Lamar took a victory lap on his surprise sixth album, GNX. Razor sharp and rhythmically complex, it’s both a poison pen letter to his detractors, and a love letter to Los Angeles’ hip-hop culture.

LA Times: “Lamar is worked up about liars, about folks doling out backhanded compliments, about other rappers with “old-ass flows” wasting space with empty rhymes. Indeed, what seems to make him angriest is the idea that a person could triumph in hip-hop by taking hip-hop less seriously than he does.”

Complex: “Even cooler is how much space Kendrick gives to underground rappers from the LA scene—figures who are talented but raw, and would likely struggle to gain national recognition without a boost.”

Six albums into her career, former Disney star Sabrina Carpenter landed on a winning formula – one that puts aside the cookie-cutter pop of her teen years, and zeroes in on her sly humour as a USP.

Fleet of foot and packed with memorable one-liners, it produced three number one singles in the UK, including song of the year contender Espresso.

New York Times: “A smart, funny, cheerfully merciless catalogue of bad boyfriend behaviour.”

Esquire: “The range, humour, and sophistication of these 12 songs were a revelation.”

11) Tyler, The Creator – Chromokopia

12) Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Wild God

13) Beth Gibbons – Lives Outgrown

=14) Mk.Gee – Two Star & The Dream People

=14) Jessica Pratt – Here In The Pitch

16) Vampire Weekend – Only God Was Above Us

17) Adrianne Lenker – Bright Future

18) Doechii – Alligator Bites Never Heal

19) Clairo – Charm

=20) Taylor Swift – The Tortured Poets Department

=20) Nala Sinephro – Endlessness

22) English Teacher – This Could Be Texas

23) The Last Dinner Party – Prelude To Ecstasy

24) Magdalena Bay – Imaginal Disk

25) Nilufer Yanya – My Method Actor

Albania’s prime minister has announced the government intends to block access to TikTok for one year after the killing of a schoolboy last month raised fears about the influence of social media on children.

Speaking on Saturday Edi Rama declared the proposed ban would start in January.

TikTok said it is seeking urgent clarifications from the Albanian government about the proposed ban.

The social media platform told the BBC it had found no evidence the person who allegedly stabbed the 14-year-old boy, or the victim himself, had TikTok accounts.

During a meeting in Albania’s capital Tirana with teachers, parents and psychologists Rama branded TikTok as “the thug of the neighbourhood”.

“We are going to close it for a year and we are going to start rolling out programs that will serve the education of students and help parents follow their children’s journey,” Rama said.

The blocking of TikTok comes less than a month after the 14-year-old student was killed and another injured in a fight near a school in southern Tirana which had its roots in a confrontation on social media.

The killing sparked a debate in Albania among parents, psychologists and educational institutions about the impact of social networks on young people.

“In China, TikTok promotes how students can take courses, how to protect nature, how to keep traditions, but on the TikTok outside China we see only scum and mud. Why do we need this?”, Rama said.

TikTok is already banned in India, which was one of the app’s largest markets before it was outlawed in June 2020. It is also blocked in Iran, Nepal, Afghanistan and Somalia.

TikTok is also fighting against a law passed by the US Congress which would ban the app from 19 January unless it is sold by ByteDance – its Chinese parent company.

The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear last-minute legal arguments from TikTok as to why it should not be banned or sold with a hearing scheduled for 10 January – just days before the 19 January deadline imposed by Congress.

The US government is taking action against the app because of what it says are its links to the Chinese state – links which TikTok and ByteDance have denied.

• Trump meets TikTok CEO as ban deadline looms
• US TikTok ban: When and why could the app be outlawed?

Several European countries including France, Germany and Belgium have enforced restrictions on social media use for children.

In November Australia passed the world’s strictest measures by voting to ban children under the age of 16 from using social media.

That particular ban will take at least a year to implement.

UK Technology Secretary Peter Kyle told the BBC that a similar ban for under-16s is “on the table” but added that he wanted to see more evidence first.

For the uninitiated, sorting one’s rubbish can be a convoluted process in Japan – a country that boasts one of the world’s strictest waste disposal rules.

But in the city of Fukushima, things are about to get even tougher.

Starting in March, the city government will go through bags of rubbish that fall afoul of regulations – such as those which have not been sorted correctly, or which exceed size limits – and in some cases publicly identify their owners.

The new regulations, passed in a municipal meeting on Tuesday, comes amid Japan’s long push to enhance its waste management system.

While many cities in Japan open rubbish bags to inspect them, and some allow for the disclosure of offending businesses, Fukushima is believed to be the first city that plans to disclose the names of both individuals and businesses.

In a statement to the BBC, the Fukushima Waste Reduction Promotion Division said that waste which had not been properly disposed has previously led to scattered rubbish and the proliferation of crows.

“The improper disposal of waste is a major concern as it deteriorates the living environment of local residents,” said the department.

Waste which is not properly sorted also leads to more landfill, the department added, “which imposes a burden on future generations”.

“Therefore, we consider waste sorting to be very important.”

Last year, Fukushima reported over 9,000 cases of non-compliant rubbish.

Currently, instead of collecting rubbish that does not comply with disposal rules, workers usually paste stickers on the bags informing residents of the violation. Residents would then have to take them back inside, re-sort it and hope they get it right the next time collectors come around.

Under Fukushima’s new rules, if the rubbish remains unsorted for a week, city workers can go through it and try to identify the offenders via items such as mail. The violators will be issued a verbal warning, followed by a written advisory, before the last resort: having their names published on the government website.

Amid privacy concerns, Fukushima authorities said that the inspection of the rubbish would be carried out in private.

Japanese cities each have their own guides on how to dispose of rubbish. In Fukushima, rubbish bags have to be placed at collection points every morning by 0830 – but cannot be left out from the night before.

Different types of waste – separated into combustibles, non-combustibles, and recyclables – are collected according to different schedules.

For items that exceed stipulated dimensions, like household appliances and furniture, residents have to make an appointment for them to be collected separately.

Fukushima’s mayor, Hiroshi Kohata, said that the new rules were meant to promote waste reduction and proper disposal methods.

“There is nothing illegal about publicising malicious waste generators who do not abide by the rules and do not follow the city’s guidance and advisory,” the Mainichi quoted authorities as saying.

Rubbish is taken very seriously in Japan, where since the 1990s the government has made it a national goal to shift away from landfills, reduce waste and promote recycling. Local authorities have introduced their own initiatives in line with this goal.

Residents in Kamikatsu, a Japanese town with an ambitious zero-waste goal, proudly sort their rubbish into 45 categories. Kagoshima prefecture has made it mandatory for residents to write their names on their rubbish bags. And last year the city of Chiba piloted an AI assistant to help residents dispose their rubbish properly.

Lara Trump, daughter-in-law of US President-elect Donald Trump, has withdrawn her name from consideration for a seat in the Senate.

She stepped down this month as co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee (RNC), fuelling speculation that she might replace outgoing Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, whom Trump has nominated for secretary of state.

But in a post on X, she said she had removed herself from consideration “after an incredible amount of thought, contemplation, and encouragement from so many”.

She said she wished Florida Governor Ron DeSantis luck in hand-picking a replacement to serve out the remainder of Rubio’s six-year term, which ends in 2026.

In her post on X on Saturday, Lara Trump said: “I could not have been more honoured to serve as RNC co-chair during the most high-stakes election of our lifetime and I’m truly humbled by the unbelievable support shown to me by the people of our country, and here in the great state of Florida.”

She said she had a big announcement to share in January, without giving further details.

Lara Trump was elected as RNC co-chair in March, solidifying her father-in-law’s influence over the party as he campaigned for the presidency.

Alongside her husband, Trump’s son Eric, and his older brother Don Jr, she emerged as one of the top campaign surrogates for the Republican candidate in the run-up to the election.

It was one of the worst weeks of his political career, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was ringing in the season.

At the Liberal Party’s annual holiday gathering, Trudeau put on his party face, despite being blindsided the day before by the snap resignation of one of his most trusted allies, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, just hours before she was due to deliver an economic statement in Parliament.

But even as some members of his own party were calling on him to leave, the prime minister struck a resolute, defiant tone as he addressed the party faithful in his dark blue suit and tie.

He alluded to his “difficult” week, comparing it to a family fight.

He discussed being “audacious” and “ambitious” in the face of adversity, and made pointed digs at his political rival, Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the opposition Conservative Party of Canada.

Pundits remarked afterwards that it sounded a lot like a campaign speech, and that despite the latest political turmoil, Trudeau appears to be digging in.

That stance did not change on Friday, even after the leader of the country’s progressive New Democrat Party (NDP) Jagmeet Singh said he would introduce a motion to topple Trudeau’s government in the new year. It was the support of the NDP that had kept the Liberals in power. An election now appears imminent.

Yet Trudeau has so far given no indication that he will resign soon, though he reportedly told fellow party members that he would take time over the winter holiday to think about what to do.

Political observers say Trudeau has often shown a streak of defiance when he is under pressure, something that has helped him weather a number of controversies in his nine years in power.

And he has often been underestimated, such as when he won a majority government in 2015 at the age of 44, despite being portrayed by his political opponents as something of a dilettante.

But as pressure mounts on him to resign, some of those same experts say he may need a new strategy.

When Trudeau first ran for prime minister, three words followed him around: Just not ready.

That phrase was the tagline of an attack ad played repeatedly throughout the country as he tried to unseat the incumbent Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a Conservative who had been in power since 2006.

It conveyed common criticisms he faced at the time about his young age, his relative lack of experience and his winding path to politics.

Trudeau “sort of meandered around” in his early life before becoming a drama teacher in Vancouver, said Canadian historian Raymond Blake, seemingly insulated as the well-known and wealthy son of former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

But not long after entering politics, Trudeau adopted a fighting stance.

It is a trait that some say he learned from his father, who was known for his charismatic yet combative leadership style, and who is famous for his catchphrase of “just watch me,” which he glibly told a reporter at the height of a political crisis.

“His father had an image of really being a resilient, very tough politician,” said Lawrence Martin, a long-time Canadian political columnist based in Washington DC.

The younger Trudeau went on to defy the odds himself by pulling off a historic win for his Liberal party, taking them from third-place in parliament to a majority mandate in his first federal election.

“This kind of makes him feel that he can overcome big obstacles,” said Mr Martin, adding that, politically, Trudeau operates with “a hyper amount of self-confidence”.

Trudeau’s path to power turned bumpy once he had assumed office, after he became involved in a number of political scandals.

In his first term, Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould – the first indigenous woman to hold the job – quit over what she described as attempts at interference and “veiled threats” from top government officials seeking a legal favour for a firm facing a corruption trial.

As he vied for a second term in 2019, Trudeau’s re-election campaign was rocked by images that were released showing him as a younger man donning brown face on at least three occasions.

And a year later, in 2020, Trudeau faced yet another ethics scandal involving a potentially large government contract for a youth charity that had worked with Trudeau family members.

But in the face of every setback, Trudeau held on to power. He won re-election twice, making him the longest-serving leader of his G7 peers.

“Trudeau has survived so much,” Prof Blake said, noting that his political successes and leadership have won the loyalty of many in his party despite the scandals.

While Trudeau has weathered many storms, there are signs that his time may be up.

For one, history is not on his side. Only one Canadian prime minister, Sir John A MacDonald – the country’s first – served four consecutive terms.

Trudeau is also working against a sinking popularity. A September poll from Ipsos suggested around two-thirds of Canadians disapprove of him. Just 26% of respondents said Trudeau was their top pick for prime minister, putting him 19 points behind Conservative leader Poilievre.

And then there’s the slowly dwindling support within Trudeau’s own party. So far, at least 18 Liberal MPs have called for their leader to step down.

“He’s delusional if he thinks we can continue like this,” New Brunswick MP Wayne Long told reporters this week.

“It’s unfair to us MPs, it’s unfair to the ministers and most importantly it’s unfair to the country. We need to move on with a new direction and we need to reboot.”

According to Long, who has driven the push to remove Trudeau, as many as 50 of the 153 Liberal MPs want him to quit immediately. Roughly the same number are Trudeau loyalists, he said, and the rest are on the fence.

“There’s still some party loyalists who like him and, you know, want to still support him,” said Mr Martin, the DC-based columnist. “But if you had a secret vote of Liberal caucus about whether he should stay on or not, he would be defeated handily.”

The prime minister is also seemingly driven to stay by his disdain for his political opponent Poilievre, Mr Martin observed.

“He does not want to back down, and he does want to take on Pierre Poilievre, whom he detests,” he said.

Trudeau’s stubborn perseverance in the face of a dismal political forecast has drawn comparisons to outgoing US President Joe Biden, who abandoned his candidacy months before the November election only after mounting internal pressure.

Prof Blake said that Trudeau’s legacy, like Biden’s, will hinge on how he exits. Fighting a losing battle, he said, could give Trudeau “a lasting scar”. But the prime minister has a remarkable ability to survive, he noted.

“He’s been a survivor, and he hasn’t done what’s normal. Will normal – whatever it is – fall into place this time? Perhaps, but I’m not convinced.”

Trudeau’s dilemma is also similar to one faced by his father, who won three elections in a row, and went on to win a fourth after leaving power for less than a year.

But by 1984, more than 15 years after first becoming prime minister, the elder Trudeau – like his son now – faced dire polls. It seemed clear he would not win the next election if he stayed on. He decided to step down, telling the public that he made the decision after taking a walk in an Ottawa snowstorm.

Since then, the term “walk in the snow” has become synonymous with political resignation in Canada. This Christmas, it remains to be seen whether Trudeau will take his own walk.

Russia says five people have been killed in a Ukrainian strike in the western Kursk region.

Ukrainian officials reported earlier that Moscow had launched a fresh missile attack on Kyiv, damaging a building hosting several embassies.

In Russia, the acting governor of the Kursk region said in addition to those killed, nine had been taken to hospital following the attack on the town of Rylsk.

Alexander Khinshtein said a cultural centre, a fitness complex, a school and homes had been damaged in the strike which took place at 15:30 local time (12:30 GMT) on Friday.

Russian officials earlier reported six killed, including a child, in Rylsk, about 25km (16 miles) from the Ukrainian border.

But in an audio message on Telegram on Saturday morning, Khinshtein gave the latest update, saying there were five fatalities.

“There were no children among those [killed],” he said.

Ukrainian troops still hold parts of the Kursk region after launching a surprise cross-border offensive in early August.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry said Russia’s strike on Kyiv had affected the diplomatic missions of Albania, Argentina, North Macedonia, Palestine, Portugal and Montenegro. It is unclear whether the building housing them was directly targeted in the Ukrainian capital.

At least one person was killed and nine others were injured in the strike which damaged a number of buildings in the city, Ukraine’s military said. It is not thought that any of the embassy diplomats were injured.

In a verified video filmed in the Pecherskyi District, Kyiv’s second oldest Roman Catholic church, St Nicholas Cathedral. is shown with windows shattered following a nearby blast.

Ukraine’s military said Russia had launched 65 drones and missiles across the country overnight, with most shot down.

One man in Kyiv, who said he was the owner of a restaurant that suffered extensive damage following the attack, was filmed cursing the Russians as “beasts” as he surveyed the charred shell of a building in front of him.

The video was widely shared on social media.

Oksana, another resident, sent the BBC photos of her destroyed apartment, with the windows blown in and glass and brickwork strewn across the floors.

“I don’t understand how I survived,” she said.

“My balcony flew away, half my walls are gone. My neighbour is in such shock she can’t even speak. I have no words for the people who did this.”

A local journalist at the scene told the BBC that one of the buildings nearby had been used by the Ukrainian Security Service, the SBU, and was likely to have been the target of the strikes, although much of the damage seen by the BBC had affected residential buildings.

In a statement confirming the attack, the Russian defence ministry said missiles had been launched at an SBU “command post” in response to a strike on a chemical plant in Russia’s Rostov Region two days ago.

But there is also speculation in Kyiv that Friday’s attack could be linked to the killing of a Russian general, Lt-Gen Igor Kirillov, in Moscow on Tuesday.

Friday’s attack come one day after Vladimir Putin’s end-of-year press conference and phone-in show, in which he threatened to launch more ballistic missiles at the Ukrainian capital.

There is concern in Ukraine that Russia could use a so-called Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile to hit Kyiv. Moscow test-fired the missile on the central city of Dnipro earlier this month.

Earlier on Friday morning, the Ukrainian authorities issued an air alert linked to the possible launch of an Oreshnik missile, and urged people in Kyiv to urgently seek shelter. It turned out to be a false alarm.

In 2012, Elon Musk had just completed a business trip to London and Oxford. “Just returned… I met with many interesting people,” he wrote on Twitter. “I really like Britain!”

Fast-forward to 2024, and Musk’s views on Britain are a little different.

“Civil war is inevitable” … “Britain is going full Stalin”… “The people of Britain have had enough of a tyrannical police state”.

These are just some of his recent comments on X, as he renamed the site after he bought it.

He has repeatedly got into spats with politicians including Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, he has amplified voices on the right and far-right online and is in talks to donate to Reform UK, according to the party’s leader Nigel Farage.

So why has Musk’s relationship with America’s closest ally apparently soured and what, if anything, does he hope to achieve?

We would love to ask him ourselves but he didn’t respond to our requests for an interview.

His X timeline offers some clues though.

The self-proclaimed “Chief Troll Officer” often exaggerates in an ambiguous way, unclear if he’s being sincere or ironic.

When he writes, “Is this Britain or the Soviet Union?” he doesn’t really mean that Britain is a totalitarian Communist state but also, he sort of does. Often he reposts content with just a single word – “interesting” – or an emoji, rather than going into details.

In recent years, however, Musk watchers have noticed that the kinds of things he boosts to his 200 million followers tend to come from a particular place: a world view that is libertarian and “anti-woke”, against progressives and centrists.

The shift was explicit during last summer’s riots following the horrific killing of three girls at a dance class in the north-west England town of Southport.

False rumours about the attacker were circulated on X, including by far-right accounts which had been unbanned since Musk took over the company two years before.

As a protest turned violent and rioting flared, Sir Keir issued a warning: “To large social media companies, and those who run them – violent disorder, clearly whipped up online, that is also a crime.

“It’s happening on your premises, and the law must be upheld everywhere.”

Musk replied with one word: “Insane”.

Later, he would state that “civil war is inevitable” and spread a false message from the leader of a far-right party, claiming that Sir Keir was considering building detainment camps for rioters on the Falkland Islands. By the time he deleted the post, it had been viewed more than a million times.

Musk also criticised Britain’s “prison overcrowding situation” on Joe Rogan’s podcast – watched 19m times on YouTube – saying we should “make Orwell fiction again”, a reference to George Orwell’s writings about dystopian society.

While free speech is not Musk’s only big issue – he appears to care a lot about existential questions around the future of humanity too – it’s a subject that the Tesla, SpaceX and X owner has repeatedly returned to.

Just a few weeks ago, in response to a tweet from a right-wing American influencer, making an exaggerated claim about a report from the last government on radicalisation, he commented: “What is happening in the UK?”

And he may be planning to do more than tweet. He was recently pictured with Farage and Reform UK treasurer Nick Candy, amid reports he is preparing to donate a large sum of money to the party.

Musk’s interest in UK affairs could be a reflection of how his own political beliefs have changed. He previously described himself as a centrist and even donated to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, but now he talks a lot about the “woke mind virus”.

According to interviews he’s given and a recent biography, the transition of one of his children from male to female – and that child, Vivian Wilson, subsequently cutting him off from her life – appears to be one of the key turning points.

Winston Marshall, a former Mumford & Sons guitarist turned podcast host and right-leaning political commentator whose father jointly owns TV channel GB News, speculates that Musk could be picking fights because “he cares very deeply about the UK”.

“Britain is the birthplace of liberal democracy, of many of the great philosophies that underpin America,” Marshall says.

“So then he looks over to the UK and he sees what’s been going on for several years, but which is now crescendoing after the August riots, with many, many people being given long jail sentences for literally Facebook memes in some cases.”

“Facebook memes” sounds pretty harmless but these examples include – for instance – a three-month jail sentence for a person who posted a meme along with the caption “let’s [expletive] riot” on a Facebook group with “riot/protest” in the name during the Southport disorder.

Some question whether the tycoon is really as committed to free speech as he claims.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate, which scrutinises social media companies, was critical of Musk’s tenure at X – prompting the tycoon to sue, accusing the organisation of misusing data and scaring off advertisers. The case was thrown out by a US judge.

Its CEO Imran Ahmed called the incident “indicative of the mindset of a man who simply cannot understand that freedom of speech is a freedom afforded to all, not just to him”.

Other critics have pointed out that Musk has been careful not to criticise the president of China, a country where Tesla has huge business interests, despite Beijing’s well-documented culture of censorship.

He has far less at stake, business-wise, in Britain, but the country could still affect his bottom line via the Online Safety Act, passed by Parliament in late 2023. It will allow regulator Ofcom to issue huge fines to social media companies if they’re found to have certain types of illegal content on their platforms.

Andrew Chadwick, professor of political communication at Loughborough University, explains that while some provisions in the bill are uncontroversial, “where it gets a bit more tricky is where this illegal content blurs across into what we might call the kinds of disinformation or misinformation that we see circulate on a daily basis on social media platforms”.

This could include “racially or religiously aggravated public order offences or the incitement of violence,” he says.

The Act comes with some potentially huge punishments – a fine of up to 10% of qualifying worldwide revenue.

Could it be that Musk is worried about Britain biting off a chunk of X’s revenues – or even, as the Act allows for in some circumstances, blocking access to the site in the UK?

Defenders of the Act argue that it’s got nothing to do with censoring free speech. Gawain Towler, former head of press for Reform UK, says while Musk might not have “a forensic knowledge of all the details of backbench committee” he does “see the bigger picture” – what Reform activists and others describe as a creeping culture of censorship.

“You don’t have to concentrate always on the trees. And I think Musk sees the forest quite, quite well,” he adds.

Nobody can read the mind of the world’s richest man.

But it’s clear that Musk has funnelled his vast wealth into influence and is now exporting his values – including a mainstream American view of free speech and largely unfettered capitalism – around the world.

And one thing’s for sure – he’s not yet done with the UK.

German authorities are facing questions about security and what they knew about the suspect accused of using an access lane for emergency vehicles to drive into a Christmas market in Magdeburg, killing five people and injuring more than 200.

On a visit on Saturday, politicians were heckled by members of the public, some seemingly outraged by what was criticised as a security lapse.

German authorities have defended the market’s layout and security.

Authorities are also fielding questions after reports they were warned last year about the suspect, with police saying they had evaluated whether the suspect might be a threat a year ago.

The suspect has been ordered into pre-trial detention on counts of murder, attempted murder and dangerous bodily harm.

• Grief and anger in Magdeburg after Christmas market attack
• Explained: What we know so far about Magdeburg Christmas market attack
• From the scene: Eyewitness heard rumbling and shattering glass

Usually at this time of the year, German city centres are full of shoppers and revellers drinking mulled wine, but this year the mood is very different.

The main Christmas market is cordoned off by tape and surrounded by police vans as armed officers patrol the shops and malls nearby.

There is sadness in the air in Magdeburg, as well as bafflement and anger, as people ask how could this have happened.

As politicians walked out of the cordoned-off market during their visit on Saturday, they were met with booing and heckling and shouts of “hau ab”, an extremely aggressive form of “get lost”.

Some people seemed enraged by a perceived lapse in security. Others appeared simply annoyed and irritated in general at Germany’s political leaders.

Security has ramped up at Christmas markets across Germany since a similar attack in Berlin in 2016 when a man drove a lorry into a market crowd, killing 12 people.

Open-plan Christmas markets now have some sort of barrier around them — typically large concrete blocks, which is the case in Magdeburg.

However, the gap in the barriers was large enough to allow emergency vehicles to pass through.

City official Ronni Krug told reporters at a press conference on Saturday that emergency responders needed an evacuation route in case of a “conventional” emergency, and all the relevant agencies approved the plan.

“A safety and security concept must, on the one hand, protect those visiting an event as much as possible, but also needs to ensure, at the same time, if something does happen, they are able to leave the site safely and rapidly”, he said.

“Perhaps it is something that could not have been prevented”, he added.

German media reported that before the attack, there had been warnings into a potential threat from the suspect.

The suspect, a doctor from Saudi Arabia named Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, arrived in Germany in 2006 and in 2016 was recognised as a refugee.

An atheist, he ran a website that aimed to help other former Muslims flee persecution in their Gulf homelands. His social media was full of anti-Islamic sentiment and conspiracy theories.

At Saturday’s press conference, Magdeburg police chief Tom-Oliver Langhans said police had conducted an evaluation as to whether the suspect might be a potential threat, “but that discussion was one year ago”.

He added that investigations into the suspect’s past were ongoing and declined to comment further.

Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser told German newspaper Bild that investigators would examine “in detail” what information authorities had on the suspect in the past and how he had been investigated.

The German Office for Migration and Refugees announced in a post on social media that it had fielded a complaint about the suspect, which it had “taken seriously”, but as the office is not an investigative body, had referred the complainant to other authorities.

One tip-off received by authorities is believed to have come from Saudi Arabia, the suspect’s home country.

A source close to the Saudi government told the BBC it sent four official notifications known as “Notes Verbal” to German authorities, warning them about what they said were “the very extreme views” held by al-Abdulmohsen.

However, a counter-terrorism expert told the BBC the Saudis may have been mounting a disinformation campaign to discredit someone who tried to help young Saudi women seek asylum in Germany.

On Saturday, Langhans said he did not have information when asked about Saudi Arabia issuing warnings.

Later, the head of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), Holger Münch, told public broadcaster ZDF that his office had received a notice from Saudi Arabia in November 2023. He said local police took appropriate investigative measures, but the matter was unspecific.

He added that the suspect “had various contacts with authorities, insulted them and even made threats, but he was not known for violent acts”.

Past investigations would need to be revisited, Münch said.

The social media accounts of the suspect are under a great deal scrutiny as investigators build their case against him.

He was a prolific poster of anti-Islamic sentiment and conspiracy theories on X, and had made threats in the past.

The German ambassador to the UK said X owner Elon Musk had questions to answer about why his platform had not taken action against al-Abdulmohsen.

“We have seen that the man who committed this terrible attack was extremely active, threatening on X. The question is, ‘does X really act against these things?’,” Ambassador Miguel Berger told BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House programme on Sunday.

“We have a Digital Safety Act in the European Union which requires social media to act […]. It has not happened,” he said.

Musk’s own account called for Scholz to resign, and retweeted several accounts broadly criticising the German government for failing to act on threats made on social media by the suspect.

The BBC has contacted X for a response.

Musk’s criticism of German authorities goes beyond the Magdeburg attack. In the morning before the attack, he posted in support of far-right political party Alternative for Germany (AfD).

“Only the AfD can save Germany,” he said.

Leader of the party, Alice Weidel, thanked Musk for his “note” and said “the Alternative for Germany is indeed the one and only alternative for our country; our very last option,” in a post retweeted by Musk.

When asked by the BBC to comment on Musk telling Germans how to vote, Berger said: “I think Elon Musk – before giving unwanted advice to German citizens – he should look at the responsibility of his own platform”.

Blake Lively has filed a legal complaint against It Ends With Us co-star Justin Baldoni, alleging sexual harassment and a campaign to “destroy” her reputation.

According to the legal filing, she accuses Mr Baldoni and his team of attacking her public image following a meeting in which she brought along her actor husband, Ryan Reynolds, to address “repeated sexual harassment and other disturbing behavior” by Mr Baldoni and a producer on the movie.

Mr Baldoni’s legal team told the BBC the allegations are “categorically false” and said they hired a crisis manager because Ms Lively had threatened to derail the film unless her demands were met.

In the romantic drama, Ms Lively plays a woman who finds herself in a relationship with a charming but abusive boyfriend, played by Mr Baldoni.

The meeting between Ms Lively and Mr Baldoni, together with others involved in the movie’s production, took place on 4 January this year, and it aimed to address “the hostile work environment” on set, says the legal filing.

Ms Lively’s husband, Deadpool star Mr Reynolds, who did not appear in It Ends With Us, joined her at the showdown, according to the legal complaint, which is one step before a lawsuit.

Mr Baldoni, 40, attended the meeting in his capacity as co-chairman and co-founder of the company that produced the film, Wayfarer Studios. He was also the film’s director.

In the legal complaint, Ms Lively’s lawyers allege that both Mr Baldoni and the Wayfarer chief executive officer, Jamey Heath, engaged in “inappropriate and unwelcome behavior towards Ms Lively and others on the set of It Ends With Us”.

In the filing to the California Civil Rights Department, a list of 30 demands relating to the pair’s alleged misconduct was made at the meeting to ensure they could continue to produce the film.

Among them, Ms Lively, 37, requested that there be no more mention of Mr Baldoni and Mr Heath’s previous “pornography addiction” to Ms Lively or to other crew members, no more descriptions of their own genitalia to Ms Lively, and “no more adding of sex scenes, oral sex, or on camera climaxing by BL [Blake Lively] outside the scope of the script BL approved when signing onto the project”, says the complaint.

Ms Lively also demanded that Mr Baldoni stop saying he could speak to her dead father.

Ms Lively’s legal team further accuse Mr Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios of leading a “multi-tiered plan” to wreck her reputation.

She alleges this was “the intended result of a carefully crafted, coordinated, and resourced retaliatory scheme to silence her, and others from speaking out about the hostile environment that Mr Baldoni and Mr Heath created”.

Responding to the legal complaint, Mr Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, said on Saturday: “It is shameful that Ms Lively and her representatives would make such serious and categorically false accusations against Mr Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios and its representatives.”

Mr Freedman accused Ms Lively of making numerous demands and threats, including “threatening to not show up to set, threatening to not promote the film”, which would end up “ultimately leading to its demise during release, if her demands were not met”.

He alleged that Ms Lively’s claims were “intentionally salacious with an intent to publicly hurt and rehash a narrative in the media”.

In a statement via her attorneys to the BBC, Ms Lively said: “I hope that my legal action helps pull back the curtain on these sinister retaliatory tactics to harm people who speak up about misconduct and helps protect others who may be targeted.”

She also denied that she or any of her representatives had planted or spread negative information about Mr Baldoni or Wayfarer.

The film was a box-office hit, although some critics said it romanticised domestic violence.

Soon after the release date in August, another co-star, Brandon Sklenar, hinted in an Instagram post at rumours of a rift between Ms Lively and Mr Baldoni.

Speculation of a falling out only grew when they did not appear together on the red carpet.

It Ends With Us tells the story of Boston florist Lily Bloom, played by Ms Lively, as she navigates a love triangle between her charming but abusive boyfriend, Ryle Kincaid, played by Mr Baldoni, and her compassionate first love, Atlas Corrigan, played by Mr Sklenar.

It is based on a best-selling novel by Colleen Hoover. The 45-year-old author has previously said her inspiration was domestic abuse her mother endured.

In an interview with the BBC at the film’s premiere in August, Ms Lively said she had felt the “responsibility of servicing the people that care so much about the source material”.

“I really feel like we delivered a story that’s emotional and it’s fun, but also funny, painful, scary, tragic and it’s inspiring and that’s what life is, it’s every single colour,” said the actress.

Ms Lively, who is also credited as a producer, told the BBC she felt the film had been made “with lots of empathy”.

“Lily is a survivor and a victim and while they are huge labels, these are not her identity,” said Ms Lively. “She defines herself and I think it’s deeply empowering that no one else can define you.”

An American fighter jet has been shot down over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, the US military has said.

Both crew from the US Navy F/A-18 Hornet ejected safely, with one suffering minor injuries, according to Central Command.

The incident came after the US carried out a series of air strikes against a missile storage site and command facilities in the Yemeni capital Sanaa operated by Iran-backed Houthi militants.

US Central Command added it also hit multiple Houthi drones and an anti-ship cruise missile over the Red Sea.

In a statement, US Central Command confirmed a “friendly fire” incident over the Red Sea.

“The guided missile cruiser USS Gettysburg, which is part of the USS Harry S Truman Carrier Strike Group, mistakenly fired on and hit the F/A-18, which was flying off the USS Harry S Truman,” the statement said.

It is not clear whether the downed aircraft had been involved in the Yemen operation.

Earlier Central Command said the strikes against targets in Sanaa aimed to “disrupt and degrade Houthi operations, such as attacks against US Navy warships and merchant vessels in the Southern Red Sea, Bab al-Mandeb, and Gulf of Aden”.

The US military also said it struck “multiple Houthi one-way attack uncrewed aerial vehicles, or drones, and an anti-ship cruise missile over the Red Sea” using “US Air Force and US Navy assets, including F/A-18s”.

• Who are the Houthis and why are they attacking Red Sea ships?

The Houthis, an Iran-backed rebel group that controls north-western Yemen, began attacking Israeli and international shipping shortly after the start of the Gaza war in October 2023, saying they were acting in solidarity with Palestinians.

Since November 2023, Houthi missile attacks have sunk two vessels in the Red Sea and damaged others. They have claimed, often falsely, that they are targeting ships only linked to Israel, the US or the UK.

Last December, the US, UK and 12 other nations launched Operation Prosperity Guardian to protect Red Sea shipping lanes against the attacks.

On Saturday, Israel’s military said its attempts to shoot down a projectile launched from Yemen were unsuccessful and the missile struck a park in Tel Aviv.

Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency medical service, said it treated 16 people who were “mildly injured” by glass shards from shattered windows in nearby buildings.

Another 14 people suffered minor injuries on their way to protected areas were also treated, it said.

A Houthi spokesman said the group hit a military target using a hypersonic ballistic missile.

Earlier this week, Israel conducted a series of strikes against what it said were Houthi military targets, hitting ports as well as energy infrastructure in the Yemeni capital Sanaa.

Houthi-run Al Masirah TV reported that nine people were killed in the port of Salif and the Ras Issa oil terminal.

The Houthis have vowed to continue their attacks until the war in Gaza ends. The US says its latest strike is part of a commitment to protect itself and its allies.

Ukrainian sniper Oleksandr Matsievsky was captured by Russians in the first year of the full-scale invasion. Later, a video emerged showing him smoking his last cigarette in a forest, apparently next to a grave he had been forced to dig.

“Glory to Ukraine!” he says to his captors. Moments later, shots ring out and he falls dead.

His execution is one of many.

In October this year, nine captured Ukrainian soldiers were reportedly shot dead by Russian forces in Kursk region. Ukrainian prosecutors are investigating the case including a photo showing half-naked bodies lying on the ground. This photo was enough for one of the victims, drone operator Ruslan Holubenko, to be identified by his parents.

“I recognised him by his underwear,” his distraught mother told local broadcaster Suspilne Chernihiv. “I bought it for him before a trip to the sea. I also knew that his shoulder had been shot through. You could see that in the picture.”

The list of executions goes on. Ukrainian prosecutors are investigating reports of beheadings and a sword being used to kill a Ukrainian soldier with his hands tied behind his back.

In another instance, a video showed 16 Ukrainian soldiers apparently being lined up and then mowed down with automatic gunfire after emerging from a woods to surrender.

Some of the executions were filmed by Russian forces themselves, while others were observed by Ukrainian drones hovering above.

The killings captured on such videos usually take place in woods or fields lacking distinctive features, which makes confirming their exact location difficult. BBC Verify, however, has been able to confirm in several cases – such as one beheading – that the victims wear Ukrainian uniforms and that the videos are recent.

The Ukrainian prosecution service says that at least 147 Ukrainian prisoners of war have been executed by Russian forces since the start of the full-scale invasion, 127 of them this year.

“The upward trend is very clear, very obvious,” says Yuri Belousov, the head of the War Department at the Ukrainian Prosecutor-General’s Office.

“Executions became systemic from November last year and have continued throughout all of this year. Sadly, their number has been particularly on the rise this summer and autumn. This tells us that they are not isolated cases. They are happening across vast areas and they have clear signs of being part of a policy – there is evidence that instructions to this effect are being issued.”

International humanitarian law – particularly the Third Geneva Convention – offers protection to prisoners of war, and executing them is a war crime.

Despite this, Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman leader of Russia’s Chechnya, briefly ordered his commanders involved in the Ukraine war “to take no prisoners”.

Rachel Denber, Deputy Director of the Europe and Central Asia Division at Human Rights Watch, says there is no shortage of evidence supporting allegations of Ukrainian prisoners of war being executed by Russian troops. According to her, impunity plays a key part, and the Russian army has some serious questions to answer.

“What instructions do these units have, either formally or informally from their commanders? Are their commanders being quite clear about what the Geneva Conventions say about the treatment of prisoners of war? What are Russian military commanders telling their units about their conduct? What steps is the chain of command taking to investigate these instances? And if higher ups are not investigating, or not taking steps to prevent that conduct, are they aware that they too are criminally liable and can be held accountable?” she asks.

So far, there has been nothing to suggest that Russia is formally investigating claims that its forces have been executing Ukrainian prisoners of war. Even mentioning similar allegations is punishable by lengthy prison sentences in Russia.

According to Vladimir Putin, Russian forces have “always” treated Ukrainian prisoners of war “strictly in line with international legal documents and international conventions”.

Ukrainian forces have also been accused of executing Russian prisoners of war, but the number of such claims has been much smaller.

Yuri Belousov says that the Ukrainian prosecution service treats such accusations “very seriously” and is investigating them – but so far no one has been charged.

According to Human Rights Watch, since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022 the Russian forces have committed “a litany of violations, including those which should be investigated as war crimes or crimes against humanity”.

The Russian army’s record of abuses is such that some Ukrainian soldiers prefer death to capture.

“He told me: Mum, I’ll never surrender, never. Forgive me, I know you’ll cry, but I don’t want to be tortured,” Ruslan Holubenko’s mother says. Her son is still officially classed as missing in action, and she hopes against hope.

“I’ll do everything that’s possible and impossible to get my child back. I keep looking at this photo. Maybe he is just unconscious? I want to believe, I don’t want to think that he’s gone.”

Magdeburg’s Christmas market is a sad sight. This should have been the busiest weekend of the season, but the whole area has been cordoned off and all the stands are shut.

Police are the only people walking around the boarded-up mulled wine and gingerbread stalls.

On the pavement, red candles flicker, tributes laid for the victims.

Lukas, a truck driver, told me he felt compelled to come to pay his respects. “I wasn’t there when it happened,” he told me.

“But I work here in Magdeburg. I’m here every day. I’ve driven by here a thousand times.”

“It’s a tragedy for everyone here in Magdeburg. The perpetrator should be punished.”

“We can only hope that the victims and their families find the strength to deal with it.”

There is sorrow here – but there is anger too.

Many people here see this attack as a terrible lapse in security. That is a claim the authorities reject, although they have admitted the attacker entered the market using a route planned for emergency responders.

Michael, who also came to pay tributes to the victims, said “there should’ve been better security”.

“We should have been prepared better but that was not done properly.”

• Investigation: Police probe market security and warnings about suspect
• Explained: What we know so far about Magdeburg Christmas market attack
• From the scene: Eyewitness heard rumbling and shattering glass

Standing at the security cordon, I heard a group of locals complaining loudly about Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz and regional politicians.

“They are wasting our tax money, they are just looking out for themselves. They are not interested in us. We just hear empty promises,” one man said.

“They are turning what happened here around and want to put the blame on the opposition and use it for their election campaign,” he said.

On Saturday evening, around the same time as the square in front of Magdeburg’s Gothic cathedral was filled with mourners watching a memorial service, a demonstration took place nearby.

Protesters held a banner that read “Remigration now!” – a concept popular among the far-right – and shouted “those who do not love Germany should leave Germany”.

It is not clear yet what impact this attack may have on Germany’s upcoming election.

Germany has been hit by a number of deadly Islamist attacks in the past, but investigators said the evidence they have gathered so far suggests a different picture in this case.

Germany’s Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said the suspect appears to have been “Islamophobic”.

The suspect, Taleb Al-Abdulmohsen, is from Saudi Arabia, and his social media posts suggest he had been critical of Islam.

He also expressed sympathy on social media for Germany’s far-right political party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), re-tweeting posts from the party’s leader and a far-right activist.

Strong winds are continuing to cause some travel disruption in parts of the UK as millions of people travel ahead of Christmas.

Heathrow said around 100 flights had been cancelled on Sunday and passengers are advised to check with their airline before travelling.

The weather has also led to the “widescale cancellation” of ferry services across the Irish Sea and along the Scottish coast, road closures to high-sided vehicles and rail disruption.

Yellow weather warnings for wind are in place until 21:00 GMT for Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, and northern and western England.

On Sunday, winds of 50-60mph are predicted, with the Met Office warning of gusts of up to 70mph in exposed coastal and hilly areas – a gust of 82mph was recorded in South Uist on the Western Isles on Saturday.

Saturday also saw disruption, with a number of ferries between Northern Ireland and Scotland cancelled, speed restrictions in place on some trains in Scotland, a “small number of flights” cancelled at Heathrow Airport due to “strong winds and airspace restrictions”, and some road closures in exposed areas.

Travel expert Simon Calder said Sunday’s 100 cancellations at Heathrow were “significant” and a much higher number than you would normally see on a typical Sunday.

He said they were caused by the predicted high wind speeds so the rate of arrivals – normally as many as one every 80 seconds – has to be extended.

Around 80 of the 100 flights cancelled were British Airways, Mr Calder said, and he estimated around 15,000 passengers would be affected in total.

A Heathrow spokesperson said “a small number” of flights had been cancelled “due to strong winds and airspace restrictions”.

The airport advised passengers to check with their airline for the latest information about their flight.

A spokesperson for British Airways said that “adverse weather” and “restrictions” on the number of flights able to take off and land had led to “a small number of cancellations”.

They added: “We’re offering free flight changes for those customers booked on short-haul services who don’t wish to travel this weekend, and we will be offering rebooking and refund options as always to those whose journeys are disrupted as a result of the restrictions.”

NATs, which provides UK air traffic control, confirmed that “due to adverse weather, temporary air traffic restrictions are in place at Heathrow.

“Restrictions of this sort are only ever applied to maintain safety.”

Mr Calder said there are “widescale cancellations” on ferry services across the Irish Sea and along the Scottish coast, with “things getting worse”.

P&O Ferries said journeys between Larne and Cairnryan have been cancelled until at least 20:00 on Sunday.

NorthLink Ferries said it had cancelled all its sailings for the day, while CalMac cancelled a number of services and warned of “possible disruption” on other routes.

StenaLine warned of disruption and advised passengers to check the status of their ferry before travelling to the port.

Ferry company DFDS said it had cancelled seven services between Dover and Calais due to strong winds.

Network Rail warned that strong winds could “severely impact the railway, with train delays and cancellations”.

ScotRail warned that some routes have speed restrictions in place, which would lead to delays, cancellations and revisions of timetables. Disruption is expected until 21:00.

Great Western Railway said there are delays and some cancellations on the line between Exeter St Davids and Okehampton via Crediton, after services were earlier stopped on the line due to the weather.

Nikki Berry from BBC Weather said forecasts suggested that winds will gradually ease through the afternoon and evening.

Much quieter weather is expected from Monday, she said, with temperatures gradually rising to leave all areas in double figures Celsius by Christmas Eve, with “weather impacts minimal over the Christmas period”.

• What will the weather be like for the week ahead?

Motoring experts have said this will be the busiest weekend of travel of the year, with the RAC warning it could be a “pretty exhausting experience” and urging drivers to “be patient”.

The AA warned of a “perfect storm” of Christmas getaways and bad weather with a predicted 22.7 million drivers hitting the road on Saturday and 21.3 million on Sunday.

National Highways said the Humber Bridge is closed to high-sided vehicles.

RAC spokesman Rod Dennis warned motorists about driving conditions: “With the weekend bringing a mix of strong winds along with heavy, and in some places wintry, showers, it’s going to make many of the estimated seven million getaway trips by car a pretty exhausting experience.”

He urged drivers to “be patient”, adding: “These are journeys that matter to us this time of year, don’t expect to get there the minute your sat-nav says you will.

“Allow yourself a bit of time to make it easy and get there safely.”

Mr Calder said that even though roads are expected to be busy on Sunday, they will likely be less busy than on Monday or Tuesday when people make their final getaways before Christmas.

Away from the roads, the first of the rail closures taking place over the festive period began on Saturday, with a section of the Midland Main line will closed between London St Pancras and Bedford until 29 December as projects costing £29m are completed. This will affect travel to Luton Airport.

Engineering works will also impact other stations over Christmas, including Paddington and Liverpool Street in London, as well as in the Cambridge and Crewe areas.

Asked why so many trains are cancelled over Christmas for work to take place, at a time when people might be more likely to make leisure journeys and use trains if available, Robert Nisbet, the director of nations and regions at the Rail Delivery Group, which represents National Rail and train operators, said “plenty of thought” goes into closures and the festive period is chosen because “on the whole fewer people travel” then.

He added that the engineering works would improve services and reliability

On Friday evening, a man ploughed a car into a crowd of shoppers at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg.

The attack killed five people, including a nine-year-old boy, and left more than 200 injured, with many in a critical condition.

A judge has ordered the pre-trial detention of a 50-year-old man arrested on suspicion of carrying out the attack.

Police believe he acted alone.

• Eyewitness account: Witness saw car hit boyfriend in attack

• Investigation ongoing: Police probe market security and warnings about suspect

At 19:02 local time (18:02 GMT), the first call to emergency services was made.

The caller reported that a car had driven into a crowd at a Christmas market in the middle of town.

The caller assumed it was an accident, police said, but it soon became clear this was not the case.

The driver, police said, had used traffic lights to turn off the road and onto a pedestrian crossing, leading him through an entry point to the market which was reserved for emergency vehicles, injuring a number of people on the way.

Unverified footage on social media showed the driver speeding the vehicle through a pedestrian walkway between Christmas stalls.

Eyewitnesses described jumping out of the car’s path, fleeing or hiding.

Police said the driver then returned to the road the way he came in and was forced to stop in traffic. Officers already at the market were able to apprehend and arrest the driver here.

Footage showed armed police confronting and arresting a man who can be seen lying on the ground next to a stationary vehicle – a black BMW with significant damage to its front bumper and windscreen.

The entire incident was over in three minutes, police said.

A nine-year-old boy and four women aged 45, 52, 67 and 75 are confirmed to have died in the attack.

More than 200 people have been injured and at least 41 of those are in a critical condition.

The toll had earlier been reported as two dead and 68 injured, but was revised to the much higher totals on Saturday morning.

The Schöppenstedt fire department paid tribute to the child who died, André Gleißner, in a Facebook post.

The fire department said the nine-year-old was a member of the children’s fire brigade in Warle – about an hour’s drive from Magdeburg.

The suspect has been identified in local media reports as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, the BBC understands.

He is a 50-year-old Saudi-born psychiatrist who lives in Bernburg, around 40km (25 miles) south of Magdeburg.

He has been remanded in custody on suspicion of five counts of murder, multiple attempted murders and dangerous bodily harm, police say.

The motive behind the attack remains unclear but authorities have reported that they believe he carried out the attack alone.

Al-Abdulmohsen arrived in Germany in 2006 and in 2016 was recognised as a refugee.

The suspect ran a website that aimed to help other former Muslims flee persecution in their Gulf homelands, and was interviewed about it by the BBC in 2019.

Germany’s Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told reporters that it was “clear to see” that the suspect holds “Islamophobic” views.

On social media, he is an outspoken critic of Islam, and has promoted conspiracy theories regarding an alleged plot by German authorities to Islamicise Europe.

He also expressed sympathy on social media for Germany’s far-right political party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), re-tweeting posts from the party’s leader and a far-right activist.

Magdeburg police chief Tom-Oliver Langhans said police had previously conducted an evaluation as to whether the suspect might have posed a potential threat, “but that discussion was one year ago”.

Faeser told German newspaper Bild that investigators would examine “in detail” what information authorities had on al-Abdulmohsen in the past and how he had been investigated.

The German Office for Migration and Refugees announced in a post on social media that it had fielded a complaint about the suspect, which it had “taken seriously”, but as the office is not an investigative body, had referred the complainant to other authorities.

One tip-off received by authorities is believed to have come from Saudi Arabian authorities.

A source close to the Saudi government told the BBC it sent four official notifications known as “Notes Verbal” to German authorities, warning them about what they said were “the very extreme views” held by al-Abdulmohsen.

However, a counter-terrorism expert told the BBC the Saudis may have been mounting a disinformation campaign to discredit someone who tried to help young Saudi women seek asylum in Germany.

The head of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), Holger Münch, told public broadcaster ZDF that his office had received a notice from Saudi Arabia in November 2023. He said local police took appropriate investigative measures, but the matter was unspecific.

He added that the suspect “had various contacts with authorities, insulted them and even made threats, but he was not known for violent acts”.

“The reports from Magdeburg raise the worst fears,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on social media platform X.

Magdeburg’s city councillor for public order, Ronni Krug, said the Christmas market will stay closed and that “Christmas in Magdeburg is over”, according to German public broadcaster MDR.

That sentiment was echoed on the market’s website, which in the wake of the attack featured only a black screen with words of mourning, announcing that the market was over.

The Saudi government expressed “solidarity with the German people and the families of the victims”, in a statement on X, and “affirmed its rejection of violence”.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said he was “horrified by the atrocious attack in Magdeburg”, adding that his thoughts were with “the victims, their families and all those affected” in a post on X on Friday night.

In 1915, 29-year-old Indian entrepreneur Jhamandas Watumull arrived in Hawaii’s O’ahu island to set up a retail shop of his import business with his partner Dharamdas.

The two registered Watumull & Dharamdas as a business on Honolulu’s Hotel Street, selling exotic goods like silks, ivory crafts, brassware and other curios from the East.

Dharamdas died of cholera in 1916, prompting Jhamandas Watumull to send for his brother Gobindram to manage their Honolulu store while he took care of their business in Manila. Over the next several years, the brothers would travel between India and Hawaii as they solidified their business.

Today, the Watumull name is ubiquitous on the islands – from garment manufacturing and real estate to education and arts philanthropy, the family is inextricably linked with Hawaii’s rich history.

The first South Asians to move to the island from India, they are now one of its wealthiest families.

“Slowly, slowly, that’s how we did it,” Jhamandas told a local Hawaiian publication in 1973.

Born in pre-independent India, Jhamandas was the son of a brick contractor in Sindh province’s Hyderabad (now in Pakistan). The family was educated but not wealthy. After an accident paralysed his father, Jhamandas’ mother bought his passage to the Philippines where he began working in textile mills. In 1909, he began his own trading business in Manila with his partner Dharamdas.

His grandson JD Watumull says Jhamandas and Dharamdas moved to Hawaii after a drop in their Manila business after the US, which occupied Philippines at the time, curtailed ties with foreign businesses.

Their Hawaii business was renamed East India Store soon after Jhamandas’ brother Gobindram began managing it. In the following years, the business expanded into a major department store with branches in several parts of Asia as well as Hawaii, says SAADA, a digital archive of South Asian American history.

In 1937, Gobindram built the Watumull Building in Honolulu’s Waikiki neighbourhood to house the company’s headquarters. According to SAADA, the multi-million-dollar business had expanded to 10 stores, an apartment house and assorted commercial developments by 1957.

The Star-Bulletin newspaper describes products at the store – linens, lingerie, brass and teak wood curios – as woven with “romance and mystery” that transported one “to distant lands and fascinating scenes”.

As Hawaii emerged as a popular destination for wealthy tourists in the 1930s, shirts in bold colours with island motifs called the ‘Aloha shirt’ became a sought-after souvenir.

According to Dale Hope, an expert in Hawaiian textile and patterns, the Watumull’s East India Store was one of the first on the island to carry designs with Hawaiian patterns.

The designs were first commissioned in 1936 by Gobindram from his artist sister-in-law Elsie Jensen.

“Instead of Mount Fuji, she’d have Diamond Head, instead of koi [she’d] have tropical fish, instead of cherry blossoms [she’d] have gardenias and hibiscus and all the things we know here,” Hope said.

The designs were sent to Japan where they were handblocked onto raw silk, Nancy Schiffer writes in the book Hawaiian Shirt Designs.

“These subtle floral patterns, modern and dynamic in concept, were the first Hawaiian designs to be produced commercially,” Schiffer notes.

“They were sold by the boat load and were exhibited as far away as London,” William Devenport says in the book Paradise of the Pacific.

Gobindram’s daughter Lila told Hope that the Watumull’s Waikiki store had American movie stars Loretta Young, Jack Benny, Lana Turner and Eddie “Rochester” Anderson coming to buy these shirts.

“More and more we are finding out that Watumull has become a synonym for Hawaiian fashions,” Gulab Watumull said in a 1966 interview in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

The Watumulls soon bought the Royal Hawaiian Manufacturing Company, where the first matching family aloha wear was created.

Despite their success, it would be decades before the Watumull brothers – Jhamandas and Gobindram – received US citizenship. Their early years in the country were marred by discrimination and difficult immigration laws, the Hawaii Business Magazine wrote.

In 1922, Gobindram married Ellen Jensen, an American, whose citizenship was stripped under the Cable Act for marrying an immigrant who was not eligible for US citizenship. Jensen would go on to work with the League of Women Voters to reform the law and regain citizenship in 1931.

Gobindram would become a citizen in 1946 when a law allowing Indians to gain citizenship through naturalisation was enacted.

His brother Jhamandas, meanwhile, continued to split much of his time between India and Hawaii.

During India’s 1947 partition, the Watumull family moved from Sindh to Bombay (now Mumbai), leaving much of their property behind, SAADA says.

Jhamandas’ son Gulab eventually arrived in Hawaii to work in the family business and become its head.

In 1955, the brothers split the business with Jhamandas and Gulab keeping its retail portion while Gobindram’s family took over its real estate section.

Jhamandas moved permanently to Hawaii In 1956, a few years after the death of his wife and one of their sons, and in 1961, became a US citizen.

Over the years, the family remained invested in the welfare of India and its people. Gobindram was an active member of the Committee for India’s Freedom and often travelled to Washington to support the country’s case for independence, Elliot Robert Barkan writes in Making it in America.

Gobindram’s home in Los Angeles was “a Mecca for people concerned with Indian independence”, Sachindra Nath Pradhan notes in the book India in the United States.

The Watumull Foundation in 1946 sponsored a series of lectures by Dr S Radhakrishnan – who later served as India’s president – at American universities.

Gobindram’s wife Ellen was instrumental in bringing an international parenthood conference to Delhi in 1959, leading to the establishment of the country’s first birth control clinics.

The family’s philanthropy has and continues to include funding for educational institutions in Hawaii and in India, endowments for Honolulu-based art programmes and promoting Indian-Hawaiian exchange.

Many of the Watumull brothers’ grandchildren now work in and around Hawaii.

In the past few years, as the family business shifted focus to real estate, the last Watumull retail store closed in 2020. The company thanked its customers “for years of good business and good memories”.

Watumull Properties purchased a 19,045 sq m (205,000 sq ft) marketplace in Hawaii last year. JD Watumull, the president of the company, said, “The Hawaiian Islands continue to be our family’s focus today and in the future.”

Lara Trump, daughter-in-law of US President-elect Donald Trump, has withdrawn her name from consideration for a seat in the Senate.

She stepped down this month as co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee (RNC), fuelling speculation that she might replace outgoing Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, whom Trump has nominated for secretary of state.

But in a post on X, she said she had removed herself from consideration “after an incredible amount of thought, contemplation, and encouragement from so many”.

She said she wished Florida Governor Ron DeSantis luck in hand-picking a replacement to serve out the remainder of Rubio’s six-year term, which ends in 2026.

In her post on X on Saturday, Lara Trump said: “I could not have been more honoured to serve as RNC co-chair during the most high-stakes election of our lifetime and I’m truly humbled by the unbelievable support shown to me by the people of our country, and here in the great state of Florida.”

She said she had a big announcement to share in January, without giving further details.

Lara Trump was elected as RNC co-chair in March, solidifying her father-in-law’s influence over the party as he campaigned for the presidency.

Alongside her husband, Trump’s son Eric, and his older brother Don Jr, she emerged as one of the top campaign surrogates for the Republican candidate in the run-up to the election.