The US Department of State has notified Congress of a planned $8bn (£6.4bn) arms sale to Israel, an American official has confirmed to the BBC.

The weapons consignment, which needs approval from House and Senate committees, includes missiles, shells and other munitions.

The move comes just over a fortnight before President Joe Biden leaves office. Washington has rejected calls to suspend military backing for Israel because of the number of civilians killed during the war in Gaza.

In August, the US approved the sale of $20bn in fighter jets and other military equipment to Israel.

The latest planned shipment contains air-to-air missiles, Hellfire missiles, artillery shells and bombs, the US official said.

A source familiar with the sale told the BBC on Saturday: “The president has made clear Israel has a right to defend its citizens, consistent with international law and international humanitarian law, and to deter aggression from Iran and its proxy organisations.

“We will continue to provide the capabilities necessary for Israel’s defence.”

Biden has often described US support for Israel as iron-clad.

The US is by far the biggest supplier of arms to Israel, having helped it build one of the most technologically sophisticated militaries in the world.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the US accounted for 69% of Israel’s imports of major conventional arms between 2019 and 2023.

In May 2024, the US confirmed it had paused a single consignment of 2,000lb and 500lb bombs over concerns Israel was going ahead with a major ground operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. But Biden immediately faced a backlash from Republicans in Washington and from Netanyahu who appeared to compare it to an “arms embargo”. Biden has since partially lifted the suspension and not repeated it.

The planned shipment is one of a number of steps taken by the Biden administration in recent weeks, as the outgoing president attempts to shore up his legacy.

It will likely also be the last planned weapons sale to Israel before he leaves the White House on 20 January 2025, when his successor Donald Trump is inaugurated.

The president-elect has previously spoken of ending foreign conflicts, and of reducing US involvement, including during his re-election bid.

Trump has positioned himself as a staunch supporter of Israel, but has urged the American ally to finish its military operation in Gaza quickly.

Israel launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the group’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

More than 45,580 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Sixty-year-old Chinese grandmother Su Min had no intention of becoming a feminist icon.

She was only trying to escape her abusive husband when she hit the road in 2020 in her white Volkswagen hatchback with a rooftop tent and her pension.

“I felt like I could finally catch my breath,” she says, recalling the moment she drove away from her old life. “I felt like I could survive and find a way of life that I wanted.”

Over the next four years and 180,000 miles, the video diaries she shared of her adventures, while detailing decades of pain, earned her millions of cheerleaders online. They called her the “road-tripping auntie” as she inadvertently turned into a hero for women who felt trapped in their own lives.

Her story is now a hit film that was released in September – Like a Rolling Stone – and she made it to the BBC’s list of 100 inspiring and influential women of 2024.

It was a year of big moments, but if she had to describe what 2024 meant to her in a single word, she says that word would be “freedom”.

As soon as Su Min started driving, she felt freer, she told the BBC over the phone from Shenyang – just before she headed south for winter in her new SUV with a caravan.

But it wasn’t until 2024, when she finally filed for divorce, that she experienced “another kind of freedom”.

It took a while to get there: it’s a complicated process in China and her husband refused to divorce her until she agreed to pay him. They settled on 160,000 yuan ($21,900; £17,400) but she is still waiting for the divorce certificate to come through.

But she is resolute that she doesn’t want to look back: “I’m saying goodbye to him.”

In her new life on the road, Su Min’s duty is to herself.

Her videos mostly feature only her. Although she drives alone, she never seems lonely. She chats with her followers as she films her journey, sharing what she has been cooking, how she spent the previous day and where she’s going next.

Her audience travels with her to places they never knew they would long for – Xinjiang’s snow-capped mountains, Yunnan’s ancient river towns, sparkling blue lakes, vast grasslands, endless deserts.

They applaud her bravery and envy the freedom she has embraced. They had rarely heard such a raw first-hand account about the reality of life as a “Chinese auntie”.

“You’re so brave! You chose to break free,” wrote one follower, while another urged her to “live the rest of your life well for yourself!”. One woman sought advice because she too “dreams of driving alone” and an awe-struck follower said: “Mom, look at her! When I get older, I’ll live a colourful life like hers if I don’t get married!”

For some, the takeaways are more pragmatic yet inspiring: “After watching your videos, I’ve learned this: as women, we must own our own home, cultivate friendships far and wide, work hard to be financially independent, and invest in unemployment insurance!”

Through it all, Su Min processes her own past. A stray cat she encounters on the road reminds her of herself, both of them having “weathered the wind and rain for years but still managing to love this world that dusts our faces”. A visit to the market, where she smells chili peppers, evokes “the smell of freedom” because throughout her marriage spicy food was forbidden by her husband who didn’t like it.

For years Su Min had been the dutiful daughter, wife and mother – even as her husband repeatedly struck her.

“I was a traditional woman and I wanted to stay in my marriage for life,” she says. “But eventually I saw that I got nothing in return for all my energy and effort – only beatings, violence, emotional abuse and gaslighting.”

Her husband, Du Zhoucheng, has admitted to hitting her. “It’s my mistake that I beat you,” he said in a video she recently shared on Douyin, TikTok’s China platform.

A high school graduate, he had a government job in the water resources ministry for 40 years before retiring, according to local media reports. He told an outlet in 2022 that he beat his wife because she “talked back” and that it was “an ordinary thing”: “In a family, how can there not be some bangs and crashes?”

Su Min married Du Zhoucheng “really to avoid my father’s control, and to avoid the whole family”.

She was born and raised in Tibet until 1982, when her family moved to Henan, a bustling province in the valley along the Yellow River. She had just finished high school and found work in a fertiliser factory, where most of her female colleagues, including those younger than 20, already had husbands.

Her marriage was arranged by a matchmaker, which was common at the time. She had spent much of her life cooking for and looking after her father and three younger brothers. “I wanted to change my life,” she says.

The couple met only twice before the wedding. She wasn’t looking for love, but she hoped that love would grow once they married.

Su Min did not find love. But she did have a daughter, and that is one reason she convinced herself she needed to endure the abuse.

“We are always so afraid of being ridiculed and blamed if we divorce, so we all choose to endure, but in fact, this kind of patience is not right,” she says. “I later learned that, in fact, it can have a considerable impact on children. The child really doesn’t want you to endure, they want you to stand up bravely and give them a harmonious home.”

She thought of leaving her husband after her daughter got married, but soon she became a grandmother. Her daughter had twins – and once again duty called. She felt she needed to help care for them, although by now she had been diagnosed with depression.

“I felt that if I didn’t leave, I would get sicker,” she says. She promised her daughter she would care for the two boys until they went to kindergarten, and then she would leave.

The spark of inspiration for her escape came in 2019 while flicking through social media. She found a video about someone travelling while living in their van. This was it, she thought to herself. This was her way out.

Even the pandemic did not stop her. In September 2020, she drove away from her marital home in Zhengzhou and she barely looked back as she made her way through 20 Chinese provinces and more than 400 cities.

It’s a decision that has certainly resonated with women in China. To her millions of followers, Su Min offers comfort and hope. “We women are not just someone’s wife or mother… Let’s live for ourselves!” wrote one follower.

Many of them are mothers who share their own struggles. They tell her that they too feel trapped in suffocating marriages – some say her stories have inspired them to walk out of abusive relationships.

“You are a hero to thousands of women and many now see the possibility of a better life because of you,” reads one of the top comments on one of her most-watched videos.

“When I turn 60, I hope I can be as free as you,” another comment says.

A third woman asks: “Auntie Su, can I travel with you? I’ll cover all the expenses. I just want to take a trip with you. I feel so trapped and depressed in my current life.”

“Can you have the life of your dreams?” Su Min pondered over the call. “I want to tell you that no matter how old you are, as long as you work hard, you will definitely find your answer. Just like me, even though I’m 60 now, I found what I was looking for.”

She admits it wasn’t easy and she had to live frugally on her pension. She thought the video blogs might help raise some money – she had no idea they would go viral.

She talks about what she’s learned over the years and her latest challenge – finalising the divorce.

“I haven’t got my divorce certificate yet, because the law has a cooling-off period and we are now in that period.”

One of her followers wrote that the money she paid her husband was “worth every penny”, adding: “Now it’s your turn to see the world and live a vibrant, unrestrained life. Congratulations, Auntie – here’s to a colourful and fulfilling future!”

She says it’s hard to get a divorce because “many of our laws in China are to protect the family. Women often dare not divorce because of family disharmony”.

At first, she thought that Du Zhoucheng’s behaviour might improve with time and distance, but she said he still threw “pots and pans” at her on her return.

He has only called her twice in the last few years – once because her highway access card was tied to his credit card and he wanted her to return 81 yuan (£0.90). She says she hasn’t used that card since then.

Undeterred by the delay in securing a divorce, Su Min keeps planning more trips and hopes to one day travel abroad.

She’s worried about overcoming language barriers, but is confident her story will resonate around the world – as it has in China.

“Although women in every country are different, I would like to say that no matter what environment you are in, you must be good to yourself. Learn to love yourself, because only when you love yourself can the world be full of sunshine.”

China is now a country where a high-school handyman has a master’s degree in physics; a cleaner is qualified in environmental planning; a delivery driver studied philosophy, and a PhD graduate from the prestigious Tsinghua University ends up applying to work as an auxiliary police officer.

These are real cases in a struggling economy – and it is not hard to find more like them.

“My dream job was to work in investment banking,” says Sun Zhan as he prepares to start his shift as a waiter in a hot pot restaurant in the southern city of Nanjing.

The 25-year-old recently graduated with a master’s degree in finance. He was hoping to “make a lot of money” in a high-paying role but adds, “I looked for such a job, with no good results”.

China is churning out millions of university graduates every year but, in some fields, there just aren’t enough jobs for them.

The economy has been struggling and stalling in major sectors, including real estate and manufacturing.

Youth unemployment had been nudging 20% before the way of measuring the figures was altered to make the situation look better. In August 2024, it was still 18.8%. The latest figure for November has come down to 16.1%.

Many university graduates who’ve found it hard to get work in their area of selected study are now doing jobs well below what they’re qualified for, leading to criticism from family and friends.

When Sun Zhan became a waiter, this was met with displeasure by his parents.

“My family’s opinions are a big concern for me. After all, I studied for many years and went to a pretty good school,” he says.

He says his family is embarrassed by his job choice and would prefer he tried to become a public servant or official, but, he adds, “this is my choice”.

Yet he has a secret plan. He’s going to use his time working as a waiter to learn the restaurant business so he can eventually open his own place.

He thinks if he ends up running a successful business, the critics in his family will have to change their tune.

“The job situation is really, really challenging in mainland China, so I think a lot of young people have to really readjust their expectations,” says Professor Zhang Jun from the City University of Hong Kong.

She says many students are seeking higher degrees in order to have better prospects, but then the reality of the employment environment hits them.

“The job market has been really tough,” says 29-year-old Wu Dan, who is currently a trainee in a sports injury massage clinic in Shanghai.

“For many of my master’s degree classmates, it’s their first time hunting for a job and very few of them have ended up landing one.”

She also didn’t think this was where she would end up with a finance degree from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Prior to this, she worked at a futures trading company in Shanghai, where she was specialising in agricultural products.

When she returned to the mainland after finishing her studies in Hong Kong, she wanted to work in a private equity firm and did get some offers but was not happy with the conditions.

That she didn’t accept any of them and instead started training in sports medicine was not welcomed by her family.

“They thought I had such a good job before, and my educational background is quite competitive. They didn’t understand why I chose a low-barrier job that requires me to do physical work for little money.”

She admits that she couldn’t survive in Shanghai on her current salary, if not for the fact that her partner owns their home.

At first, she didn’t know anyone who supported her current career path, but her mother has been coming around after she recently treated her for her bad back, significantly reducing the pain she had been experiencing.

Now the one-time finance student says she feels that a life working in the investment world actually doesn’t suit her after all.

She says she is interested in sports injuries, likes the job and, one day, wants to open her own clinic.

Chinese graduates are being forced to change their perceptions regarding what might be considered “a good position”, Prof Zhang says.

In what might be seen as “a warning sign” for young people, “many companies in China, including many tech companies, have laid off quite a lot of staff”, she adds.

She also says that significant areas of the economy, which had once been big employers of graduates, are offering sub-standard conditions, and decent opportunities in these fields are disappearing altogether.

While they work out what to do in the future, unemployed graduates have also been turning to the film and television industry.

Big budget movies need lots of extras to fill out their scenes and, in China’s famous film production town of Hengdian, south-west of Shanghai, there are plenty of young people looking for acting work.

“I mainly stand beside the protagonist as eye candy. I am seen next to the lead actors but I have no lines,” says Wu Xinghai, who studied electronic information engineering, and was playing a bodyguard in a drama.

The 26-year old laughs that his good looks have helped him become employed as an extra.

He says people often come to Hengdian and work for just a few months at a time. He says this is a temporary fix for him too, till he finds something permanent. “I don’t make much money but I’m relaxed and feel free.”

“This is the situation in China, isn’t it? The moment you graduate, you become unemployed,” says Li, who didn’t want to give his first name.

He majored in film directing and screenwriting and has also signed up to work as an extra for a few months.

“I’ve come here to look for work while I’m still young. When I get older, I’ll find a stable job.”

But many fear they’ll never land a decent job and may have to settle for a role unlike what they had imagined.

The lack of confidence in the trajectory of the Chinese economy means young people often don’t know what the future will hold for them.

Wu Dan says even her friends who are employed can feel quite lost.

“They are quite confused and feel that the future is unclear. Those with jobs aren’t satisfied with them. They don’t know for how long they can hold onto these positions. And if they lose their current job, what else can they do?”

She says she will just “go with the flow and gradually explore what I really want to do”.

Tens of millions of Americans are bracing for a huge winter storm that could bring the heaviest snowfall and coldest temperatures in over a decade.

The storm, which started in the middle of the US, will move east in the next couple of days, the National Weather Service (NWS) said.

Parts of the US not accustomed to severe cold, including Mississippi and Florida, have been warned to expect treacherous conditions.

Forecasters say the extreme weather is being caused by the polar vortex, an area of cold air that circulates around the Arctic.

“For some, this could be the heaviest snowfall in over a decade,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

AccuWeather forecaster Dan DePodwin said: “This could lead to the coldest January for the US since 2011.”

He added that “temperatures that are well below historical average” could linger for a week.

Those low temperatures will be on the east coast as well, where the storm is expected to reach by Sunday evening.

In the central US, there will be “considerable disruptions to daily life” and “dangerous or impossible driving conditions and widespread closures” into Sunday, according to the NWS.

Some areas of Kansas and Indiana could see at least 8in (20.3cm) of snow.

In parts of the Midwest, blizzards are possible.

“Whiteout conditions will make travel extremely hazardous, with impassable roads and a high risk of motorists becoming stranded,” the NWS warned.

Sleet and freezing rain is forecast for Missouri, Illinois, and swathes of Kentucky and West Virginia.

As the storm moves east, millions more Americans will see record low temperatures, forecasters said.

Cities including Washington DC, Baltimore and Philadelphia are preparing for snowy and icy conditions from Sunday into Monday. Snowfall of between 5-12in could be recorded in parts of Virginia.

Also on Sunday, portions of the southern US including Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi may see severe thunderstorms.

Private meteorologist Ryan Maue said: “It’s going to be a mess, a potential disaster. This is something we haven’t seen in quite a while.”

American, Delta, Southwest and United airlines are waiving change fees for passengers because of the potential flight disruptions.

Americans have been gathering to remember Jimmy Carter as a nearly week-long state funeral gets under way for the 39th US president.

Saturday’s procession from Carter’s home in Plains, Georgia, to Atlanta marked the beginning of the six-day public goodbye for the statesman, who passed away last month aged 100.

Carter will be flown to Washington DC on Tuesday where he will lie in state at the US Capitol before a service on Thursday that will feature remarks from former American presidents.

Mourners from the state of Georgia and around the world have gathered in Atlanta to pay their respects.

Among those who came on Saturday was Heather Brooks, an Atlanta resident and “great admirer” of the Democrat.

“[I] found him to be always kind, relatable, just an awesome individual who has done so much for the world, not just America,” Ms Brooks told the BBC.

She said she had met Carter a handful of times and described him as “powerful yet so humble”.

• What is a state funeral and who will attend Jimmy Carter’s?

Paige Alexander, the head of the Carter Center, told the BBC that the ex-president should be remembered for his “sincerity and integrity”.

“I mean, at the end of the day, you have a politician who would say during a debate, you know, ‘the Honourable President [Gerald] Ford and I disagree on these issues’,” Ms Alexander said. “You don’t hear that now.”

The grassy area outside the Carter Center has been overflowing with flowers, handwritten tributes and bags of peanuts, a reference to Carter’s early years as a peanut farmer in Plains.

Those who knew the former president well, like Jill Stuckey, a long-time friend of the Carter family, said she will miss his – and his wife Rosalynn’s – commitment to helping others.

That’s something Ms Stuckey said the couple was committed to “until the day they passed”.

“I don’t know how we’re going to get used to a world without President Carter,” she told the BBC.

On Saturday the motorcade passed the Methodist church where the Carters married in 1946, and the home where they lived and died.

The former president will be buried there alongside Rosalynn, who died in late 2023 aged 96.

The procession also stopped in front of Carter’s boyhood home and family farm just outside Plains. The site is now part of Jimmy Carter National Historical Park, which rang the old farm bell on Saturday 39 times to honour the 39th president.

The motorcade then stopped at the Georgia state capitol building for a moment of silence led by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp.

Mourners will be able to visit Carter at the presidential library on 5 January and 6 January before he is flown to Washington DC on 7 January.

For two days he will lie in state at the US Capitol Rotunda, where the public will be able to pay their respects.

His life will be commemorated at Washington National Cathedral on 9 January in a service attended by several former presidents.

On top of the political praise Carter is expected to receive in the coming days will be the personal tributes from his extended family.

For Jason Carter, the former president’s grandson, it is the personal connection he had with people that he will especially miss.

“I think for many people in the country he was a beacon of love and respect and I think that’s worth celebrating,” the former Georgia state senator told the BBC.

There were more than 100 police officers and they were armed with a warrant, but South Korean authorities failed to arrest suspended President Yoon Suk Yeol after a six-hour deadlock outside his home.

That’s how long the confrontation with Yoon’s security team lasted as they formed a human wall and used vehicles to block the arrest team’s path, according to local media.

It has been an unprecedented month for South Korean politics. Yoon’s shocking yet short-lived martial law order was followed by an impeachment vote against him. Then came the criminal investigation, his refusal to appear for questioning and, earlier this week, a warrant for his arrest.

The right-wing leader still has a strong support base. Thousands of them turned up outside his home on Friday morning to oppose his arrest.

But, by many accounts, Yoon is now a disgraced leader – impeached by parliament and suspended from office, he awaits the decision of the constitutional court which can remove him from office.

So why has it proven so difficult for police to arrest him?

Although Yoon has been stripped of his presidential powers – after lawmakers voted to impeach him – he is still entitled to a security detail.

And those men played a key role in blocking the arrest on Friday.

The presidential security service (PSS) could have acted out of loyalty to Yoon or under “a misguided understanding of their legal and constitutional role”, says Mason Richey, an associate professor at Seoul’s Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.

Given that Yoon has been suspended, the PSS should be taking directions from acting President Choi Sang-mok. “They have either not been instructed by acting President Choi to stand down, or they are refusing his orders to do so,” says Assoc Prof Richey.

Some experts believe the security officers were showing “unconditional loyalty” to Yoon, rather than the office itself. They point to the fact that the PSS’s chief Park Jong-joon was appointed to the job by Yoon last September.

And that Park’s predecessor was former defence minister Kim Yong-hyun, who is accused of advising Yoon to impose martial law. He is currently being held for questioning as part of the criminal investigation into Yoon.

“It may well be the case that Yoon has seeded the organisation with hardline loyalists in preparation for precisely this eventuality,” says US-based lawyer and Korea expert Christopher Jumin Lee.

The “simplest” solution, Mr Lee says, is for acting president Choi to order the PSS to stand down in the interim.

“If he is unwilling to do so, that may be grounds for his own impeachment by the National Assembly,” he added.

Choi, who is the finance minister, had stepped in to lead the country after lawmakers voted to impeach Yoon’s first successor, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo.

This political stalemate also reflects the polarisation in South Korean politics between those who support Yoon, and his decision to impose martial law, and those who oppose it. And the differences don’t necessarily end there.

The vast majority of South Koreans agree that Yoon’s declaration of martial law on 3 Dec was wrong and that he needs to be held accountable, says Duyeon Kim, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, but they cannot agree on what accountability looks like.

“The actors involved disagree over process, procedure and their legal basis, which is adding to the current political uncertainty,” she explains.

That uncertainty is also creating tense standoffs like the one that unfolded on Friday in and outside Yoon’s presidential residence, where his supporters have been camping out for days, leading to heated speeches and even skirmishes with police.

Law enforcement could return with more agents and use force but that would be “highly dangerous,” Assoc Prof Mason said.

The PSS too is heavily armed, so arresting officers would be looking to avoid any escalation.

“What happens if the police show up with additional warrants calling for the arrest of PSS personnel, [the PSS] defy those warrants as well and then brandish their guns?” Mr Lee asks.

Police have now said they are investigating the PSS director and his deputy for obstructing them – so there could be more charges and arrest warrants coming.

The fallout from Yoon’s martial law order is also a challenge for the Corruption Investigation Office (CIO) that is investigating him.

It has only been operating for four years. It was created in response to public anger over former president Park Geun-hye who was impeached, removed from office and later jailed over a corruption scandal.

While South Korean presidents have been jailed before, Yoon is the first one to face arrest before he steps down.

Investigators have until 6 January to arrest Yoon before the current warrant expires.

They may attempt to arrest Yoon again over the weekend, although the weekend could pose a bigger challenge if the crowds of supporters grow. They can also apply for a new warrant and try to detain him again.

Given how far South Korea has now slid into uncharted territory, the uncertainty is likely to continue.

Austria’s Chancellor Karl Nehammer says he will resign in the coming days, both as chancellor and party leader, after talks about forming a coalition government collapsed.

The chancellor said his party – the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP) – and the Social Democrats had failed to agree on key issues.

The liberal Neos, another party involved in the talks, also pulled out on Friday.

In September the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) won an unprecedented victory in Austria’s general election, but the other parties ruled out forming a coalition with the FPÖ’s leader Herbert Kickl.

The collapse of the talks could lead to the conservatives negotiating with the far-right, or to a new election taking place, analysts have said.

The Russia-friendly FPÖ has been in a ruling coalition before. It would likely welcome a new election as opinion polls suggest its popularity has grown further since September.

The FPÖ has said in a statement on X that three months have been lost by the coalition talks and adds that “instead of stability, we have chaos”.

The party has called for Social Democrat leader Andreas Babler to also resign and said President Alexander Van der Bellen bears “a significant share of responsibility for the chaos that has arisen and the lost time”.

The FPÖ won almost 29% of the vote in September’s election, the People’s Party came second with 26.3% and the Social Democrats third, with 21%.

There was a high turnout of 77.3% as Austrian voters took part in an election dominated by the twin issues of migration and asylum, as well as a flagging economy and the war in Ukraine.

The FPÖ’s Kickl promised to build “Fortress Austria”, to restore Austrians’ security and prosperity.

The party wants firm rules on legal immigration and it has promoted the idea of remigration, which involves sending asylum seekers to their original countries.

The FPÖ was founded by former Nazis in the 1950s.

Two days before last year’s general election vote some of its candidates were caught on video at a funeral where an SS song was sung.

The party later denied the song, dating back to 1814, had any link to “National Socialist sentiments”.

The Golden Globe Awards take place later, with Emilia Pérez, Conclave, Anora and The Brutalist in the running for the top prizes.

Film acting nominees include Zendaya, for tennis drama Challengers, and Timothée Chalamet for his starring role in Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown.

Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are both up for their roles as sorcery students in Wicked, the musical adaptation of the hit stage show, while Daniel Craig is nominated for 1950s romance Queer, Demi Moore is up for body horror The Substance, and Nicole Kidman for erotic drama Babygirl.

Kate Winslet has two nominations – for Lee, a film about war photojournalist Lee Miller, and for her leading TV role in political satire The Regime. Selena Gomez is also up for two – for the film Emilia Pérez, about a Mexican drug lord who changes gender, and TV mystery comedy Only Murders in the Building.

The event marks the first major ceremony of the film awards season, which culminates with the Oscars on 2 March.

The Globes will be held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles on Sunday evening, beginning at 01:00 GMT on Monday for UK audiences.

A win at the Globes can help boost a film’s profile at a crucial time, when Bafta and Oscar voters are preparing to fill in their nomination ballots.

But the Globes is a much less formal event than the Academy Awards, with celebrities generally in a good mood after the Christmas break, ready to mingle over a few drinks and have fun with their acceptance speeches.

The main film contenders:

• 10 nominations – Emilia Pérez
• 7 – The Brutalist
• 6 – Conclave
• 5 – Anora, The Substance
• 4 – Challengers, A Real Pain, Wicked, The Wild Robot
• The Golden Globe nominees in full

Baby Reindeer, Shogun and The Bear are among the shows competing in the TV categories.

In recent years, the voting body behind the Globes has expanded and diversified its membership and brought in a new code of conduct.

The changes follow a scathing investigation by the LA Times in 2021 which exposed various ethical lapses, such as voters accepting “freebies” from studios and PR agencies lobbying for nominations.

The Golden Globes split their film categories by drama and comedy/musical, which allows them to nominate more movies and hand out more prizes than other ceremonies.

The film with the most nominations is Emilia Pérez, a largely Spanish-language musical about a dangerous cartel leader who wants to quit the world of crime and live a new life as a woman.

However, several of its 10 nominations are in the same categories – with two nods in best original song and two in best supporting actress.

Other contenders in the musical/comedy category include Anora, the story of a New York stripper who falls for the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch.

The Substance, which sees a woman trade her body for a younger, more beautiful version of herself is also nominated, along with A Real Pain, about two cousins travelling across Poland after the death of their grandmother.

In the drama category, acclaimed historical epic The Brutalist follows a Hungarian architect who tries to build a new life for himself in America following World War Two.

It’s up against Conclave, based on the 2016 novel by Robert Harris, which depicts a group of gossipy and scheming cardinals who gather in Rome to select the new Pope.

Nickel Boys, about two young men forced to attend a reform school in 1960s Florida, and September 5, which dramatises the terror attack on the 1972 Munich Olympics from the perspective of the sports journalists who covered it, are also in the running.

The other drama contenders include the sandy sci-fi sequel Dune: Part Two and A Complete Unknown, about Bob Dylan’s rise to fame in the 1960s.

Blockbusters including Deadpool & Wolverine, Twisters, Inside Out 2, Gladiator II and The Wild Robot will compete for the cinematic and box office achievement award, which was introduced last year to recognise more mainstream films.

Dune: Part Two was not submitted in that category despite its huge financial success, reportedly because the film’s producers wanted Globe voters to focus on its artistic merits.

That means if members want to vote for the film, they will have to do so in the main categories.

There’s a much higher chance of an actor being nominated at the Globes, where there are 36 slots available, than at the Oscars, which have 20.

As a result, the Globes are able to lean in to big celebrity names, ensuring their ceremony is well attended by A-listers, not all of whom will necessarily go on to score an Oscar nomination.

British acting nominees this year include Daniel Craig (Queer) Kate Winslet (Lee), Ralph Fiennes (Conclave), Cynthia Erivo (Wicked) Hugh Grant (Heretic), Tilda Swinton (The Room Next Door) and Felicity Jones (The Brutalist).

They are joined by stars including Angelina Jolie (Maria), Nicole Kidman (Babygirl), Demi Moore (The Substance), Glen Powell (Hit Man), Timothée Chalamet (A Complete Unknown) and Zendaya (Challengers).

There are two pop stars in the race – with Ariana Grande (Wicked) and Selena Gomez (Emilia Pérez) both in the running for best supporting actress.

Other well-known nominees include Amy Adams (Nightbitch), Pamela Anderson (The Last Showgirl), Colman Domingo (Sing Sing) and Denzel Washington (Gladiator II).

The supporting actor category will see two former Succession stars go head to head – Kieran Culkin (A Real Pain) and Jeremy Strong (The Apprentice).

Strong’s co-star Sebastian Stan has two nominations – one for playing Donald Trump in The Apprentice and one for A Different Man.

But some of the strongest contenders this awards season aren’t necessarily Hollywood A-listers, such as relative newcomer Mikey Madison (Anora), Spanish actress Karla Sofía Gascón (Emilia Pérez), Brazil’s Fernanda Torres (I’m Still Here) and Russian actor Yura Borisov (Anora).

Away from the top categories, other notable nominees include singer Robbie Williams in the best original song category, for Forbidden Road, from his biopic Better Man.

Two of this year’s winners have already been announced: Viola Davis will take home the Cecil B DeMille Award, for outstanding contribution to film, while Ted Danson will be honoured with the Carol Burnett Award, for excellence in television.

The Globes have traditionally had excellent taste in hosts, regularly enlisting an acerbic personality to make cutting jokes about the A-list guests.

They are continuing that model this year with US comic Nikki Glaser, who gave a barnstorming performance at The Roast of Tom Brady last summer.

Glaser said she was “absolutely thrilled” to be hosting the Globes, adding she was looking forward to getting a “front row seat” at “one of my favourite nights in television”.

“It’s one of the few times that show business not only allows, but encourages itself to be lovingly mocked (at least I hope so). (God I hope so),” she said in a statement.

“Some of my favourite jokes of all time have come from past Golden Globes opening monologues when Tina [Fey], Amy [Poehler] or Ricky [Gervais] have said exactly what we all didn’t know we desperately needed to hear.

“I just hope to continue in that time-honoured tradition (that might also get me cancelled). This is truly a dream job.”

US viewers can watch the show live on the CBS network, which is airing the Globes as part of a five-year deal.

It will also stream on Paramount+ with Showtime. The ceremony starts at 01:00 GMT and usually lasts between three and four hours.

UK viewers without a VPN can expect to see highlights on social media, YouTube and news bulletins on Monday morning.

It’s the picture of domestic bliss.

The Duchess of Sussex, picking flowers, slicing veggies and decorating cakes in a trailer for her new Netflix show.

There’s also a scene where she harvests honey, and hugs her husband, Prince Harry.

Meghan, it appears, has rebranded herself. Her new look is described by public relations expert Chloe Franses as similar to the “trad wife” social media trend, inspired by 1950s housewives.

In that sense, it is a departure for Meghan, who has been known as a feminist and a Hollywood actress.

But Frances says it’s actually a return to Meghan’s roots, as the duchess used to be a lifestyle blogger before she married Harry.

And as ever with Meghan, it’s proving divisive. Franses praises it as “authentic,” while Alex Silver, a media relations expert, calls it “tone deaf”.

So what’s the reason for her new TV show, With Love, and will it work?

One of the most striking things about the trailer is that it’s Meghan on her own, rather than with Harry.

Since stepping down as senior royals in 2020 and moving to California, the pair have pursued various ventures together, including starting a production company and charitable foundation.

• Where do Harry and Meghan get their money?

But with this new show, it looks like the couple increasingly want to do their own thing professionally – and to create two separate income streams.

“They seem to have separated their brands,” says Pauline Maclaran, professor of marketing and consumer research at Royal Holloway.

“I think it’s likely to be much more successful, because I think the two of them together weren’t really getting any strong recognition.”

The relaunch also signifies a move away from royal life.

Since stepping back as senior royals, Harry and Meghan have continued to talk about the monarchy – including in their 2021 Oprah Winfrey interview and Harry’s book Spare.

But in this new TV show, Meghan “isn’t drawing on her royal connections” anymore, says Maclaren.

Instead, it focuses on lifestyle and wellness – areas she already explored before she met Harry through her lifestyle blog The Tig.

On The Tig, Meghan shared beauty, diet and fashion tips, recipes, travel advice, and words of wisdom about love and life.

• Meghan Markle: The wellness guru she could have been

The Tig was closed in 2017, but PR experts have said that returning to lifestyle could be a smart move.

“This is a well-trodden path for a woman in the public eye who has a lifestyle that straddles aspirational as well as challenging,” Frances says.

Others are more sceptical.

“There are more interesting and significant world events that are happening, which she could be talking about,” Silver says. “She could’ve been raising awareness for charitable work or something.

“I think she is all about herself. As a publicist, I can’t understand how she can’t read a room.”

Experimenting in the world of lifestyle has also backfired for some others in the public eye.

Brooklyn Beckham’s debut photography book was roundly mocked on social media, for instance – with one picture of an elephant receiving particular ire.

This is not Meghan’s first foray into the business world – an industry fraught with risk and reward.

The couple’s previous business initiatives include a multi-million pound deal with Netflix.

They appeared in another Netflix show, called Harry & Meghan, about their relationship. Both were also named as executive producers for the recent Polo documentary, but it drew low ratings from critics including in The Guardian and The Telegraph.

Spotify’s big bet on Meghan also fell flat.

In July 2023, the streaming giant and the Sussexes’s Archewell Audio announced they were parting ways in a mutual decision.

At the time, experts suggested there hadn’t been a big enough audience for Megan’s Archetypes podcast to justify keeping it going.

Last March, she launched a different lifestyle brand called American Riviera Orchard. It currently has more than 600,000 followers on Instagram, and features nine posts from when it launched – but there have been no posts since then.

With this new venture, some have speculated that Meghan is hoping to open up further business opportunities for herself, such as partnerships with major supermarkets and brands.

If so, she would be following in the path of others such as Hollywood A-lister Gwyneth Paltrow, with her hugely successful lifestyle platform Goop.

“This is clearly all about her own commercial interests,” says Silver.

“They’re aware their income is going to dry up at some stage. Their lifestyles are quite lavish, they’re mixing in upmarket circles and they don’t want to be the poor relation.”

When it comes to the new TV show, royal expert Victoria Murphy says she “[doesn’t] think there’s any doubt that people will watch it initially and it will do well”.

But she says the real test is whether it engages a consistently large following and really builds a strong global brand for her outside the monarchy.

McLaren agrees, saying she thinks the show will chime with certain groups of people, particularly in the US.

“A lot of the public won’t be interested in this but I don’t think that’s her aim – I think she’ll be trying to get other mothers like herself really.”

Silver, for her part, argues that Meghan may be hoping to “detoxify” her brand with the new show.

But she doesn’t think the show will resonate with the public.

“I can’t imagine this is going to be a well viewed thing,” Silver says.

• I want to stop hate towards Meghan, Harry tells court

Perhaps the reaction to the trailer tells us everything we need to know about how this latest venture is likely to go down.

After it dropped on Thursday, thousands of column inches were dedicated to it.

The Daily Mail, for example, picked apart every single detail of every frame in the trailer, most of it unsympathetic.

The duchess, it seems, is of never ending interest – especially for the British tabloids. But she also has a core fan base on social media.

For her detractors, they will say this is glossy and superficial, Hollywood at its worst.

But for her fans, they will say it’s great to see her back, and that this shows exactly what the Royal Family are missing.

In other words, this is likely to reinforce whatever people think about Meghan on either side.

Family members of an Indian nurse who is on death row in war-torn Yemen say they are pinning their hopes on a last-ditch effort to save her.

Nimisha Priya, 34, was sentenced to death for the murder of a local man – her former business partner Talal Abdo Mahdi – whose chopped-up body was discovered in a water tank in 2017.

Lodged in the central jail of capital Sanaa, she is set to be executed soon, with Mahdi al-Mashat, president of the rebel Houthis’ Supreme Political Council, approving her punishment this week.

Under the Islamic judicial system, known as Sharia, the only way to stop the execution now is securing a pardon from the victim’s family. For months, Nimisha’s relatives and supporters have been trying to do this by raising diyah, or blood money, to be paid to Mahdi’s family, and negotiations have been going on.

But with time running out, supporters say their hopes rest entirely on the family’s decision.

With the presidential sanction coming in, the public prosecutor’s office will once again seek consent from Mahdi’s family and ask if they have any objections to the execution, said Samuel Jerome, a Yemen-based social worker who holds a power of attorney on behalf of Nimisha’s mother.

“If they say they do not want to or can pardon her, the sentence would be immediately stopped,” he said.

“Forgiveness is the first step. Whether the family accepts the blood money comes only after that.”

Under Yemen’s laws, Nimisha’s family cannot directly contact the family of the victim and must hire negotiators.

Subhash Chandran, a lawyer who has represented Nimisha’s family in India in the past, told the BBC that the family had already crowdfunded $40,000 (£32,268) for the victim’s family. The money has been given in two tranches to the lawyers hired by the Indian government to negotiate the case (a delay in sending the second tranche affected the negotiations, Mr Jerome says).

“We now need to explore the scope for discussions with the [victim’s] family, which is possible only with the Indian government’s support,” Mr Chandran said.

India’s foreign ministry has said they are aware of Nimisha’s situation and are extending all possible help to the family.

Her family is anxious but also hopeful.

“Nimisha has no knowledge of what is happening beyond the gates of prison,” said her husband Tony Thomas, who spoke to her hours before the approval of the death sentence. “The only thing she wants to know is if our daughter is fine.”

Nimisha’s mother is currently in Sanaa, having travelled there last year after a court in India allowed her to go to the region controlled by Houthi rebels. She has met her daughter twice in prison since then.

The first reunion was very emotional. “Nimisha saw me… she said I had become weak and asked me to keep courage, and that God would save her. She asked me not to be sad,” her mother Prema Kumari told the BBC.

The second time, Ms Kumari was accompanied by two nuns who held prayers for her daughter in prison.

Nimisha was barely 19 when she went to Yemen.

The daughter of a poorly-paid domestic worker, she wanted to change her family’s financial situation, and worked as a nurse in a government-run hospital in Sanaa for some years.

In 2011, she returned home – Kochi city in southern India – and married Mr Thomas, a tuk-tuk driver.

The couple moved to Yemen together shortly afterwards. But financial struggles forced Mr Thomas to return to India with their baby daughter.

Tired of low-paying hospital jobs, Nimisha decided to open her own clinic in Yemen.

As the law there mandated that she have a local partner, she opened the clinic jointly with Mahdi, a store owner.

The two were initially on good terms – when Nimisha briefly visited India for her daughter’s baptism, Mahdi accompanied her.

“He seemed like a nice man when he came to our house, ” Mr Thomas told the BBC.

But Mahdi’s attitude, Mr Thomas alleged, “suddenly changed” when the civil war broke out in Yemen in 2014.

At that time, Nimisha was trying to finalise paperwork so her husband and daughter could join her again.

But after the war broke out, the Indian government banned all travel to Yemen, making it impossible for them to go be with her.

Over the coming days, thousands of Indians were evacuated from the country, but Nimisha chose to stay, as she had taken out huge loans to open her clinic.

It was around then that Nimisha started to complain about Mahdi’s behaviour, including allegations of physical torture, Mr Thomas said.

A petition in court, filed by a group called Save Nimisha Priya International Action Council, alleged that Mahdi snatched all her money, seized her passport and even threatened her with a gun.

After Mahdi’s body was discovered in 2017, the police charged Nimisha with killing him by giving him an “overdose of sedatives”, and allegedly chopping up his body.

Nimisha denied the allegations. In court, her lawyer argued that she had tried to anaesthetise Mahdi just to retrieve her passport from him, but that the dose was accidentally increased.

In 2020, a local court sentenced Nimisha to death. Three years later, in 2023, her family challenged the decision in Yemen’s Supreme Court, but their appeal was rejected.

Even with so many twists and turns, the family is not willing to give up hope.

“My heart says that we can arrive at a settlement and save Nimisha’s life,” Mr Thomas said.

More than anything, he said he was worried about their daughter, now 13, who had “never experienced a mother’s love”.

“They speak on the phone every week and my daughter gets upset if she misses the call,” Mr Thomas said.

“She needs her mother. What will she do without her?”

A contingent of 150 Guatemalan soldiers has arrived in Haiti, tasked with helping to restore order amid the chaos wrought by armed gangs.

A first group of 75 soldiers arrived on Friday and another 75 on Saturday, all drafted from the military police, according to Guatemala’s government.

A state of emergency has been in place across the Caribbean nation for months as the government battles violent gangs that have taken control of much of the capital Port-au-Prince.

The forces are in Haiti to boost a United Nations-backed security mission led by Kenya that has so far failed to prevent violence from escalating.

Kenya sent nearly 400 police officers in June and July last year to help combat the gangs.

This was the first tranche of a UN-approved international force that will be made up of 2,500 officers from various countries.

A small number of forces from Jamaica, Belize and El Salvador are also in Haiti as part of the mission and the US is the operation’s largest funder.

In March 2024, armed gangs stormed Haiti’s two biggest prisons, freeing around 3,700 inmates.

The Ouest Department – a region including Port-au-Prince – was originally put under a state of emergency on 3 March, after escalating violence gripped the capital.

Chronic instability, dictatorships and natural disasters in recent decades have left Haiti the poorest nation in the Americas.

In 2021, President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated by unidentified gunmen in Port-au-Prince.

Since then the country has been wracked by economic chaos, little functioning political control and increasingly violent gang warfare.

Parts of the UK are bracing for considerable disruption as heavy snow and freezing rain hit the country, with amber weather warnings now in force.

Areas of northern England, the Midlands and Wales are forecast to be among the worst hit as wintry weather pushes northwards throughout the night, possibly bringing 20-40cm (7.8-15.7in) of snow in some places.

Flights from Bristol Airport were temporarily suspended on Saturday evening and the Met Office has warned of possible power cuts, rural communities being cut off and travel disruption.

Less severe yellow weather warnings are also in force for parts of Scotland, Northern Ireland and elsewhere in England.

The amber weather warnings in place are:

• A warning for snow and freezing rain covering most of Wales and central England, including the Midlands and the north-west cities of Liverpool and Manchester, until noon on Sunday
• A separate warning for snow covering most of northern England including Leeds, Sheffield and the Lake District until midnight on Sunday.

• Your striking pictures of snow and frost across UK

Amber warnings are more serious than yellow warnings and indicate a possible risk to life, as well as more significant travel disruption.

Photographs show snow settling on the ground in a number of places around the country on Saturday evening.

Areas include many parts of Wales along with western, central and southern counties in England including Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Hampshire, Surrey and Oxfordshire.

Bristol airport halted flights for a period of Friday evening. Operations restarted around around 23:00 GMT but passengers were warned there could be ongoing delays on Sunday and to check with their airline before traveling.

Wiltshire Police said the weather was “causing chaos” all over the county, while Avon and Somerset Police warned of significant road disruption. Both forces advised only to travel if necessary.

The National Grid said there were a number of power cuts and they were working to restore power to some properties, including in Birmingham, Bristol and Cardiff.

A zone of wet weather will continue to move northwards across England and Wales overnight, turning readily to snow as it interacts with the cold air that is sitting across the UK.

The heaviest snow is expected in higher parts of Wales, the Midlands and northern England with up to 30-40cm possible over the mountains of north Wales, the Peak District and the Pennines.

At lower levels some disruptive snow is likely but in places this will mix with rain – falling on cold surfaces, leading to the threat of ice.

Much of England and Wales is covered by a separate yellow warning for snow and freezing rain into Sunday, though there is uncertainty over how disruptive the adverse weather could be, with milder temperatures forecast.

• Why does Britain face flight chaos during bad weather?
• What are cold weather payments and who can get them?
• How to keep babies warm during cold weather and other winter tips
• How to drive in snow and icy weather
• How do cold weather health alerts work?
• Does the UK get less snow than it used to?

Prof Liz Bentley, chief executive of the Royal Meteorological Society, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that freezing rain occurs when droplets fall onto surfaces at temperatures below zero degrees and instantly freeze, causing a “glazed ice” on the ground.

Eastern parts of Northern Ireland could also see a small amount of snow overnight, with up to 10cm possible over the hills.

Snow and ice will affect parts of southern and eastern Scotland through the early hours, with wintry showers in the north also giving the chance of slippery conditions.

Across southern counties of England and southern Wales any snow is likely to turn back to rain as milder air pushes in, with temperatures in parts south west England set to be as high as 12C by the end of the night.

On Sunday further snow is expected to accumulate across parts of northern England, Northern Ireland and Scotland, where it will remain cold.

Heavy rain will be more of an issue across Wales, central and southern England where milder conditions will develop.

Fresh yellow weather warnings will also come into force in some areas on Sunday.

Heavy rain and thawing snow could lead to flooding in some parts of north-west England and Wales, while localised snow and ice warnings cover parts of Scotland where it will remain cold.

Temperatures are forecast to dip again from Monday, and UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) amber cold weather health alerts for all of England remain in place.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist has resigned from the Washington Post after the newspaper refused to publish a cartoon satirical of its billionaire owner Jeff Bezos.

Ann Telnaes, a long-time Washington Post cartoonist, created a cartoon of Mr Bezos and other tycoons kneeling before a statue of President-elect Donald Trump.

She said the paper’s refusal to run the cartoon was a “game changer” and described it as “dangerous for a free press”.

But David Shipley, the editorial page editor at the paper, said he decided not to run the cartoon in order to avoid repetition, not because it mocked the paper’s owner.

In the cartoon, Mr Bezos, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI’s Sam Altman are depicted on their knees giving bags of cash to a statue of Trump.

Mickey Mouse is also depicted prostrate in the cartoon. ABC News – which is owned by Disney – last month agreed to pay $15m to settle a defamation lawsuit filed by Trump.

Ms Telnaes announced her resignation in a Substack post on Friday, saying she had worked for the newspaper since 2008.

“In all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at,” she wrote. “Until now.

“The cartoon that was killed criticizes the billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect Trump.”

She said the cartoon was satirising “these men with lucrative government contracts and an interest in eliminating regulations”.

But Mr Shipley told the BBC his decision not to publish the cartoon was because of repetition of another piece set to publish.

“I respect Ann Telnaes and all she has given to The Post. But I must disagree with her interpretation of events,” he said in a statement. “Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force.”

He added: “My decision was guided by the fact that we had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and had already scheduled another column – this one a satire – for publication.”

This is not the first time one of Ms Telnaes’ cartoons has been spiked by the Washington Post.

In 2015, the newspaper retracted one of her sketches that depicted the young daughters of Texas Senator Ted Cruz as monkeys.

Explaining its decision at the time, the newspaper said its editorial policy was to leave children “out of it”.

Last month, Mr Bezos announced Amazon would donate $1m to Trump’s inauguration fund and make a $1m in-kind contribution.

Mr Bezos also described Trump’s re-election victory as “an extraordinary political comeback” and dined with him at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.

The newspaper faced a liberal backlash weeks before the November presidential election after Mr Bezos interceded to prevent the editorial board endorsing Vice-President Kamala Harris.

Mr Bezos defended the move, but the newspaper reported it lost more than 250,000 subscribers following the decision.

The Los Angeles Times, whose owner Patrick Soon-Shiong is also depicted in the now-killed cartoon, made a similar move and said the newspaper would not publish its endorsement of Harris in October.

A Court of Thorn and Roses, also known as ACOTAR is the TikTok-viral fantasy book series which took the genre by storm in 2024.

But with character names including Rhysand, Gwyneth, Alis and Morrigan, it seems American author Sarah J Maas drew inspiration far from home.

Dubbed “the Tolkien effect”, after the author of the The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit who was influenced by the Welsh language and literature, Wales has undeniably influenced fantasy writing, both old and new.

But while some applaud the spread of Welsh culture and language, others fear its misuse could have a detrimental impact.

“It was something that, at first, would always really excite me, but has become increasingly something of a pet peeve,” said bookseller and fantasy blogger Bethan Hindmarch, from Kidwelly, Carmarthenshire.

“Tolkien was the one who opened that floodgate [and] Terry Pratchett always did it in a great way. His own daughter has a Welsh name, and it was about honouring [the language] and being respectful.

“But you do get authors who want their fantasy to sound more mystical, magical and made up.”

Prof Dimitra Fimi, a lecturer in fantasy and children’s literature at Glasgow University, and lived and taught in Cardiff for more than 20 years, said the genre was “particularly good at connecting us with the past in imaginative ways”.

“Fantasy has – definitely in the last couple of centuries – been consciously playing with myths, legends, folk tales… Wales in particular has a very rich tradition in terms of that and there is a chain of key fantasy authors that have played around with that material.”

She said, for Tolkien, Welsh language was the main influence, particularly in his more popular works.

“If you think of Sindarin – one of the two main Elvish languages – it’s very much based on the phonology and grammar, at points, of Welsh,” she said.

“I think what happened is you get a generation of writers after Tolkien who want to write fantasy, [but] they don’t want to replicate what Tolkien has done.”

She said the natural starting point for many authors was their own, often Welsh, roots, and the impact on awareness of Welsh language and culture was huge.

“It’s a positive thing in terms of discovering a very rich new culture or opening up to other perspectives [but] what worries me is a particular perception of Wales that is developing within fantasy, which is that it’s this magical, rural, romantic place.

“It can be pretty patronising, it creates an image of the country which isn’t realistic. That’s not all that Wales is.”

Ms Hindmarch said she hated the “snobbery” which could surround books such as ACOTAR and other fantasy sagas made mainstream by social media.

“I have always been a bookworm. I will read a bit of anything, but fantasy is my niche because it’s escapist,” she said.

“Other genres really looked down on it and now within fantasy there is snobbery towards so-called romantasy books, and it really upsets me.

“It brings a whole host of new readers to the genre. I have people coming into my shop who would normally never have come in.”

As a teacher on the only fantasy literature masters course in the world, Prof Fimi had seen the genre “expanding and developing into more hybrid genres” and “moving away from the Tolkien model”.

But, while they acknowledged some authors had evidently done their research well, both women said issues could arise when distinctions were not clearly made between something inspired by Wales, and being authentically Welsh.

“There’s a pan-Celticism sort of situation that has developed in fantasy, where everybody thinks that all of that can be thrown in together – that’s Gaelic, Irish, Welsh, Manx, Cornish, the lot – and it just becomes one big amalgamation and anybody can pick anything they want out of that pot,” said Prof Fimi.

Ms Hindmarch added that Celtic languages could sometimes be used sloppily, citing the blunder by Fourth Wing author Rebecca Yarros, where she was forced to apologise after using Scottish Gaelic names but mispronouncing them.

“People assume if you’re an author, you know what you’re talking about. It doesn’t take much to get a sensitivity reader, do your research, and pay a bit more respect.”

She recalled sending a message to one self-published author who had used Welsh terms, asking about his inspiration and whether he was a Welsh learner, only to be told he “just liked the sound of it”.

Prof Fimi said choosing to use the Welsh language needed “justification”.

“You have to think it through, there must be a reason for it.”

Ms Hindmarch said she was “so moved” to be asked to be a sensitivity reader for an author who wanted one of his characters to have a similar style of speaking to his ex-colleague in Carmarthen, and other Welsh speakers would “jump at the chance” to help their language reach others.

She said there was an international appetite for Welsh-inspired works, with books such as Morgan is My Name by Sophie Keetch, based on Arthurian legend, and Claire Fayers’s Welsh Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends, selling very well.

“It’s fantasy with strong characterisation and it’s done properly – people are loving it.

“For example, everyone has heard of the Mabinogion, but people think it’s quite archaic and worry it’s not accessible. So when people write something inspired by it, there is interest in that.”

Prof Fimi called Howl’s Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones a good example of a fantasy novel which was aware of the inaccurate perceptions of Wales and consciously critiqued that within the work itself.

She said while Welsh was “very well established” within the UK, its international perception was where its misuse becomes “problematic” and called for more awareness of the risks across the publishing industry.

“It’s the outside, where people talk about England and they mean the whole of the the UK,” she said.

“That’s where I think it could be very easily misinterpreted.”

South Korea’s month-long political crisis saw another day of high drama with police failing to arrest suspended President Yoon Suk Yeol after a six-hour standoff.

Authorities had sought to arrest Yoon over his short-lived martial law declaration in early December – but they spent half the day locked in confrontation with the presidential security team.

This follows an unprecedented few weeks in which the opposition-dominated parliament voted to impeach Yoon and then the man who succeeded him as acting president.

Although hundreds of Yoon supporters gathered outside the presidential residence to protest the arrest, his future remains uncertain.

Officers were seeking to arrest him as part of a criminal investigation into the martial law declaration. But his fate is also in the hands of the country’s constitutional court, which can remove him from office by upholding the impeachment vote.

It was an hour to midnight on 3 December when South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law – which had never happened since the country became a democracy in 1987.

Yoon said he was protecting the country from “anti-state” forces that sympathised with North Korea – but it soon became clear that he was spurred by his own political troubles.

Ever since he took office in May 2022, Yoon has weathered scandals and low ratings. In 2024, he became a lame-duck president after the main opposition Democratic Party won by a landslide in the general election. He was reduced to vetoing bills passed by the opposition, a tactic that they used with “unprecedented frequency”, says Celeste Arrington, director of The George Washington University Institute for Korean Studies.

Days before 3 Dec, the opposition slashed the budget Yoon’s government had proposed. And they were also moving to impeach cabinet members for failing to investigate first lady Kim Keon Hee, who was embroiled in scandal.

Up against these political challenges, and reportedly under the advice of senior aides, Yoon decided to impose martial law.

But the decison sparked protests and public anger.

MPs voted down the declaration, with many climbing fences and breaking barricades to enter the heavily guarded National Assembly to do so.

Lawmakers across the political spectrum decried the move as unconstitutional. Even the then-leader of Yoon’s conservative People’s Power Party called it “wrong”.

Days and nights of protests followed in the chilly temperatures, with tens of thousands of people calling for Yoon to be removed from office.

“No martial law!” they chanted. “Strike down dictatorship!”

Opposition lawmakers soon filed a motion to impeach Yoon – it needed a two-thirds majority to pass.

With 192 of 300 seats in hand, the oppoition Democratic Party still required eight PPP members to vote for impeachment. But Yoon’s party members toed the line in that first vote, boycotting it to walk out of the chamber en masse.

An undeterred opposition vowed to file an impeachment motion every week until it passed. Their second attempt on 14 Dec was successful, with 12 members of Yoon’s party voting for impeachment, alongside the opposition.

Yoon was suspended from office and is now awaiting the decision of the constitutional court, which has to decide within six months of the impeachment vote. Analysts expect judges to reach a verdict by February.

If Yoon is removed, the country must hold an election within the next 60 days to vote for a new leader. DP’s leader Lee Jae-myung is the frontrunner by a large margin in opinion polls.

Meanwhile, the politcial uncertainty continues.

Yoon’s successor, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo who had stepped in as acting president, has also been impeached – the opposition accused him of stalling Yoon’s impeachment process. Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok is now acting president and acting prime minister.

Several former cabinet ministers and Yoon’s presidential aides have resigned over the events on 3 Dec. Some of them have been detained by the Corruption Investigation Office (CIO), which is investigating Yoon for abusing his power and inciting an insurrection with the martial law order.

Among those detained is former defence minister Kim Yong-hyun, who reportedly suggested the martial law declaration to Yoon. Kim had tried to take his own life while in detention.

Yoon has remained defiant throughout, refusing multiple summonses to appear for questioning, leading a Seoul court to issue a warrant for his arrest.

On 3 January, about 100 police and CIO officers went up against the president’s security team at his home in central Seoul.

Finally the CIO suspended its operation after a six-hour standoff, citing safety concerns for its team on the ground.

Investigators have until 6 January to arrest him before the warrant expires – after that they would need to apply for another warrant to detain him.

The acting president has pledged to do all he can to restore stability, but if the opposition finds him uncooperative, they could move to impeach him.

It’s been an unprecedented month in South Korea. Yoon is the first sitting president to face arrest and what comes next remains unclear.

Financial markets have reacted badly – at the end of December, the South Korean won plunged to its lowest level against the dollar since the global financial crisis in 2008.

South Korea is one of the world’s most important economies and a crucial US ally – so turmoil on its shores is unwelcome on many fronts.

China is now a country where a high-school handyman has a master’s degree in physics; a cleaner is qualified in environmental planning; a delivery driver studied philosophy, and a PhD graduate from the prestigious Tsinghua University ends up applying to work as an auxiliary police officer.

These are real cases in a struggling economy – and it is not hard to find more like them.

“My dream job was to work in investment banking,” says Sun Zhan as he prepares to start his shift as a waiter in a hot pot restaurant in the southern city of Nanjing.

The 25-year-old recently graduated with a master’s degree in finance. He was hoping to “make a lot of money” in a high-paying role but adds, “I looked for such a job, with no good results”.

China is churning out millions of university graduates every year but, in some fields, there just aren’t enough jobs for them.

The economy has been struggling and stalling in major sectors, including real estate and manufacturing.

Youth unemployment had been nudging 20% before the way of measuring the figures was altered to make the situation look better. In August 2024, it was still 18.8%. The latest figure for November has come down to 16.1%.

Many university graduates who’ve found it hard to get work in their area of selected study are now doing jobs well below what they’re qualified for, leading to criticism from family and friends.

When Sun Zhan became a waiter, this was met with displeasure by his parents.

“My family’s opinions are a big concern for me. After all, I studied for many years and went to a pretty good school,” he says.

He says his family is embarrassed by his job choice and would prefer he tried to become a public servant or official, but, he adds, “this is my choice”.

Yet he has a secret plan. He’s going to use his time working as a waiter to learn the restaurant business so he can eventually open his own place.

He thinks if he ends up running a successful business, the critics in his family will have to change their tune.

“The job situation is really, really challenging in mainland China, so I think a lot of young people have to really readjust their expectations,” says Professor Zhang Jun from the City University of Hong Kong.

She says many students are seeking higher degrees in order to have better prospects, but then the reality of the employment environment hits them.

“The job market has been really tough,” says 29-year-old Wu Dan, who is currently a trainee in a sports injury massage clinic in Shanghai.

“For many of my master’s degree classmates, it’s their first time hunting for a job and very few of them have ended up landing one.”

She also didn’t think this was where she would end up with a finance degree from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Prior to this, she worked at a futures trading company in Shanghai, where she was specialising in agricultural products.

When she returned to the mainland after finishing her studies in Hong Kong, she wanted to work in a private equity firm and did get some offers but was not happy with the conditions.

That she didn’t accept any of them and instead started training in sports medicine was not welcomed by her family.

“They thought I had such a good job before, and my educational background is quite competitive. They didn’t understand why I chose a low-barrier job that requires me to do physical work for little money.”

She admits that she couldn’t survive in Shanghai on her current salary, if not for the fact that her partner owns their home.

At first, she didn’t know anyone who supported her current career path, but her mother has been coming around after she recently treated her for her bad back, significantly reducing the pain she had been experiencing.

Now the one-time finance student says she feels that a life working in the investment world actually doesn’t suit her after all.

She says she is interested in sports injuries, likes the job and, one day, wants to open her own clinic.

Chinese graduates are being forced to change their perceptions regarding what might be considered “a good position”, Prof Zhang says.

In what might be seen as “a warning sign” for young people, “many companies in China, including many tech companies, have laid off quite a lot of staff”, she adds.

She also says that significant areas of the economy, which had once been big employers of graduates, are offering sub-standard conditions, and decent opportunities in these fields are disappearing altogether.

While they work out what to do in the future, unemployed graduates have also been turning to the film and television industry.

Big budget movies need lots of extras to fill out their scenes and, in China’s famous film production town of Hengdian, south-west of Shanghai, there are plenty of young people looking for acting work.

“I mainly stand beside the protagonist as eye candy. I am seen next to the lead actors but I have no lines,” says Wu Xinghai, who studied electronic information engineering, and was playing a bodyguard in a drama.

The 26-year old laughs that his good looks have helped him become employed as an extra.

He says people often come to Hengdian and work for just a few months at a time. He says this is a temporary fix for him too, till he finds something permanent. “I don’t make much money but I’m relaxed and feel free.”

“This is the situation in China, isn’t it? The moment you graduate, you become unemployed,” says Li, who didn’t want to give his first name.

He majored in film directing and screenwriting and has also signed up to work as an extra for a few months.

“I’ve come here to look for work while I’m still young. When I get older, I’ll find a stable job.”

But many fear they’ll never land a decent job and may have to settle for a role unlike what they had imagined.

The lack of confidence in the trajectory of the Chinese economy means young people often don’t know what the future will hold for them.

Wu Dan says even her friends who are employed can feel quite lost.

“They are quite confused and feel that the future is unclear. Those with jobs aren’t satisfied with them. They don’t know for how long they can hold onto these positions. And if they lose their current job, what else can they do?”

She says she will just “go with the flow and gradually explore what I really want to do”.

Shortly after Mike Johnson appeared to come up two votes shy of retaining the speakership of the House of Representatives on Friday, Marjorie Taylor Greene – the loyal Trump ally and firebrand Republican congresswoman from Georgia – stood in the middle of the House chamber, intently speaking on her mobile phone.

Although she covered the device with her hand, a sharp photographer for Reuters news agency, Evelyn Hockstein, captured the name of the person on the other end of the conversation – incoming White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.

It was a tangible sign of the enormous interest President-elect Donald Trump was taking in this vote. Trump had enthusiastically endorsed Johnson to be speaker for the incoming session of Congress earlier this week, and defeat in the first round of balloting would have been an embarrassment.

Behind the scenes, however, wheels were furiously turning – setting up a chaotic interlude in the House after Johnson had initially appeared headed to at least a temporary defeat.

At one point, Johnson walked out of the chamber, followed by two of the men who had opposed him, Ralph Norman of North Carolina and Keith Self of Texas. Meanwhile, other members of the House and their families milled about and chatted, waiting to see what happened next.

When Johnson ultimately returned, he was all smiles.

Trump himself had made a direct appeal to Norman and Self to back Johnson via speakerphone conversation, Republican sources told news outlets including Politico.

Because the vote had not been officially declared to be closed, Norman and Self were able to switch their votes to the Louisianian, putting him at just the 218 mark necessary to retain the speaker’s gavel. Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie was the lone Republican holdout.

Both Norman and Self told reporters after the vote that they had spoken to Trump during the course of the day.

Norman said he conversed with Trump twice on Friday. The first during a several-minute phone call when fellow Republican Nancy Mace handed him her phone and the president-elect was on the other line.

The second time was a longer, 15-minute call that included Norman, Johnson and Self, he said, without confirming the exact timing.

“Trump was exactly right when he told me Mike is the only one who has the likeability factor,” Norman said.

He went on to describe Trump as “enthusiastic” about the Republican trifecta in Washington – control of the House, Senate and presidency.

“I said, ‘Mr President I agree with you, I’m just hoping Mike has got the oomph to pull this off,'” Norman said.

Self also said he spoke with Trump several times on Friday.

“We had a discussion about the entire process,” he said of his conversation with the president-elect.

Ultimately, embarrassment was avoided – even if Trump publicly appeared to be more focused on other things.

In the midst of the voting, as the names of House members were called in alphabetical order, the president-elect was complaining on social media about the possibility that US flags would be at half-staff during his 20 January inauguration – part of the traditional mourning process following the death of former president Jimmy Carter.

Friday afternoon’s proceedings underscored just how tenuous the Republican majority in the House of Representatives will be over the course of the coming months.

Besides the three initial Republican votes against Johnson, another five hard-line conservatives – who have objected to the compromises Johnson has made with Democrats in the past – delayed casting their ballots during the initial roll call. While they ultimately relented, it was a very obvious shot across the speaker’s bow.

After the final vote, the House Freedom Caucus – some of whom were among the temporary holdouts – released a statement explaining that they ultimately backed Johnson because of their support for Trump.

“We did this despite our sincere reservations regarding the speaker’s track record over the past 15 months,” they wrote.

For now, the party holds a 219 to 215 edge over Democrats – but that could shrink by two if Congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York and Michael Waltz of Florida fill administration jobs Trump has offered them. It will be months until special elections determine their replacements.

That means Trump will have to hold his entire House Republican membership together if he wants to pass key pieces of his legislative agenda early in his presidency, including hardline immigration reforms, new tariffs, and tax and spending cuts.

As Friday demonstrated, this could be a tall task.

A revolution in vehicle fuel is gaining momentum in Tanzania, but a lack of filling stations means it is stuck in second gear.

Like Nigeria and some other countries on the continent, Tanzania is beginning to embrace compressed natural gas (CNG) as an alternative to petrol and diesel.

It is seen as cleaner and better for the environment than those fossil fuels, but its relative cheapness is the biggest draw for the 5,000 or so motorists in the East African state who have embraced the change – particularly commercial drivers.

This represents a small fraction of Tanzania’s vehicles, but the early adopters are paving the way for a wider acceptance of CNG – the government reportedly wants near total adoption by the middle of the century.

Tanzania has large reserves of gas under the sea and for those filling up, CNG can cost less than half its petrol equivalent.

The potential saving was enough to persuade taxi owner Samuel Amos Irube to part with about 1.5m Tanzanian shillings ($620; £495) to convert his three-wheeled vehicle – known locally as a bajaji – to CNG.

But now, having to get the gas twice a day, he often spends more time waiting at a filling station in the largest city, Dar es Salaam, than he does earning money.

There are only four places in Tanzania’s commercial hub where he can fill up.

Quietly frustrated, he says he has to wait for at least three hours every time he wants to refuel, but the savings make it worth it, as he spends just 40% of what he would on the equivalent amount of petrol.

The slow-moving queues of vehicles at the Ubungo CNG station snake down the road. Things are orderly – there are three clear lines, one for cars and two for bajajis – but the irritation is palpable.

Medadi Kichungo Ngoma, in the queue for two hours already, stares at the vehicles ahead of him as he waits by his silver pick-up truck.

He tells the BBC that he was among the first people in the city to convert his vehicle, which involved installing a large cylinder in the back of the pick-up, and reminisces about the short queues.

“Sometimes the attendant would have to be called to serve us,” he says.

He complains that the infrastructure has not expanded to accommodate the increasing demand.

This is also the refrain heard at the largest of the city’s CNG filling stations near the airport.

Sadiki Christian Mkumbuka has waited here for three hours with his bajaji.

“The queue is very long,” he says, adding that “we should have as many stations as there are for petrol vehicles”.

But the price consideration will keep people coming back.

“I pay 15,000 shillings ($6; £5) to fill my 11kg gas tank, which goes for about 180km,” says another motorist who introduces himself as Juma, adding that this is less than half the cost for petrol to cover the same distance.

The push to encourage motorists to adopt CNG-powered vehicles in Tanzania was hatched over a decade ago but did not begin in earnest until 2018.

Those in charge of the project acknowledge that they did not foresee the rapid rise in demand.

Aristides Kato, the CNG project manager at the state-oil firm, the Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation (TPDC), tells the BBC that there “has been a very drastic increase” recently in the use of natural gas by vehicle owners.

“We found ourselves not having enough infrastructure to support the demand for gas-using vehicles,” he admits.

The authorities, though, want more people to switch to CNG because it is a relatively clean-burning fossil fuel that results in fewer emissions of nearly all types of air pollutants, according to the UN.

Plus the locally available natural gas should allow for cheaper prices than petrol. But the cost of converting a vehicle plus the lower mileage that a full tank gives a motorist compared to petrol or diesel may be putting some people off.

However, the country manager of Taqa Arabia, an Egyptian company that runs the filling station near the airport, sees the growing demand as a “positive sign that CNG use has started to develop in Tanzania”.

Amr Aboushady says his firm plans to build more stations and hopes to “replicate our success story in Egypt by helping the [Tanzanian] government best utilise natural gas as an affordable, reliable, cleaner source of energy”.

Egypt has pioneered the use of CNG on the continent, with about half a million vehicles converted to a dual-fuel system since the 1990s.

Other African countries that have approved CNG use for vehicles include South Africa, Kenya, Mozambique and Ethiopia.

The authorities in Tanzania are committed to rolling out more infrastructure and hope to encourage more private investors to get involved.

A central CNG “mother station” is being built in Dar es Salaam by TPDC, which will supply gas to smaller stations around the country.

In addition, TPDC is acquiring five mobile CNG units that will be located in Dar es Salaam as well as the capital, Dodoma, and Morogoro.

These measures should in the medium-term lead to shorter queues, but for the time being the lack of filling stations will continue to frustrate Tanzania’s CNG pioneers.

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Parts of the UK have been met with wintry scenes heading into the weekend, as frosty weather and snow make an appearance early in the new year.

Bitter conditions are expected to continue into next week thanks to an Arctic wind.

Several weather warnings are in place for parts of England and Wales as heavy snow and freezing rain are expected.

• Follow our weather updates
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• How to keep warm when budgets are squeezed
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On a chilly December morning, a group of women wrapped in colourful saris, warm shawls and woollen caps huddled outside a three-storey building in a busy neighbourhood in Delhi.

Within the walls of the building ran a unit of one of India’s oldest social enterprises, owned and run by women.

The co-operative – now called Shri Mahila Griha Udyog Lijjat Papad – was started in 1959 in Mumbai (then Bombay) by seven housewives who made the humble papad or poppadoms, a crispy, savoury snack that is a staple of Indian meals.

Sixty-five years later, the co-operative – headquartered in Mumbai – has spread across India with more than 45,000 women members. It has an annual turnover of 16bn rupees ($186m; £150m) and exports products to countries including the UK and US.

Working mostly from home, the women in this co-operative produce items including detergents, spices and chapatis (flatbreads), but their most-loved product is the Lijjat brand of poppadoms.

“Lijjat is a temple for us. It helps us earn money and feed our families,” says Lakshmi, 70, who manages the Delhi centre.

Ms Lakshmi, who uses only one name, joined the co-operative about four decades ago after her husband died, which forced her to look for work.

“I hadn’t finished my studies and didn’t know what else to do. That’s when my neighbour told me about Lijjat,” she says.

The decision to join the women’s co-operative transformed her life, she says. She now manages 150 women at the centre.

For women like Ms Lakshmi, the co-operative offers a chance to earn a decent income while balancing their work at home.

Every morning, the women members take a bus hired by the co-operative to the nearest Lijjat centre. There, they collect their share of pre-mixed dough made with lentils and spices, which they take home to roll into poppadoms.

“I used to go home with this dough and do all my housework, feed my children and sit with my chakla [a flat wooden board] and a belan [rolling pin] in the afternoon to make small round thin papads,” says Ms Lakshmi.

Initially, it took her four-five hours to make 1kg of dried lentil papad, but she says she can now produce that amount in just half an hour.

The head office in Mumbai buys raw materials like lentils, spices and oil in bulk, mixes the flour and sends it to Lijjat offices around the country.

Once the women make and dry the poppadoms at home, they deliver them back to the centre for packaging. Lijjat’s distributor network then transports the products to retail shops.

The enterprise has come a long way since it was founded.

In the 1950s, a newly independent India was focusing on rebuilding itself, trying to strike a balance between promoting small-scale, rural industries and pushing for large urban factories.

It was also a time when the government owned most of the factories in the country. Life for women was especially challenging as they had to negotiate a deeply conservative and patriarchal society to get educated and work.

The group of women who founded Lijjat – Jaswantiben Jamnadas Poppat, Parvatiben Ramdas Thodani, Ujamben Narandas Kundalia, Banuben N Tanna, Laguben Amritlal Gokani, Jayaben V Vithalani and Diwaliben Lukka – were in their 20s and 30s, living in a crowded tenement in Mumbai and looking for ways to support their families.

Their idea was simple – work from home and earn money by using the cooking skills passed down to them through generations of women.

But they did not have money to buy ingredients and sought financial assistance from Chhaganlal Karamshi Parekh, a social worker.

He offered them a loan of 80 rupees ($0.93; £0.75 at today’s rates), which was enough to get started at the time.

But the women soon realised that there were no takers for their poppadoms. Narrating the story, Swati Paradkar, the current president of the co-operative, says that the women had to return to Parekh for help.

He again lent them 80 rupees, but this time with the condition that they would repay 200 rupees to him. Parekh – whom the women called Bappa (meaning father) – and other social workers took the poppadoms to local shopkeepers, who agreed to stock them only if they could pay after the products were sold.

Only one shopkeeper agreed to pay the women immediately. “He began purchasing four to six packets daily and gradually the poppadoms became quite popular,” Ms Paradkar says.

As the business grew, more women joined the co-operative – not as employees, but as co-owners with a say in decision-making. The women call each other or sister in Gujarati.

“We are like a co-operative and not a company. Even though I am the president, I am not the owner. We are all co-owners and have equal rights. We all share profits and even losses,” Ms Paradkar says. “I think that’s the secret of our success.”

For decades, the co-operative produced its poppadoms without the iconic Lijjat brand name.

In 1966, the Khadi Development And Village Industries Commission, a government organisation to promote small rural industries, suggested that they come up with a brand name.

The co-operative placed an advertisement in newspapers asking for suggestions. “We received a lot of entries but one of our own sisters suggested Lajjat. We tweaked it to Lijjat, which means taste in Gujarati”, Ms Paradkar says.

Over the decades, the co-operative has allowed generations of women to attain financial independence.

“Today I have put my children through school, built a house and got them married,” says Ms Lakshmi.

“Working here, I have found not just an income but respect.”

A Japanese woman, recognised as the world’s oldest person by Guinness World Records, has died aged 116.

Tomiko Itooka died in a nursing home in the city of Ashiya, Hyogo Prefecture, according to officials.

She became the oldest person in the world after Spain’s Maria Branyas Morera passed away in August 2024 at age 117.

“Ms Itooka gave us courage and hope through her long life,” Ashiya’s 27-year-old mayor Ryosuke Takashima said in a statement.

• World’s oldest man: ‘No special secret to long life’

“We thank her for it.”

Ms Itooka was born in May 1908 – six years before World War One and the same year that the Ford Model T car was launched in the US.

She was verified as the world’s oldest person in September 2024 and was presented with the official GWR certificate on the Respect for the Aged Day, which is a Japanese public holiday celebrated annually to honour the country’s elderly citizens.

Ms Itooka, who was one of three siblings, lived through world wars and pandemics as well as technological breakthroughs.

As a student, she played volleyball and climbed the 3,067-metre (10,062-foot) Mount Ontake twice.

In her older age, she enjoyed bananas and Calpis, a milky soft drink popular in Japan, according to the mayor’s statement.

She married at 20, and had two daughters and two sons, according to Guinness.

During World War Two she managed the office of her husband’s textile factory. She lived alone in Nara after her husband died in 1979.

She is survived by one son and one daughter, and five grandchildren. A funeral service was held with family and friends, according to officials.

As of September, Japan counted more than 95,000 people who were 100 or older – 88% of whom were women.

Of the country’s 124 million people, nearly a third are 65 or older.

Brazilian nun Inah Canabarro Lucas, who was born 16 days after Itooka and is 116, is now believed to be the world’s oldest person.

Chile’s President Gabriel Boric has become the first leader in the Americas to visit the South Pole, after arriving at a US base there.

The president said his visit to the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station reaffirmed Chile’s own claim to sovereignty over part of the Antarctic.

“This is a milestone for us,” Boric said in footage shown on Chilean television, before adding “it’s the first time a Chilean president has come to the South Pole and talked about Chile’s Antarctic mission”.

Boric travelled with a group of scientists and several cabinet members, including ministers for the armed forces and the environment, his office said.

Boric said his visit underlined Chile’s determination to play a key role in scientific projects in the area, especially those involving climate change.

In a statement, the government said research centres, universities, diplomats and the armed forces had united to ensure that Chile becomes the world’s gateway to the Antarctic.

Leftist President Gabriel Boric won Chile’s presidential election in 2021 to become the country’s youngest ever leader, at 35 years of age.

Only two other world leaders had visited the South Pole before Boric: the prime ministers of New Zealand and Norway.

Several countries, including Chile, the UK, France, Norway, Australia, New Zealand and Argentina, have laid claim to parts of Antarctica and many more have a presence there.

Antarctica is not a country: it has no government and no indigenous population. Instead, the entire continent is set aside as a scientific preserve.

The Antarctic Treaty, which came into force in 1961, enshrines an ideal of intellectual exchange.

The Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station is named after Roald Amundsen – the Norwegian explorer who led the first expedition to the South Pole – and also Robert Scott, the UK explorer whom Amundsen beat to the pole in 1911.

Scott and four companions died on the return leg of their trek after being caught in a blizzard.

A former city councillor in Brazil has returned a toilet and two sinks she had removed from her office after losing a bid for re-election.

Footage of one of Janaína Lima’s employees hauling away the facilities was posted online as her tenure as Sao Paulo councilwoman ended.

“I decided to donate the equipment I acquired with my own resources to the chamber,” she said in statement on X, following a social media backlash.

“Obviously, neither I nor my advisers need a toilet.”

CCTV cameras caught employees in her office removing the facilities that were installed when she took office eight years ago.

In a statement posted on social media, Lima said the bathroom renovation was paid for with her own money and therefore not an asset belonging to the council.

Lima said she had followed the guidance of the legal department, that had indicated that all personally installed resources should be removed.

She told Brazilian media outlet G1 the hydraulics in the building are “sensitive”.

She added that other fixtures she had bought for the office – such as a glass partition and industrial-style light fittings – would remain in place for her successor.

Lima served as a councillor for the New Party until 1 January.

The 41-year-old lost her position to Adrilles Jorge, of the Brazilian Labour Party, in the 2024 elections.

At his inauguration on Monday, Jorge quipped to G1 that his team would “use a communal potty” until the situation is resolved.

“I visited the office and thought the architecture was brilliant. But she took everything out,” he said.

“They even took out the toilet and the sink. She didn’t say [that she was going to take them out]. And it’s something that neither she would say, nor would I ask.”

The new president of the House, Ricardo Teixeira said “appropriate measures” would be taken.

A selection of news photographs from around the world.

Stargazers around the globe were treated to a stunning celestial scene on Friday as Venus appeared shining brightly above a crescent Moon.

The planet was visible to the naked eye from the UK to the US, Turkey and China.

Venus is often called the Evening Star or Morning Star because, when it is prominent, it appears like the brightest “star” in the sky.

More astronomical delights are expected this new year, as January 2025 is going to be a good month to spot both Venus and Saturn. Make sure to take a look up into the sky on 18 January, as those planets will be appear just 2.2° apart.

Stargazers may also be able to spot shooting stars blazing across the skies, as the Quadrantid meteor shower continues.

This shower, which is expected to peak on Saturday, has been visible since 26 December and will continue until 12 January.

Dr Robert Massey, deputy director of the Royal Astronomical Society in the UK, said observers hoping to catch a glimpse of the celestial fireworks after sunset will need to get “as far away from light pollution as possible”.

“If you have the time to look out and the weather is good, then do take a look because it’s a perfect new year treat.”

Tens of millions of Americans are bracing for a huge winter storm that could bring the heaviest snowfall and coldest temperatures in over a decade.

The storm, which started in the middle of the US, will move east in the next couple of days, the National Weather Service (NWS) said.

Parts of the US not accustomed to severe cold, including Mississippi and Florida, have been warned to expect treacherous conditions.

Forecasters say the extreme weather is being caused by the polar vortex, an area of cold air that circulates around the Arctic.

“For some, this could be the heaviest snowfall in over a decade,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

AccuWeather forecaster Dan DePodwin said: “This could lead to the coldest January for the US since 2011.”

He added that “temperatures that are well below historical average” could linger for a week.

Those low temperatures will be on the east coast as well, where the storm is expected to reach by Sunday evening.

In the central US, there will be “considerable disruptions to daily life” and “dangerous or impossible driving conditions and widespread closures” into Sunday, according to the NWS.

Some areas of Kansas and Indiana could see at least 8in (20.3cm) of snow.

In parts of the Midwest, blizzards are possible.

“Whiteout conditions will make travel extremely hazardous, with impassable roads and a high risk of motorists becoming stranded,” the NWS warned.

Sleet and freezing rain is forecast for Missouri, Illinois, and swathes of Kentucky and West Virginia.

As the storm moves east, millions more Americans will see record low temperatures, forecasters said.

Cities including Washington DC, Baltimore and Philadelphia are preparing for snowy and icy conditions from Sunday into Monday. Snowfall of between 5-12in could be recorded in parts of Virginia.

Also on Sunday, portions of the southern US including Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi may see severe thunderstorms.

Private meteorologist Ryan Maue said: “It’s going to be a mess, a potential disaster. This is something we haven’t seen in quite a while.”

American, Delta, Southwest and United airlines are waiving change fees for passengers because of the potential flight disruptions.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist has resigned from the Washington Post after the newspaper refused to publish a cartoon satirical of its billionaire owner Jeff Bezos.

Ann Telnaes, a long-time Washington Post cartoonist, created a cartoon of Mr Bezos and other tycoons kneeling before a statue of President-elect Donald Trump.

She said the paper’s refusal to run the cartoon was a “game changer” and described it as “dangerous for a free press”.

But David Shipley, the editorial page editor at the paper, said he decided not to run the cartoon in order to avoid repetition, not because it mocked the paper’s owner.

In the cartoon, Mr Bezos, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI’s Sam Altman are depicted on their knees giving bags of cash to a statue of Trump.

Mickey Mouse is also depicted prostrate in the cartoon. ABC News – which is owned by Disney – last month agreed to pay $15m to settle a defamation lawsuit filed by Trump.

Ms Telnaes announced her resignation in a Substack post on Friday, saying she had worked for the newspaper since 2008.

“In all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at,” she wrote. “Until now.

“The cartoon that was killed criticizes the billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect Trump.”

She said the cartoon was satirising “these men with lucrative government contracts and an interest in eliminating regulations”.

But Mr Shipley told the BBC his decision not to publish the cartoon was because of repetition of another piece set to publish.

“I respect Ann Telnaes and all she has given to The Post. But I must disagree with her interpretation of events,” he said in a statement. “Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force.”

He added: “My decision was guided by the fact that we had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and had already scheduled another column – this one a satire – for publication.”

This is not the first time one of Ms Telnaes’ cartoons has been spiked by the Washington Post.

In 2015, the newspaper retracted one of her sketches that depicted the young daughters of Texas Senator Ted Cruz as monkeys.

Explaining its decision at the time, the newspaper said its editorial policy was to leave children “out of it”.

Last month, Mr Bezos announced Amazon would donate $1m to Trump’s inauguration fund and make a $1m in-kind contribution.

Mr Bezos also described Trump’s re-election victory as “an extraordinary political comeback” and dined with him at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.

The newspaper faced a liberal backlash weeks before the November presidential election after Mr Bezos interceded to prevent the editorial board endorsing Vice-President Kamala Harris.

Mr Bezos defended the move, but the newspaper reported it lost more than 250,000 subscribers following the decision.

The Los Angeles Times, whose owner Patrick Soon-Shiong is also depicted in the now-killed cartoon, made a similar move and said the newspaper would not publish its endorsement of Harris in October.

Parts of the UK are bracing for considerable disruption as heavy snow and freezing rain hit the country, with amber weather warnings now in force.

Areas of northern England, the Midlands and Wales are forecast to be among the worst hit as wintry weather pushes northwards throughout the night, possibly bringing 20-40cm (7.8-15.7in) of snow in some places.

Flights from Bristol Airport were temporarily suspended on Saturday evening and the Met Office has warned of possible power cuts, rural communities being cut off and travel disruption.

Less severe yellow weather warnings are also in force for parts of Scotland, Northern Ireland and elsewhere in England.

The amber weather warnings in place are:

• A warning for snow and freezing rain covering most of Wales and central England, including the Midlands and the north-west cities of Liverpool and Manchester, until noon on Sunday
• A separate warning for snow covering most of northern England including Leeds, Sheffield and the Lake District until midnight on Sunday.

• Your striking pictures of snow and frost across UK

Amber warnings are more serious than yellow warnings and indicate a possible risk to life, as well as more significant travel disruption.

Photographs show snow settling on the ground in a number of places around the country on Saturday evening.

Areas include many parts of Wales along with western, central and southern counties in England including Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Hampshire, Surrey and Oxfordshire.

Bristol airport halted flights for a period of Friday evening. Operations restarted around around 23:00 GMT but passengers were warned there could be ongoing delays on Sunday and to check with their airline before traveling.

Wiltshire Police said the weather was “causing chaos” all over the county, while Avon and Somerset Police warned of significant road disruption. Both forces advised only to travel if necessary.

The National Grid said there were a number of power cuts and they were working to restore power to some properties, including in Birmingham, Bristol and Cardiff.

A zone of wet weather will continue to move northwards across England and Wales overnight, turning readily to snow as it interacts with the cold air that is sitting across the UK.

The heaviest snow is expected in higher parts of Wales, the Midlands and northern England with up to 30-40cm possible over the mountains of north Wales, the Peak District and the Pennines.

At lower levels some disruptive snow is likely but in places this will mix with rain – falling on cold surfaces, leading to the threat of ice.

Much of England and Wales is covered by a separate yellow warning for snow and freezing rain into Sunday, though there is uncertainty over how disruptive the adverse weather could be, with milder temperatures forecast.

• Why does Britain face flight chaos during bad weather?
• What are cold weather payments and who can get them?
• How to keep babies warm during cold weather and other winter tips
• How to drive in snow and icy weather
• How do cold weather health alerts work?
• Does the UK get less snow than it used to?

Prof Liz Bentley, chief executive of the Royal Meteorological Society, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that freezing rain occurs when droplets fall onto surfaces at temperatures below zero degrees and instantly freeze, causing a “glazed ice” on the ground.

Eastern parts of Northern Ireland could also see a small amount of snow overnight, with up to 10cm possible over the hills.

Snow and ice will affect parts of southern and eastern Scotland through the early hours, with wintry showers in the north also giving the chance of slippery conditions.

Across southern counties of England and southern Wales any snow is likely to turn back to rain as milder air pushes in, with temperatures in parts south west England set to be as high as 12C by the end of the night.

On Sunday further snow is expected to accumulate across parts of northern England, Northern Ireland and Scotland, where it will remain cold.

Heavy rain will be more of an issue across Wales, central and southern England where milder conditions will develop.

Fresh yellow weather warnings will also come into force in some areas on Sunday.

Heavy rain and thawing snow could lead to flooding in some parts of north-west England and Wales, while localised snow and ice warnings cover parts of Scotland where it will remain cold.

Temperatures are forecast to dip again from Monday, and UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) amber cold weather health alerts for all of England remain in place.

Sixty-year-old Chinese grandmother Su Min had no intention of becoming a feminist icon.

She was only trying to escape her abusive husband when she hit the road in 2020 in her white Volkswagen hatchback with a rooftop tent and her pension.

“I felt like I could finally catch my breath,” she says, recalling the moment she drove away from her old life. “I felt like I could survive and find a way of life that I wanted.”

Over the next four years and 180,000 miles, the video diaries she shared of her adventures, while detailing decades of pain, earned her millions of cheerleaders online. They called her the “road-tripping auntie” as she inadvertently turned into a hero for women who felt trapped in their own lives.

Her story is now a hit film that was released in September – Like a Rolling Stone – and she made it to the BBC’s list of 100 inspiring and influential women of 2024.

It was a year of big moments, but if she had to describe what 2024 meant to her in a single word, she says that word would be “freedom”.

As soon as Su Min started driving, she felt freer, she told the BBC over the phone from Shenyang – just before she headed south for winter in her new SUV with a caravan.

But it wasn’t until 2024, when she finally filed for divorce, that she experienced “another kind of freedom”.

It took a while to get there: it’s a complicated process in China and her husband refused to divorce her until she agreed to pay him. They settled on 160,000 yuan ($21,900; £17,400) but she is still waiting for the divorce certificate to come through.

But she is resolute that she doesn’t want to look back: “I’m saying goodbye to him.”

In her new life on the road, Su Min’s duty is to herself.

Her videos mostly feature only her. Although she drives alone, she never seems lonely. She chats with her followers as she films her journey, sharing what she has been cooking, how she spent the previous day and where she’s going next.

Her audience travels with her to places they never knew they would long for – Xinjiang’s snow-capped mountains, Yunnan’s ancient river towns, sparkling blue lakes, vast grasslands, endless deserts.

They applaud her bravery and envy the freedom she has embraced. They had rarely heard such a raw first-hand account about the reality of life as a “Chinese auntie”.

“You’re so brave! You chose to break free,” wrote one follower, while another urged her to “live the rest of your life well for yourself!”. One woman sought advice because she too “dreams of driving alone” and an awe-struck follower said: “Mom, look at her! When I get older, I’ll live a colourful life like hers if I don’t get married!”

For some, the takeaways are more pragmatic yet inspiring: “After watching your videos, I’ve learned this: as women, we must own our own home, cultivate friendships far and wide, work hard to be financially independent, and invest in unemployment insurance!”

Through it all, Su Min processes her own past. A stray cat she encounters on the road reminds her of herself, both of them having “weathered the wind and rain for years but still managing to love this world that dusts our faces”. A visit to the market, where she smells chili peppers, evokes “the smell of freedom” because throughout her marriage spicy food was forbidden by her husband who didn’t like it.

For years Su Min had been the dutiful daughter, wife and mother – even as her husband repeatedly struck her.

“I was a traditional woman and I wanted to stay in my marriage for life,” she says. “But eventually I saw that I got nothing in return for all my energy and effort – only beatings, violence, emotional abuse and gaslighting.”

Her husband, Du Zhoucheng, has admitted to hitting her. “It’s my mistake that I beat you,” he said in a video she recently shared on Douyin, TikTok’s China platform.

A high school graduate, he had a government job in the water resources ministry for 40 years before retiring, according to local media reports. He told an outlet in 2022 that he beat his wife because she “talked back” and that it was “an ordinary thing”: “In a family, how can there not be some bangs and crashes?”

Su Min married Du Zhoucheng “really to avoid my father’s control, and to avoid the whole family”.

She was born and raised in Tibet until 1982, when her family moved to Henan, a bustling province in the valley along the Yellow River. She had just finished high school and found work in a fertiliser factory, where most of her female colleagues, including those younger than 20, already had husbands.

Her marriage was arranged by a matchmaker, which was common at the time. She had spent much of her life cooking for and looking after her father and three younger brothers. “I wanted to change my life,” she says.

The couple met only twice before the wedding. She wasn’t looking for love, but she hoped that love would grow once they married.

Su Min did not find love. But she did have a daughter, and that is one reason she convinced herself she needed to endure the abuse.

“We are always so afraid of being ridiculed and blamed if we divorce, so we all choose to endure, but in fact, this kind of patience is not right,” she says. “I later learned that, in fact, it can have a considerable impact on children. The child really doesn’t want you to endure, they want you to stand up bravely and give them a harmonious home.”

She thought of leaving her husband after her daughter got married, but soon she became a grandmother. Her daughter had twins – and once again duty called. She felt she needed to help care for them, although by now she had been diagnosed with depression.

“I felt that if I didn’t leave, I would get sicker,” she says. She promised her daughter she would care for the two boys until they went to kindergarten, and then she would leave.

The spark of inspiration for her escape came in 2019 while flicking through social media. She found a video about someone travelling while living in their van. This was it, she thought to herself. This was her way out.

Even the pandemic did not stop her. In September 2020, she drove away from her marital home in Zhengzhou and she barely looked back as she made her way through 20 Chinese provinces and more than 400 cities.

It’s a decision that has certainly resonated with women in China. To her millions of followers, Su Min offers comfort and hope. “We women are not just someone’s wife or mother… Let’s live for ourselves!” wrote one follower.

Many of them are mothers who share their own struggles. They tell her that they too feel trapped in suffocating marriages – some say her stories have inspired them to walk out of abusive relationships.

“You are a hero to thousands of women and many now see the possibility of a better life because of you,” reads one of the top comments on one of her most-watched videos.

“When I turn 60, I hope I can be as free as you,” another comment says.

A third woman asks: “Auntie Su, can I travel with you? I’ll cover all the expenses. I just want to take a trip with you. I feel so trapped and depressed in my current life.”

“Can you have the life of your dreams?” Su Min pondered over the call. “I want to tell you that no matter how old you are, as long as you work hard, you will definitely find your answer. Just like me, even though I’m 60 now, I found what I was looking for.”

She admits it wasn’t easy and she had to live frugally on her pension. She thought the video blogs might help raise some money – she had no idea they would go viral.

She talks about what she’s learned over the years and her latest challenge – finalising the divorce.

“I haven’t got my divorce certificate yet, because the law has a cooling-off period and we are now in that period.”

One of her followers wrote that the money she paid her husband was “worth every penny”, adding: “Now it’s your turn to see the world and live a vibrant, unrestrained life. Congratulations, Auntie – here’s to a colourful and fulfilling future!”

She says it’s hard to get a divorce because “many of our laws in China are to protect the family. Women often dare not divorce because of family disharmony”.

At first, she thought that Du Zhoucheng’s behaviour might improve with time and distance, but she said he still threw “pots and pans” at her on her return.

He has only called her twice in the last few years – once because her highway access card was tied to his credit card and he wanted her to return 81 yuan (£0.90). She says she hasn’t used that card since then.

Undeterred by the delay in securing a divorce, Su Min keeps planning more trips and hopes to one day travel abroad.

She’s worried about overcoming language barriers, but is confident her story will resonate around the world – as it has in China.

“Although women in every country are different, I would like to say that no matter what environment you are in, you must be good to yourself. Learn to love yourself, because only when you love yourself can the world be full of sunshine.”

The US Department of State has notified Congress of a planned $8bn (£6.4bn) arms sale to Israel, an American official has confirmed to the BBC.

The weapons consignment, which needs approval from House and Senate committees, includes missiles, shells and other munitions.

The move comes just over a fortnight before President Joe Biden leaves office. Washington has rejected calls to suspend military backing for Israel because of the number of civilians killed during the war in Gaza.

In August, the US approved the sale of $20bn in fighter jets and other military equipment to Israel.

The latest planned shipment contains air-to-air missiles, Hellfire missiles, artillery shells and bombs, the US official said.

A source familiar with the sale told the BBC on Saturday: “The president has made clear Israel has a right to defend its citizens, consistent with international law and international humanitarian law, and to deter aggression from Iran and its proxy organisations.

“We will continue to provide the capabilities necessary for Israel’s defence.”

Biden has often described US support for Israel as iron-clad.

The US is by far the biggest supplier of arms to Israel, having helped it build one of the most technologically sophisticated militaries in the world.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the US accounted for 69% of Israel’s imports of major conventional arms between 2019 and 2023.

In May 2024, the US confirmed it had paused a single consignment of 2,000lb and 500lb bombs over concerns Israel was going ahead with a major ground operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. But Biden immediately faced a backlash from Republicans in Washington and from Netanyahu who appeared to compare it to an “arms embargo”. Biden has since partially lifted the suspension and not repeated it.

The planned shipment is one of a number of steps taken by the Biden administration in recent weeks, as the outgoing president attempts to shore up his legacy.

It will likely also be the last planned weapons sale to Israel before he leaves the White House on 20 January 2025, when his successor Donald Trump is inaugurated.

The president-elect has previously spoken of ending foreign conflicts, and of reducing US involvement, including during his re-election bid.

Trump has positioned himself as a staunch supporter of Israel, but has urged the American ally to finish its military operation in Gaza quickly.

Israel launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the group’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

More than 45,580 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

The Golden Globe Awards take place later, with Emilia Pérez, Conclave, Anora and The Brutalist in the running for the top prizes.

Film acting nominees include Zendaya, for tennis drama Challengers, and Timothée Chalamet for his starring role in Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown.

Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are both up for their roles as sorcery students in Wicked, the musical adaptation of the hit stage show, while Daniel Craig is nominated for 1950s romance Queer, Demi Moore is up for body horror The Substance, and Nicole Kidman for erotic drama Babygirl.

Kate Winslet has two nominations – for Lee, a film about war photojournalist Lee Miller, and for her leading TV role in political satire The Regime. Selena Gomez is also up for two – for the film Emilia Pérez, about a Mexican drug lord who changes gender, and TV mystery comedy Only Murders in the Building.

The event marks the first major ceremony of the film awards season, which culminates with the Oscars on 2 March.

The Globes will be held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles on Sunday evening, beginning at 01:00 GMT on Monday for UK audiences.

A win at the Globes can help boost a film’s profile at a crucial time, when Bafta and Oscar voters are preparing to fill in their nomination ballots.

But the Globes is a much less formal event than the Academy Awards, with celebrities generally in a good mood after the Christmas break, ready to mingle over a few drinks and have fun with their acceptance speeches.

The main film contenders:

• 10 nominations – Emilia Pérez
• 7 – The Brutalist
• 6 – Conclave
• 5 – Anora, The Substance
• 4 – Challengers, A Real Pain, Wicked, The Wild Robot
• The Golden Globe nominees in full

Baby Reindeer, Shogun and The Bear are among the shows competing in the TV categories.

In recent years, the voting body behind the Globes has expanded and diversified its membership and brought in a new code of conduct.

The changes follow a scathing investigation by the LA Times in 2021 which exposed various ethical lapses, such as voters accepting “freebies” from studios and PR agencies lobbying for nominations.

The Golden Globes split their film categories by drama and comedy/musical, which allows them to nominate more movies and hand out more prizes than other ceremonies.

The film with the most nominations is Emilia Pérez, a largely Spanish-language musical about a dangerous cartel leader who wants to quit the world of crime and live a new life as a woman.

However, several of its 10 nominations are in the same categories – with two nods in best original song and two in best supporting actress.

Other contenders in the musical/comedy category include Anora, the story of a New York stripper who falls for the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch.

The Substance, which sees a woman trade her body for a younger, more beautiful version of herself is also nominated, along with A Real Pain, about two cousins travelling across Poland after the death of their grandmother.

In the drama category, acclaimed historical epic The Brutalist follows a Hungarian architect who tries to build a new life for himself in America following World War Two.

It’s up against Conclave, based on the 2016 novel by Robert Harris, which depicts a group of gossipy and scheming cardinals who gather in Rome to select the new Pope.

Nickel Boys, about two young men forced to attend a reform school in 1960s Florida, and September 5, which dramatises the terror attack on the 1972 Munich Olympics from the perspective of the sports journalists who covered it, are also in the running.

The other drama contenders include the sandy sci-fi sequel Dune: Part Two and A Complete Unknown, about Bob Dylan’s rise to fame in the 1960s.

Blockbusters including Deadpool & Wolverine, Twisters, Inside Out 2, Gladiator II and The Wild Robot will compete for the cinematic and box office achievement award, which was introduced last year to recognise more mainstream films.

Dune: Part Two was not submitted in that category despite its huge financial success, reportedly because the film’s producers wanted Globe voters to focus on its artistic merits.

That means if members want to vote for the film, they will have to do so in the main categories.

There’s a much higher chance of an actor being nominated at the Globes, where there are 36 slots available, than at the Oscars, which have 20.

As a result, the Globes are able to lean in to big celebrity names, ensuring their ceremony is well attended by A-listers, not all of whom will necessarily go on to score an Oscar nomination.

British acting nominees this year include Daniel Craig (Queer) Kate Winslet (Lee), Ralph Fiennes (Conclave), Cynthia Erivo (Wicked) Hugh Grant (Heretic), Tilda Swinton (The Room Next Door) and Felicity Jones (The Brutalist).

They are joined by stars including Angelina Jolie (Maria), Nicole Kidman (Babygirl), Demi Moore (The Substance), Glen Powell (Hit Man), Timothée Chalamet (A Complete Unknown) and Zendaya (Challengers).

There are two pop stars in the race – with Ariana Grande (Wicked) and Selena Gomez (Emilia Pérez) both in the running for best supporting actress.

Other well-known nominees include Amy Adams (Nightbitch), Pamela Anderson (The Last Showgirl), Colman Domingo (Sing Sing) and Denzel Washington (Gladiator II).

The supporting actor category will see two former Succession stars go head to head – Kieran Culkin (A Real Pain) and Jeremy Strong (The Apprentice).

Strong’s co-star Sebastian Stan has two nominations – one for playing Donald Trump in The Apprentice and one for A Different Man.

But some of the strongest contenders this awards season aren’t necessarily Hollywood A-listers, such as relative newcomer Mikey Madison (Anora), Spanish actress Karla Sofía Gascón (Emilia Pérez), Brazil’s Fernanda Torres (I’m Still Here) and Russian actor Yura Borisov (Anora).

Away from the top categories, other notable nominees include singer Robbie Williams in the best original song category, for Forbidden Road, from his biopic Better Man.

Two of this year’s winners have already been announced: Viola Davis will take home the Cecil B DeMille Award, for outstanding contribution to film, while Ted Danson will be honoured with the Carol Burnett Award, for excellence in television.

The Globes have traditionally had excellent taste in hosts, regularly enlisting an acerbic personality to make cutting jokes about the A-list guests.

They are continuing that model this year with US comic Nikki Glaser, who gave a barnstorming performance at The Roast of Tom Brady last summer.

Glaser said she was “absolutely thrilled” to be hosting the Globes, adding she was looking forward to getting a “front row seat” at “one of my favourite nights in television”.

“It’s one of the few times that show business not only allows, but encourages itself to be lovingly mocked (at least I hope so). (God I hope so),” she said in a statement.

“Some of my favourite jokes of all time have come from past Golden Globes opening monologues when Tina [Fey], Amy [Poehler] or Ricky [Gervais] have said exactly what we all didn’t know we desperately needed to hear.

“I just hope to continue in that time-honoured tradition (that might also get me cancelled). This is truly a dream job.”

US viewers can watch the show live on the CBS network, which is airing the Globes as part of a five-year deal.

It will also stream on Paramount+ with Showtime. The ceremony starts at 01:00 GMT and usually lasts between three and four hours.

UK viewers without a VPN can expect to see highlights on social media, YouTube and news bulletins on Monday morning.

It’s the picture of domestic bliss.

The Duchess of Sussex, picking flowers, slicing veggies and decorating cakes in a trailer for her new Netflix show.

There’s also a scene where she harvests honey, and hugs her husband, Prince Harry.

Meghan, it appears, has rebranded herself. Her new look is described by public relations expert Chloe Franses as similar to the “trad wife” social media trend, inspired by 1950s housewives.

In that sense, it is a departure for Meghan, who has been known as a feminist and a Hollywood actress.

But Frances says it’s actually a return to Meghan’s roots, as the duchess used to be a lifestyle blogger before she married Harry.

And as ever with Meghan, it’s proving divisive. Franses praises it as “authentic,” while Alex Silver, a media relations expert, calls it “tone deaf”.

So what’s the reason for her new TV show, With Love, and will it work?

One of the most striking things about the trailer is that it’s Meghan on her own, rather than with Harry.

Since stepping down as senior royals in 2020 and moving to California, the pair have pursued various ventures together, including starting a production company and charitable foundation.

• Where do Harry and Meghan get their money?

But with this new show, it looks like the couple increasingly want to do their own thing professionally – and to create two separate income streams.

“They seem to have separated their brands,” says Pauline Maclaran, professor of marketing and consumer research at Royal Holloway.

“I think it’s likely to be much more successful, because I think the two of them together weren’t really getting any strong recognition.”

The relaunch also signifies a move away from royal life.

Since stepping back as senior royals, Harry and Meghan have continued to talk about the monarchy – including in their 2021 Oprah Winfrey interview and Harry’s book Spare.

But in this new TV show, Meghan “isn’t drawing on her royal connections” anymore, says Maclaren.

Instead, it focuses on lifestyle and wellness – areas she already explored before she met Harry through her lifestyle blog The Tig.

On The Tig, Meghan shared beauty, diet and fashion tips, recipes, travel advice, and words of wisdom about love and life.

• Meghan Markle: The wellness guru she could have been

The Tig was closed in 2017, but PR experts have said that returning to lifestyle could be a smart move.

“This is a well-trodden path for a woman in the public eye who has a lifestyle that straddles aspirational as well as challenging,” Frances says.

Others are more sceptical.

“There are more interesting and significant world events that are happening, which she could be talking about,” Silver says. “She could’ve been raising awareness for charitable work or something.

“I think she is all about herself. As a publicist, I can’t understand how she can’t read a room.”

Experimenting in the world of lifestyle has also backfired for some others in the public eye.

Brooklyn Beckham’s debut photography book was roundly mocked on social media, for instance – with one picture of an elephant receiving particular ire.

This is not Meghan’s first foray into the business world – an industry fraught with risk and reward.

The couple’s previous business initiatives include a multi-million pound deal with Netflix.

They appeared in another Netflix show, called Harry & Meghan, about their relationship. Both were also named as executive producers for the recent Polo documentary, but it drew low ratings from critics including in The Guardian and The Telegraph.

Spotify’s big bet on Meghan also fell flat.

In July 2023, the streaming giant and the Sussexes’s Archewell Audio announced they were parting ways in a mutual decision.

At the time, experts suggested there hadn’t been a big enough audience for Megan’s Archetypes podcast to justify keeping it going.

Last March, she launched a different lifestyle brand called American Riviera Orchard. It currently has more than 600,000 followers on Instagram, and features nine posts from when it launched – but there have been no posts since then.

With this new venture, some have speculated that Meghan is hoping to open up further business opportunities for herself, such as partnerships with major supermarkets and brands.

If so, she would be following in the path of others such as Hollywood A-lister Gwyneth Paltrow, with her hugely successful lifestyle platform Goop.

“This is clearly all about her own commercial interests,” says Silver.

“They’re aware their income is going to dry up at some stage. Their lifestyles are quite lavish, they’re mixing in upmarket circles and they don’t want to be the poor relation.”

When it comes to the new TV show, royal expert Victoria Murphy says she “[doesn’t] think there’s any doubt that people will watch it initially and it will do well”.

But she says the real test is whether it engages a consistently large following and really builds a strong global brand for her outside the monarchy.

McLaren agrees, saying she thinks the show will chime with certain groups of people, particularly in the US.

“A lot of the public won’t be interested in this but I don’t think that’s her aim – I think she’ll be trying to get other mothers like herself really.”

Silver, for her part, argues that Meghan may be hoping to “detoxify” her brand with the new show.

But she doesn’t think the show will resonate with the public.

“I can’t imagine this is going to be a well viewed thing,” Silver says.

• I want to stop hate towards Meghan, Harry tells court

Perhaps the reaction to the trailer tells us everything we need to know about how this latest venture is likely to go down.

After it dropped on Thursday, thousands of column inches were dedicated to it.

The Daily Mail, for example, picked apart every single detail of every frame in the trailer, most of it unsympathetic.

The duchess, it seems, is of never ending interest – especially for the British tabloids. But she also has a core fan base on social media.

For her detractors, they will say this is glossy and superficial, Hollywood at its worst.

But for her fans, they will say it’s great to see her back, and that this shows exactly what the Royal Family are missing.

In other words, this is likely to reinforce whatever people think about Meghan on either side.

Family members of an Indian nurse who is on death row in war-torn Yemen say they are pinning their hopes on a last-ditch effort to save her.

Nimisha Priya, 34, was sentenced to death for the murder of a local man – her former business partner Talal Abdo Mahdi – whose chopped-up body was discovered in a water tank in 2017.

Lodged in the central jail of capital Sanaa, she is set to be executed soon, with Mahdi al-Mashat, president of the rebel Houthis’ Supreme Political Council, approving her punishment this week.

Under the Islamic judicial system, known as Sharia, the only way to stop the execution now is securing a pardon from the victim’s family. For months, Nimisha’s relatives and supporters have been trying to do this by raising diyah, or blood money, to be paid to Mahdi’s family, and negotiations have been going on.

But with time running out, supporters say their hopes rest entirely on the family’s decision.

With the presidential sanction coming in, the public prosecutor’s office will once again seek consent from Mahdi’s family and ask if they have any objections to the execution, said Samuel Jerome, a Yemen-based social worker who holds a power of attorney on behalf of Nimisha’s mother.

“If they say they do not want to or can pardon her, the sentence would be immediately stopped,” he said.

“Forgiveness is the first step. Whether the family accepts the blood money comes only after that.”

Under Yemen’s laws, Nimisha’s family cannot directly contact the family of the victim and must hire negotiators.

Subhash Chandran, a lawyer who has represented Nimisha’s family in India in the past, told the BBC that the family had already crowdfunded $40,000 (£32,268) for the victim’s family. The money has been given in two tranches to the lawyers hired by the Indian government to negotiate the case (a delay in sending the second tranche affected the negotiations, Mr Jerome says).

“We now need to explore the scope for discussions with the [victim’s] family, which is possible only with the Indian government’s support,” Mr Chandran said.

India’s foreign ministry has said they are aware of Nimisha’s situation and are extending all possible help to the family.

Her family is anxious but also hopeful.

“Nimisha has no knowledge of what is happening beyond the gates of prison,” said her husband Tony Thomas, who spoke to her hours before the approval of the death sentence. “The only thing she wants to know is if our daughter is fine.”

Nimisha’s mother is currently in Sanaa, having travelled there last year after a court in India allowed her to go to the region controlled by Houthi rebels. She has met her daughter twice in prison since then.

The first reunion was very emotional. “Nimisha saw me… she said I had become weak and asked me to keep courage, and that God would save her. She asked me not to be sad,” her mother Prema Kumari told the BBC.

The second time, Ms Kumari was accompanied by two nuns who held prayers for her daughter in prison.

Nimisha was barely 19 when she went to Yemen.

The daughter of a poorly-paid domestic worker, she wanted to change her family’s financial situation, and worked as a nurse in a government-run hospital in Sanaa for some years.

In 2011, she returned home – Kochi city in southern India – and married Mr Thomas, a tuk-tuk driver.

The couple moved to Yemen together shortly afterwards. But financial struggles forced Mr Thomas to return to India with their baby daughter.

Tired of low-paying hospital jobs, Nimisha decided to open her own clinic in Yemen.

As the law there mandated that she have a local partner, she opened the clinic jointly with Mahdi, a store owner.

The two were initially on good terms – when Nimisha briefly visited India for her daughter’s baptism, Mahdi accompanied her.

“He seemed like a nice man when he came to our house, ” Mr Thomas told the BBC.

But Mahdi’s attitude, Mr Thomas alleged, “suddenly changed” when the civil war broke out in Yemen in 2014.

At that time, Nimisha was trying to finalise paperwork so her husband and daughter could join her again.

But after the war broke out, the Indian government banned all travel to Yemen, making it impossible for them to go be with her.

Over the coming days, thousands of Indians were evacuated from the country, but Nimisha chose to stay, as she had taken out huge loans to open her clinic.

It was around then that Nimisha started to complain about Mahdi’s behaviour, including allegations of physical torture, Mr Thomas said.

A petition in court, filed by a group called Save Nimisha Priya International Action Council, alleged that Mahdi snatched all her money, seized her passport and even threatened her with a gun.

After Mahdi’s body was discovered in 2017, the police charged Nimisha with killing him by giving him an “overdose of sedatives”, and allegedly chopping up his body.

Nimisha denied the allegations. In court, her lawyer argued that she had tried to anaesthetise Mahdi just to retrieve her passport from him, but that the dose was accidentally increased.

In 2020, a local court sentenced Nimisha to death. Three years later, in 2023, her family challenged the decision in Yemen’s Supreme Court, but their appeal was rejected.

Even with so many twists and turns, the family is not willing to give up hope.

“My heart says that we can arrive at a settlement and save Nimisha’s life,” Mr Thomas said.

More than anything, he said he was worried about their daughter, now 13, who had “never experienced a mother’s love”.

“They speak on the phone every week and my daughter gets upset if she misses the call,” Mr Thomas said.

“She needs her mother. What will she do without her?”

There were more than 100 police officers and they were armed with a warrant, but South Korean authorities failed to arrest suspended President Yoon Suk Yeol after a six-hour deadlock outside his home.

That’s how long the confrontation with Yoon’s security team lasted as they formed a human wall and used vehicles to block the arrest team’s path, according to local media.

It has been an unprecedented month for South Korean politics. Yoon’s shocking yet short-lived martial law order was followed by an impeachment vote against him. Then came the criminal investigation, his refusal to appear for questioning and, earlier this week, a warrant for his arrest.

The right-wing leader still has a strong support base. Thousands of them turned up outside his home on Friday morning to oppose his arrest.

But, by many accounts, Yoon is now a disgraced leader – impeached by parliament and suspended from office, he awaits the decision of the constitutional court which can remove him from office.

So why has it proven so difficult for police to arrest him?

Although Yoon has been stripped of his presidential powers – after lawmakers voted to impeach him – he is still entitled to a security detail.

And those men played a key role in blocking the arrest on Friday.

The presidential security service (PSS) could have acted out of loyalty to Yoon or under “a misguided understanding of their legal and constitutional role”, says Mason Richey, an associate professor at Seoul’s Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.

Given that Yoon has been suspended, the PSS should be taking directions from acting President Choi Sang-mok. “They have either not been instructed by acting President Choi to stand down, or they are refusing his orders to do so,” says Assoc Prof Richey.

Some experts believe the security officers were showing “unconditional loyalty” to Yoon, rather than the office itself. They point to the fact that the PSS’s chief Park Jong-joon was appointed to the job by Yoon last September.

And that Park’s predecessor was former defence minister Kim Yong-hyun, who is accused of advising Yoon to impose martial law. He is currently being held for questioning as part of the criminal investigation into Yoon.

“It may well be the case that Yoon has seeded the organisation with hardline loyalists in preparation for precisely this eventuality,” says US-based lawyer and Korea expert Christopher Jumin Lee.

The “simplest” solution, Mr Lee says, is for acting president Choi to order the PSS to stand down in the interim.

“If he is unwilling to do so, that may be grounds for his own impeachment by the National Assembly,” he added.

Choi, who is the finance minister, had stepped in to lead the country after lawmakers voted to impeach Yoon’s first successor, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo.

This political stalemate also reflects the polarisation in South Korean politics between those who support Yoon, and his decision to impose martial law, and those who oppose it. And the differences don’t necessarily end there.

The vast majority of South Koreans agree that Yoon’s declaration of martial law on 3 Dec was wrong and that he needs to be held accountable, says Duyeon Kim, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, but they cannot agree on what accountability looks like.

“The actors involved disagree over process, procedure and their legal basis, which is adding to the current political uncertainty,” she explains.

That uncertainty is also creating tense standoffs like the one that unfolded on Friday in and outside Yoon’s presidential residence, where his supporters have been camping out for days, leading to heated speeches and even skirmishes with police.

Law enforcement could return with more agents and use force but that would be “highly dangerous,” Assoc Prof Mason said.

The PSS too is heavily armed, so arresting officers would be looking to avoid any escalation.

“What happens if the police show up with additional warrants calling for the arrest of PSS personnel, [the PSS] defy those warrants as well and then brandish their guns?” Mr Lee asks.

Police have now said they are investigating the PSS director and his deputy for obstructing them – so there could be more charges and arrest warrants coming.

The fallout from Yoon’s martial law order is also a challenge for the Corruption Investigation Office (CIO) that is investigating him.

It has only been operating for four years. It was created in response to public anger over former president Park Geun-hye who was impeached, removed from office and later jailed over a corruption scandal.

While South Korean presidents have been jailed before, Yoon is the first one to face arrest before he steps down.

Investigators have until 6 January to arrest Yoon before the current warrant expires.

They may attempt to arrest Yoon again over the weekend, although the weekend could pose a bigger challenge if the crowds of supporters grow. They can also apply for a new warrant and try to detain him again.

Given how far South Korea has now slid into uncharted territory, the uncertainty is likely to continue.

China is now a country where a high-school handyman has a master’s degree in physics; a cleaner is qualified in environmental planning; a delivery driver studied philosophy, and a PhD graduate from the prestigious Tsinghua University ends up applying to work as an auxiliary police officer.

These are real cases in a struggling economy – and it is not hard to find more like them.

“My dream job was to work in investment banking,” says Sun Zhan as he prepares to start his shift as a waiter in a hot pot restaurant in the southern city of Nanjing.

The 25-year-old recently graduated with a master’s degree in finance. He was hoping to “make a lot of money” in a high-paying role but adds, “I looked for such a job, with no good results”.

China is churning out millions of university graduates every year but, in some fields, there just aren’t enough jobs for them.

The economy has been struggling and stalling in major sectors, including real estate and manufacturing.

Youth unemployment had been nudging 20% before the way of measuring the figures was altered to make the situation look better. In August 2024, it was still 18.8%. The latest figure for November has come down to 16.1%.

Many university graduates who’ve found it hard to get work in their area of selected study are now doing jobs well below what they’re qualified for, leading to criticism from family and friends.

When Sun Zhan became a waiter, this was met with displeasure by his parents.

“My family’s opinions are a big concern for me. After all, I studied for many years and went to a pretty good school,” he says.

He says his family is embarrassed by his job choice and would prefer he tried to become a public servant or official, but, he adds, “this is my choice”.

Yet he has a secret plan. He’s going to use his time working as a waiter to learn the restaurant business so he can eventually open his own place.

He thinks if he ends up running a successful business, the critics in his family will have to change their tune.

“The job situation is really, really challenging in mainland China, so I think a lot of young people have to really readjust their expectations,” says Professor Zhang Jun from the City University of Hong Kong.

She says many students are seeking higher degrees in order to have better prospects, but then the reality of the employment environment hits them.

“The job market has been really tough,” says 29-year-old Wu Dan, who is currently a trainee in a sports injury massage clinic in Shanghai.

“For many of my master’s degree classmates, it’s their first time hunting for a job and very few of them have ended up landing one.”

She also didn’t think this was where she would end up with a finance degree from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Prior to this, she worked at a futures trading company in Shanghai, where she was specialising in agricultural products.

When she returned to the mainland after finishing her studies in Hong Kong, she wanted to work in a private equity firm and did get some offers but was not happy with the conditions.

That she didn’t accept any of them and instead started training in sports medicine was not welcomed by her family.

“They thought I had such a good job before, and my educational background is quite competitive. They didn’t understand why I chose a low-barrier job that requires me to do physical work for little money.”

She admits that she couldn’t survive in Shanghai on her current salary, if not for the fact that her partner owns their home.

At first, she didn’t know anyone who supported her current career path, but her mother has been coming around after she recently treated her for her bad back, significantly reducing the pain she had been experiencing.

Now the one-time finance student says she feels that a life working in the investment world actually doesn’t suit her after all.

She says she is interested in sports injuries, likes the job and, one day, wants to open her own clinic.

Chinese graduates are being forced to change their perceptions regarding what might be considered “a good position”, Prof Zhang says.

In what might be seen as “a warning sign” for young people, “many companies in China, including many tech companies, have laid off quite a lot of staff”, she adds.

She also says that significant areas of the economy, which had once been big employers of graduates, are offering sub-standard conditions, and decent opportunities in these fields are disappearing altogether.

While they work out what to do in the future, unemployed graduates have also been turning to the film and television industry.

Big budget movies need lots of extras to fill out their scenes and, in China’s famous film production town of Hengdian, south-west of Shanghai, there are plenty of young people looking for acting work.

“I mainly stand beside the protagonist as eye candy. I am seen next to the lead actors but I have no lines,” says Wu Xinghai, who studied electronic information engineering, and was playing a bodyguard in a drama.

The 26-year old laughs that his good looks have helped him become employed as an extra.

He says people often come to Hengdian and work for just a few months at a time. He says this is a temporary fix for him too, till he finds something permanent. “I don’t make much money but I’m relaxed and feel free.”

“This is the situation in China, isn’t it? The moment you graduate, you become unemployed,” says Li, who didn’t want to give his first name.

He majored in film directing and screenwriting and has also signed up to work as an extra for a few months.

“I’ve come here to look for work while I’m still young. When I get older, I’ll find a stable job.”

But many fear they’ll never land a decent job and may have to settle for a role unlike what they had imagined.

The lack of confidence in the trajectory of the Chinese economy means young people often don’t know what the future will hold for them.

Wu Dan says even her friends who are employed can feel quite lost.

“They are quite confused and feel that the future is unclear. Those with jobs aren’t satisfied with them. They don’t know for how long they can hold onto these positions. And if they lose their current job, what else can they do?”

She says she will just “go with the flow and gradually explore what I really want to do”.