Until Monday, even some of Donald Trump’s team did not seem to believe he would release all of those arrested after riots at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.

“If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned,” Vice-President JD Vance said a little over a week ago.

A few days later, testifying in front of Congress, Trump’s nominee for Attorney General Pam Bondi agreed with a Democratic senator who asked her to condemn the violence of that day.

“I do not agree with violence against any police officer,” she said, adding that she was willing to look individually at each of the more than 1,500 riot-linked cases.

Trump, however, took a far more sweeping approach to the cases on his first day in office.

He issued a handful of commutations and a blanket pardon that effectively freed all the rioters and erased the work of the largest criminal investigation in US history.

His executive order on Monday gave the rioters and their supporters nearly everything they had been pleading for, short of monetary compensation from the government which some prisoner groups have demanded.

In a news conference on Tuesday at the White House, Trump said: “These people have already served years in prison, and they’ve served them viciously.

“It’s a disgusting prison. It’s been horrible. It’s inhumane. It’s been a terrible, terrible thing.”

There were celebratory scenes outside the Washington DC jail where a number of those arrested over the riot have been held, as well as on social media accounts run by the defendants and their supporters.

The mother of Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who was released on Tuesday, has posted regular updates about her son.

“Our president gave my son and all the J6ers their lives back!” Zuny Tarrio wrote after learning he would walk free from his 22-year sentence. “They can live again! Breathe fresh air again! Feel the sunshine again!”

One of those released from the Washington DC jail on Tuesday was Rachel Powell, a Pennsylvania woman who was sentenced to more than four years in prison after smashing a window at the Capitol with an ice axe.

Speaking outside the jail, she told the BBC she would now be home in time for her son’s birthday and praised Trump for keeping his promise. “He’s a bigger blessing to me than I could ever imagine,” she said.

Some observers, including policy experts and lawyers representing rioters, were taken aback by the scale of the president’s order.

“The overall consensus was that we would see a differentiation between those who committed violent acts and those who did not,” said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, a progressive not-for-profit group that opposed the pardons.

“Donald Trump ran for office on law and order, so it’s shocking and upsetting to see him taking action to pardon violent criminals,” she said.

Fourteen people convicted of some of the most serious crimes had their sentences commuted – meaning their offences will remain on the record, but they will still be released from prison.

The justice department, in its last update, said 1,583 people had been arrested or convicted of riot-related crimes.

More than 600 were charged with assaulting, resisting or obstructing police, including around 175 charged with using a weapon or causing serious injury to an officer.

Most of those convicted have served their sentences, or did not receive a jail term at all, but around 250 who are still in prison have started to be released.

And it appears any further investigations – the FBI was still looking for at least 13 suspects and fugitives – will be halted.

Underlining the sweeping finality of his move, Trump named Ed Martin as acting US attorney for Washington DC – the prosecutorial role that has been chiefly responsible for pursuing riot cases.

Martin organised a pro-Trump rally the day before the riot, and has been a staunch critic of the entire investigation.

On the campaign trail, Trump made various statements about the rioters, at times promising blanket pardons but occasionally indicating he might be inclined to keep some of them behind bars.

Supporters of the rioters cheered his blanket pardon on Monday, and have long described the sentences handed out to people they call “J6 hostages” and “political prisoners” as being politically motivated and harsh.

Norm Pattis, a lawyer who defended some of the prisoners, told BBC Newshour that “the notion that somehow this event threatens the republic is overdone”, adding that Confederate rebels were pardoned after the Civil War.

“If we could come together as a country after such a violent act, and after people openly took arms and killed one another… why were we still prosecuting people for criminal trespass four years later after an afternoon’s riot?” he said.

Polls, however, suggest a blanket pardon including for violent convicts is unpopular. A recent Associated Press survey indicated only two in 10 Americans approve of pardoning most of those involved.

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Winston Pingeon, a Capitol Police officer who was punched and pepper sprayed that day, told Newshour the pardons were a “slap in the face”.

“It’s really an unprecedented thing to know that these violent felons who were convicted by a jury of their peers for crimes that were largely broadcast for all the country and the world to see are going to walk free,” he said.

In his executive order, Trump explained why he chose to commute the 14 convicts rather than offer them full pardons. The list includes members of the far-right Proud Boys and Oath Keepers militia. Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes was on the list, and was released in the early hours of Tuesday, his lawyer said.

Rhodes, a former US Army paratrooper and Yale-educated lawyer, led the Oath Keepers to Washington in the days before a riot. The group stashed guns in a hotel room across the Potomac River in Virginia, according to trial evidence. Rhodes did not enter the Capitol but directed his members from outside, and was sentenced in 2023 to 18 years in prison.

Rhodes’s lawyer, James Lee Bright, told the BBC that even those close to the cases were surprised by the broad nature of the clemency action and the speed of prisoner releases.

“Despite our relationships with people who are close to the president, they were extremely tight-lipped” before the executive order, Bright said.

Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, received a full pardon, although five other members of his group were on the commutation list. Tarrio was not in the crowd that day, having been banned from the city. Instead, he communicated with fellow Proud Boys from a hotel in nearby Baltimore.

After Rhodes’s arrest the Oath Keepers mostly ceased operations, while the Proud Boys focused on local protests, particularly against transgender activists and drag story hours. The latter group was also racked with infighting between established members and splinter groups pushing explicitly white nationalist ideas.

Wendy Via, CEO and co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said newly released militia members may try to continue their activities, putting far-right groups that largely dissipated back into the spotlight.

On Monday dozens of Proud Boys were seen marching around Washington to celebrate the inauguration.

“Do the Proud Boys start trying to centralise the organisation again, like it was in 2021? That’s going to be a big question,” Ms Via said.

“The fallout from these pardons is that Trump has sent a message that violence is a viable tool for change, as long as it’s on his side,” she added.

Two Americans held by the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan have been exchanged for an Afghan imprisoned in the US on drug trafficking and terrorism charges.

The news emerged after Ryan Corbett and William Wallace McKenty were freed. The Afghan, Khan Mohmmad, had been serving a life sentence in a federal prison in California on drug trafficking and terrorism charges.

A statement from the Taliban government in Kabul announced the agreement, which was concluded just before President Joe Biden ended his term in office.

Mr Corbett’s release was confirmed by his family. US media, quoting official sources, identified Mr McKenty as the second American.

The deal – reportedly the culmination of two years of negotiations – was done just before Joe Biden handed over power to Donald Trump on Monday.

“An Afghan fighter Khan Mohammed imprisoned in America has been released in exchange for American citizens and returned to the country,” the Taliban foreign ministry said in a statement.

The family of Ryan Corbett thanked both administrations as well as Qatar for what they described as its vital role.

“Today, our hearts are filled with overwhelming gratitude and praise to God for sustaining Ryan’s life and bringing him back home after what has been the most challenging and uncertain 894 days of our lives,” the family said.

Mr Corbett had lived in Afghanistan for many years with his family and was detained by the Taliban more than two years ago when he returned on a business trip.

There are few details about Mr McKenty, whose family have asked for privacy.

Khan Mohammad was a member of the Taliban taken captive in Afghanistan during the US’s military engagement. He was jailed in 2008. Joe Biden commuted his sentence just before he left office.

The Taliban called the exchange the result of “long and fruitful negotiations” with the US and “a good example of resolving issues through dialogue”.

“The Islamic Emirate looks positively at the actions of the United States of America that help the normalisation and development of relations between the two countries,” it said.

Since the Taliban took power in 2021, they have not been formally recognised by any government.

While the move is not likely to change relations between Kabul and Washington, more negotiations may follow – two other Americans are still in Afghanistan, believed to be George Glezmann and Mahmood Habibi.

The Taliban are also seeking the release of an Afghan who is one of the few remaining prisoners at the US’s Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

At a rally in Washington on the eve of his inauguration, President Trump threatened to cut humanitarian aid to Afghanistan unless the Taliban returned the military equipment seized after the US pulled out in 2021.

A US Department of Defense report in 2022 estimated that military equipment worth $7bn had been left behind in Afghanistan after US forces withdrew.

At least 76 people have been killed in a fire that engulfed a popular Turkish ski resort hotel, leaving some to jump out of windows.

The fire broke out at the wooden-clad 12-storey Grand Kartal Hotel in Bolu at 03:27 local time (00:27 GMT) during a busy holiday period when 234 people were staying there.

An initial toll of 10 dead was raised significantly in the hours after the fire by Turkey’s interior ministry. At least two people died after trying to jump to safety.

It took 12 hours for the fire to be put out. Nine people have been arrested, including the owner, the justice minister says.

The identities of all 76 are yet to be confirmed, but among those released so far are Vedia Nil Apak, a 10-year-old swimmer with Fenerbahce Sports Club in Istanbul, and her mother Ferda.

The club said it had learned of the news with “deep sorrow” in an Instagram post on Tuesday.

Eslem Uyanik, a young chef at the hotel, died along with Ceren Yaman Dogan, the daughter of a well-known local businessman, and her 17-year-old daughter Lalin.

Nedim Turkmen, a writer for Sozcu newspaper, his wife Ayse Neva, and their two children aged 18 and 22 were also named, along with Prof Atakan Yalcin, who was dean of Ozyegin University Business School.

Dilara Ermanoglu, 24, was among the victims, and her father who had gone to Bolu to look for her was treated by health workers for a heart attack.

Health minister Kemal Memisoglu said that of the 51 injured people, one was receiving treatment in intensive care, and 17 people had been discharged.

Footage circulating in Turkey showed linen hanging from windows which was used by those trying to escape the burning building.

Ski instructor Necmi Kepcetutan told the BBC he was on the second floor of the hotel when the fire broke out and managed to get out via the ski room. He then helped with relief efforts.

Eyewitnesses said the family that owned the hotel had been there at the time of the fire and Mr Kepcetutan said he saw some of the family outside.

The cause of the fire has not yet been found, but Bolu governor Abdulaziz Aydin said initial reports suggested it had broken out in the restaurant section of the hotel’s fourth floor and spread to the floors above.

Aydin said the distance between the hotel, in Kartalkaya, and the centre of Bolu, paired with the freezing weather conditions, meant it took more than an hour for fire engines to arrive. Emergency services sent 267 workers to the site.

The hotel was investigating whether guests, including children, were trapped in their rooms as the fire spread.

The hotel had two fire escapes, according to the interior minister, and one hotel worker said they had managed to rescue 30-35 people.

Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said prosecutors had been allocated to investigate the blaze.

The hotel was last inspected in 2024, and the tourism minister said there had been no concerns regarding the hotel’s fire safety prior to Tuesday’s disaster.

However, the Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects (TMMOB) said that according to regulations, an automatic fire extinguisher system is needed.

“In the photos on the hotel’s website, it is seen that the automatic sprinkler system, which was supposed to be installed in 2008, was not installed,” the union said in a statement.

It added that it was unclear if other regulations had been complied with, but based on the statements of survivors, “it is understood that the detection and warning systems did not work and the escape routes could not be determined”.

The Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said those responsible for negligence leading to the fire “will be held accountable”.

A day of national mourning has been declared and the Turkish flag will be flown at half-mast until sunset on Wednesday, he added in a statement on X.

The Bolu mountains are popular with skiers from Istanbul and Turkey’s capital Ankara, which is roughly 170km (105 miles) away, and the hotel was operating at high occupancy at the start of two-week school holidays.

Former UK ambassador to Turkey Sir Peter Westmacott told the BBC he had stayed in the area in the past, and that the fire “feels very personal”.

“The fact that so many people have lost their lives is just devastating news for those of us who care about Turkey,” he said.

“It has been a long fight full of tears for us.”

That is how Ann “Waaddao” Chumaporn describes the years that led to this moment – on Thursday, when same-sex marriage becomes legal in Thailand, and more than a hundred couples will tie the knot in one of Bangkok’s biggest shopping malls, in a riot of colour and celebration.

And the same question which has been heard throughout the long campaign to get the equal marriage law passed will be asked again: why Thailand? Why nowhere else, aside from Taiwan and Nepal, in Asia?

People think they know the answer. Thailand is famously open to and accepting of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people. They have long been visible in all walks of life. Thai people are easy-going about pretty much everything. “Mai pen rai” – no big deal – is a national catch-phrase. Buddhist beliefs, followed by more than 90% of Thais, don’t forbid LGBT lifestyles. Surely, then, equal marriage was inevitable.

Except it wasn’t. “It was not easy,” says Ms Waaddao, who organises Bangkok Pride March.

The first Pride march in Thailand took place only 25 years ago. Back then it was hard to get approval from the police, and the march was a chaotic, unfocused event. After 2006 only two marches took place until 2022. In 2009 one planned Pride march in Chiang Mai had to be abandoned because of the threat of violence.

“We were not accepted, by our own families and by society,” Ms Waaddao adds. “There were times when we did not think marriage equality would ever happen, but we never gave up.”

For all of Thailand’s general tolerance of LGBT people, getting equal rights, including marriage, required a determined campaign to change attitudes in Thai officialdom and society. And attitudes have changed.

When Chakkrit “Ink” Vadhanavira started dating his partner in 2001, they were both actors playing leading roles in TV series. At that time homosexuality was still officially described by the Thai Ministry of Health as a mental illness.

“Back then society could not accept leading male roles being played by a gay man. There was lots of gossip about us in the media, much of it untrue, which really stressed us,” Mr Chakkrit recalls.

“We decided then that if we were going to date each other, we had to leave showbiz.”

They are still together but they have stayed out of the limelight for more than 20 years, running a successful production company.

A lot has changed in that time – and their industry gets some credit for that.

The way LGBT characters are portrayed in Thai TV dramas, from comical oddities to mainstream roles, made a big difference, according to Tinnaphop Sinsomboonthong, an assistant professor at Thammasat University who self-identifies as queer.

“Nowadays they represent us as normal characters, like you see in real life,” he says. “The kind of LGBTQ+ colleague you might have in the office, or your LGBTQ+ neighbour. This really helped change perceptions and values in all generations.”

The so-called Boy Love dramas have helped bring the rest of society round to the idea of not just tolerance, but full acceptance and equal rights for the community.

These romantic television dramas featuring love affairs between beautiful young men have grown enormously in popularity over the past decade, especially during the Covid pandemic.

They are now one of Thailand’s most successful cultural exports, with huge audiences in places like China. Series like My School President and Love Sick have got hundreds of millions of views on streaming networks.

At the same time, activists became more focused and united in their bid to get the law changed. The many different LGBT groups came together in the Change 1448 campaign – 1448 is the clause in the Thai Civil Code covering the definition of marriage – and later under the Rainbow Coalition for Marriage Equality.

They linked up with other groups fighting for greater rights and freedoms in Thailand, and they learned to work with political parties in parliament to persuade them to change their stance on the law.

The resumption of Pride marches in 2022, and getting the government to recognise and promote the appeal of Thailand as an attractive destination for LGBT travellers also helped change public perceptions.

“We did not fight, we negotiated,” Mr Tinnaphop says. “We knew we had to talk to Thai society, and little by little, we shifted attitudes.”

Getting the equal marriage law through parliament was also helped by political developments in Thailand.

For five years following a coup in 2014, the country was ruled by a conservative military government, which was willing only to consider recognising civil partnerships for LGBT couples, without full rights like inheritance.

But in the 2019 election which returned Thailand to civilian rule, a new, youthful reformist party called Future Forward, which fully supported equal marriage, did unexpectedly well. They won the third-largest share of seats, revealing a growing hunger for change in Thailand.

When a year later Future Forward was dissolved by a controversial court verdict, it set off months of student-led protests calling for sweeping reforms, including curbs to the monarchy’s power.

LGBT campaigners were prominent in those protests, giving them greater national prominence. The protests eventually died down, with many of the leaders arrested for questioning the monarchy’s role.

But in the 2023 election the successor to Future Forward, calling itself Move Forward, performed even better than in 2019, winning more seats than any other party. Again, it was clear that the desire for change was felt across Thai people of all ages.

Move Forward was blocked from forming a government by conservatives who objected to its call for wholesale political reforms.

But by this time, equal marriage was less contentious. Few opposed it. And passing it gave the unwieldy and unpopular coalition government which had been formed without Move Forward a quick accomplishment with which to please most of the country.

Thailand, though, is an outlier in Asia. Few other countries in the region are likely to follow suit.

The influence of Islam in Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei makes the notion of equal marriage a non-starter. LGBT communities there face discrimination and prosecution; in Brunei sex between men carries the death penalty.

In the Philippines, there is growing acceptance of LGBT couples living together openly. But the Roman Catholic Church vehemently opposes same-sex marriage.

In Vietnam, like Thailand, there are no religious or ideological obstacles, but campaigning to change the law, as happened in Thailand, is difficult under a repressive regime. Much the same is true in China. Until the ruling communist party endorses equal marriage, which it shows no signs of doing, it cannot happen.

Even in democracies like Japan and South Korea – where political parties are largely conservative and dominated by older men – the prospects look bleak.

“It is largely conservative Christians who are blocking it,” says Chae-yoon Han, executive director of the Beyond the Rainbow Foundation in South Korea.

“Most, if not all, politicians in the conservative party of President Yoon are devout Christians, and they have framed marriage equality as a ‘leftist agenda’, which could potentially open society to a ‘leftist, communist takeover’.”

India appeared close to legalising same-sex marriage in 2023, when the decision fell to its Supreme Court – but the judges declined, saying it was up to parliament.

So Thailand hopes to benefit from being a pioneer. Tourism is one of the few areas of the Thai economy doing well in the post-pandemic recovery, and the country is seen as a safe and welcoming destination for LGBT holiday-makers.

Growing numbers of same-sex couples from other Asian countries are choosing to live here now.

The legal recognition they can get for their marriages will allow them to raise children and grow old together with nearly all the rights and protections given to heterosexual couples.

Australia’s federal police have said they are investigating whether “overseas actors or individuals” are paying local criminals to carry out antisemitic crimes in the country.

There has been a spate of such incidents in recent months, the latest of which saw a childcare centre in Sydney set alight and sprayed with anti-Jewish graffiti. No-one was injured.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called a snap cabinet meeting in response, where officials agreed to set up a national database to track antisemitic incidents.

Thus far, the federal police taskforce, set up in December to investigate such incidents, received more than 166 reports of antisemitic crimes.

Albanese said it appeared some of the crimes were “being perpetrated by people who don’t have a particular issue, aren’t motivated by an ideology, but are paid actors”.

“Now, it’s unclear who or where the payments are coming from,” he told reporters on Wednesday.

Australian Federal Police (AFP) Commissioner Reece Kershaw said it was possible that cryptocurrencies – which can take longer to identify – had been used.

He added that police were also investigating whether young people were carrying out these crimes and whether they had been radicalised online.

However, Mr Kershaw cautioned, “intelligence is not the same as evidence” and more charges were expected soon.

Last week, a man from Sydney became the first person to be charged by the federal taskforce, dubbed Special Operation Avalite, over alleged death threats he made towards a Jewish organisation.

Albanese said Tuesday’s incident at a childcare centre in the eastern Sydney suburb of Maroubra was “as cowardly as it is disgusting” and described it as a “hate crime”.

“This was an attack targeted at the Jewish community. And it is a crime that concerns us all because it is also an attack on the nation and society we have built together,” he wrote on social media.

Israel’s deputy foreign minister told the ABC that Australia’s government had been “inflaming” problems in the local community by not clamping down harder on antisemitic crimes.

But Albanese on Wednesday said his government had “acted from day one” to protect Australia’s Jewish community, and criticised those seeking to make it a “political issue”.

The Jewish Council of Australia, which was set up last year in opposition to antisemitism, said that it “strongly condemns” this and all such incidents.

“These acts underscore the urgent need for cooperation, education and community dialogue to combat prejudice and promote understanding,” it said in a statement.

Most of the recent incidents have taken place in Sydney and have involved antisemitic graffiti, arson and vandalism of buildings including synagogues.

New South Wales has set up its own state-level taskforce to address these incidents and more than 35 people have been charged so far with antisemitism-related offences. These include a 33-year-old man who was charged on Wednesday over an attempt to set fire to a synagogue earlier this month.

A further 70 arrests have been made for similar crimes in the neighbouring state of Victoria, where a synagogue was set on fire last month.

On Wednesday, police said they had charged a 33-year-old Sydney man over the

US President Donald Trump says he has signed a full and unconditional pardon for Ross Ulbricht, who operated Silk Road, the dark web marketplace where illegal drugs were sold.

Ulbricht was convicted in 2015 in New York in a narcotics and money laundering conspiracy and sentenced to life in prison.

Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he had called Ulbricht’s mother to inform her that he had granted a pardon to her son.

Silk Road, which was shut down in 2013 after police arrested Ulbricht, sold illegal drugs using Bitcoin, as well as hacking equipment and stolen passports.

“The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me,” Trump said in his post online on Tuesday evening. “He was given two life sentences, plus 40 years. Ridiculous!”

Ulbricht was found guilty of charges including conspiracy to commit drug trafficking, money laundering and computer hacking.

During his trial, prosecutors said Ulbricht’s website, hosted on the hidden “dark web”, sold more than $200m (£131m) worth of drugs anonymously.

The Silk Road took its name from the historic trade routes spanning Europe, Asia and parts of Africa.

The site achieved notoriety through media reports and online chatter. But users could only access the site through Tor – a system that lets people use the web without revealing who they are or which country they are in.

Court documents from the FBI said the site had just under a million registered users, but investigators said they did not know how many were active.

Sentencing Ulbricht – who has two college degrees – District Judge Katherine Forrest said he was “no better a person than any other drug dealer”.

She said the site had been his “carefully planned life’s work”.

The judge noted the lengthy sentence also acted as a message to copycats that there would be “very serious consequences”.

“I wanted to empower people to make choices in their lives and have privacy and anonymity,” Ulbricht said at his sentencing in May 2015.

Trump previously hinted that he planned to commute Ulbricht’s sentence during a speech last year at the Libertarian National Convention.

The Libertarian party had been advocating for Ulbricht’s release and said his case was an example of government overreach.

Republican congressman Thomas Massie, a Trump ally, applauded the president’s decision.

“Thank you for keeping your word to me and others who have been advocating for Ross’ freedom,” said the Kentucky lawmaker.

Donald Trump has signed sweeping executive orders on his return to the US presidency, vowing swift action on some of his top campaign issues.

Among the directives that have gained the most publicity are an immigration crackdown and rollbacks of some climate-friendly policies.

But even presidential powers have their limits – and in some cases, he faces hurdles before his plans can become reality.

What does the order say?

The order argues that cartels have “engaged in a campaign of violence and terror” throughout the hemisphere, and flooded the US with crime, posing a national security risk to the US.

Additionally, the order specifies that the US policy is to “ensure the total elimination” of these groups in the US. It gives US agencies 14 days to provide recommendations on which groups are to be designated and be ready to expedite the removal of individuals from the US.

What are the roadblocks?

Designating a cartel as a terrorist group could open the door to prosecuting US citizens or even legitimate businesses found to be somehow tied to those groups. The designation could also strain relations with countries including Mexico, which has vocally called for its sovereignty to be respected.

What is the potential impact?

For one, the designation of these groups as foreign terrorist organisations could ultimately be used to justify military action against targets in Mexico or other countries in which similar groups operate.

The designation could also see the US federal government dedicate more resources and enhanced legal tools to fight cartels and other gangs, and go after their business and financial interests on both sides of the border.

While it would make “material support” of these groups a crime, it remains unclear what that could mean. In theory, that could mean that drug dealers and users, including US citizens, could be charged with aiding terrorists – as could US citizens or businesses on the border that are extorted to pay them.

What does the order say?

The executive order asks the US ambassador to the UN to “immediately” submit a formal written request to withdraw from the Paris agreement.

It says the accord does not reflect the country’s values or its economic and environmental objectives.

What are the roadblocks?

Any country can withdraw from the global climate pact, but UN regulations mean the process of removing a country can be drawn out.

Trump announced his intent to withdraw during his last term in 2017, but it was not formally finalised until 2020. We can expect another waiting period this time of at least one year.

President Joe Biden rejoined it shortly after taking office in 2021

What is the potential impact?

The US is responsible for around 11% of global greenhouse gas emissions, making it the second biggest polluter behind China. This damages the global effort to limit emissions.

Its withdrawal in the past has raised issues of trust on climate leadership, and questions about whether the agreement itself has been effective.

The withdrawal is also in line with Trump’s goal to boost domestic oil and gas production, though the US is already the number one producer of both in the world. It is one of several of Trump’s reversals of environmental protections that were enacted by the Biden administration.

What does the order say?

This order aims to end birth right citizenship for children born in the US to immigrant parents who are in the country illegally, as well as those born to parents who are in the country on a temporary basis.

There have been reports that the administration will enforce the order by withholding documents, such as passports, from people it deems ineligible for citizenship.

What are the roadblocks?

The principle of birthright citizenship is established in the US Constitution. The 14th Amendment says that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” are citizens of the United States.

The legal challenges are already under way – one claims the order is “unconstitutional, and flouts fundamental American values”.

“Ultimately this will be decided by the courts. This is not something [Trump] can decide on his own,” Saikrishna Prakash, a constitutional expert, told the BBC.

What is the potential impact?

Trump has threatened mass deportations, which could include those whose birthright citizenship is revoked if Trump is successful in enforcing this executive action.

Legal cases could ultimately have to be decided by the US Supreme Court, which could take a long time.

What does the order say?

The order says the US was withdrawing “due to the organization’s mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic”.

Trump’s longheld antipathy towards the WHO is rooted in a perception that it was dominated by – and so soft on – China, which the president has long believed was responsible for the spread of the virus.

It also mentions “unfairly onerous payments” the US made to the WHO.

What are the roadblocks?

It is the second time Trump has ordered the US be pulled out of the WHO. He began the process and Biden later reversed the decision after taking office.

The US exit won’t take effect until 2026 at the earliest, but leaving will require the approval of Congress.

On paper, the Republicans have a majority in both houses of Congress. But their numerical advantage is slim, and it would only take a few Republican defectors to potentially block the move.

What is the potential impact?

“Catastrophic”, “disastrous”, “damaging” is how some global public health experts are describing it.

Of the 196 member states, the US is by far the largest individual funder, contributing almost a fifth of the total WHO budget.

It’s possible that funding could disappear almost overnight and that could have an impact on the ability of the WHO to respond to emergencies.

There is also concern among some scientists that this would leave the US isolated when it comes to access to programmes such as pandemic preparedness and seasonal influenza strain sequencing, which is used to develop annual flu jabs.

That could ultimately harm the health of Americans, and the US national interest.

Some argue US withdrawal could prompt further reforms of how the WHO works, making it a body that better serves the public health needs of people around the globe.

What does the order say?

The order calls for the Gulf of Mexico to “officially be renamed the Gulf of America”.

Trump can change the name of the Gulf on official US government documents.

This has happened on some documents already – including a weather update from Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, which refers to “an area of low pressure moving across the Gulf of America”.

What are the roadblocks?

Trump can’t force other countries or companies to change the name.

For example, it’s currently still labelled as the Gulf of Mexico on Google Maps.

What is the potential impact?

There’s no formal international agreement for the naming of maritime areas – although there is a body that seeks to resolve disputes if raised.

So Mexico could raise an official dispute, and allies of the US and Mexico could be caught up in a diplomatic spat between the two countries.

In response to the order, Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum said the US can call it the “Gulf of America”, but this won’t change what Mexico and the rest of the world call it.

What does the order say?

“It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality,” it says, adding that the federal government will use the term sex, not gender.

President Trump’s team argues that requirements to refer to transgender people in government facilities and workplaces by pronouns that match their gender identity violates the US Constitution’s First Amendment on freedom of speech and religion.

States like Kansas and Montana have already legislated to enshrine a biological definition of sex into law.

What are the roadblocks?

There are likely to be legal challenges.

The Human Rights Campaign, which represents LGBTQ+ people, stated that “we will fight back against these harmful provisions with everything we’ve got”.

These challenges could work their way up to the US Supreme Court which, with its conservative majority, could rule in Trump’s favour.

What is the potential impact?

Prisons and settings such as shelters for migrants and rape victims would be segregated by sex under the plans, which campaigners say will help safeguard women. But transgender rights groups say trans women could be put at a heightened risk of violence.

Official identification documents, including passports and visas, would have to state whether the individual was “male” or female”. US citizens would no longer be able to select “X” as a third option.

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• IN PICTURES: Defining images as the 47th US president takes office
• VIRAL MOMENTS: Carrie Underwood audio fail and Melania’s air kiss
• FASHION: Melania’s striking hat and other eye-catching look
• POLICIES: Trump vows to leave Paris climate agreement

Nine Palestinians have been killed and 35 injured by Israeli forces during a major operation in Jenin in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry says.

Palestinian media reported that there were a series of air strikes as a large number of troops moved in to the city and its refugee camp, backed by drones, helicopters and armoured bulldozers.

Israel’s prime minister said it launched an “extensive and significant” operation to “defeat terrorism” in Jenin, long seen as a stronghold of Palestinian armed groups.

It comes three days after the start of a ceasefire in Gaza and highlights the threat of more violence in the West Bank, where suspected Israeli settlers also went on the rampage overnight.

Jenin’s governor, Kamal Abu al-Rub, told AFP news agency that “what is happening is an invasion of the camp”, adding: “It came quickly, Apache [helicopters] in the sky and Israeli military vehicles everywhere.”

The official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, cited local sources as saying that Israeli forces were “completely besieging” Jenin camp, and that armoured bulldozers had dug up several streets.

It also cited the director of Jenin’s Government hospital, Wissam Bakr, as saying that three doctors and two nurses were among those wounded by Israeli gunfire.

Palestinian security personnel reportedly withdrew from some of their positions around Jenin refugee camp before the Israeli forces moved in on Tuesday morning.

Brig-Gen Anwar Rajab, a spokesman of the Palestinian security forces, told AFP that Israeli forces had “opened fire on civilians and security forces”, resulting in a number of injuries.

On Tuesday evening, the Palestinian health ministry reported that eight men and a 16-year-old boy, whom it named as Mutaz Abu Tbeikh, had been killed by Israeli forces in Jenin.

Another man was shot and killed by Israeli troops in the village of Tianik, about 8km (5 miles) to the north-west, it added.

A statement from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Jenin operation – dubbed “Iron Wall” – was an “additional step in achieving the objective we have set: bolstering security” in the West Bank.

“We are acting methodically and with determination against the Iranian axis wherever it reaches: in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and [the West Bank] – and we are still active.”

Israel accuses Iran of smuggling weapons and funds to Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other armed groups in the West Bank to foment unrest.

Israeli media cited a military source as saying that the goals of the operation were to preserve its “freedom of action” in the West Bank, dismantle armed groups’ infrastructure, and eliminate imminent threats. The source also said the operation would continue for “as long as necessary”.

The prime minister of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, Mohammed Mustafa, condemned the raid, saying it was the latest in a series of “aggressive Israeli measures” against Palestinians in the West Bank, according to Wafa.

Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad both called on Palestinians in the West Bank to escalate attacks against Israel in response to the Jenin operation.

There have been a number of previous Israeli military operations Jenin.

And recently, the PA’s security forces carried out a controversial, weeks-long operation against armed groups there, including Hamas and PIJ, trying to reassert their control.

There has been a spike in violence in the West Bank since Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 and the ensuing war in Gaza.

Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed as Israeli forces have intensified their raids, saying they are trying to stem deadly Palestinian attacks on Israelis in the West Bank and Israel.

In another development in the West Bank overnight, dozens of masked Israeli extremists attacked Palestinians in two villages east of Qalqilya, Jinsafut and al-Funduq, setting fire to Palestinian homes and cars and smashing property.

At least 21 Palestinians were injured, the Palestinian Red Crescent said. Two Israelis were also shot, apparently when an Israeli police officer opened fire while responding to the violence.

“If you were there last night, you would not hear anything more than screaming of women and children,” said Mohammed, whose family home in al-Funduq was metres away from a garden centre that was torched.

“In the end, we have don’t have anything to protect ourselves. But they have everything to attack us.”

The Israeli military said it was investigating the incidents, during which it said Israeli civilians “instigated riots, set property on fire, and caused damage”. It also said they hurled rocks and attacked Israeli security forces.

It happened just as new US President Donald Trump announced he was lifting sanctions on Israeli settlers accused of carrying out attacks in the West Bank.

The reversal of the Biden administration’s sanctions targeting radical Israelis, could indicate the direction for the new White House that is expected to be more tolerant of Jewish settlement expansion.

The far-right, pro-settler Israeli Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, welcomed the US move. In a post on X, he praised Trump’s “unwavering and uncompromising support for the state of Israel”.

Meanwhile, Palestinian officials condemned the change in policy. “Lifting sanctions on extremist settlers encourages them to commit more crimes against our people”, the Palestinian foreign ministry said in a statement.

The mayor of al-Funduq, Luay Tayyam, told the BBC: “It is like a green light for the settlers, saying: ‘Just go ahead, do whatever you want. You will not be persecuted.'”

“So they are happy with this news. And I think this was a big push for them last night. They feel encouraged by it.”

There are also rising tensions over the large-scale release of Palestinian prisoners in the West Bank this week, as part of the Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas.

The attack in al-Funduq was in an area where three Israelis were killed in a shooting earlier this month. It was the latest in a long series of settler attacks that have accelerated markedly since the start of the Gaza war.

According to the Israeli anti-settlement group, Peace Now, in 2024 settlers also established 59 new outposts, without authorisation from the Israeli government. That was more than double the number from the previous year – which was also a record year for settlement outpost establishment.

Israel has built about 160 settlements housing some 700,000 Jews since it occupied the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war. The settlements are considered illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this – as did the previous Trump administration.

Netflix will raise prices across a number of countries after adding nearly 19 million subscribers in the final months of 2024.

The streaming firm said it will increase subscription costs in the US, Canada, Argentina and Portugal.

“We will occasionally ask our members to pay a little more so that we can re-invest to further improve Netflix,” it said.

Netflix announced better-than-expected subscriber numbers, helped by the second series of South Korean drama Squid Game as well as sports including a boxing match between influencer-turned-fighter Jake Paul and former world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson.

In the US, prices will increase across almost all plans including the standard subscription with no adverts which will now cost $17.99 (£14.60) a month, up from $15.49.

Its membership with adverts will also rise, by one dollar to $7.99.

The last time Netflix raised prices in the US was October 2023, when it also lifted costs for some plans in the UK.

Asked if prices were set to increase in the UK, a spokesperson for Netflix said there was “nothing to share right now”.

Meanwhile, the company said it finished last year with more than 300 million subscribers in total. It had been expected to add 9.6 million new subscribers between October and December but far surpassed that number.

It is the last time that Netflix will report quarterly subscriber growth – from now on it said it will “continue to announce paid memberships as we cross key milestones”.

As well as Squid Game and the Paul v Tyson fight, Netflix also streamed two NFL games on Christmas Day.

It will also broadcast more live events including WWE wrestling and has bought the rights for the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2027 and 2031.

Paolo Pescatore, a technology analyst at PP Foresight, said Netflix “is now flexing its muscles by adjusting prices given its far stronger and diversified programming slate compared to rivals”.

Net profit between October and December doubled to $1.8bn compared to the same period a year ago.

Sales rose from $8.8bn to $10.2bn.

South Korea’s suspended president Yoon Suk Yeol has made his first appearance at his impeachment trial, where he denied ordering the arrest of lawmakers during his attempt to impose martial law.

Parliament voted to impeach Yoon last month, and last week the Constitutional Court began a trial to decide whether to permanently remove him from office.

Yoon is also facing a separate criminal investigation into whether he led an insurrection. He has been detained since last week.

Security was tight on Tuesday as Yoon was transported by van from the detention centre, where he is being held, to the Constitutional Court.

Police formed human walls and held up anti-riot barricades to stop hundreds of his supporters who had gathered nearby from getting too close. Last weekend saw violence as dozens of Yoon’s supporters clashed with law enforcers and broke into another court house.

On Tuesday, Yoon was asked if he had ordered military commanders to “drag out” lawmakers from parliament on the night he declared martial law, in order to prevent them from overturning his order.

He replied: “No.”

Military commanders had earlier alleged that Yoon had given such an order on 3 December, after lawmakers climbed fences and broke barricades to enter the parliament building and vote down Yoon’s martial law declaration.

“I am a person who has lived with a firm belief in liberal democracy,” Yoon said in his opening remarks on Tuesday.

“As the Constitutional Court exists to safeguard the constitution, I ask that you thoroughly examine all aspects of this case,” he told the judges.

During the hearing, which lasted nearly two hours, Yoon and his lawyers argued that the martial law order was “a formality that was not meant to be executed”.

Yoon had cited threats from “anti-state forces” and North Korea when he declared martial law, but it soon became clear that his move had been spurred not by external threats but by his own domestic political troubles.

The lawyers prosecuting the case, who were selected by the parliament, accused Yoon and his lawyers for making “largely contradictory, irrational, and unclear” comments.

“If they continue to evade responsibility as they did today, it will only work against them in the impeachment trial and cause even greater disappointment among the public,” the prosecutors told reporters after the hearing.

Outside the courtroom, Yoon’s supporters – who have become more agitated and aggressive lately – demanded that the suspended president be released and restored to office immediately.

They were forced to set up some distance from the court due to tight security. Waving their trademark combination of Korean and US flags, some wore Maga-style baseball caps embossed with the slogan “Make Korea Free Again”, an echo of the campaign slogan used by US President Donald Trump.

Some of their chants included calls for the leader of South Korea’s main opposition party, Lee Jae-myung, and the investigator leading Yoon’s criminal case to be executed.

Several of the supporters told the BBC they believed Yoon’s martial law declaration was an attempt to protect the country’s democracy.

They accused the opposition party of being pro-China and pro-North Korea, and for wanting to turn South Korea into a communist country.

“This is a conflict between people who pursue communism and people who pursue democracy,” said Wongeun Seong, a 49-year-old businessman who joined the protest on the way back from a lunch meeting.

Former defence minister Kim Yong-hyun, who reportedly suggested martial law to Yoon, will testify during the next hearing on Thursday.

Yoon will be removed from office if at least six of the eight-member Constitutional Court bench votes to uphold the impeachment. A presidential election must then be called within 60 days.

South Korea has been in political chaos since the failed martial law attempt. Thousands of protesters and supporters of Yoon have taken to the streets multiple times despite the winter cold.

The crisis has hit the country’s economy, with the won weakening and global credit rating agencies warning of weakening consumer and business sentiment.

Ukraine has detained its army’s chief psychiatrist for alleged “illegal enrichment” charges related to earnings of more than $1m (£813,000) accrued since the start of Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

In a statement, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said the man sat on a commission deciding whether individuals were fit for military service.

The SBU statement did not name him – however, a man called Oleh Druz was previously identified as the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ chief psychiatrist.

The SBU said he owned three apartments in or near Kyiv, one in Odesa, two plots of land and several BMW luxury cars, and investigators searching his home also found $152,000 (£124,000) and €34,000 in cash.

The statement said the man did not declare the property, which was registered in the name of his wife, daughter, sons, and other third parties.

He now faces ten years in jail for the alleged charges of illegal enrichment and making a false declaration.

Druz was implicated in a similar case in 2017 which saw him fail to declare two SUVs and several properties, leading him to be suspended.

Ukraine has long battled endemic corruption.

In May, a Ukrainian MP was charged with embezzling £220,000, while in 2023 more than 30 conscription officials accused of taking bribes and smuggling people out of the country were sacked in an anti-corruption purge.

Last year, the Ukrainian parliament voted to abolish military medical commissions after several officials were accused of accepting bribes in exchange for issuing exemptions from military service.

“Terrorism has changed” as Britain faces a “new and dangerous threat” from extreme violence, Sir Keir Starmer has said in a statement on the Southport murders.

Speaking in Downing Street after the government announced a public inquiry into the case, the prime minister said failings by the state “leap off the page”.

Axel Rudakubana had been referred three times to anti-extremism programme Prevent before killing Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar last July.

Sir Keir said if the law needed to change, it would – as he denied there had been any cover-up over the background in the case.

He said a review would be carried out into “our entire counter-extremist system”, adding that he had asked cross-bench peer Lord Anderson of Ipswich KC – the new independent Prevent commissioner – “to hold this system to account, to shine a light into its darkest corners”.

The prime minister said in the past the predominant threat was highly-organised groups such as al-Qaeda, but warned the new threat was acts of extreme violence by “loners, misfits, young men in their bedroom” accessing material online.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the inquiry into Rudakubana would also “consider the wider challenge of rising youth violence and extremism”.

In a House of Commons statement, she said 162 people were referred to Prevent last year for concerns relating to school massacres.

Cooper said Rudakubana had been “easily able” to order a knife from Amazon despite having a previous conviction for violence and being aged 17 at the time. She also revealed he had admitted to having carried a knife more than 10 times.

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In his Downing Street speech, Sir Keir said he had known details of the case following the attack, but contempt of court laws prevented him from disclosing them sooner.

He said: “If this trial had collapsed, because I or anyone else had revealed crucial details while the police were investigating, while the case was being built, while we were awaiting a verdict, then the vile individual who committed these crimes would have walked away a free man.”

Rudakubana had been in possession of an al-Qaeda training manual and had produced the biological toxin ricin.

Despite this, his case has never been treated as terror-related by police as he did not appear to follow an ideology, such as Islamism or racial hatred, and instead appeared to be motivated by an interest in extreme violence.

As well as being referred to Prevent three times between 2019-2021, Rudakubana was excluded from school aged 13 in October 2019, after which he returned to the school in December that year with a hockey stick and assaulted a pupil, breaking their wrist.

Lancashire Child Safeguarding Partnership said Lancashire Constabulary responded to five calls from his home address, between October 2019 and May 2022, relating to concerns about his behaviour.

Rudakubana also called Childline several times as a young teenager, eventually telling the service he was going to take a knife into school because of racial bullying.

Sir Keir said it was “clearly wrong” Rudakubana was deemed not to meet the threshold for intervention from the Prevent programme, and the Southport victims’ families had been failed.

The prime minister said the Southport attack “must be a line in the sand” and “nothing will be off the table” in the public inquiry.

He added that he would not let any state institution “deflect from their failure – failure which in this case, frankly, leaps off the page”.

Sir Keir’s decision to deliver a speech after Rudakubana’s guilty pleas was not only a recognition of the “barbaric” attack but also the failures of the state in its handling of the teenager over the years, and the intensity of the reaction to the murders.

The section of the speech dedicated to combatting claims of a “cover-up” about Rudakubana’s motivations showed the prime minister was anxious to dispel claims he should have been more frank, before the case came to court, about the various authorities which were aware of the teenager.

The government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Jonathan Hall KC, said there needed to be a review of Prevent and the mechanisms for dealing with people obsessed by violence but not ideology.

He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “What I would hope is that someone… is going to look at, ‘how do you pick up these people for whom Prevent wasn’t really designed?’

“In its present format it needs to change because of the internet – that’s the key factor.”

The Conservatives said they wanted the inquiry to establish if opportunities were missed to stop the attack.

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said he also wanted the government to implement recommendations from the Sir William Shawcross review on Prevent, and for the inquiry to examine if authorities should have revealed more information after the attack to avoid speculation on social media.

Misinformation spread online about the Southport attacker, leading to riots breaking out. Posts claiming he was an asylum seeker who had arrived in the UK on a small boat were shared widely, and the violent unrest quickly spread around the country.

Rudakubana, of Banks, Lancashire, will be sentenced on Thursday.

The teenager, who was born in Cardiff after his parents came to the UK from Rwanda, admitted three counts of murder and the attempted murders of eight other children and two adults.

He further pleaded guilty to possessing a knife on the date of the attack, production of a biological toxin, ricin, on or before July 29, and possession of information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing to commit an act of terrorism.

US President Donald Trump has said he is considering imposing a 10% tariff on imports of Chinese-made goods as soon as 1 February.

Trump said discussions with his administration were “based on the fact that they’re sending fentanyl to Mexico and Canada.”

It followed threats by Trump to levy import taxes of 25% on Mexico and Canada, accusing them of allowing undocumented migrants and drugs to come into the US.

In a press conference in Washington on Tuesday, Trump also vowed to hit the European Union with tariffs.

“China is an abuser, but the European Union is is very, very bad to us,” he said.

“They treat us very, very badly. So they’re going to be in for tariffs. It’s the only way you’re going to get back. It’s the only way you’re going to get fairness.”

Shortly after he was sworn in on Monday, the new president also instructed federal agencies to conduct a review of existing trade deals and identify unfair practices by US trading partners.

Meanwhile, a top Chinese official spoke out against protectionism at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

China’s Vice Premier, Ding Xuexiang, called for “win-win” solutions to trade disputes without mentioning the US.

On the campaign trail Trump had promised to place tariffs as high as 60% on Chinese goods.

The Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised to fight back.

“If the [US] president does choose to proceed with tariffs, Canada will respond – and everything is on the table,” Trudeau said.

Ottawa is preparing counter-tariffs in response to the threat, reportedly worth billions of dollars.

Canada, China and Mexico are the top US trading partners.

Tariffs are an important part of Trump’s economic plans. The president believes they can boost growth, protect jobs and raise tax revenue.

But many economists say such measures could lead to higher prices for Americans and harm companies hit by foreign retaliation.

Elon Musk has brushed aside the furore over a one-armed gesture he gave during a speech celebrating the inauguration of Donald Trump.

At Monday’s event, Musk thanked the crowd for “making it happen”, before placing his right hand over his heart and then thrusting the same arm out into air straight ahead of him. He then turned and repeated the action for those sitting behind him.

Some on X, the social medial platform he owns, likened the gesture to a Nazi salute, though others disagreed.

In response, the SpaceX and Tesla chief posted on X: “Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.”

Musk, the world’s richest man and a close ally of President Trump, was speaking at the Capital One Arena in Washington DC when he made the gesture.

“My heart goes out to you. It is thanks to you that the future of civilisation is assured,” the 53-year-old said, after giving the second one-armed salute.

There was immediate backlash on social media and disagreement about Musk’s intent.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University, said: “Historian of fascism here. It was a Nazi salute and a very belligerent one too.”

But the Anti-Defamation League, an organisation founded to combat antisemitism, did not agree.

“It seems that Elon Musk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute,” it posted on X.

Andrea Stroppa, a confidant of Musk who has connected him with far-right Italian PM Giorgia Meloni, was reported by Italian media to have posted the clip of Musk with the caption: “Roman Empire is back starting from Roman salute”.

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The Roman salute was widely used in Italy by Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Party, before later being adopted by Adolf Hitler in Germany.

Stroppa later deleted his post, Italian media said. He later posted that “that gesture, which some mistook for a Nazi salute, is simply Elon, who has autism, expressing his feelings by saying, ‘I want to give my heart to you'”.

“That is exactly what he communicated into the microphone. ELON DISLIKES EXTREMISTS!”

The gesture comes as Musk’s politics have increasingly shifted to the right. He has made recent statements in support of Germany’s far-right AfD party and British anti-immigration party Reform UK.

Appearing at the Davos at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was asked about the comparison to a Nazi salute, something that is banned in Germany.

“We have the freedom of speech in Europe and in Germany,” he said.

“… what we do not accept is if this is supporting extreme right positions. And this is what I would like to repeat again.”

Musk has become one of Trump’s closest allies and has been tapped to co-lead what the president has termed the Department of Government Efficiency.

In one of his first acts as the 47th president of the United States, Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at ending “birthright citizenship” – meaning the automatic American citizenship that is granted to anyone born in the country.

It’s a policy change he’s long promised – but implementing it won’t be easy.

Trump’s order seeks to change the rules to deny the granting of citizenship to the children of migrants who are either in the US illegally or on temporary visas. The document does not suggest that the order would apply retrospectively.

But it remains unclear how he intends to achieve this, given that birthright citizenship is enshrined in the US Constitution and would require a two-thirds vote in both chambers of Congress to change.

Indeed, Trump’s attempts could face significant legal hurdles. Eighteen states, along with the city of San Francisco and the District of Columbia, have already sued the federal government and challenged the executive order.

The first sentence of the 14th Amendment to the US constitution establishes the principle of “birthright citizenship”:

Immigration hardliners argue that the policy is a “great magnet for illegal immigration” and that it encourages undocumented pregnant women to cross the border in order to give birth, an act that has been pejoratively called “birth tourism” or having an “anchor baby”.

The 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868, after the close of the Civil War. The 13th Amendment had abolished slavery in 1865, while the 14th settled the question of the citizenship of freed, American-born former slaves.

Previous Supreme Court decisions, like Dred Scott v Sandford in 1857, had decided that African Americans could never be US citizens. The 14th Amendment overrode that.

In 1898, the US Supreme Court affirmed that birthright citizenship applies to the children of immigrants in the case of Wong Kim Ark v United States.

Wong was a 24-year-old child of Chinese immigrants who was born in the US, but denied re-entry when he returned from a visit to China. Wong successfully argued that because he was born in the US, his parents’ immigration status did not affect the application of the 14th Amendment.

“Wong Kim Ark vs United States affirmed that regardless of race or the immigration status of one’s parents, all persons born in the United States were entitled to all of the rights that citizenship offered,” writes Erika Lee, director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota. “The court has not re-examined this issue since then.”

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Most legal scholars agree that President Trump cannot end birthright citizenship with an executive order.

“He’s doing something that’s going to upset a lot of people, but ultimately this will be decided by the courts,” said Saikrishna Prakash, a constitutional expert and University of Virginia Law School professor. “This is not something he can decide on his own.”

Mr Prakash said that while the president can order employees of federal agencies to interpret citizenship more narrowly – agents with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, for example – that would trigger legal challenges from anyone whose citizenship is denied.

That could lead to a lengthy court battle ultimately winding up at the US Supreme Court.

A constitutional amendment could do away with birthright citizenship, but that would require a two-thirds vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate and approval by three quarters of US states.

According to Pew Research, about 250,000 babies were born to unauthorised immigrant parents in the United States in 2016, which is a 36% decrease from a peak in 2007. By 2022, the latest year that data is available, there are 1.2m US citizens born to unauthorised immigrant parents, Pew found.

But as those children also have children, the cumulative effect of ending birthright citizenship would increase the number of unauthorised immigrants in the country to 4.7m in 2050, the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank, found.

In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press, Trump said he thought the children of unauthorised immigrants should be deported alongside their parents – even if they were born in the US.

“I don’t want to be breaking up families,” Trump said last December. “So the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back.”

More than 30 countries – including Canada and Mexico – practise automatic “jus soli”, or “right of the soil” without restriction.

Other countries, like the UK and Australia, allow for a modified version where citizenship is automatically granted if one parent is a citizen or permanent resident.

Niluper says she has been living in agony.

A Uyghur refugee, she has spent the past decade hoping her husband would join her and their three sons in Turkey, where they now live.

The family was detained in Thailand in 2014 after fleeing increasing repression in their hometown in China’s Xinjiang province. She and the children were allowed to leave Thailand a year later. But her husband remained in detention, along with 47 other Uyghur men.

Niluper – not her real name – now fears she and her children may never see him again.

Ten days ago, she learned that Thai officials had tried to persuade the detainees to sign forms consenting to be sent back to China. When they realised what was in the forms, they refused to sign them.

The Thai government has denied having any immediate plans to send them back. But human rights groups believe they could be deported at any time.

“I don’t know how to explain this to my sons,” Niluper told the BBC on a video call from Turkey. Her sons, she says, keep asking about their father. The youngest has never met him.

“I don’t know how to digest this. I’m living in constant pain, constant fear that at any moment I may get the news from Thailand that my husband has been deported.”

The last time Thailand deported Uyghur asylum seekers was in July 2015. Without warning, it put 109 of them onto a plane back to China, prompting a storm of protest from governments and human rights groups.

The few photos that were released show them hooded and handcuffed, guarded by large numbers of Chinese police officers. Little is known about what happened to them after their return. Other deported Uyghurs have received long prison sentences in secret trials.

The nominee for Secretary of State in the incoming Trump administration, Marco Rubio, has promised to press Thailand not to send the remaining Uyghurs back.

Their living conditions have been described by one human rights defender as “a hell on earth”.

They are all being held in the Immigration Detention Centre (IDC) in central Bangkok, which houses most of those charged with immigration violations in Thailand. Some are there only briefly, while waiting to be deported; others are there much longer.

Driving along the narrow, congested road known as Suan Phlu it is easy to miss the non-descript cluster of cement buildings, and difficult to believe they house an estimated 900 detainees – the Thai authorities give out no precise numbers.

The IDC is known to be hot, overcrowded and unsanitary. Journalists are not allowed inside. Lawyers usually warn their clients to avoid being sent there if at all possible.

There are 43 Uyghurs there, plus another five being held in a Bangkok prison for trying to escape. They are the last of around 350 who fled China in 2013 and 2014.

They are kept in isolation from other inmates and are rarely allowed visits by outsiders or lawyers. They get few opportunities to exercise, or even to see daylight. They have been charged with no crime, apart from entering Thailand without a visa. Five Uyghurs have died in custody.

“The conditions there are appalling,” says Chalida Tajaroensuk, director of the People’s Empowerment Foundation, an NGO trying to help the Uyghurs.

“There is not enough food – it is mostly just soup made with cucumber and chicken bones. It is crammed in there. The water they get, both for drinking and washing, is dirty. Only basic medicines are provided and these are inadequate. If someone falls ill, it takes a long time to get an appointment with the doctor. And because of the dirty water, the hot weather and bad ventilation, a lot of the Uyghurs get rashes or other skin problems.”

But the worst part of their detention, say those who have experienced it, is not knowing how long they will be imprisoned in Thailand, and the constant fear of being sent back to China.

Niluper says there were always rumours about deportation but it was difficult to find out more. Escaping was hard because they had children with them.

“It was horrible. We were so scared all the time,” recalls Niluper.

“When we thought about being sent back to China, we would have preferred to die in Thailand.”

China’s repression of the Muslim Uyghurs has been well documented by the UN and human rights groups. Up to one million Uyghurs are believed to have been detained in re-education camps, in what human rights advocates say is a state campaign to eradicate Uyghur identity and culture. There are many allegations of torture and enforced disappearances, which China denies. It says it has been running “vocational centres” focused on de-radicalising Uyghurs.

Niluper says she and her husband faced hostility from Chinese state officials over their religiosity – her husband was an avid reader of religious texts.

The couple made the decision to flee when people they knew were being arrested or disappearing. The family were in a group of 220 Uyghurs who were caught by the Thai police trying to cross the border to Malaysia in March 2014.

Niluper was held in an IDC near the border, and then later in Bangkok, until with 170 other women and children, she was allowed in June 2015 to go to Turkey, which usually offers Uyghurs asylum.

But her husband remains in the Bangkok IDC. They were separated when they were detained, and she has had no contact with him since a brief meeting they were permitted in July 2014.

She says she was one of 18 pregnant women and 25 children crammed into a room that was just four by eight metres. The food was “bad and there was never enough for all of us”.

“I was the last one to give birth, at midnight, in the bathroom. The next day the guard saw my condition and that of my baby was not good, so they took us to the hospital.”

Niluper was also separated from her eldest son, who was just two years old at the time and held with his father – an experience which she says has traumatised him, after experiencing “terrible conditions” and witnessing a guard beating an inmate. When the guards brought him back to her, she says, he did not recognise her.

“He was so scared, screaming and crying. He could not understand what had happened. He did not want to talk to anyone.”

It took a long time before he accepted his mother, she says, and after that he would not leave her even for a moment, even after they had arrived in Turkey.

“It took a really, really long time for him to understand that he was finally in a safe place.”

Thailand has never explained why it will not allow the remaining Uyghurs to join their families in Turkey, but it is almost certainly because of pressure from China.

Unlike other inmates in the IDC, the fate of the Uyghurs is not handled by the Immigration Department but instead by Thailand’s National Security Council, a body chaired by the prime minister in which the military has significant influence.

As the influence of the US, Thailand’s oldest military ally, wanes, that of China has been steadily increasing. The current Thai government is keen to build even closer ties to China, to help revive the faltering economy.

The United Nations Refugee Agency has been accused of doing little to help the Uyghurs, but says it is given no access to them, so is unable to do much. Thailand does not recognise refugee status.

Accommodating China’s wish to get the Uyghurs back is not without risk though. Thailand has just taken a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, for which it lobbied hard.

Deporting 48 men who have already endured more than a decade of incarceration would badly tarnish the image the Thai government is trying to project.

Thailand will also be mindful of what happened just a month after the last mass deportation in 2015.

On 17 August that year a powerful bomb exploded at a shrine in Bangkok which was popular with Chinese tourists. Twenty people were killed, in what was widely assumed to be a retaliation by Uyghur militants, although the Thai authorities tried to downplay the link.

Two Uyghur men were charged with the bombing, but their trial has lasted for nine years, with no end in sight. One of them, say his lawyers, is almost certainly innocent. A veil of secrecy surrounds the trial; the authorities seem reluctant to let anything from the hearings tying the bomb to the deportation to get out.

Even those Uyghurs who have managed to get to Turkey must then deal with their uncertain status there, and with the severance of all communications with their families in Xinjiang.

“I have not heard my mother’s voice for 10 years,” says Hasan Imam, an Uyghur refugee who now works as a lorry driver in Turkey.

He was in the same group as Niluper caught by the Malaysian border in 2014.

He remembers how the following year the Thai authorities deceived them about their plan to deport some of them to China. He says they were told some men would be moved to a different facility, because the one they were in was too crowded.

This was after some women and children had been sent to Turkey, and, unusually, the men in the camp were also allowed to talk to their wives and children in Turkey on a phone.

“We were all happy, and full of hope,” Hassan says. “They selected them, one by one. At this point they had no idea they would be sent back to China. It was only later, through an illicit phone we had, that we found out from Turkey that they had been deported.”

This filled the remaining detainees with despair, recalls Hasan, and two years later, when he was moved temporarily to another holding camp, he and 19 others made a remarkable escape, using a nail to make a hole in a crumbling wall.

Eleven were recaptured, but Hasan managed to cross the forested border into Malaysia, and from there reached Turkey.

“I do not know what condition my parents are in but for those still detained in Thailand it is even worse,” he says.

They fear being sent back and imprisoned in China – and they also fear that it would mean more severe punishment for their families, he explains.

“The mental strain for them is unbearable.”

“We live in terror,” whispers Layla over the phone so nobody can hear. She fled Sudan with her husband and six children early last year in search of safety and is now in Libya.

Like all the Sudanese women who the BBC spoke to about their experiences of being trafficked to Libya, her name has been changed to protect her identity.

In a trembling voice she explains how her home in Omdurman had been raided during Sudan’s violent civil war, which erupted in 2023.

The family went to Egypt first before paying traffickers $350 (£338) to take them to Libya, where they had been told life would be better and they would be able to find jobs in cleaning and hospitality.

But as soon as they crossed the border, Layla says the traffickers held them hostage, beat them and demanded more money.

“My son needed medical attention after he was hit repeatedly in the face,” she tells the BBC.

The traffickers released them after three days, without saying why. Layla thought her new life in Libya was starting to get better after the family managed to travel west and she rented a room and started working.

But one day her husband left to look for work and never returned. Then her 19-year-old daughter was raped by a man known to the family through Layla’s job.

“He told my daughter he would rape her younger sister if she spoke about what he did to her,” Layla says.

She speaks in hushed tones fearing the family will be evicted if their landlady hears about the threats.

Layla says they are now trapped in Libya: they have no money left to pay traffickers to leave and cannot return to war-torn Sudan.

“We have barely any food,” she says, adding that her children are not in school. “My son is afraid to leave the house as other children often beat him and insult him for being black. I feel like I’m going to lose my mind.”

Millions have fled Sudan since the war between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) erupted in 2023. The two sides had jointly staged a coup in 2021, but a power struggle between their commanders plunged the country into civil war.

More than 12 million people have been forced from their homes, while famine has spread to five areas, with 24.6 million people – about half the population – in urgent need of food aid, experts say.

The UN refugee agency says more than 210,000 Sudanese refugees are now in Libya.

The BBC has spoken to five Sudanese families who initially went to Egypt, where they said they experienced racism and violence, before moving to Libya, believing it would be safer with better job opportunities. We contacted them through a researcher in migration and asylum seeker issues in Libya.

Salma tells the BBC she was already living in Cairo, in Egypt, with her husband and three children when the Sudanese civil war broke out, but as huge numbers of refugees entered the country, conditions for migrants there worsened.

They decided to move to Libya, but what was awaiting them there was a “living hell”, Salma says.

She describes how, as soon as they crossed the border, they were placed in a warehouse run by traffickers. The men wanted money that had been paid in advance to traffickers on the Egyptian side of the border, but it never arrived.

Her family spent nearly two months in the warehouse. At one point, Salma was separated from her husband and taken to a room for women and children. Here, she says she and her two eldest children were subjected to various forms of brutality because they wanted the money.

“Their whips left marks on our bodies. They would beat my daughter and put my son’s hands in a lit oven while I was watching.

“Sometimes I wished we would all die together. I could think of no other way out.”

Salma says her son and daughter were traumatised by the experience and have suffered from incontinence since. She then lowers her voice.

“They would take me to a separate room, the ‘rape room’ with different men each time,” she says. “I bear the child of one of them.”

Eventually, she raised some money through a friend in Egypt and the traffickers released the family.

She says a doctor then told her it was too late for an abortion, and when her husband found out she was pregnant he abandoned her and the children, leaving them to sleep rough, eating leftovers from rubbish bins and begging in the street.

They found refuge on a remote farm in north-western Libya for a while, spending whole days with little to no food. They quenched their thirst by drinking contaminated water from a nearby well.

“It breaks my heart to hear my [older] son saying he is literally dying from hunger,” Salma says over the phone, as the cries of her baby grow louder in the background.

“He is so hungry,” she says, “but I have nothing, not even enough milk in my breasts to feed him.”

Jamila, a Sudanese woman in her mid-40s, also believed reports within the Sudanese community that a better life awaited them in Libya.

She fled previous unrest in Sudan’s western region of Darfur in 2014 and spent years in Egypt before moving to Libya in late 2023. She says her daughters have been raped repeatedly since then – they were 19 and 20 when it first happened.

“I sent them for a cleaning job while I was ill; they came back at night covered with dirt and blood – four men raped them until one of them fainted,” she tells the BBC.

Jamila says she was also raped and held captive for weeks by a man, much younger than her, who had offered her a job cleaning his house.

“He used to call me a ‘disgusting black’. He raped me and said, ‘This is what women were made for,'” she recalls.

“Even kids here are mean to us, they treat us as beasts and sorcerers, they insult us for being black and African, are they not Africans themselves?” Jamila says.

When her daughters were raped the first time, Jamila took them to hospital and reported it to police. But when the police officer realised they were refugees, Jamila says he withdrew the report and warned her that she would be jailed if the complaint was officially filed. This was in the west of Libya.

Libya is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention or the 1967 protocol relating to the Status of Refugees – and considers refugees and asylum-seekers “illegal migrants”.

The country is divided into two, with each part run by a different government, but the situation is easier for migrants in the east as they can file official complaints without being detained, and access healthcare more easily, according to human rights group Libya Crimes Watch.

While sexual violence is common within unofficial facilities run by traffickers, there is also evidence that abuse is happening in official detention centres in Libya, especially in the west.

Hanaa, a Sudanese woman who works gathering plastic bottles from bins to feed her children, says she was abducted in western Libya and taken to a forest and raped at gunpoint by a group of men.

The next day her attackers took her to a facility run by the state-funded Stability Support Authority (SSA). Nobody told Hanaa why she had been detained.

“Young men and boys were beaten and forced to completely remove their clothes while I was watching,” Hanaa tells the BBC.

“I was there for days. I slept on the bare floor, resting my head on my plastic slippers. They would let me go to the toilet after hours of begging. I was repeatedly beaten on the head.”

There have been numerous previous reports of migrants from other African countries being abused in Libya. The country is a key stepping stone on the way to Europe, although none of the women the BBC spoke to planned to travel there.

In 2022, Amnesty International accused the SSA of “unlawful killings, arbitrary detentions, interception and subsequent arbitrary detention of migrants and refugees, torture, forced labour, and other shocking human rights violations and crimes under international law”.

The report states that Ministry of Interior officials in the capital, Tripoli, told Amnesty that the ministry had no oversight over the SSA since it answers to the prime minister, Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, whose office did not respond to our request for comment.

Libya Crimes Watch has told the BBC that systemic sexual abuse of migrants takes place in official migrant detention centres, including the notorious Abu Salim prison in Tripoli.

In a 2023 report, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said there was an “increasing number of reports of sexual and physical violence, including systematic strip and intimate body searches and rape” at Abu Salim.

The interior affairs minister and the Department for Combating Illegal Migration in Tripoli did not respond to our request for comment.

Salma has now left the farm moved into a new room with another family nearby, but she and her family still face the threat of eviction and abuse.

She says she cannot go back home because of what happened to her.

“I bring shame on the family, they would say. I’m not sure they would even welcome my dead body,” she says. “If only I had known what was awaiting me here.”

• Inside a Libyan migrant detention centre
• How Bangladeshis are lured into slavery in Libya
• A quick guide to Libya
• Sudan war: A simple guide to what is happening

When Pte Oleksander Bezverkhny was evacuated to the Feofaniya Hospital in Kyiv, few believed he would live. The 27-year-old had a severe abdominal injury and shrapnel had ripped through his buttocks. Both his legs were amputated.

Then, doctors discovered that his infections were resistant to commonly-used antibiotics – and the already daunting task of saving his life became almost hopeless.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is when bacteria evolve and learn how to defend themselves against antibiotics and other medicines, rendering them ineffective.

Ukraine is far from the only country affected by this issue: around 1.4 million people globally died of a AMR infection in 2021, and in the UK there were 66,730 serious antibiotic-resistant infections in 2023. However, war appears to have accelerated the spread of multi-resistant pathogens in Ukraine.

Clinics treating war injuries have registered a sharp increase of AMR cases. More than 80% of all patients admitted to Feofaniya Hospital have infections caused by microbes which are resistant to antibiotics, according to deputy chief physician Dr Andriy Strokan.

Ironically, antimicrobial-resistant infections often originate from medical facilities.

Medical staff try to follow strict hygiene protocols and use protective equipment to minimise the spread of these infections but facilities can be overwhelmed with people injured in the war.

Dr Volodymyr Dubyna, the head of the Mechnikov Hospital’s ICU, said that since the start of the Russian invasion his unit alone has increased the number of beds from 16 to 50. Meanwhile, with many employees fleeing the war or joining the military themselves, staffing levels are down.

Dr Strokan explained that these circumstances can affect the spread of AMR bacteria. “In surgical departments there is one nurse that looks after 15-20 patients,” he said. “She physically cannot scrub up her hands in the required amount and frequency in order not to spread infections.”

The nature of this war also means patients are exposed to far more strains of infection than they would be in peacetime. When a soldier is evacuated for medical reasons, they will often pass through multiple facilities, each with their own strains of AMR. While medical professionals say this is unavoidable because of the scale of the war, it only worsens the spread of AMR infections.

This was the case for Pte Bezverkhny who was treated at three different facilities before reaching the hospital in Kyiv. Since his infections could not be treated with the usual medication, his condition deteriorated and he contracted sepsis five times.

This situation is different to other recent conflicts, for example the Afghanistan War, where Western soldiers would be stabilised on site and then air-transferred to a European clinic rather than passing through multiple different local facilities.

This would not be possible in Ukraine as the influx of patients has not been seen since the Second World War, according to Dr Dubyna, whose hospital in Dnipro neighbours front-line regions. Once his patients are stable enough, they are transferred to another clinic – if it has room – to free up capacity.

“In terms of microbiological control, it means they spread [bacteria] further. But if it’s not done, we’re not able to work. Then it’s a catastrophe.”

With so many wounded, Ukrainian hospitals simply cannot usually afford to isolate infected patients – meaning that multi-resistant and dangerous bacteria spread unchecked.

The problem is that infections they cause must be treated with special antibiotics from the “reserve” list. But the more often doctors prescribe these, the quicker bacteria adapt, making those antibiotics ineffective too.

“We have to balance our scales,” Dr Strokan explains. “On the one hand, we must save a patient. On the other – we mustn’t breed new microorganisms that will have antimicrobial resistance.”

In Pte Bezverkhny’s case, doctors had to use very expensive antibiotics, which volunteers sourced from abroad. After a year in hospital and over 100 operations, his condition is no longer life-threatening.

Doctors managed to save his life. But as pathogens grow more resistant, the struggle to save others only gets harder.

When Teddy Swims turned up to the MTV Awards last September, he was nominated for four prizes, including best new artist.

In the event, the combined forces of Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter denied him a single Moon Man trophy – but the singer left with something much more valuable.

“I didn’t realise until a couple of weeks later, but my partner and I conceived that night,” he beams.

“We’re due in June and things are great. I think we’re gonna crush it.”

Domestic bliss isn’t a quality that fans might associate with Teddy Swims.

His huge breakthrough single Lose Control, and the hit album I’ve Tried Everything But Therapy, were rooted in dysfunction, addiction and heartbreak.

They were inspired by a toxic, mutually-destructive relationship he’d escaped. In the past, he’s described it as a “really co-dependent lifestyle” that went from “bender to bender” as both sides “leveraged each other’s shame against one another”.

As he sings on a recent single, “I saved my life when I showed you the door”.

But that was only one chapter in the story of the 32-year-old Georgia native Jaten Dimsdale.

This Friday, he releases a second album, I’ve Tried Everything But Therapy Part 2, that explains what happened next.

“I’ve learned that love doesn’t have to be this thing of high highs and low lows – fighting and pulling teeth just to stay together,” he says.

“The first album was a lot of turmoil, and not too much closure. So I wanted to come back and say, ‘Here’s me on the other side of this, and I’m doing better’.

“I feel like, as a listener, I would want to hear that there’s a way out.”

His new partner is also a singer-songwriter, Raiche Wright, who he met “a couple of Thanksgivings ago” when she came to one of his shows – and the new album dwells in a sort of bewildered bliss.

“” he wonders on the slick R&B groove of Are You Real.

Later, on the acoustic guitar ballad If You Ever Change Your Mind, he croons, “” with a quiet sincerity rarely found in a pop record.

Musically, the album paints from the same palette as before – a brand of 1960s soul where dusty piano grooves and chugging guitar lines are punched up with a modern pop sheen, and a pinch of rock and roll swagger.

But it’s not all hearts and flowers. The sumptuous soul of Black And White makes a plea for tolerance, inspired by the prejudice Dimsdale and his partner – who has mixed black and white heritage – have faced.

“I see people looking disgusted because we’re different colours – especially down South,” he says.

“But it’s okay to be happy in love with someone of a different colour, or a different size or shape, or the same sex, or whatever it is.

“Why would you be hating on that? It’s such a backwards thing.”

Dimsdale learned about acceptance the hard way. Born in Conyers, an eastern suburb of Atlanta, his grandfather was a Pentecostal preacher with set views on the world, and family life was hard to navigate.

His parents divorced when he was three and, although both remarried, their new relationships were problematic. His mother, with whom he lived, married an alcoholic who left suddenly when Dinsdale was 18 and never spoke to the family again.

His father, who he saw at weekends, married a woman who developed serious mental health problems, including schizophrenia, and spent long stretches in hospital. His dad ended up raising Dimsdale’s step-brothers almost single-handedly.

“He’d work 18 hours a day, and still get the homework done and still get to the practices, all by himself,” he says.

“There’s just not enough I can say about how amazing that man truly is.”

Dimsdale was a late bloomer when it came to music. As a youngster, he was a dedicated footballer, until a friend convinced him to audition for a school production of Damn Yankees.

The musical sparked a love affair with singing. He researched vocal techniques on YouTube, soaking in performances by Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson and Aretha Franklin.

After graduation, he started playing with local metal bands, adopting the stage name “Swims” from internet forum-speak for Someone Who Isn’t Me Sometimes. Teddy, meanwhile, is a childhood nickname, based on his affable and cuddly persona.

But it was a cover of Shania Twain’s country ballad You’re Still The One that earned him his big break.

On YouTube, it’s been watched 197 million times. One of those viewers was a talent scout for Warner Bros records, who signed Dimsdale to a record deal on Christmas Eve 2019.

They partnered the musician with professional writers like Julian Bunetta (Sabrina Carpenter, One Direction) and Mikky Ekko (Rihanna, Drake) – but he also retained his high school band, Freak Feely, who play with him to this day.

After three EPs, and hundreds of sessions, they wrote Lose Control, and Dinsdale instantly “knew it was going to change my life”.

He was right. With 2.2 billion global streams, it is one of the most successful songs in recent chart history – but finding an audience took time.

There was no viral moment or TikTok trend associated with Lose Control. Instead, Dimsdale “did it the old-fashioned way”.

“We showed up and did every damn interview possible,” he says. “We went to every office and radio station and shook every hand individually. We stopped everyone on the street, busking.”

He believes the personal touch beats everything, hands down.

“People love to see their friend win, so if you go out there and make time for them, it goes a lot further than a playlist coming across your desk, or a little file coming to your email that says, ‘Hey, can you push this song?’

“And that’s the old way you work a record, before streaming.”

Bashfully, he confesses the song made him a millionaire (“so I can’t be too mad at that girl any more, can I?”) but he’s learning that making money means spending money.

“A million dollars goes so fast,” he says. “Once you put 66 people on a tour, with all the gear and all the lights, it’s right out the door as fast as you get it.

“Twenty bucks still means what 20 bucks meant to me before, but the amount coming in and out is such a scary thing to look at sometimes.”

As we speak, he’s in rehearsals in Pennsylvania, ahead of his first European arena tour, which includes two nights at Wembley this March.

The stage has just been built for the first time, and he’s eager to acquaint himself with all the ramps and video walls. The music… not so much.

“I wouldn’t say I’m already sick of the songs, but we’ve been playing them non-stop for two weeks now,” he says. “I can’t wait ’til people sing along, so I can fall in love with them again.”

If you’ve been to a Teddy Swims show, you’ll know he lays his heart on the line.

There are countless videos of him sobbing as he performs Some Things I’ll Never Know, a song about abandonment and grief. For the upcoming tour, he’s playing it back-to-back with a new tear-jerker, Northern Lights, that dives even deeper into heartbreak.

He’s going to be a mess – but Dimsdale insists it’s a good thing.

“Every day I try to cry a little bit,” he says. “It’s just pain leaving the body.

“And it’s a constant reminder that, whatever you were going through, on the other side of it there’s happiness.”

With his bearded and tattooed face, you might not expect such emotional intelligence – but Dimsdale’s model of masculinity wasn’t afraid to share his feelings.

“I’m my daddy’s son,” he says. “He’s just a sensitive man. He’ll tell you he loves you, he’ll tell you he’s proud of you. Man, I’ll still sit there, laying in his arms while we’re watching TV on the couch.”

“He’s the most beautiful, humble human being I’ve ever met. Second to only Jesus Christ.”

So, the obvious question: Is dad excited to become a grandfather?

“He’s doing backflips,” laughs the singer.

“I’m almost scared to have him as a granddad, because I want my kids to think I’m cool, too.”

When Mir Ahmad Bin Quasem was abducted at night by armed men from his home in Bangladesh, his four-year-old daughter was too young to understand what was happening.

“They were dragging me away, I was barefoot,” he tells me, sobbing. “My youngest daughter was running behind me with my shoes saying ‘take, father’, as if she thought I was going away.”

He was held in solitary confinement for eight years, handcuffed and blindfolded, yet still doesn’t know where or why.

The British-trained barrister, 40, is one of Bangladesh’s so-called “disappeared”. These were critics of Sheikh Hasina, the country’s prime minister of more than 20 years, in two terms, until she was deposed last August.

Hasina’s regime ruled over the worst violence Bangladesh has seen since its war of independence in 1971 in which hundreds were killed, including at least 90 people while she clung to power on her last day in office.

Controversial in her own right, Hasina is also the aunt of Labour MP Tulip Siddiq – who resigned as Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s anti-corruption minister last week after a slew of corruption allegations that she denied.

These included claims Siddiq’s family embezzled up to £3.9bn from infrastructure spending in Bangladesh – and that she used properties in London linked to her aunt’s allies.

The government’s ethics watchdog later found she did not break the ministerial code, but Siddiq resigned anyway.

That isn’t necessarily the end of the matter, though.

The episode raises troubling questions about Starmer’s judgement and Labour’s approach to courting the votes of people of Bangladeshi heritage.

Questions are now swirling over why Labour failed to see this coming, given the party has long known about Siddiq’s links to her scandal-hit aunt. It was 2016 when Bin Quasem’s case was first raised with her.

He and others among Bangladesh’s “disappeared” have represented an awkward tension with Siddiq’s publicly voiced views on human rights in the years since.

She long campaigned for the release from Iran of her constituent Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, for example, while showing an apparent comparative indifference in her public statements to the suffering and extrajudicial killings under her aunt’s regime in Bangladesh.

Siddiq has also previously appeared alongside her aunt at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and appeared on BBC television as a spokesperson for the Awami League, the political party Hasina has led since 1981.

Siddiq also thanked Awami League members for helping her election as a Labour MP in 2015. Two pages on her website from 2008 and 2009 setting out her links to the party were later removed.

Yet once in Parliament Siddiq told journalists that she had “no capability or desire to influence politics in Bangladesh”.

So these links weren’t a secret, but perhaps they weren’t viewed as a bad thing within Labour, not least since it has shown little sign of distancing itself from the Awami League in recent years.

Then-Labour MP Jim Fitzpatrick told the Commons in 2012 that they were “sister organisations”, a warmth shared by many of his colleagues.

And Starmer – who entered Parliament in 2015 at the same time as Siddiq in her neighbouring seat – has met Hasina multiple times.

This included in 2022 when the then-Bangladeshi PM was in London for Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral, a meeting that Bin Quasem calls “heartbreaking and shocking”.

A Starmer ally argues it is “perfectly legitimate” for him to have met Hasina, and it did not amount to an endorsement of her policies.

The apparent attempts by Labour over the years to keep Bangladesh on side might reflect the political reality here in the UK, especially in parts of the capital city.

“You can’t succeed in east London without understanding the Bangladeshi vote”, one seasoned Labour campaigner explains.

However, those who fail to appreciate the country’s divided and volatile politics can end up offending those they are attempting to charm. “You need to carefully balance what you say and do,” the campaigner says. “If you are too overt for one [Bangladeshi] party, you’ll get criticised.”

Analysis by the FT suggests there are at least 17 UK constituencies where the voting-age Bangladeshi population is larger than the Labour majority.

Starmer’s Holborn and St Pancras constituency has at least 6,000 adult residents of Bangladeshi origin.

Might this mix of warmth and political pragmatism have clouded Starmer’s judgement from a potential corruption storm on the horizon when, shortly after winning the election in July, he appointed Siddiq as the Treasury minister responsible for leading Britain’s anti-corruption efforts?

“Starmer has blindspots for his friends and political allies,” says a Labour source. “It’s not new.”

Investigative journalist David Bergman, who has been shedding light on Siddiq’s connections to Bangladeshi politics for a decade, points out context is everything. “This was not a major story until Labour got into power, Tulip Siddiq became a minister and the Awami League government fell,” he says.

He argues someone in the party should have raised concerns many years before. “There was first a blind spot about Tulip Siddiq’s failure to respond to enforced disappearances in Bangladesh,” Bergman argues.

“Then there was a blind spot about how tied she was to the UK Awami League.”

When I put this to one Labour MP, they responded that the UK media, as well as Labour, have had a Bangladesh blind spot.

“There are some 600,000 people in the British Bangla diaspora”, they say. “It is a country with the eighth largest population on Earth yet we’ve not heard a peep [from the UK media] since the events of 5 August.”

The corruption investigations into Hasina are likely to rumble on for some time, potentially bringing further issues for Starmer’s top team to address in the months ahead while Siddiq remains a Labour MP.

For Bin Quasem, the toppling of Hasina’s regime saw him abruptly awoken in his cell, bundled into a car and dumped in a ditch, before finally being allowed to return home to his two daughters.

Toddlers when he last saw them in 2016, they are now young women. “I couldn’t really recognise them, and they couldn’t recognise me,” he tells me through tears.

“At times it’s difficult to stomach that I never got to see my daughters grow up.

“I missed the best part of life. I missed their childhood.”

Scottish soldier Donnie MacRae died as a German prisoner of war during World War Two – but it was not until almost 80 years later that his family discovered he had been buried without his brain.

Donnie died in a PoW hospital in 1941 and because he had suffered with a rare neurological condition an autopsy was performed on his body.

During the post-mortem, his brain and part of his spinal cord were removed and sent to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Psychiatry in Munich to be used for research.

His body was buried by the Germans and later reburied by the Allies in the Commonwealth War Graves cemetery in Berlin but no-one knew his brain had been removed.

In total, about 160 small slices of Donnie’s brain and spinal cord have been kept in the archives of the Munich research centre – since renamed the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry – ever since.

A BBC Radio 4 documentary – Shadow of War: A Tainted Anatomy – looks at why this happened and at the work being carried out to reunite the remains with the soldier in his grave.

Donnie MacRae grew up as a Gaelic speaker in Gairloch on the west coast of Scotland.

The family were music lovers, with a strong tradition of bagpiping, and they were all talented tailors, including Donnie.

He had plans to use hand-woven tweeds from his home village to set up his own tailoring business in Blair Atholl in Perthshire, where his brother lived and worked as a chauffeur at a local hotel.

However, in 1939, with the country on the brink of war, Donnie joined the Territorial Army and was called up to fight.

He was a private with the Seaforth Highlanders and was captured as a prisoner of war while fighting at St Valery, France, in June 1940.

He died the following year, at the age of 33, in a prisoner of war camp hospital.

Though the MacRae family knew of Donnie’s capture and death, they were never informed about an autopsy, or about samples being taken from his brain.

It was only in 2020, when Prof Paul Weindling from Oxford Brookes University got in touch, that his niece Libby MacRae learned what had happened after Donnie’s death.

Prof Weindling is part of an international group of researchers who are examining records of thousands of brains that were held at the Max Planck Society in Germany.

The aim of the project is to identify all the victims and to commemorate them properly.

“One overlooked group is certainly prisoners of war whose brains were taken for neuropathological research by the Germans and stockpiled for many, many years,” Prof Weindling says.

The Germans wanted to be at the forefront of medical research and the reason why Donnie’s brain ended up at the institute in Munich lies in the manner of his death.

When he was captured he had been wounded by a rifle bullet in the left knee and back.

Although the wound healed he was later readmitted to hospital where his condition deteriorated quickly in the following months.

At first he had double vision, tingling in his fingertips and difficulty speaking.

This rapidly led to paralysis in both arms and an inability to speak.

In the days before his death he was unable to move.

Donnie died on 6 March 1941 of a rare condition called Landry’s Paralysis – known in the UK as the Guillain-Barré syndrome – where the immune system attacks the nervous system.

It is usually not fatal and, as a result, an autopsy was undertaken, including a dissection of his brain.

Dr Sabine Hildebrandt, a lecturer at Harvard Medical School with a keen interest in the ethics of the period, told the BBC it was an “excruciating fact” that removing tissue after death was not unusual.

“I’m not saying that they were ethically correct, but they were within the routine process of scientific work at the time,” Dr Hildebrandt says.

The slices of Donnie’s brain and spinal cord were fixed in a solution and put on to glass microscope slides to be used for research into his condition.

His niece Libby says: “It’s difficult to say what it feels like.

“I think it’s pretty horrible, actually, to think about it.”

As well as Donnie, Prof Weindling and his team uncovered records of four other British prisoners of war who had their brains removed and held for research purposes during 1941.

They were Patrick O’Connell, Donald McPhail, Joseph Elston and William Lancaster.

Until very recently, none of the families of the men had any idea what had happened to their relatives.

They were among about 2,000 brains that were taken for research by the leading Berlin and Munich institutes during World War Two, including those of children killed during the Holocaust.

The victims also included Polish Jews and Catholics, those with mental illness, political prisoners, Belgian resistance fighters and French and Polish soldiers.

Other German institutes are also known to have harvested body parts for research.

Dr Hildebrandt says the output of research from the German institutes was vast, and researchers across the world were “envious” of the volume of work coming out of the country.

After the war, the Allies investigated the true nature of Nazi crimes and the resulting Nuremberg Trial saw nearly 200 people convicted of war crimes.

However, the Kaiser Wilhelm research institutes and those anatomists involved were allowed to continue their work.

This was in part due to the fact that, although it is now considered deeply unethical to keep human tissue without consent, at the time it was the norm.

However, questions arise over why nothing was done for so long about material held in German archives.

In the late 1980s there was a push from the German government to get rid of any specimens that had been “sourced” during World War Two, in particular any samples from persecuted groups.

There was to be a mass burial of hundreds of thousands of slides in Munich and a short deadline of just a few months was set.

Prof Heinz Wässle, who was head of the neurological department of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Berlin at the time, said there was pressure to act extremely quickly.

“We were not able in short notice to find out which of the sections were from victims and which were just ordinary neuropathological material, therefore our decision was to bury all the sections from 1933 to 1945.”

However, the Munich institute chose a different policy.

It only buried those with suspected links to the so-called euthanasia programmes, which referred to the systematic killing of those the Nazis deemed “unworthy of life” because of alleged genetic diseases or defects.

Many slides, considered to be of scientific interest, were retained.

The samples of Donnie MacRae were held for research purposes until 2015, when they were then put into an archive collection.

Now, more than 80 years after his death, work is under way to reunite this material with the rest of Donnie’s remains in his war grave in Berlin.

Prof Weindling and his colleagues have been connecting microscope samples with patient records, and contacting the next of kin.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission recently agreed to accept Donnie’s brain and spinal cord samples from the Max Planck Institute and reunite them with the remains already buried at their cemetery in Berlin.

“We are hoping this will mean we are in the position to re-inter the remains later this year,” they said.

Libby says she hopes the painful situation is close to finally being resolved.

“I’m so glad to hear that the Commonwealth War Graves Commission will eventually bury the specimens, and all of Donnie will be together in a peaceful place,” she said.

Her wish is to see a new Gaelic inscription on Donnie’s grave in Berlin – “Faodaidh an saoghal tighinn gu crìch ach mairidh gaol is ceòl gu bràth”.

It translates as: “The world may come to an end, but love and music will last forever.”

Shadow of War: A Tainted Anatomy is on BBC Radio 4 at 8pm on Tuesday 21st January and available on BBC Sounds.

US President Donald Trump says he has signed a full and unconditional pardon for Ross Ulbricht, who operated Silk Road, the dark web marketplace where illegal drugs were sold.

Ulbricht was convicted in 2015 in New York in a narcotics and money laundering conspiracy and sentenced to life in prison.

Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he had called Ulbricht’s mother to inform her that he had granted a pardon to her son.

Silk Road, which was shut down in 2013 after police arrested Ulbricht, sold illegal drugs using Bitcoin, as well as hacking equipment and stolen passports.

“The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me,” Trump said in his post online on Tuesday evening. “He was given two life sentences, plus 40 years. Ridiculous!”

Ulbricht was found guilty of charges including conspiracy to commit drug trafficking, money laundering and computer hacking.

During his trial, prosecutors said Ulbricht’s website, hosted on the hidden “dark web”, sold more than $200m (£131m) worth of drugs anonymously.

The Silk Road took its name from the historic trade routes spanning Europe, Asia and parts of Africa.

The site achieved notoriety through media reports and online chatter. But users could only access the site through Tor – a system that lets people use the web without revealing who they are or which country they are in.

Court documents from the FBI said the site had just under a million registered users, but investigators said they did not know how many were active.

Sentencing Ulbricht – who has two college degrees – District Judge Katherine Forrest said he was “no better a person than any other drug dealer”.

She said the site had been his “carefully planned life’s work”.

The judge noted the lengthy sentence also acted as a message to copycats that there would be “very serious consequences”.

“I wanted to empower people to make choices in their lives and have privacy and anonymity,” Ulbricht said at his sentencing in May 2015.

Trump previously hinted that he planned to commute Ulbricht’s sentence during a speech last year at the Libertarian National Convention.

The Libertarian party had been advocating for Ulbricht’s release and said his case was an example of government overreach.

Republican congressman Thomas Massie, a Trump ally, applauded the president’s decision.

“Thank you for keeping your word to me and others who have been advocating for Ross’ freedom,” said the Kentucky lawmaker.

Elon Musk has brushed aside the furore over a one-armed gesture he gave during a speech celebrating the inauguration of Donald Trump.

At Monday’s event, Musk thanked the crowd for “making it happen”, before placing his right hand over his heart and then thrusting the same arm out into air straight ahead of him. He then turned and repeated the action for those sitting behind him.

Some on X, the social medial platform he owns, likened the gesture to a Nazi salute, though others disagreed.

In response, the SpaceX and Tesla chief posted on X: “Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.”

Musk, the world’s richest man and a close ally of President Trump, was speaking at the Capital One Arena in Washington DC when he made the gesture.

“My heart goes out to you. It is thanks to you that the future of civilisation is assured,” the 53-year-old said, after giving the second one-armed salute.

There was immediate backlash on social media and disagreement about Musk’s intent.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University, said: “Historian of fascism here. It was a Nazi salute and a very belligerent one too.”

But the Anti-Defamation League, an organisation founded to combat antisemitism, did not agree.

“It seems that Elon Musk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute,” it posted on X.

Andrea Stroppa, a confidant of Musk who has connected him with far-right Italian PM Giorgia Meloni, was reported by Italian media to have posted the clip of Musk with the caption: “Roman Empire is back starting from Roman salute”.

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The Roman salute was widely used in Italy by Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Party, before later being adopted by Adolf Hitler in Germany.

Stroppa later deleted his post, Italian media said. He later posted that “that gesture, which some mistook for a Nazi salute, is simply Elon, who has autism, expressing his feelings by saying, ‘I want to give my heart to you'”.

“That is exactly what he communicated into the microphone. ELON DISLIKES EXTREMISTS!”

The gesture comes as Musk’s politics have increasingly shifted to the right. He has made recent statements in support of Germany’s far-right AfD party and British anti-immigration party Reform UK.

Appearing at the Davos at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was asked about the comparison to a Nazi salute, something that is banned in Germany.

“We have the freedom of speech in Europe and in Germany,” he said.

“… what we do not accept is if this is supporting extreme right positions. And this is what I would like to repeat again.”

Musk has become one of Trump’s closest allies and has been tapped to co-lead what the president has termed the Department of Government Efficiency.

Shivering a little, Marcos pulls his hoodie over his head as much to protect his identity as to shield him from the cold.

A year ago, at just 16 years old, he says he was forcibly recruited into a drug cartel in his home state of Michoacán, Mexico.

Recounting his story of horror and escape, Marcos (not his real name) says he and his family fled Michoacán with only what they were wearing.

Leaving for the pharmacy one evening to buy painkillers for his mother’s toothache, he says he was suddenly surrounded by four pick-up trucks with armed men inside.

“Get in,” he says they ordered, “or we’ll kill your family.”

They dragged him off to a shack where several other youths were in the same predicament, according to Marcos.

For months, he says he was made to be a foot soldier in a war he wanted no part of, before managing to escape with the help of a gang member who took pity on him.

Marcos has spent months inside a migrant shelter in the Mexican border city of Tijuana waiting to make his case for asylum before the US authorities, confident that he could convince them he has what US immigration courts call “credible fear” of persecution or torture in Mexico.

But now he thinks President Trump’s sweeping executive orders on immigration and border security have ruined his chances of success.

“I hope they look at the circumstances of every person and take each case on its merit,” he says, “and that Mr Trump’s heart softens to help those who truly need it.”

From the Oval Office on Monday evening, hours after returning to the presidency, Trump signed a blizzard of orders aimed at delivering on one of his central campaign promises: to drastically reduce illegal migration and asylum claims at the US border.

Among the measures were a move to declare some drug cartels terrorist organisations, paving the way for US military action and deportations.

That order has Pastor Albert Rivera, the director of a migrant shelter that primarily houses people fleeing cartel intimidation and death threats, confused.

He says there’s a contradiction at the heart of the executive order.

“If you’re going from saying these people are fleeing gangs to say they are now fleeing terrorists, surely that only makes their claims for asylum stronger,” he argues.

For Trump’s supporters on the other side of the border, in southern California, the need for these strict new measures is self-evident.

“It will be a relief,” says Paula Whitsell, the chairwoman of the San Diego County Republican Party, about the new president’s plan to launch what he’s called “the largest deportation in American history”.

“Our system here in San Diego County is very burdened by the heavy weight of all these people coming in, and we’re just not built for it. The county is not made to be able to sustain this,” she argues.

She insists the measures are not inherently anti-immigrant – “we are still a nation of immigrants” – but directed instead at removing undocumented criminals in the US and dismantling the gangs that operate people-smuggling routes across the border.

But for people waiting in Mexico, who say they have done nothing wrong and have legitimate claims for asylum, Trump’s orders have had sweeping and swift consequences.

On the morning that the president took the oath of office, around 60 migrants gathered at the Chaparral crossing in Tijuana, waiting to speak to border guards about their asylum claims. But they never got the chance, as Mexican officials instead directed them towards buses that would take them back to shelters.

The CBP One app – a mobile application launched by the Biden administration and criticised by Trump on the campaign trial – had shut down.

The app had been the only legal pathway to request asylum at the US-Mexico border, and with all of its appointments scrapped, there would no crossing the border.

For some, it felt like the end of the road.

Oralia has been living with her two youngest children for seven months in a nylon tent just walking distance from the US border.

She says she is also fleeing cartel threats in Michoacán, and that her 10-year-old boy has epilepsy. She says her hope was to get him medical attention somewhere safe in the US.

But without the CBP One app, Oralia says she has little hope that her claim will ever be heard.

“We have no choice but to go back and trust in God that nothing happens,” she says.

A local migrant rights’ lawyer has apparently advised her to wait and see how President Trump’s actions unfold. But Oralia’s mind is made up.

Her bags packed, the tent she’s called home for most of the last year is now vacant for the next family.

“It’s all been so unjust,” she says, wiping away tears.

“Mexico receives their citizens with no complaint, but it doesn’t work the other way round.

“I just hope God moves him [Trump] because there are lots of families like ours.”

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Netflix will raise prices across a number of countries after adding nearly 19 million subscribers in the final months of 2024.

The streaming firm said it will increase subscription costs in the US, Canada, Argentina and Portugal.

“We will occasionally ask our members to pay a little more so that we can re-invest to further improve Netflix,” it said.

Netflix announced better-than-expected subscriber numbers, helped by the second series of South Korean drama Squid Game as well as sports including a boxing match between influencer-turned-fighter Jake Paul and former world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson.

In the US, prices will increase across almost all plans including the standard subscription with no adverts which will now cost $17.99 (£14.60) a month, up from $15.49.

Its membership with adverts will also rise, by one dollar to $7.99.

The last time Netflix raised prices in the US was October 2023, when it also lifted costs for some plans in the UK.

Asked if prices were set to increase in the UK, a spokesperson for Netflix said there was “nothing to share right now”.

Meanwhile, the company said it finished last year with more than 300 million subscribers in total. It had been expected to add 9.6 million new subscribers between October and December but far surpassed that number.

It is the last time that Netflix will report quarterly subscriber growth – from now on it said it will “continue to announce paid memberships as we cross key milestones”.

As well as Squid Game and the Paul v Tyson fight, Netflix also streamed two NFL games on Christmas Day.

It will also broadcast more live events including WWE wrestling and has bought the rights for the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2027 and 2031.

Paolo Pescatore, a technology analyst at PP Foresight, said Netflix “is now flexing its muscles by adjusting prices given its far stronger and diversified programming slate compared to rivals”.

Net profit between October and December doubled to $1.8bn compared to the same period a year ago.

Sales rose from $8.8bn to $10.2bn.

Donald Trump has signed sweeping executive orders on his return to the US presidency, vowing swift action on some of his top campaign issues.

Among the directives that have gained the most publicity are an immigration crackdown and rollbacks of some climate-friendly policies.

But even presidential powers have their limits – and in some cases, he faces hurdles before his plans can become reality.

What does the order say?

The order argues that cartels have “engaged in a campaign of violence and terror” throughout the hemisphere, and flooded the US with crime, posing a national security risk to the US.

Additionally, the order specifies that the US policy is to “ensure the total elimination” of these groups in the US. It gives US agencies 14 days to provide recommendations on which groups are to be designated and be ready to expedite the removal of individuals from the US.

What are the roadblocks?

Designating a cartel as a terrorist group could open the door to prosecuting US citizens or even legitimate businesses found to be somehow tied to those groups. The designation could also strain relations with countries including Mexico, which has vocally called for its sovereignty to be respected.

What is the potential impact?

For one, the designation of these groups as foreign terrorist organisations could ultimately be used to justify military action against targets in Mexico or other countries in which similar groups operate.

The designation could also see the US federal government dedicate more resources and enhanced legal tools to fight cartels and other gangs, and go after their business and financial interests on both sides of the border.

While it would make “material support” of these groups a crime, it remains unclear what that could mean. In theory, that could mean that drug dealers and users, including US citizens, could be charged with aiding terrorists – as could US citizens or businesses on the border that are extorted to pay them.

What does the order say?

The executive order asks the US ambassador to the UN to “immediately” submit a formal written request to withdraw from the Paris agreement.

It says the accord does not reflect the country’s values or its economic and environmental objectives.

What are the roadblocks?

Any country can withdraw from the global climate pact, but UN regulations mean the process of removing a country can be drawn out.

Trump announced his intent to withdraw during his last term in 2017, but it was not formally finalised until 2020. We can expect another waiting period this time of at least one year.

President Joe Biden rejoined it shortly after taking office in 2021

What is the potential impact?

The US is responsible for around 11% of global greenhouse gas emissions, making it the second biggest polluter behind China. This damages the global effort to limit emissions.

Its withdrawal in the past has raised issues of trust on climate leadership, and questions about whether the agreement itself has been effective.

The withdrawal is also in line with Trump’s goal to boost domestic oil and gas production, though the US is already the number one producer of both in the world. It is one of several of Trump’s reversals of environmental protections that were enacted by the Biden administration.

What does the order say?

This order aims to end birth right citizenship for children born in the US to immigrant parents who are in the country illegally, as well as those born to parents who are in the country on a temporary basis.

There have been reports that the administration will enforce the order by withholding documents, such as passports, from people it deems ineligible for citizenship.

What are the roadblocks?

The principle of birthright citizenship is established in the US Constitution. The 14th Amendment says that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” are citizens of the United States.

The legal challenges are already under way – one claims the order is “unconstitutional, and flouts fundamental American values”.

“Ultimately this will be decided by the courts. This is not something [Trump] can decide on his own,” Saikrishna Prakash, a constitutional expert, told the BBC.

What is the potential impact?

Trump has threatened mass deportations, which could include those whose birthright citizenship is revoked if Trump is successful in enforcing this executive action.

Legal cases could ultimately have to be decided by the US Supreme Court, which could take a long time.

What does the order say?

The order says the US was withdrawing “due to the organization’s mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic”.

Trump’s longheld antipathy towards the WHO is rooted in a perception that it was dominated by – and so soft on – China, which the president has long believed was responsible for the spread of the virus.

It also mentions “unfairly onerous payments” the US made to the WHO.

What are the roadblocks?

It is the second time Trump has ordered the US be pulled out of the WHO. He began the process and Biden later reversed the decision after taking office.

The US exit won’t take effect until 2026 at the earliest, but leaving will require the approval of Congress.

On paper, the Republicans have a majority in both houses of Congress. But their numerical advantage is slim, and it would only take a few Republican defectors to potentially block the move.

What is the potential impact?

“Catastrophic”, “disastrous”, “damaging” is how some global public health experts are describing it.

Of the 196 member states, the US is by far the largest individual funder, contributing almost a fifth of the total WHO budget.

It’s possible that funding could disappear almost overnight and that could have an impact on the ability of the WHO to respond to emergencies.

There is also concern among some scientists that this would leave the US isolated when it comes to access to programmes such as pandemic preparedness and seasonal influenza strain sequencing, which is used to develop annual flu jabs.

That could ultimately harm the health of Americans, and the US national interest.

Some argue US withdrawal could prompt further reforms of how the WHO works, making it a body that better serves the public health needs of people around the globe.

What does the order say?

The order calls for the Gulf of Mexico to “officially be renamed the Gulf of America”.

Trump can change the name of the Gulf on official US government documents.

This has happened on some documents already – including a weather update from Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, which refers to “an area of low pressure moving across the Gulf of America”.

What are the roadblocks?

Trump can’t force other countries or companies to change the name.

For example, it’s currently still labelled as the Gulf of Mexico on Google Maps.

What is the potential impact?

There’s no formal international agreement for the naming of maritime areas – although there is a body that seeks to resolve disputes if raised.

So Mexico could raise an official dispute, and allies of the US and Mexico could be caught up in a diplomatic spat between the two countries.

In response to the order, Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum said the US can call it the “Gulf of America”, but this won’t change what Mexico and the rest of the world call it.

What does the order say?

“It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality,” it says, adding that the federal government will use the term sex, not gender.

President Trump’s team argues that requirements to refer to transgender people in government facilities and workplaces by pronouns that match their gender identity violates the US Constitution’s First Amendment on freedom of speech and religion.

States like Kansas and Montana have already legislated to enshrine a biological definition of sex into law.

What are the roadblocks?

There are likely to be legal challenges.

The Human Rights Campaign, which represents LGBTQ+ people, stated that “we will fight back against these harmful provisions with everything we’ve got”.

These challenges could work their way up to the US Supreme Court which, with its conservative majority, could rule in Trump’s favour.

What is the potential impact?

Prisons and settings such as shelters for migrants and rape victims would be segregated by sex under the plans, which campaigners say will help safeguard women. But transgender rights groups say trans women could be put at a heightened risk of violence.

Official identification documents, including passports and visas, would have to state whether the individual was “male” or female”. US citizens would no longer be able to select “X” as a third option.

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“It has been a long fight full of tears for us.”

That is how Ann “Waaddao” Chumaporn describes the years that led to this moment – on Thursday, when same-sex marriage becomes legal in Thailand, and more than a hundred couples will tie the knot in one of Bangkok’s biggest shopping malls, in a riot of colour and celebration.

And the same question which has been heard throughout the long campaign to get the equal marriage law passed will be asked again: why Thailand? Why nowhere else, aside from Taiwan and Nepal, in Asia?

People think they know the answer. Thailand is famously open to and accepting of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people. They have long been visible in all walks of life. Thai people are easy-going about pretty much everything. “Mai pen rai” – no big deal – is a national catch-phrase. Buddhist beliefs, followed by more than 90% of Thais, don’t forbid LGBT lifestyles. Surely, then, equal marriage was inevitable.

Except it wasn’t. “It was not easy,” says Ms Waaddao, who organises Bangkok Pride March.

The first Pride march in Thailand took place only 25 years ago. Back then it was hard to get approval from the police, and the march was a chaotic, unfocused event. After 2006 only two marches took place until 2022. In 2009 one planned Pride march in Chiang Mai had to be abandoned because of the threat of violence.

“We were not accepted, by our own families and by society,” Ms Waaddao adds. “There were times when we did not think marriage equality would ever happen, but we never gave up.”

For all of Thailand’s general tolerance of LGBT people, getting equal rights, including marriage, required a determined campaign to change attitudes in Thai officialdom and society. And attitudes have changed.

When Chakkrit “Ink” Vadhanavira started dating his partner in 2001, they were both actors playing leading roles in TV series. At that time homosexuality was still officially described by the Thai Ministry of Health as a mental illness.

“Back then society could not accept leading male roles being played by a gay man. There was lots of gossip about us in the media, much of it untrue, which really stressed us,” Mr Chakkrit recalls.

“We decided then that if we were going to date each other, we had to leave showbiz.”

They are still together but they have stayed out of the limelight for more than 20 years, running a successful production company.

A lot has changed in that time – and their industry gets some credit for that.

The way LGBT characters are portrayed in Thai TV dramas, from comical oddities to mainstream roles, made a big difference, according to Tinnaphop Sinsomboonthong, an assistant professor at Thammasat University who self-identifies as queer.

“Nowadays they represent us as normal characters, like you see in real life,” he says. “The kind of LGBTQ+ colleague you might have in the office, or your LGBTQ+ neighbour. This really helped change perceptions and values in all generations.”

The so-called Boy Love dramas have helped bring the rest of society round to the idea of not just tolerance, but full acceptance and equal rights for the community.

These romantic television dramas featuring love affairs between beautiful young men have grown enormously in popularity over the past decade, especially during the Covid pandemic.

They are now one of Thailand’s most successful cultural exports, with huge audiences in places like China. Series like My School President and Love Sick have got hundreds of millions of views on streaming networks.

At the same time, activists became more focused and united in their bid to get the law changed. The many different LGBT groups came together in the Change 1448 campaign – 1448 is the clause in the Thai Civil Code covering the definition of marriage – and later under the Rainbow Coalition for Marriage Equality.

They linked up with other groups fighting for greater rights and freedoms in Thailand, and they learned to work with political parties in parliament to persuade them to change their stance on the law.

The resumption of Pride marches in 2022, and getting the government to recognise and promote the appeal of Thailand as an attractive destination for LGBT travellers also helped change public perceptions.

“We did not fight, we negotiated,” Mr Tinnaphop says. “We knew we had to talk to Thai society, and little by little, we shifted attitudes.”

Getting the equal marriage law through parliament was also helped by political developments in Thailand.

For five years following a coup in 2014, the country was ruled by a conservative military government, which was willing only to consider recognising civil partnerships for LGBT couples, without full rights like inheritance.

But in the 2019 election which returned Thailand to civilian rule, a new, youthful reformist party called Future Forward, which fully supported equal marriage, did unexpectedly well. They won the third-largest share of seats, revealing a growing hunger for change in Thailand.

When a year later Future Forward was dissolved by a controversial court verdict, it set off months of student-led protests calling for sweeping reforms, including curbs to the monarchy’s power.

LGBT campaigners were prominent in those protests, giving them greater national prominence. The protests eventually died down, with many of the leaders arrested for questioning the monarchy’s role.

But in the 2023 election the successor to Future Forward, calling itself Move Forward, performed even better than in 2019, winning more seats than any other party. Again, it was clear that the desire for change was felt across Thai people of all ages.

Move Forward was blocked from forming a government by conservatives who objected to its call for wholesale political reforms.

But by this time, equal marriage was less contentious. Few opposed it. And passing it gave the unwieldy and unpopular coalition government which had been formed without Move Forward a quick accomplishment with which to please most of the country.

Thailand, though, is an outlier in Asia. Few other countries in the region are likely to follow suit.

The influence of Islam in Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei makes the notion of equal marriage a non-starter. LGBT communities there face discrimination and prosecution; in Brunei sex between men carries the death penalty.

In the Philippines, there is growing acceptance of LGBT couples living together openly. But the Roman Catholic Church vehemently opposes same-sex marriage.

In Vietnam, like Thailand, there are no religious or ideological obstacles, but campaigning to change the law, as happened in Thailand, is difficult under a repressive regime. Much the same is true in China. Until the ruling communist party endorses equal marriage, which it shows no signs of doing, it cannot happen.

Even in democracies like Japan and South Korea – where political parties are largely conservative and dominated by older men – the prospects look bleak.

“It is largely conservative Christians who are blocking it,” says Chae-yoon Han, executive director of the Beyond the Rainbow Foundation in South Korea.

“Most, if not all, politicians in the conservative party of President Yoon are devout Christians, and they have framed marriage equality as a ‘leftist agenda’, which could potentially open society to a ‘leftist, communist takeover’.”

India appeared close to legalising same-sex marriage in 2023, when the decision fell to its Supreme Court – but the judges declined, saying it was up to parliament.

So Thailand hopes to benefit from being a pioneer. Tourism is one of the few areas of the Thai economy doing well in the post-pandemic recovery, and the country is seen as a safe and welcoming destination for LGBT holiday-makers.

Growing numbers of same-sex couples from other Asian countries are choosing to live here now.

The legal recognition they can get for their marriages will allow them to raise children and grow old together with nearly all the rights and protections given to heterosexual couples.

Ukraine has detained its army’s chief psychiatrist for alleged “illegal enrichment” charges related to earnings of more than $1m (£813,000) accrued since the start of Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

In a statement, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said the man sat on a commission deciding whether individuals were fit for military service.

The SBU statement did not name him – however, a man called Oleh Druz was previously identified as the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ chief psychiatrist.

The SBU said he owned three apartments in or near Kyiv, one in Odesa, two plots of land and several BMW luxury cars, and investigators searching his home also found $152,000 (£124,000) and €34,000 in cash.

The statement said the man did not declare the property, which was registered in the name of his wife, daughter, sons, and other third parties.

He now faces ten years in jail for the alleged charges of illegal enrichment and making a false declaration.

Druz was implicated in a similar case in 2017 which saw him fail to declare two SUVs and several properties, leading him to be suspended.

Ukraine has long battled endemic corruption.

In May, a Ukrainian MP was charged with embezzling £220,000, while in 2023 more than 30 conscription officials accused of taking bribes and smuggling people out of the country were sacked in an anti-corruption purge.

Last year, the Ukrainian parliament voted to abolish military medical commissions after several officials were accused of accepting bribes in exchange for issuing exemptions from military service.

At least 76 people have been killed in a fire that engulfed a popular Turkish ski resort hotel, leaving some to jump out of windows.

The fire broke out at the wooden-clad 12-storey Grand Kartal Hotel in Bolu at 03:27 local time (00:27 GMT) during a busy holiday period when 234 people were staying there.

An initial toll of 10 dead was raised significantly in the hours after the fire by Turkey’s interior ministry. At least two people died after trying to jump to safety.

It took 12 hours for the fire to be put out. Nine people have been arrested, including the owner, the justice minister says.

The identities of all 76 are yet to be confirmed, but among those released so far are Vedia Nil Apak, a 10-year-old swimmer with Fenerbahce Sports Club in Istanbul, and her mother Ferda.

The club said it had learned of the news with “deep sorrow” in an Instagram post on Tuesday.

Eslem Uyanik, a young chef at the hotel, died along with Ceren Yaman Dogan, the daughter of a well-known local businessman, and her 17-year-old daughter Lalin.

Nedim Turkmen, a writer for Sozcu newspaper, his wife Ayse Neva, and their two children aged 18 and 22 were also named, along with Prof Atakan Yalcin, who was dean of Ozyegin University Business School.

Dilara Ermanoglu, 24, was among the victims, and her father who had gone to Bolu to look for her was treated by health workers for a heart attack.

Health minister Kemal Memisoglu said that of the 51 injured people, one was receiving treatment in intensive care, and 17 people had been discharged.

Footage circulating in Turkey showed linen hanging from windows which was used by those trying to escape the burning building.

Ski instructor Necmi Kepcetutan told the BBC he was on the second floor of the hotel when the fire broke out and managed to get out via the ski room. He then helped with relief efforts.

Eyewitnesses said the family that owned the hotel had been there at the time of the fire and Mr Kepcetutan said he saw some of the family outside.

The cause of the fire has not yet been found, but Bolu governor Abdulaziz Aydin said initial reports suggested it had broken out in the restaurant section of the hotel’s fourth floor and spread to the floors above.

Aydin said the distance between the hotel, in Kartalkaya, and the centre of Bolu, paired with the freezing weather conditions, meant it took more than an hour for fire engines to arrive. Emergency services sent 267 workers to the site.

The hotel was investigating whether guests, including children, were trapped in their rooms as the fire spread.

The hotel had two fire escapes, according to the interior minister, and one hotel worker said they had managed to rescue 30-35 people.

Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said prosecutors had been allocated to investigate the blaze.

The hotel was last inspected in 2024, and the tourism minister said there had been no concerns regarding the hotel’s fire safety prior to Tuesday’s disaster.

However, the Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects (TMMOB) said that according to regulations, an automatic fire extinguisher system is needed.

“In the photos on the hotel’s website, it is seen that the automatic sprinkler system, which was supposed to be installed in 2008, was not installed,” the union said in a statement.

It added that it was unclear if other regulations had been complied with, but based on the statements of survivors, “it is understood that the detection and warning systems did not work and the escape routes could not be determined”.

The Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said those responsible for negligence leading to the fire “will be held accountable”.

A day of national mourning has been declared and the Turkish flag will be flown at half-mast until sunset on Wednesday, he added in a statement on X.

The Bolu mountains are popular with skiers from Istanbul and Turkey’s capital Ankara, which is roughly 170km (105 miles) away, and the hotel was operating at high occupancy at the start of two-week school holidays.

Former UK ambassador to Turkey Sir Peter Westmacott told the BBC he had stayed in the area in the past, and that the fire “feels very personal”.

“The fact that so many people have lost their lives is just devastating news for those of us who care about Turkey,” he said.

US President Donald Trump has said he is considering imposing a 10% tariff on imports of Chinese-made goods as soon as 1 February.

Trump said discussions with his administration were “based on the fact that they’re sending fentanyl to Mexico and Canada.”

It followed threats by Trump to levy import taxes of 25% on Mexico and Canada, accusing them of allowing undocumented migrants and drugs to come into the US.

In a press conference in Washington on Tuesday, Trump also vowed to hit the European Union with tariffs.

“China is an abuser, but the European Union is is very, very bad to us,” he said.

“They treat us very, very badly. So they’re going to be in for tariffs. It’s the only way you’re going to get back. It’s the only way you’re going to get fairness.”

Shortly after he was sworn in on Monday, the new president also instructed federal agencies to conduct a review of existing trade deals and identify unfair practices by US trading partners.

Meanwhile, a top Chinese official spoke out against protectionism at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

China’s Vice Premier, Ding Xuexiang, called for “win-win” solutions to trade disputes without mentioning the US.

On the campaign trail Trump had promised to place tariffs as high as 60% on Chinese goods.

The Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised to fight back.

“If the [US] president does choose to proceed with tariffs, Canada will respond – and everything is on the table,” Trudeau said.

Ottawa is preparing counter-tariffs in response to the threat, reportedly worth billions of dollars.

Canada, China and Mexico are the top US trading partners.

Tariffs are an important part of Trump’s economic plans. The president believes they can boost growth, protect jobs and raise tax revenue.

But many economists say such measures could lead to higher prices for Americans and harm companies hit by foreign retaliation.

When Pte Oleksander Bezverkhny was evacuated to the Feofaniya Hospital in Kyiv, few believed he would live. The 27-year-old had a severe abdominal injury and shrapnel had ripped through his buttocks. Both his legs were amputated.

Then, doctors discovered that his infections were resistant to commonly-used antibiotics – and the already daunting task of saving his life became almost hopeless.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is when bacteria evolve and learn how to defend themselves against antibiotics and other medicines, rendering them ineffective.

Ukraine is far from the only country affected by this issue: around 1.4 million people globally died of a AMR infection in 2021, and in the UK there were 66,730 serious antibiotic-resistant infections in 2023. However, war appears to have accelerated the spread of multi-resistant pathogens in Ukraine.

Clinics treating war injuries have registered a sharp increase of AMR cases. More than 80% of all patients admitted to Feofaniya Hospital have infections caused by microbes which are resistant to antibiotics, according to deputy chief physician Dr Andriy Strokan.

Ironically, antimicrobial-resistant infections often originate from medical facilities.

Medical staff try to follow strict hygiene protocols and use protective equipment to minimise the spread of these infections but facilities can be overwhelmed with people injured in the war.

Dr Volodymyr Dubyna, the head of the Mechnikov Hospital’s ICU, said that since the start of the Russian invasion his unit alone has increased the number of beds from 16 to 50. Meanwhile, with many employees fleeing the war or joining the military themselves, staffing levels are down.

Dr Strokan explained that these circumstances can affect the spread of AMR bacteria. “In surgical departments there is one nurse that looks after 15-20 patients,” he said. “She physically cannot scrub up her hands in the required amount and frequency in order not to spread infections.”

The nature of this war also means patients are exposed to far more strains of infection than they would be in peacetime. When a soldier is evacuated for medical reasons, they will often pass through multiple facilities, each with their own strains of AMR. While medical professionals say this is unavoidable because of the scale of the war, it only worsens the spread of AMR infections.

This was the case for Pte Bezverkhny who was treated at three different facilities before reaching the hospital in Kyiv. Since his infections could not be treated with the usual medication, his condition deteriorated and he contracted sepsis five times.

This situation is different to other recent conflicts, for example the Afghanistan War, where Western soldiers would be stabilised on site and then air-transferred to a European clinic rather than passing through multiple different local facilities.

This would not be possible in Ukraine as the influx of patients has not been seen since the Second World War, according to Dr Dubyna, whose hospital in Dnipro neighbours front-line regions. Once his patients are stable enough, they are transferred to another clinic – if it has room – to free up capacity.

“In terms of microbiological control, it means they spread [bacteria] further. But if it’s not done, we’re not able to work. Then it’s a catastrophe.”

With so many wounded, Ukrainian hospitals simply cannot usually afford to isolate infected patients – meaning that multi-resistant and dangerous bacteria spread unchecked.

The problem is that infections they cause must be treated with special antibiotics from the “reserve” list. But the more often doctors prescribe these, the quicker bacteria adapt, making those antibiotics ineffective too.

“We have to balance our scales,” Dr Strokan explains. “On the one hand, we must save a patient. On the other – we mustn’t breed new microorganisms that will have antimicrobial resistance.”

In Pte Bezverkhny’s case, doctors had to use very expensive antibiotics, which volunteers sourced from abroad. After a year in hospital and over 100 operations, his condition is no longer life-threatening.

Doctors managed to save his life. But as pathogens grow more resistant, the struggle to save others only gets harder.

The mysterious balls that forced the closure of several beaches in Sydney last week were found to contain saturated fatty acids, E. coli and faecal bacteria, authorities say.

Sydney’s Northern Beaches council said it has sent the debris to the New South Wales Environment Protection Authority (EPA) for further analysis.

Nine beaches, including popular spots Manly and Dee Why, were closed on 14 January after the marble-sized balls started washing up.

It came months after thousands of black blobs started appearing on the city’s coasts in October, prompting authorities to close some of its most famous beaches for several days and order a massive clean-up.

The latest batch of balls was cleaned up from harbour beaches this week, the Northern Beaches council said in its statement on Tuesday.

It urged anyone who spotted the balls not to handle them and to contact authorities.

Besides the acids and bacteria, the balls also contained volcanic rock pumice.

Northern Beaches mayor Sue Heins said she hopes the EPA analysis will “identify the source so that they can stop this from happening at other beaches”.

“We are continuing to conduct regular inspections of our beaches and encourage the community to report any sightings,” she said.

The first batch of debris in October were at first mistakenly called “tar balls” but were later found to contain everything from cooking oil and soap scum molecules, to blood pressure medication, pesticides, hair, methamphetamine and veterinary drugs.

Scientists said they resembled fat, oil and grease blobs – often called “fatbergs” – which are commonly formed in sewage systems.

But Sydney Water has reported that its water treatment plants are operating normally and that there were no known issues with waste systems in the city.

Israel’s military chief has resigned, saying he recognised his responsibility for its failure on 7 October 2023, when the Palestinian armed group Hamas carried out a deadly attack on the country that triggered the Gaza war.

In a letter to the defence minister, Lt Gen Herzi Halevi admitted the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had “failed in its mission to protect the citizens of Israel”.

“My responsibility for the terrible failure accompanies me every day, every hour, and will be so for the rest of my life,” he added.

The general said he would leave his role on 6 March at a time of “significant achievements” for the IDF, although he acknowledged that “not all” of Israel’s war goals had been achieved.

“The military will continue to fight to further dismantle Hamas and its governing capabilities, ensure the return of the hostages” and enable Israelis displaced by attacks by armed groups to return home, he added.

Shortly afterwards, the chief of the IDF’s Southern Command, Maj Gen Yaron Finkelman, also announced he was also stepping down, saying he had had failed in his “duty to protect the Western Negev and its beloved, heroic residents”.

Their resignations come three days after the start of a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal agreed with Hamas, which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US and others.

Israeli military and intelligence officials missed or ignored many warnings before hundreds of Hamas gunmen breached Israel’s Gaza perimeter fence at multiple locations 15 months ago and attacked nearby Israeli communities, IDF bases and a music festival. About 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.

The IDF responded by launching an air and ground campaign in Gaza, during which more than 47,100 Palestinians have been killed, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Gen Halevi said in a televised address on Tuesday that Hamas’s military wing had been “severely damaged”, with most of the group’s leadership and military commanders have been killed along with almost 20,000 “operatives”.

He also promised that the IDF’s inquiry into the events of 7 October, which he plans to complete before leaving his role, would be “high quality, thorough, and fully transparent”.

However, he warned that the military inquiry “is focused solely on the IDF and does not encompass the broader factors that could prevent similar events in the future”.

“A commission of inquiry or any other external body can investigate and examine and will receive full transparency from the IDF,” he said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked Gen Halevi “for his many years of service and for commanding the IDF” during the war, saying it had “led to major achievements for Israel”.

Up to now, Netanyahu has said only that he is deeply sorry about what happened on 7 October and that he will have to answer “some tough questions” over his role, without acknowledging any responsibility. He has also said an independent commission of inquiry should wait until the end of the Gaza war.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid praised Halevi’s decision and called on Netanyahu to follow suit.

“Now, it is time for them to take responsibility and resign – the prime minister and his entire catastrophic government,” he said.

• ‘I want to fulfil my dead brother’s dream’ – rebuilding life in Gaza’s ruins
• Video: Hugs and tears: How Israeli hostage return unfolded
• ‘I came back to life’ says freed British-Israeli hostage
• Joy fades as Gazans return to destroyed homes

Gen Halevi is currently overseeing the IDF’s compliance with a three-phase Gaza ceasefire deal with Hamas that should see the remaining Israeli hostages released in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

In total, 33 hostages should be released during the first phase lasting six weeks. Hamas handed over three women on Sunday, when the ceasefire took effect, and has said it will free another four women on Saturday.

Israeli forces should also withdraw from densely populated areas of Gaza, displaced Palestinians should be allowed to begin returning to their homes, and hundreds of aid lorries should be allowed into the territory each day.

Negotiations for the second phase – which should see the remaining hostages released, a full Israeli troop withdrawal and “the restoration of sustainable calm” – should start in just over two weeks.

The third and final stage should involve the reconstruction of Gaza, which could take years, and the return of any remaining hostages’ bodies.

However, there is high anxiety among Palestinians in Gaza and the hostages’ families about whether the deal will hold.

New US President Donald Trump, who has taken credit for brokering the ceasefire, said on Monday that he was not confident that all three phases would be implemented.

Netanyahu has said Israel already has US backing to return to the fighting if it “reaches the conclusion that the second phase negotiations are ineffectual”.

The opening day of Prince Harry’s damages battle against the owners of The Sun newspaper has been delayed after it emerged that the two sides are involved in potential settlement talks after years of legal warfare.

The duke’s lawyers were due on Tuesday to open an eight-week trial of his allegations that journalists at News Group Newspapers used unlawful techniques to pry into his private life – and executives then allegedly covered it up.

Moments before they were to begin presenting their case, they asked for an adjournment.

However, after hours of secret discussions, and no sign of a final agreement that could change the nature of the trial, the judge demanded that the two sides begin – leading them both to say they would ask the Court of Appeal to overturn that order.

The practical effect of their objection is that the case has been delayed until at least 10am on Wednesday – which means both sides have more time to negotiate.

It’s not clear what has been raised in the 11th hour negotiations.

Prince Harry has repeatedly said he wants a trial so that he can get “accountability” for other alleged victims of unlawful newsgathering of private information by NGN journalists.

NGN has denied there was any wrongdoing at The Sun or that executives across the group covered it up.

The Rupert Murdoch-owned empire has long admitted that journalists at the News of the World, closed down in 2011, did use unlawful techniques but has always denied that it was widespread.

This morning, lawyers for Prince Harry and former Labour MP Lord Tom Watson, the other remaining claimant, asked Mr Justice Fancourt to delay opening the case twice – meaning the court did not sit until 2pm.

David Sherborne, Prince Harry’s barrister, said there was potentially a “good prospect” of an agreement that would save the court time.

“We are very close, there is an issue with time and gaining instructions,” he said.

“It is not the only factor.”

Anthony Hudson KC, for News Group Newspapers, added the parties needed more time because of “time differences” and said that both parties were involved in a “settlement dynamic”.

Mr Justice Fancourt – who has repeatedly criticised both sides for long delays and spats over how the case should be conducted – refused to give them more time, saying that the case should start, even if there were still talks behind the scenes that could change the nature of the trial.

“I am not persuaded that if there is a real will to settle this that it could not have been done by today,” said the judge.

News Group Newspapers’ lawyers then asked for the court to sit in private – without the presence of the media – to hear more about what was going on.

The judge refused, saying he was not going to sit in “secret” – and then both Prince Harry’s team and NGN’s lawyers said they would ask senior judges to overturn the order to get underway.

Four people were injured in a stabbing attack in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, Israel’s emergency services said.

Ichilov Hospital said it was treating three of the victims, including one with “a serious condition with a knife wound to the neck”. The assailant, a 28-year-old foreign national, was shot at the scene, police said.

Israel’s intelligence agency Shin Bet said it is carrying out an investigation after a decision was made to allow the man, who reportedly had Moroccan citizenship and American permanent residency, to enter the country.

This is the second stabbing in Tel Aviv in four days, after another person was attacked on Saturday before being shot by an armed civilian.

• Israel’s military chief resigns over 7 October 2023 failures

Tuesday’s attack took place on Nahalat Binyamin Street, an area popular for its restaurants and nightlife, and on the nearby Gruzenberg Street, where the attacker stabbed another person and was shot dead.

Israeli media reported that an American residency permit and border control ticket were found on the body of the attacker.

He entered Israel on a tourist visa on 18 January.

Border and immigration forces had raised objections to the man entering Israel while he was at Ben Gurion Airport, but the Shin Bet security service approved his entry, Israel’s Interior Minister Moshe Arbel said.

“I call on Shin Bet head Ronen Bar to investigate the serious incident and draw lessons from it as soon as possible,” he added.

The Shin Bet said in response: “Upon the individual’s entry into Israel, a security assessment was conducted, including questioning and additional checks, which concluded that there were no grounds to deny his entry for security reasons. The incident will be investigated.”

Hamas did not claim responsibility but in a statement praised the attack.

Australia’s federal police have said they are investigating whether “overseas actors or individuals” are paying local criminals to carry out antisemitic crimes in the country.

There has been a spate of such incidents in recent months, the latest of which saw a childcare centre in Sydney set alight and sprayed with anti-Jewish graffiti. No-one was injured.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called a snap cabinet meeting in response, where officials agreed to set up a national database to track antisemitic incidents.

Thus far, the federal police taskforce, set up in December to investigate such incidents, received more than 166 reports of antisemitic crimes.

Albanese said it appeared some of the crimes were “being perpetrated by people who don’t have a particular issue, aren’t motivated by an ideology, but are paid actors”.

“Now, it’s unclear who or where the payments are coming from,” he told reporters on Wednesday.

Australian Federal Police (AFP) Commissioner Reece Kershaw said it was possible that cryptocurrencies – which can take longer to identify – had been used.

He added that police were also investigating whether young people were carrying out these crimes and whether they had been radicalised online.

However, Mr Kershaw cautioned, “intelligence is not the same as evidence” and more charges were expected soon.

Last week, a man from Sydney became the first person to be charged by the federal taskforce, dubbed Special Operation Avalite, over alleged death threats he made towards a Jewish organisation.

Albanese said Tuesday’s incident at a childcare centre in the eastern Sydney suburb of Maroubra was “as cowardly as it is disgusting” and described it as a “hate crime”.

“This was an attack targeted at the Jewish community. And it is a crime that concerns us all because it is also an attack on the nation and society we have built together,” he wrote on social media.

Israel’s deputy foreign minister told the ABC that Australia’s government had been “inflaming” problems in the local community by not clamping down harder on antisemitic crimes.

But Albanese on Wednesday said his government had “acted from day one” to protect Australia’s Jewish community, and criticised those seeking to make it a “political issue”.

The Jewish Council of Australia, which was set up last year in opposition to antisemitism, said that it “strongly condemns” this and all such incidents.

“These acts underscore the urgent need for cooperation, education and community dialogue to combat prejudice and promote understanding,” it said in a statement.

Most of the recent incidents have taken place in Sydney and have involved antisemitic graffiti, arson and vandalism of buildings including synagogues.

New South Wales has set up its own state-level taskforce to address these incidents and more than 35 people have been charged so far with antisemitism-related offences. These include a 33-year-old man who was charged on Wednesday over an attempt to set fire to a synagogue earlier this month.

A further 70 arrests have been made for similar crimes in the neighbouring state of Victoria, where a synagogue was set on fire last month.

On Wednesday, police said they had charged a 33-year-old Sydney man over the