The US State Department has issued a halt to all existing foreign assistance and paused new aid, according to an internal memo sent to officials and US embassies abroad.

The leaked notice follows President Trump’s executive order issued on Monday for a 90-day pause in foreign development assistance pending a review of efficiencies and consistency with his foreign policy.

The United States is the world’s biggest international aid donor spending $68bn in 2023 according to government figures. The State Department notice appears to affect everything from development assistance to military aid.

It makes exceptions only for emergency food aid and for military funding for Israel and Egypt. The leaked memo’s contents have been confirmed by the BBC.

“No new funds shall be obligated for new awards or extensions of existing awards until each proposed new award or extension has been reviewed and approved,” says the memo to staff.

It adds that US officials “shall immediately issue stop-work orders, consistent with the terms of the relevant award, until such time as the secretary shall determine, following a review.”

It also orders a wide scale review of all foreign assistance to be completed within 85 days to ensure the aid adheres to President Trump’s foreign policy goals.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio – the US’s top diplomat – has previously stated that all US spending abroad should take place only if it makes America “stronger”, “safer” or “more prosperous”.

One former senior State Department official told the BBC the notice meant a “potentially huge” impact on foreign aid programmes funded by the US.

“One can imagine, for example, the humanitarian de-mining programmes around the world suddenly being told stop work. That’s a pretty big deal,” said Josh Paul, who oversaw Congressional relations on weapons transfers at the State Department until late 2023.

Dave Harden, a former US Agency of International Aid (USAID) mission director in the Middle East, told the BBC the move was “very significant”, saying it could see humanitarian and development programmes funded by the US around the world being immediately suspended, while the review is carried out.

He said it could affect a wide range of critical development projects including water, sanitation and shelter.

“The employees of the implementing partner or the [non-governmental organisation] would be able to be paid, but actual assistance, I think, needs to be halted,” said Mr Harden.

“I have gone through [assistance suspensions] many times when I was the West Bank and Gaza mission director, but that was specific to that account. This is global,” he said.

“Not only does it pause assistance, but it puts a ‘stop work’ order in existing contracts that are already funded and underway. It’s extremely broad,” he added.

The AFP news agency reported the funding freeze could also potentially affect Ukraine, which received billions of dollars in weapons under Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden.

Rubio’s memo, justifying the freeze, said it was impossible for the new administration to assess whether existing foreign aid commitments “are not duplicated, are effective and are consistent with President Trump’s foreign policy”.

Rubio has issued a waiver for emergency food assistance, according to the memo.

This comes amid a surge of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip after a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas began, and several other hunger crises around the world, including Sudan.

The memo also said waivers have so far been approved by Rubio for “foreign military financing for Israel and Egypt and administrative expenses, including salaries, necessary to administer foreign military financing”.

The State Department has been approached for comment.

Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s nominee for US defence secretary, was confirmed by the Senate late on Friday night, after facing misconduct allegations that nearly derailed his confirmation.

Vice-President JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote in Hegseth’s favour, after three Republican senators, including former Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, voted against him.

During Hegseth’s confirmation hearing, he faced multiple questions about an allegation of sexual assault, which he has denied, as well as infidelity and drinking.

The former combat veteran and one-time Fox News television host will oversee a department of some three million employees and a $849bn (£695bn) budget.

Four Republicans would have needed to join the 47 Democratic and independent senators who voted against Hegseth for his nomination to be defeated.

McConnell’s surprise vote left the Senate in a 50-50 deadlock before Vance arrived to cast the tie-breaker.

Explaining his vote, McConnell issued a bruising statement saying Hegseth was unprepared to lead a vast department of three million people while managing a huge budget and co-ordinating with global allies.

The role of defence secretary is “a daily test with staggering consequences for the security of the American people”, McConnell said. “Mr. Hegseth has failed, as yet, to demonstrate that he will pass this test.”

In confirming Hegseth, Vance becomes only the second vice-president in US history to break a tie to confirm a cabinet nominee. Trump’s previous vice-president, Mike Pence, became the first when he cast the deciding vote to confirm Betsy DeVos as education secretary in 2017.

“Warfighting, lethality, meritocracy, standards, and readiness. That’s it. That is my job,” Hegseth said during the confirmation hearing earlier this month.

Democratic senators questioned Hegseth, a military veteran, about his qualifications to lead one of the nation’s largest agencies.

Hegseth, 44, a veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, later worked at Fox. He has little of the traditional experience expected for a national security cabinet position – a role typically filled by senior civil servants, experienced politicians, generals and high-level executives.

Hegseth also was asked during the hearing, particularly by female senators, about his previous comments that women should not serve in combat roles. He responded that his concern was not women serving in combat, but in maintaining a certain standard in the US military.

His confirmation process was overshadowed by allegations of misconduct. He was accused of sexually assaulting an unnamed women in 2017 in a Monterey, California, hotel room. He has denied the accusation repeatedly.

The newly confirmed defence secretary also faced allegations of excessive drinking, including at work events, and infidelity in his previous two marriages.

“I am not a perfect person, but redemption is real,” he said during the hearing.

Earlier this week, he was accused of alcohol and spousal abuse in a sworn affidavit given to a congressional committee by his former sister-in-law. Hegseth’s lawyer denied the allegations.

But many Republicans, including Trump, have maintained their support for Hegseth.

For Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican who voted against confirmation on Friday, past allegations helped swayed their vote.

In a statement released days before the vote, she said his past behaviour, “demonstrates a lack of judgment that is unbecoming of someone who would lead our armed forces”.

Meanwhile, Maine Senator Susan Collins, another Republican who voted against Hegseth, said she was “concerned that he does not have the experience and perspective necessary to succeed in the job”.

Australian police are investigating after a statue of Captain James Cook was covered in red paint and disfigured, ahead of the Australia Day weekend.

It is the second time in 12 months that the statue in Sydney has been vandalised.

Australia Day is a national holiday that is held each year on 26 January – the anniversary of Britain’s First Fleet landing at Sydney Cove in 1788. Many Indigenous Australians say the date causes them pain.

The local council in Randwick – the suburb where the statue is located – described the vandalism as “a disservice to the community and a disservice to reconciliation”.

Councillor Carolyn Martin told Sydney radio station 2GB that the vandals had knocked off one hand and parts of the face and nose.

The statue – which was first unveiled in 1874 – was previously targeted in February last year, when it was covered with red paint and had parts of its sandstone damaged. Works to repair and restore it were completed a month later.

There are several Captain Cook statues across Australia, and others have also been vandalised on or around 26 January.

In 2024, one in Melbourne was cut down on the eve of the holiday, while its plinth was spray-painted with the words “the colony will fall”. Two years earlier the same statue had been splashed with red paint, while in 2018 it was graffitied with the words “no pride” and had an Aboriginal flag placed next to it.

Cook charted Australia’s east coast in 1770, laying the groundwork for the later decision to send the First Fleet, which was led by Captain Arthur Phillip.

Australia Day is a contentious holiday for some, particularly among those in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities who view it as a reminder of the dispossession and displacement of their people.

To many Australians though, it is celebrated as a day of nation-building and achievement. Polling suggests a majority of people are supportive of keeping the holiday, despite suggestions it should be changed to a different date.

“It’s like the United States doesn’t actually understand what I did for this country, it’s a betrayal,” Abdullah tells the BBC.

He fled Afghanistan with his parents amid the US withdrawal in August 2021 and is now a paratrooper for the US military. He worries he can’t help his sister and her husband escape too, because of President Donald Trump’s executive order suspending a resettlement programme.

The order cancels all flights and suspends applications for Afghan refugees, without any exemption for families of active servicemembers.

Trump argues the decision addresses “record levels of migration” that threaten “the availability of resources for Americans”.

But Abdullah and several other Afghan refugees have told the BBC they feel the US has “turned its back” on them, despite years of working alongside American officials, troops and non-profit organisations in Afghanistan. We are not using their real names, as they worry doing so could jeopardise their cases or put their families at risk.

As soon as Abdullah heard about the order, he called his sister in Afghanistan. “She was crying, she’s lost all hope,” he said. He believes his work has made her a target of the Taliban government which took power in 2021.

“The anxiety, it’s just unimaginable. She thinks we’ll never be able to see each other again,” he says.

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During the war, Abdullah says he was an interpreter for US forces. When he left Afghanistan, his sister and her husband couldn’t get passports in time to board the flight.

Suhail Shaheen, a spokesperson for the Taliban government, told the BBC there is an amnesty for anyone who worked with international forces and all Afghans can “live in the country without any fear”. He claims these refugees are “economic migrants”.

But a UN report in 2023 cast doubt on assurances from the Taliban government. It found hundreds of former government officials and armed forces members were allegedly killed despite a general amnesty.

Abdullah’s sister and her husband had completed the medical exams and interviews required for resettlement in the US. The BBC has seen a document from the US Department of Defense endorsing their application.

Now Abdullah says Trump’s insistence that immigration is too high does not justify his separation from his family. He describes sleepless nights, and says the anxiety is affecting his work in his combat unit, serving the United States.

Babak, a former legal adviser to the Afghan Air Force, is still in hiding in Afghanistan.

“They’re not just breaking their promise to us – they’re breaking us,” he says.

The BBC has seen letters from the United Nations confirming his role, as well as a letter endorsing his asylum claim by a Lt Colonel in the US Air Force. The endorsement adds that he provided advice on strikes targeting militants linked to both the Taliban and the Islamic State group.

Babak can’t understand the president’s decision, given that he worked alongside US troops. “We risked our lives because of those missions. Now we’re in grave danger,” he says.

He has been moving his wife and young son from location to location, desperately trying to stay hidden. He claims his brother was tortured for his whereabouts. The BBC cannot verify this part of his story, given the nature of his claims.

Babak is appealing to Trump and his National Security Adviser Mike Waltz to change their minds.

“Mike Waltz, you served in Afghanistan. Please encourage the president,” he tells us.

Before saying goodbye, he adds: “The one ray of light we’ve been holding onto has been extinguished.”

Ahmad managed to fly out to the US amid the chaos of the withdrawal but is now separated from his family. He felt he had no choice but to leave his father, mother and teenage siblings behind.

If he and his father had not worked with the US, he says, his family would not be targets of the Taliban government. “I can’t sleep knowing I’m one of the reasons they’re in this situation,” he adds.

Before the Taliban takeover, Ahmad worked for a non-profit called Open Government Partnership (OGP), co-founded by the US 13 years ago and headquartered in Washington. He says the work he’s proudest of is establishing a special court to address abuses against women.

But he claims his work at OGP and his advocacy for women made him a target and he was shot by Taliban fighters in 2021 before the Taliban took over the country.

The BBC has seen a letter from a hospital in Pennsylvania assessing “evidence of injury from bullet and bullet fragments” which they say is “consistent with his account of what happened to him in Kabul”.

Making matters worse, he says his family is also in danger because his father was a colonel with the Afghan army and assisted the CIA. The BBC has seen a certificate, provided by the Afghan National Security Forces, thanking his father for his service.

Ahmad says the Taliban government has harassed his parents, brothers and sisters, so they fled to Pakistan. The BBC has seen photos showing Ahmad’s father and brother being treated in a hospital for injuries he claims were inflicted by people from the Taliban government.

His family had completed several steps of the resettlement programme. He says he even provided evidence that he has enough funds to support his family once they arrive in the US, without any government help.

Now Ahmad says the situation is critical. His family are in Pakistan on visas that will expire within months. He has contacted the IOM and has been told to “be patient”.

The head of #AfghanEvac, a non-profit group helping eligible Afghan refugees resettle, said he estimated 10,000-15,000 people were in the late stages of their applications.

Mina, who is pregnant, has been waiting for a flight out of Islamabad for six months. She worries her terror will threaten her unborn child. “If I lose the baby, I’ll kill myself,” she told the BBC.

She says she used to protest for women’s rights, even after the Taliban government took control of Afghanistan. She claims she was arrested in 2023 and detained overnight.

“Even then I didn’t want to leave Afghanistan. I went into hiding after my release, but they called me and said next time, they’d kill me,” she says.

Mina worries the Pakistani government will send her back to Afghanistan. That’s partly because Pakistan will not grant Afghan refugees asylum indefinitely.

The country has taken in hundreds of thousands of refugees from its neighbour, over decades of instability in the region. According to the UN refugee agency, the country hosts three million Afghan nationals, about 1.4 million of whom are documented.

As cross-border tensions with the Taliban government have flared, there has been growing concern over the fate of Afghans in Pakistan, with reports of alleged intimidation and detentions. The UN special rapporteur has said he’s concerned and Afghans in the region deserve better treatment.

Pakistan’s government says it is expelling foreign nationals who are in the country illegally back to Afghanistan and confirmed search raids were conducted in January.

According to the IOM, more than 795,000 Afghans have been expelled from Pakistan since September 2023.

The Afghan refugees we’ve spoken to feel caught between a homeland where their lives are in danger, and a host country whose patience is running out.

They had been pinning their hopes on the US – but what seemed a safe harbour has been abruptly blocked off by the new president until further notice.

President Donald Trump has travelled to California to survey the destruction from deadly wildfires that devastated several communities in the Los Angeles area earlier this month.

The visit, coming at the end of Trump’s first week back in office, is taking place as he continues to denounce the state emergency response being led by Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom – one of Trump’s fiercest critics.

Despite their political rivalry, Newsom greeted Trump on the tarmac as he emerged from Air Force One, arriving from North Carolina where he toured damage from Hurricane Helene, which rocked the western part of the state in September.

Trump’s visit comes as new fires erupt in southern California, and local officials continue to contend with dry and windy weather conditions that favour fire growth.

Speaking to reporters after shaking hands with Newsom, Trump said: “I appreciate the governor coming out and meeting me”.

“We want to get it fixed,” he continued, telling Newsom that aftermath looks “like you got hit by a bomb”.

Newsom, who Trump has nicknamed “Newscum”, then thanked Trump for coming to visit, telling him: “We’re going to need your support, we’re going to need your help”.

The new blazes – named Laguna, Sepulveda, Gibbel, Gilman and Border 2 – flared up on Thursday in the counties of Los Angeles, San Diego, Ventura and Riverside – all in southern California.

Firefighters have made progress in bringing the 10,000-acre Hughes Fire in Los Angeles under control, containing it by 56% since it broke out on Wednesday, forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate.

Fires have devastated the US state over the last few weeks, with the Palisades and Eaton fires scorching a combined total of more than 37,000 acres and killing at least 28 people. Multiple neighbourhoods have been levelled, leaving more than 10,000 homes and businesses in ashes.

Governor Newsom on Thursday announced a $2.5bn (£2bn) state-level aid package to deal with the fire damage.

Trump has been critical of the response to the California fires, threatening to withhold federal assistance unless the state does not change its water laws and implement laws requiring an ID to vote in elections.

“After that, I will be the greatest president that California has ever seen,” Trump said.

California does not usually require ID to vote but does to register to vote.

Newsom’s office said in a statement on social media that: “Conditioning aid for American citizens is wrong”.

Brian Rice, the president of the California Professional Firefighters, told the BBC that he hopes Trump does not deny the state federal aid.

“The most important focus we have is getting federal aid into California, into these communities where people have lost their lives, their homes,” he said.

The city is set to host both the 2028 Summer Olympics and Fifa World Cup matches in 2026 – two global events that will thrust the Los Angeles region into the spotlight.

Trump has also been critical of the work done by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) – which is tasked with responding to such disasters – under the Biden administration.

He has suggested getting rid of the agency and letting US states manage disasters in their jurisdictions.

During his remarks to reporters on Friday in North Carolina, he said “Fema was not doing their jobs” in that state.

He noted that some residents still don’t have power or hot water and it was “totally unacceptable”.

Los Angeles is under an elevated fire risk area today with brisk winds, according to BBC Weather.

Rain is expected over the weekend in the county, as well as snow up in the mountains of southern California.

However, while this will aid firefighting efforts, there are concerns that it could also cause flooding and dislodge debris from the fires, creating mudslides.

Specialist crews have been working to try and secure burned areas, while sandbags and other flood prevention supplies have been handed out to locals so that they can protect their properties.

Twenty-three people died in 2018 when mudslides hit the California town of Montecito, one of the areas that had recently been affected by the Thomas Fire.

Hamas has named four hostages to be released on Saturday under the Gaza ceasefire deal.

It says they are soldiers Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa, Naama Levy and Liri Albag. They will be freed in exchange for 180 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

It will be the second such exchange since the ceasefire came into effect last Sunday.

Three hostages and 90 prisoners were released in the first swap.

The ceasefire halted the war which began when Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023. About 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken back to Gaza as hostages.

More than 47,200 Palestinians, the majority civilians, have been killed in Israel’s offensive, Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says.

It was originally thought that a female Israeli civilian, Arbel Yehud, would be included in the list of those to be released on Saturday.

It is unclear why her name is not on the list, though Israeli media reported that Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a separate group, is holding her.

Hamas is expected to provide information about the remaining 26 hostages due to be released over the next five weeks.

This includes the Bibas family – two parents and two children, one of whom, Kfir, was 10 months old when taken captive and is the youngest hostage. It is unclear if this information will include the names or just the number of living or dead hostages.

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The prisoners who will be released are of a more serious category than those freed in the first exchange. They will include those who have killed, some of whom are serving sentences of more than 15 years.

Israel has insisted that no-one who was involved in the 7 October attacks will be freed.

Ariev, Gilboa, Levy and Albag were seized at the Nahal Oz military base which was overrun by Hamas gunmen. Footage showed them among a group of women being tied up with their hands behind their backs. They were seen pleading for help while being taunted by their captors.

The women were part of a unit which surveilled the Israel-Gaza border.

Three weeks ago Hamas released a video of Albag, 19, calling for the Israeli government to reach a deal.

The ceasefire was concluded after months of indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas, led by the US, Qatar and Egypt.

It will be implemented in three stages, with the second stage due to begin six weeks into the truce. About 1,900 Palestinian prisoners will be released during the first stage in exchange for 33 hostages. Israeli forces will also begin withdrawing from positions in Gaza and hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians will be able to return to areas they had fled or been forced from.

The ceasefire is meant to lead to a permanent end to the war in Gaza.

Ninety-one hostages taken on 7 October 2023 are still held in Gaza. Fifty-seven of them are assumed by Israel to still be alive. Three others – two of whom are alive – have been held for a decade or more.

Three female Israeli hostages have already been released as part of the latest ceasefire and hostage release deal.

Romi Gonen, 24, was captured as she tried to escape the Nova music festival when it was targeted by the militant group as part of the 7 October 2023 attack.

She has been freed alongside Doron Steinbrecher, 31, a veterinary nurse, and Emily Damari, 28, who holds dual British-Israeli nationality.

All three arrived back in Israel on Sunday after being released by Hamas in Gaza, and were reunited with their families.

A Chinese man has been sentenced to death for fatally stabbing a 10-year-old Japanese schoolboy, in a case that sparked concern among Japanese expats living in China.

The sentence for the knife attack in the southern city of Shenzhen in September was handed down on Friday, according to Japanese media reports.

It comes a day after another court handed a death sentence to a Chinese man who attacked a Japanese mother and child and killed a Chinese woman who tried to protect them in Suzhou province in June.

The courts’ decisions come as Chinese authorities carried out several high-profile executions in recent days.

The stabbings in Shenzhen and Suzhou were among three attacks on foreigners in China last year. Just days before the Suzhou incident, four US college instructors were hurt in a knife attack at a public park in Jilin in the country’s north.

After the attack in Shenzhen, Japanese companies, including Toshiba and Toyota, told their staff to take precautions against any possible violence, while Panasonic offered its employees free flights home.

In the Suzhou case, a Chinese court said that Zhou Jiasheng, 52, had carried out the attack outside a Japanese school after he lost the will to live, following the loss of his job and subsequent debts.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters at a press conference that the court ruled that the attack was an “intentional murder” and the penalty was given due to the “significant social impact” the crime had caused.

However, the court made no mention of Japan during the ruling, according to Hayashi, who added that officials from the Japanese consulate in Shanghai had attended the sentencing.

Hayashi added that the crime, which killed and injured “innocent people”, including a child, was “absolutely unforgivable”.

He also paid tribute to Hu Youping, the Chinese bus attendant who was killed by Zhou while trying to protect a Japanese mother and her child.

Earlier on Thursday, Mao Ning, spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry, briefly commented in a daily press conference that the case was “in judicial process”, adding that China would “as always, act to protect the safety of foreign nationals in China.”

China has been grappling with an uptick in public violence, with many attackers believed to have been spurred by a desire to “take revenge on society” – where perpetrators act on personal grievances by attacking strangers.

There were 19 attacks on pedestrians or strangers last year, a sharp increase from single digits in previous years.

On Monday, a man who killed at least 35 people in a car attack that is thought the be the country’s deadliest attack in a decade was executed.

Last month, a man who killed eight people in a stabbing spree at his university was sentenced to death.

Additionally, in December, a man who injured 30 people by driving into a crowd of children and parents outside a primary school was handed a suspended death sentence.

Japan’s central bank has increased the cost of borrowing to its highest level in 17 years after consumer price rises accelerated in December.

The move by the Bank of Japan (BOJ) to raise its short-term policy rate to “around 0.5 per cent” comes just hours after the latest economic data showed prices rose last month at the fastest pace in 16 months.

The BOJ’s last interest rate hike in July, along with a weak jobs report from the US, caught investors around the world by surprise, which triggered a stock market selloff.

The bank’s governor, Kazuo Ueda, signalled this latest rate hike in advance in a bid to avoid another market shock.

According to official figures released on Friday, core consumer prices in Japan increased by 3% in December from a year earlier.

The decision marks the BOJ’s first rate hike since July and came just days after Donald Trump returned to the White House.

During the election campaign Trump threatened to impose tariffs on all imports into the US, which could have an impact on exporting countries like Japan.

By raising rates now the bank will have more scope to cut rates in the future if it needs to boost the economy.

The move highlights the central bank’s plans to steadily increase rates to around 1% – a level seen as neither boosting or slowing the economy.

The BOJ signalled that interest rates will continue to rise from ultra-low levels.

Neil Newman, the head of strategy at Astris Advisory Japan said: “rates will continue to rise as wages increase, inflation remains above 2% and there is some growth in the economy.”

“We look for another 25-basis point hike in six months,” said Stefan Angrick, a Japan economist at Moody’s Analytics.

Last year, the BOJ raised the cost of borrowing for the first time since 2007 after rates had been kept down for years as the country struggled with stagnant price growth.

That hike meant that there were no longer any countries left with negative interest rates.

When negative rates are in force people have to pay to deposit money in a bank. They have been used by several countries as a way of encouraging people to spend their money rather than putting it in a bank.

Every day families stream over a dry and dusty path into Chad, fleeing war and famine in Sudan – scenes that have clearly shaken the UK’s foreign secretary.

Under the sweltering sun, David Lammy visited the Adré border post on Friday to witness first-hand the impact of Sudan’s civil war which erupted when the army and its former ally, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), fell out.

Those who make it over the border have often been separated from their families in the chaos to escape and are desperate to see if their relatives have made it over safely.

“It’s some of the most horrific things I’ve ever heard and seen in my life,” said Lammy.

“Overwhelmingly, what I’ve seen here in Chad, on the border with Sudan, are women and children fleeing for their lives – telling stories of widespread slaughter, mutilation, burning, sexual violence against them, their children. And amongst it all, famine, hunger – such unbelievable plight.”

The foreign minister saw the dozens of women wrapped in light, multicoloured shawls and holding children of different ages crossing over on horse-drawn carts.

They looked weary sitting on bags holding the few belongings they could bring with them in the long journey to safety.

“Alhamdulillah” meaning “praise be God”, remarks Halima Abdalla when I asked her how she felt to have made it over the border.

The 28-year-old is relieved despite the tragedy she has suffered losing one of her children as she fled from Darfur, Sudan’s western region, which has suffered some of the most devastating violence over the last 21 months – much of it alleged to have been perpetrated by the RSF.

“I first went to el-Geneina, but I had to run again when fighting broke out there,” she says, explaining how she then became separated from her husband and two other children.

Aid workers in Adré say they have been trying to reunite families once they crossed the border.

“Some mothers have told us they had to choose which children to run with as they couldn’t carry all of them at one go,” an aid worker told the BBC.

Some abandoned children have been brought by humanitarian workers across the border and are put in foster care while efforts are made to find their families.

Standing on the Chadian side of the border, Lammy spoke to families that were fleeing and aid workers who were receiving them.

After meeting some of the refugees, he told the BBC: “All of these people have stories – very, very desperate stories of fleeing violence, of murder in their families, of rape, of torture, of mutilation.”

“I just sat with one woman who showed me burn marks. She had been burned by soldiers up and down her arms, she had been beaten and she had been raped. This is desperate, and we must bring the world’s attention to it and bring the suffering to an end.”

But he decried what he described as a “hierarchy of conflict” that has seemingly placed Sudan’s at the bottom, even though it is currently the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

In November last year, the UK foreign secretary spearheaded a resolution calling for a ceasefire at the UN Security Council, which Russia vetoed.

“How could you veto the plight that is going on here?” he asked, sounding exasperated.

He told the BBC he now planned to convene, in London, a meeting of Sudan’s neighbours like Chad and Egypt and other “international partners to broker the peace”.

Several attempts at peace talks led by the US and Saudi Arabia have failed to yield a solution to the conflict.

Since the mediation stalled, the US subsequently sanctioned the generals leading both sides of the war. It also determined that the RSF and its allies had committed genocide.

More than 12 million people have fled their homes since fighting broke out in April 2023.

Caught in the middle of the bitter fighting are more than 50 million civilians, almost half of whom desperately need humanitarian aid, according to UN agencies.

Malnutrition rates are among the world’s highest here. At the tented clinic in Adré, health workers measure the circumference of the upper arm of six-month-old Rasma Ibrahim.

The colour-coded tape goes all the way to the red end. The impact of her health status could last her entire lifetime. One in every seven children here in Adré is malnourished.

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The UK would continue to push for a ceasefire, said Lammy.

It has already doubled aid to £200m ($250m), and is calling for other donor countries to step up.

Aid agencies are however concerned by the announcement by newly inaugurated US President Donald Trump of a 90-day freeze on foreign aid.

A disruption in the support of one of the world’s largest donors will no doubt have devastating consequences on crises like Sudan. The UN is already struggling to meet its targets for badly needed aid money.

In 2024, an appeal for $2.7bn (£2.2bn) to support Sudan was put out, but only 57% of this money was provided.

At the food distribution centre in Adré, sacks of split yellow peas, millet, sorghum, and boxes of cooking oil and other supplies have been arranged neatly on top of tarpaulins as families from the nearby refugee camp queue for their quotas.

The cries of infants tied by shawls to their queueing mothers’ backs fill the air. One-by-one, the families are called to collect their rations.

A man helps lift a sack of dry food on to the shoulder of another, who then hums as he makes his way back to his makeshift home.

The population of Adré was about 40,000 before Sudan’s civil war began and now it has grown more than five-fold, according to local volunteers.

The refugees here are among the lucky few. Just across the border, in Darfur, famine was declared in August in Zamzam camp, near the city of el-Fasher, which the RSF has besieged for more than a year.

In December the UN-backed Famine Review Committee said it had spread to more areas – in Darfur to Abu Shouk and al-Salam camps and to parts of South Kordofan state.

The famine spread despite the re-opening of the Adré border that had been shut by the army on suspicion it was being used to transport weapons to its rivals.

As we left the border, three or four lorries with UN World Food Programme banners slowly rumbled down the dusty road crossing into Sudan.

They will be delivering much-needed aid to villages, towns and displacement camps beyond the border. But it is still far from sufficient.

“We have to step up and wake up now to this huge, huge crisis,” said Lammy.

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It doesn’t matter how much you prepare for it. It still takes you by surprise. As the great-granddaughter of a woman who was murdered in Auschwitz, I am meeting the granddaughter of a man who drove Jews to their death. I’m lost for words.

I never got to meet my grandfather Ludvig, who survived the Holocaust, or his mother Rachel. They were put onto a cattle cart to the Auschwitz death camp in 1944. Ludvig, who was about 15 at the time, was separated from his mother and sent to another concentration camp. But Rachel was tortured, gassed and murdered.

I grew up hearing so many stories about them, and spending time with other Holocaust survivors in my family in Australia. They were at the forefront of my mind when I found myself in Germany interviewing Cornelia Stieler.

Cornelia’s grandfather was the main breadwinner in a household with very little income. He originally worked as a coal miner, but after a near-fatal accident which left him trapped under coal for two days, he decided to do something else. Things turned around when he eventually got a job at Deutsche Reichsbahn as a train driver. Cornelia’s mother used to speak of that achievement with pride, saying getting the job was “the chance of a lifetime”.

At first, he was transporting goods for the war effort. But it soon turned into something more sinister. “I believe that my grandfather served as a train driver, commuting between the death camps. He stayed in Liegnitz, now Legnica, in a boarding school, so there was a certain separation from the family and between the death camps.”

Cornelia says that when her grandfather first started the job, he didn’t know what it would become. “I think my grandfather saw a lot of horrible things and didn’t know how to get out of this work, didn’t know how to deal with it.”

After training as a family therapist, she delved into her past and tried to understand him better. She tells me she started asking: “At what point was he a perpetrator? Was he an accessory to perpetrators? When could he have left?”

At this point, my mouth is dry. My heart is racing. Listening to all of this feels like an out-of-body experience. All I can think about is how her grandfather drove trains into Auschwitz, and that’s how my grandfather and great-grandmother ended up there. I’m thinking about all my other relatives – cousins that I know existed but know nothing about – who were murdered in Auschwitz too.

“If I were any younger, I think I’d feel a strong hate towards you,” I tell her, fighting back tears. “But I don’t because saying all of those things must have been really difficult to admit.”

“Give me your hand,” Cornelia says, also welling up. “It’s important. Your tears, and my touch, are touching me… My grandfather was a train driver in Auschwitz. What can I say? Nothing.

“I can’t apologise, it’s not possible,” she adds, implying the crime is too grave. “My grandfather felt very, very guilty, and he died with his guilt.” Cornelia thanks me for my openness and says there’s a need to fully uncover the history.

Then she says something you might not expect – that some Germans from Schönwald, where her family came from, had reacted angrily to her research. The now Polish town renamed Bojków, some 100km from Kraków, hasn’t come to terms with its Nazi past.

Cornelia explains that originally, the town was against the ideology of the Nazi Party, but over time, became consumed by it. Hitler saw Schönwald as a model village – an Aryan village in a land of Slavs. He was hoping that a “fifth column” of ethnic Germans there would become a useful aid in the military.

It was the site of the Gleiwitz incident – a false flag incident staged by Nazi Germany in 1939 to justify the invasion of Poland, one of the triggers of World War Two. And in 1945, towards the end of the war, it was the first German village to be attacked by advancing Soviet forces.

But just before that, it was the scene of one of the Nazis’ so-called death marches.

As Soviets approached Auschwitz, Hitler’s elite guard, the SS, forced around 60,000 prisoners there – mostly Jews – to move further west. Between 19 and 21 January 1945, one of those marches passed through Schönwald. In below freezing temperatures, the prisoners were dressed only in their thin striped uniforms with just wooden shoes on their feet. Those who collapsed from starvation and exhaustion were shot.

Those who survived were put onto open cattle cart trains heading further west, usually to other concentration camps, like Buchenwald. The Nazis wanted to hold onto their slave labour – even at this point, some still believed in an ultimate triumph of the Third Reich.

A local history and religion teacher, Krzysztof Kruszynski, takes me to the main street where the death march passed. People wait to catch their bus outside the main church on Rolnikow Street – known as Bauer-Strasse in German times. He points to ground, and tells me these are the original cobble stones that the prisoners had to walk on.

“It is a silent witness of the death march,” he says. “But the stone cannot talk.”

This history has been buried until now – partly because Germans from Schönwald were forced to flee after the Soviet attack that came soon after and Poles resettled the village. One German-Polish woman in her 80s, Ruta Kassubek, told me how drunk Soviet soldiers had stormed her family home and murdered her father. But there’s another reason: an active suppression of the past.

It didn’t surprise me that some Germans had responded negatively to Cornelia’s research. Germany prides itself on its , or culture of remembrance: mandatory Holocaust education, museums, memorials. But many see that as the job of state and government. And while they’re happy enough to face the past in the abstract, it’s harder to deal with their own family history, says Benjamin Fischer, a former Jewish student leader and political consultant. He calls it the “deindividualisation of history”.

A study by Bielefeld University found that a third of Germans believed their family members helped save Jews during the Holocaust. That’s “ridiculous”, says Benjamin, and “statistically impossible”.

On the ground in Bojków, 80 years after the death march, things are changing. Last week, a delegation of Germans, Jews and Poles, including local authorities, schools and emergency services unveiled a new memorial commemorating those who died in the town’s death march.

Cornelia and Krzysztof were there. For Cornelia the history is deeply personal. She is convinced that studying and remembering it is key to understanding how society could change so rapidly. And I’m grateful for it. Their work and passion gives me hope in a world of rising antisemitism – as I try to keep the memory of how my family came to be murdered alive.

The people of Schönwald believed their town lay at the pinnacle of high culture and spirituality. But then it “folded into immorality”, Cornelia says. “This is a development that we need to understand… They weren’t solely good or evil. People can go into jobs with good intentions but very quickly, [find themselves] on the wrong side.

“We can’t change the past. We can’t turn back time. But it’s important to talk about this, to remind people of what happened, to remind people of what humans can do to one another.”

A years-long investigation into rock star Marilyn Manson over sexual assault and domestic violence allegations has been dropped, California prosecutors said on Friday.

Prosecutors said in a statement the allegations against Manson exceeded the statute of limitations, adding “we cannot prove charges of sexual assault beyond a reasonable doubt”.

Four women had filed lawsuits against Manson – whose legal name is Brian Warner – accusing him of rape, sexual assault and bodily harm.

Through his lawyer, Warner repeatedly denied the accusations and dismissed the claims as “falsehoods”.

Howard King, Warner’s attorney, said in a statement to the BBC that they are “very pleased” with the decision, and that his client has always maintained his innocence.

The four women who filed lawsuits accusing Warner of sexual and physical abuse include model Ashley Morgan Smithline, Game of Thrones actress Esmé Bianco and Warner’s former personal assistant Ashley Walters. The fourth woman chose to remain anonymous.

“We recognise and applaud the courage and resilience of the women who came forward to make reports and share their experiences,” Nathan J Hochman from the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said in the statement.

“We thank them for their cooperation and patience with the investigation.”

Authorities began their investigations in 2021, looking into alleged incidents between 2009 and 2011 in West Hollywood, where Warner lived.

In total, more than a dozen women had made allegations against the rock star, including his ex-fiancée Evan Rachel Wood.

Smithline – who filed the most recent lawsuit of the four women – said in court documents that Warner had “repeatedly threatened” her life, saying he would “find her” and “kill her if she left him”.

Her testimony echoed the experiences of Walters who, in court documents, described Warner as a terrifying and violent boss who gave friends permission to grope and kiss her. He also made her work for 48 hours in a row.

Since the allegations were made, Warner’s record label, booking agent and manager have severed ties with him.

“Obviously, my art and my life have long been magnets for controversy, but these recent claims about me are horrible distortions of reality,” Warner wrote in an Instagram post in February 2021.

Ukraine reportedly hit a Russian oil refinery and targeted Moscow during an attack involving a wave of at least 121 drones, one of the largest single operations of its kind during the war.

Video footage verified by the BBC shows a fireball rising over the refinery and pumping station in the Ryazan region, southeast of Moscow, which Ukrainian officials said was a target.

Russia said it had shot down 121 drones that had targeted 13 regions, including Ryazan and Moscow, but reported no damage.

Elsewhere, Ukrainian authorities said three people were killed and one was injured when a Russian drone hit a residential building in the Kyiv region.

Andriy Kovalenko, head of Ukraine’s centre for countering disinformation, said on Telegram that an oil refinery in Ryazan had been hit, as well as the Kremniy factory in Bryansk that Kyiv says produces missile components and other weapons.

Bloggers on Telegram posted images and videos of fires raging at the Ryazan facility, which covers around 6sq km (2.3sq miles). Verified footage shows people fleeing from the site in cars and on foot as a fireball rises into the sky.

BBC Verify used video footage to establish the location of two fires at the refinery. One video shows a fire near the northern entrance, whose location was matched by the road layout, signs and fences.

Two other videos show a larger fire on the eastern side of the refinery, around 3km (1.6m) away from the first. The location was identified by matching trees, pylons, road and path layouts.

Russian state-owned news agency RIA cited a statement from the Kremniy factory in Bryansk, which said work had been suspended after an attack by six drones. Pavel Malkov, the regional governor, said emergency services were responding.

The Kremlin acknowledged the attacks but made no mention of damage or casualties.

It claimed to have destroyed 121 Ukrainian drones, including six over the Moscow region, 20 in the Ryazan region, and a number over the border region of Bryansk.

Sergei Sobyanin, Moscow’s mayor, said the city’s air defences had intercepted attacks by Ukrainian drones at four locations.

He said air defences southeast of the capital in Kolomna and Ramenskoye had also repelled drones, without specifying how many. He said there was no damage.

Russian news agencies quoted Rosaviatsiya, the federal aviation agency, as saying two Moscow airports, Vnukovo and Domodedovo, had resumed flights after suspending operations for a time. Six flights were redirected to other airports.

In the city of Kursk, Mayor Igor Kutsak said overnight attacks had damaged power lines and cut off electricity to one district.

In Ukraine, officials said that its air defences had destroyed 25 of 58 drones launched overnight by Russia.

The interior ministry said debris from one of the drones had killed two men and a woman in Hlevakha, Kyiv region, and that another person had been injured.

Russia’s justice ministry on Friday designated the BBC Russian service’s Olga Ivshina a “foreign agent”.

Ivshina, who is based in London, is the fourth BBC journalist to be designated by Russia since the full invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022.

Last week BBC Russian’s Anastasia Lotareva, a senior editor in Riga, and Andrey Kozenko, a reporter in London, were added to the list.

Those named as foreign agents are compelled to mark any online content available in Russia as having come from a foreign agent, and to share financial details. Failure to comply can lead to fines or even imprisonment.

A spokesperson for the BBC said the corporation “strongly rejects and will challenge the designation”.

“The role of BBC News Russian journalists, reporting independently and impartially, has never been needed more, and we will support them to ensure they can continue to do their jobs serving Russian-speaking audiences.”

President Donald Trump has said the US does not need Canadian energy, vehicles or lumber as he spoke to global business leaders at the World Economic Forum.

Trump also reiterated his threat to impose tariffs on the country, saying it can be avoided if the neighbouring nation chose to “become a state” of the US.

“You can always become a state, and if you’re a state, we won’t have a deficit. We won’t have to tariff you,” he said to gasps in the hall in Davos.

Trump has threatened to impose up to 25% tariffs on Canadian imports, possibly by 1 February.

The renewed threat of tariffs has been met with deep unease by the trade-dependent Canada.

But it has also said it will consider significant countermeasures, including a “dollar-for-dollar” response if the Trump administration follows through.

Roughly 75% of Canada’s exports head south. In contrast, Canada accounts for a much smaller 17% of US exports, though it is the second largest US trading partner, behind Mexico.

Trump in his remarks on Thursday said Canada had been “very tough to deal with over the years”.

“We don’t need them to make our cars, we make a lot of them, we don’t need their lumber because we have our own forests… we don’t need their oil and gas, we have more than anybody,” he told forum attendees via video link from Washington DC.

Trump reiterated the assertion that the US has a trade deficit with Canada of between $200bn and $250bn. It’s not clear where he got that figure.

The trade deficit with Canada – expected to be $45bn in 2024 – is mostly driven by US energy demands.

The North American auto industry also has highly integrated supply chains.

Auto parts can cross the borders between the US and Mexico and Canada multiple time before a vehicle is finally assembled.

Trump has also tied the tariffs to border security, saying it will be imposed unless Canada increases security at the shared border.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has repeatedly said that everything is on the table in response if the tariffs are imposed.

That includes a tax or embargo on energy exports to the US, though some of Canada’s provincial leaders disagree with that response.

On Thursday, Trudeau told reporters that Canada’s goal is to avoid US tariffs altogether but it will step up its response “gradually” to seek the quick removal of levies if they are imposed.

Canada is also pitching itself as a reliable trading partner and a secure source to the US for energy and critical minerals as it lobbies American lawmakers in a bid to avoid the tariffs.

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Economists suggest the US depends on Canadian products for energy security.

In 2024, Canadian energy exports came to almost $170bn (C$244bn), according to a recent analysis by TD Bank economists.

Trump also said on Thursday that businesses should make their products in the US if they want to avoid tariffs.

Tariffs are a central part of Trump’s economic vision – he sees them as a way of growing the US economy, protecting jobs and raising tax revenue.

The new president has ordered federal officials to review US trade relationships for any unfair practices by 1 April.

US President Donald Trump has been criticised for launching a meme-coin while saying he “doesn’t know much” about the cryptocurrency.

The digital coin called TRUMP appeared on his social media accounts ahead of his inauguration on Monday and quickly became one of the most valuable crypto coins. The value of a single coin shot up to $75 within a day, but since has fallen to $39.

But the launch of the so-called meme-coin – a cryptocurrency with no utility other than for fun or speculation – has been widely criticised by industry insiders.

“Trump’s comments about not knowing much about the coin back up my opinion that he is making a mockery of the industry. It’s a stunt,” says Danny Scott, CEO of CoinCorner.

The latest dip in value came after Trump told reporters: “I don’t know much about it other than I launched it, other than it was very successful.”

When he was told his coin raised several billion dollars for him, he played it down saying “several billion – that’s peanuts for these guys” pointing to tech billionaires assembled for a press conference about AI.

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Meme-coins are often used by speculators to make money or to allow fans to show support to a celebrity or moment in internet culture.

It’s not the first time Trump has sold crypto products. He made millions from launching a series of NFTs of him in various superhero poses in 2022.

Some industry analysts say the president having his own meme coin is a sign that others should follow.

“TRUMP token just signaled to every company, municipality, university & individual brand that crypto can now be used as a capital formation and customer bootstrapping mechanism,” Jeff Dorman from investing firm Arca posted online.

However, the overall sentiment seems to be negative towards the president’s meme coin.

Many in the crypto world are waiting for Trump to back up campaign promises to help boost the industry in the US. People like Danny Scott hope to see focused plans, particularly around Bitcoin, from the administration.

On Thursday the president took a first step towards fulfilling those promises by signing an Executive Order to set up a working group to explore changes to crypto regulation and potentially create a national crypto stockpile.

Last year Trump promised Bitcoin fans he would make the US the “crypto capital of the planet”. A few days into his term, the president has not issued executive orders involving cryptocurrency, nor has he mentioned it in his speeches.

TRUMP coin is now the 25th most valuable crypto coin with a value of around $8 billion, according to the website CoinMarketCap.

Trump and the team behind it own 80% of the coins so, in theory, they would make billions of dollars if they sold their shares and the price remained the same.

This set-up has been described by crypto researchers at K33 as outdated for similar tokens.

“There’s no sugar-coating this – these tokenomics are horrendous for a meme-coin,” said David Zimmerman, a K33 analyst.

However, K33 analysts acknowledge that the remaining 80% of coins can’t be dumped on the open market so investors are partially shielded from price shocks.

There are thousands of cryptocurrency coins and anyone can create one.

First Lady Melania Trump launched her own meme-coin on the eve of the inauguration, which now has a value of $700m since slumping from $13 a coin to $2.70.

But many meme-coins have led to big losses for people investing in them.

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Dan Hughes, from crypto firm Radix, thinks the president and his wife launching their meme-coins undermines the positives of the industry.

“This pattern of celebrity-driven token launches, particularly from political figures, potentially marks a concerning trend in crypto markets where influence and liquidity manipulation could overshadow fundamental value creation,” he said.

Others in the cryptocurrency world think that launching meme-coins to make money is degrading.

“The introduction of these coins during the presidential inauguration raises concerns about potential conflicts of interest and may undermine the dignity of the president and the first lady,” said Grzegorz Drozdz, market analyst at investment firm Conotoxia.

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President Donald Trump has said he will ask Saudi Arabia and other Opec nations to “bring down the cost of oil” and doubled-down on his threat to use tariffs.

In a speech to executives at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday, the US president said he was “surprised” that Opec hadn’t brought down the price of oil before the elections.

“Right now the price is high enough that that war will continue,” he said, referring to the Russia-Ukraine conflict and suggesting that the higher crude price was helping to sustain funding for the conflict in Moscow.

“You gotta bring down the oil price,” he said. “That will end that war. You could end that war.”

His remarks follow a conversation he had with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Wednesday.

According to Saudi state media, Bin Salman pledged to invest as much as $600bn (£484bn) in the US over the next four years. However, this figure was not mentioned in the White House statement after the call.

Despite the cordial exchange, Trump said he would be asking “the Crown Prince, who’s a fantastic guy, to round it out to around $1 trillion”.

Saudi Arabia is the leading member of Opec, a cartel of 12 oil-producing nations which has a remit to “work together to ensure stable oil prices”.

The price of crude fell by 1% after Trump spoke.

David Oxley, chief climate and commodities economist at Capital Economics, said his comments are in keeping with the president’s desire for lower gasoline prices.

“[It’s] his clear intention to use energy as leverage over Russia to end the war in Ukraine. That said, lower oil prices will certainly not incentivise US oil producers to ‘drill, baby, drill’ – particularly in high-cost Alaska.

“Of course, Saudi Arabia would not be guaranteed to heed a request by President Trump to expand oil production and to bring down global oil prices.”

The US president’s appearance via video link at the World Economic Forum marked his first address to a global audience since his inauguration earlier this week.

He used the platform to insist that companies around the world manufacture their products in the US or face bruising tariffs on imported goods entering the American market.

There were a few stony faces as executives left the hall after the speech, but some were happy.

“A very powerful speech,” said one.

“I liked it, I thought it was really good,” said a delegate from the US. “A lot of it made sense, common sense. He’s just looking for fair trade.”

One Swiss executive though was pretty downbeat. “It’s nothing new but it’s clear what he wants to do,” he said.

“Am I happy? No, I’m not happy. I think it’s bad for the world.”

Trump also said he would demand an immediate drop in interest rates, which he said had led to deeper deficits and resulted in what he described as economic calamity under the tenure of his predecessor, President Joe Biden.

“This begins with confronting the economic chaos caused by the failed policies of the last administration,” he said.

“Over the past four years, our government racked up $8 trillion in wasteful deficit spending and inflicted nation-wrecking energy restrictions, crippling regulations and hidden taxes like never before.”

Interest rates are decided by the US Federal Reserve, the central bank which is independent from the government.

Trump also spoke of “good, clean, coal” to power data centres needed for artificial intelligence (AI).

Earlier this week, he announced that a number of firms, including ChatGPT-creator OpenAI, would invest $500bn to build artificial intelligence infrastructure in the US.

“We need double the energy we currently have in the US for AI to be as big as we want to have it,” Trump told delegates at Davos, adding that he would use emergency decrees to speed up the construction of new power plants.

“Nothing can destroy coal – not the weather, not a bomb, nothing,” he said.

A federal judge in Seattle has temporarily blocked Donald Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship in the US.

US District Court Judge John Coughenour called Trump’s executive order “blatantly unconstitutional” and issued a restraining order blocking it from going into force after a 25-minute hearing on Thursday.

Under a long-standing interpretation of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, nearly anyone born inside the US is automatically given citizenship.

Trump hopes to end that rule for children born to parents who are in the country illegally or temporarily.

Four states – Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon – asked for the order to be paused while the federal court considers the states’ legal challenge.

During arguments, Judge Coughenour asked a lawyer for the Trump administration “where were the lawyers” when the executive order was drafted by Trump’s team, and chastised him for his claim that the order is constitutional.

“It boggles my mind,” the judge said.

The executive order will be put on hold for 14 days pending further legal proceedings.

Trump, who has issued a range of unilateral actions since returning to the US presidency on Monday, has long vowed to make this particular change.

His executive order called on US government departments and agencies to deny the granting of citizenship to the children of migrants who are either in the US illegally or on temporary visas.

It would have applied to children born on 19 February and onwards, according to legal filings in the case by the Department of Justice (DoJ).

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

The judge’s order also put a temporary stop to any enforcement of the order by federal agencies.

In their lawsuit, the four states challenging the order argue that the 14th Amendment and US law “automatically confer citizenship upon individuals born in the United States” and that the president does not have the power to amend the Constitution.

They add that if the order is implemented, residents of those states will “suffer immediate and irreparable harm”.

“The individuals who are stripped of their United States citizenship will be rendered undocumented, subject to removal or detention, and many will be stateless,” the lawsuit states.

Trump’s Department of Justice argued that the case brought by the states does not warrant the “extraordinary measure” of a temporary restraining order, but the judge disagreed.

The 14th Amendment, adopted in 1868, states in part: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States”.

The DoJ argued that the clause “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof”, excludes children of non-citizens who are in the US unlawfully, and added that the order is “an integral part” of Trump’s goal to address the country’s “broken immigration system and the ongoing crisis at the southern border”.

There were 255,000 children born to undocumented mothers in the US in 2022, according to the states’ legal challenge.

The amendment has been interpreted by courts as granting citizenship to anyone born on US territory, with very limited exceptions such as the children of foreign diplomats.

Without a direct amendment to the US Constitution – which requires a two-thirds vote in both chambers of Congress, plus the approval by America’s states – experts say the issue is likely to be ultimately decided by the courts.

Lawyers for the federal government said they planned to appeal the ruling, and that they expected the case to end up in front of the US Supreme Court.

The birthright citizenship amendment dates back to the days after the US Civil War, and settled the question of the citizenship of freed, American-born former slaves.

Lane Polozola, a lawyer for Washington state, argued in court that Trump’s order would bring the nation back “to one of our… darkest chapters”.

Judge Coughenour, who paused the executive order, has served in the Western District of Washington court since 1981 after he was appointed by then-president Ronald Reagan, a Republican.

A group of 18 other Democratic-led states, along with the District of Columbia and the city of San Francisco, have filed a separate challenge to the executive order.

Trump’s order is also facing a legal challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

More than 100 Reddit communities have banned users from posting links to X in protest at owner Elon Musk’s controversial arm gesture at a rally celebrating Donald Trump’s return to office.

The billionaire twice extended his arm out straight as he thanked the crowd for “making it happen.”

Critics, including some historians, said it was a Nazi salute – Mr Musk has dismissed that, saying comparisons with Hitler were “tired” and “dirty tricks.”

However many Reddit users have been unpersuaded by his response describing his actions as “hateful”, leading the moderators of scores of communities – or subreddits – to stop content being shared on X.

X has not commented but Reddit has stressed there is no sitewide ban on X links, telling the BBC in a statement it “has a longstanding commitment to freedom of speech and freedom of association”.

However the platform relies heavily on community moderation, where unpaid individuals known as Redditors decide what is – and isn’t – allowed to be published on their own corner of the website.

In many instances, those Redditors have reached a different conclusion, deciding Mr Musk’s actions were so offensive that they won’t link to content from their subreddits on X, potentially reducing traffic, engagement and – ultimately – revenue.

The biggest subreddits to have enforced the ban include basketball community r/NBA, which has 15 million members, female-focused community r/TwoXChromosomes, which has 14 million members, and American football community r/NFL, which has 12 million members.

It is worth remembering that subreddits are almost always run by fans – it does not mean that the NFL or NBA organisations are taking a stance against Musk.

The BBC has independently verified that at least 100 subreddits have banned X posts.

Of this number, more than 60 have at least 100,000 members.

But the actual number that have instituted the ban will likely be significantly higher by taking into account smaller subreddits with only a few thousand members.

And there are many more communities discussing a potential blacklisting.

The subreddits run by fans of football clubs Liverpool, Celtic and Tottenham Hotspur have all instituted the bans, as have communities for many US sports sides as well as Formula 1.

The subreddits where residents of many cities and countries gather around the world – ranging from New Jersey to South Korea – have also blocked posts to X.

And gamers are also amongst those to bring in the ban for video games including Baldur’s Gate 3 and World of Warcraft.

But while the blacklisting may have first started in some of these communities, it is popping up in a variety of places now where people gather to discuss all sorts of topics, ranging from RuPaul’s Drag Race to Disneyland and even the military.

While the vast majority of subreddits discussing a ban are in favour of it, there are some that have refused.

The moderators of the Maine community for example say they won’t institute a ban so long as “the state maintain official accounts there”.

And those running a group for people in British Columbia said they simply aren’t “doing censorship here”.

Though there are many subreddits which already disallow posts from social media, those built around professional sports in particular may have a big impact on referrals to X.

That’s because sports subreddits generally get a lot of content from links to athletes, analysts and journalists who spend a lot of time posting online.

For example, the top two most popular posts of all time on the NBA subreddits are screenshots taken from X, while three of the top ten most popular posts of all time on the AEW wrestling subreddit are screenshots from the platform.

And gaming subreddits have a similar story, with the top posts on the Animal Crossing and Kingdom Hearts communities both screenshots from X.

But that is not to say the bans will necessarily be permanent – Reddit is known for this sort of community movement to protest against wider issues, which doesn’t always work out.

In 2023, thousands of communities “went dark” to contest changes to how the platform was being run.

Some of the biggest Reddit communities then began only allowing photos and videos of comedian John Oliver, following comments from disgruntled users.

But this proved to be short-lived.

Eventually the communities mostly became publicly available again, and Reddit’s plan ultimately proved financially beneficial – the platform subsequently successfully listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Jimmy Donaldson – aka MrBeast – was jubilant as he told his tens of millions of TikTok followers about his bid to buy the platform.

“I might become you guys’ new CEO! I’m super excited!” Donaldson said from a private jet. He then proceeded to promise $10,000 to five random new followers.

The internet creator’s post has been viewed more than 73 million times since Monday. Donaldson said he could not share details about his bid, but promised: “Just know, it’s gonna be crazy.”

Donaldson is one of multiple suitors who have expressed interest in purchasing TikTok, the wildly popular social media platform that’s become the subject of a fast-moving political drama in the United States.

Last year, then-President Joe Biden signed a law that gave TikTok’s China-based parent company ByteDance until 19 January to sell the platform or face a ban in the United States.

The legislation addressed concerns about TikTok’s links to the Chinese government and worries about the app being a national security risk.

President Donald Trump has floated the possibility of a joint venture.

“I would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position,” he said in a Truth Social post on Sunday. “By doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to [stay up].”

Trump has since signed an executive order that allows the app to stay operational for another 75 days.

Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that China was considering a TikTok sale to Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a close ally of President Trump, who already owns the social media platform X.

Musk himself wrote on X this week that while he has long been against a TikTok ban, “the current situation where TikTok is allowed to operate in America, but X is not allowed to operate in China is unbalanced. Something needs to change”.

At a news conference Tuesday, Trump was asked by a reporter if he would be open to Musk buying the platform.

“I would be if he wanted to buy it, yes,” the president replied.

“I’d like Larry to buy it, too,” Trump added, referring to Oracle chairman Larry Ellison, a long-time Trump supporter who was on stage with him for a separate announcement.

Oracle is one of TikTok’s main server providers, managing many of the data centres where billions of the platform’s videos are stored.

Last year, Oracle warned that a TikTok ban could hurt its business. The cloud computing giant was also a leading contender to buy the social media platform in 2020, back when Trump was trying to ban it.

Billionaire investor Frank McCourt has also expressed interest in TikTok, and has been doing media interviews about the prospect for several months.

McCourt has said he wants TikTok to run on technology overseen by the Project Liberty Institute, which he founded. He has been critical of data collection practices of social media companies.

Project Liberty is bidding for TikTok without its proprietary algorithm. McCourt told CNBC this week that Project Liberty is “not interested in the algorithm or the Chinese technology” even as he acknowledged that the platform is “worth less” without it.

Ultimately, President Trump is likely to have a major role in selecting a US buyer of TikTok.

“It’s going to be a winner that’s likely to be politically sympathetic to President Donald Trump,” said Anupam Chander, a law professor at Georgetown University.

Prof Chander said the 50-50 joint ownership model does not comport with the law’s requirements, which might prompt Trump to pressure Congress into revising the law.

For now, the platform’s future remains in limbo.

Prof Chander said the Biden administration made an “unforced error” by allowing the law to give the president outsized control over who owns TikTok.

“It was a terrible idea to put the future of a massive information platform into this political maelstrom,” Prof Chander said.

World leaders, the bosses of the world’s biggest companies and a sprinkling of celebrities gathered in the small Swiss mountain town of Davos for the annual World Economic Forum this week.

On the other side of the Atlantic, President Donald Trump was starting his political comeback as the new US president.

“Nothing will stand in our way”, he declared, as he vowed to end America’s “decline”.

Towards the end of the gathering, President Trump was beamed in straight from the White House webcam to deliver his message of world domination directly to the global elite.

While he charmed, almost seduced the audience with a credible picture of a booming US economy about to scale new technological heights, he simultaneously menaced with threats of tariffs to those who did not choose to shift their factories into the US.

Trillions of dollars of tariffs for the US Treasury for those businesses exporting into the US market from foreign factories.

“Your prerogative” he said, with a smile not out of place in a Godfather movie. And then for one of his own, the Bank of America chief Brian Moynihan, a remarkable public lashing accusing the lending giant of “debanking” many of his conservative supporters.

He awkwardly mumbled about sponsoring the World Cup.

In this first week of his second term, most people at Davos were nodding along, as they cannot think what else to do, just yet.

Two worlds colliding, as the ‘America First’ President was beamed in like a 30-foot interplanetary emperor, into the beating heart of the rules-based international economic order.

It is one thing suggesting that trade deficits are a problem with your domestic electorate. It is quite another to suggest at an internationalist forum that a G7 ally, Canada, become a state of your nation, eliciting gasps in the audience, and not just from Canadians.

The address was, by design, charming and offensive. There was carrot and stick for the rest of the world.

As delegates absorbed the mix of threats, invites and on occasion, praise, many appeared to be trying to decide just how much Trump might damage the global trading system, whilst assessing just how far ahead his America is getting in this tech driven AI boom.

Davos has been for this first week the alternative pole of the Trump second term.

There was a coherence to his agenda to use every means to drive down energy prices including by pressurising the Saudis on oil.

This he said would not just help to lower inflation, but also drain Russia’s war coffers of oil dollars to help end the Ukraine war, by economic means. The ceasefire in the Middle East has already bought Trump some geopolitical credibility in these circles.

Christine Lagarde, David Miliband, and John Kerry shuffled into the hall. Various bank chiefs assembled on stage to praise and then lightly question the President.

The bottom line was this: Is president Trump serious about what sounded like campaign trail threats to the world economic system? The answer will reverberate for the next four years and beyond.

The answer sounded like a most definitely, yes. However, this does not mean it is going to work.

Some leading US CEOs told me that they were preparing for tit-for-tat retaliatory tariffs to be applied to their exports. Their assumption was that the President’s love of a rising stock market would restrict his deployment of tariffs.

But no one really knows. In any event, much is up for grabs. He has already withdrawn from the World Health Organisation.

In the promenades the whisper was of his Project 2025 allies suggesting US withdrawal from the IMF and the World Bank too.

The rest of the world does have some counter leverage, once it decides to get back up after the Trump whirlwind.

The Canadians are now briefing on their retaliatory tariffs. In conversations with both the British business secretary and EU trade minister, Jonathan Reynolds and European Union trade chief, Maros Sefcovic, I detected a desire for calm dialogue.

Both are making similar arguments to try to dissuade Trump from wider tariffs.

Mr Reynolds told me that as the US does not have a goods trade deficit with the UK, there is no need for tariffs.

Mr Sefcovic said that the US should really think about its services surplus too.

But do they not consider the threats to G7 and Nato allies Canada and Denmark (over Greenland) to be straightforwardly unacceptable and as absurd as France claiming back Louisiana? Sefcovic did not want to whip anything up.

Diplomats are making lists of US goods that Europe can now purchase to demonstrate “wins” for President Trump, from arms to gas to the magnets in wind turbines.

It might make some sense for the rest of the G7 to work in unison on retaliation against the tariffs, in order to concentrate the minds of Congress, and the competing factions inside the court of Trump.

There is no sign of that happening.

The US tech supremacy story epitomised by the broligarchy – including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg, Apple leader Tim Cook, and Google chief Sundar Pichar – had top seats at the inauguration this week.

While the US is streets ahead of Europe, its standing against China is more uncertain.

One of the talks of Davos was DeepSeek’s high performing, much cheaper AI model, made in China. The prediction that the tech bros would be tearing strips out of each other in the court of Trump began to come true within hours, rather than months.

Meanwhile, while most, though not all, here in Davos sounded rather seduced by Trump’s tech-fuelled optimism, some in Europe also see a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to attract top researchers who may be rather less than enamoured with the direction of US politics. It was openly suggested by the European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde.

Others sought solace in the fact that Europe no longer has to face Biden’s massive green subsidies, creating a more level playing field again for Europe.

President Trump is changing the terms of world trade. The response of the rest of the world to this is as important as what the Trump administration itself decides.

There are times in history when countries are gripped by election fever.

January 2025 in Belarus is not one of them.

Drive around Minsk and you’ll see no big billboards promoting the portraits of candidates.

There is little campaigning.

The grey skies and sleet of a Belarusian winter add to an overriding sense of inactivity.

And inevitability.

The outcome of the 2025 presidential election is not in doubt. Alexander Lukashenko, once dubbed “Europe’s last dictator,” who has ruled Belarus with an iron fist for more than 30 years, will be declared the winner and secure a seventh term in office.

His supporters call it an exercise in “Belarusian democracy”. His opponents reject the process as “a farce”.

Even Mr Lukashenko himself claims to lack interest in the process.

“I’m not following the election campaign. I’ve got no time,” the Belarusian leader told workers at the Minsk Automobile Plant this week.

The workers presented him with a gift: an axe for chopping wood.

“I’ll try it out before the election,” promised Mr Lukashenko, to rapturous applause.

Four-and-a-half years ago, at a different enterprise, the leader of Belarus received a much cooler reception.

One week after the 2020 presidential election, Alexander Lukashenko visited the Minsk Wheels Tractor Plant. Leaked video showed him being jeered and heckled by workers. They shouted ‘”Go away! Go away!”.

In 2020 the official election result – of 80% for Mr Lukashenko – had sparked anger and huge protests across the country. Belarusians poured onto the streets to accuse their leader of stealing their votes and the election.

In the brutal police crackdown that followed, thousands of anti-government protesters and critics were arrested. Eventually the wave of repression extinguished the protests and, with help from Russia, Mr Lukashenko clung to power.

The UK, the European Union and the United States refuse to recognise him as the legitimate president of Belarus.

Alexander Lukashenko’s staunchest opponents (and potential rivals) are either in prison or have been forced into exile.

That is why this week the European Parliament passed a resolution calling on the EU to reject the upcoming presidential election as “a sham” and pointing out that the election campaign has been taking place “in an environment of severe repression which fails to meet even the minimum standards for democratic elections”.

I remember interviewing Alexander Lukashenko last October, on the day the date of the presidential election was announced.

“How can these elections be free and democratic if the leaders of the opposition are in prison or abroad?” I asked.

“Do you actually know who the leaders of the opposition are?” Mr Lukashenko hit back.

“An opposition is a group of people who should serve the interests, at the very least, of a small number of people in the country. Where are these leaders you speak of? Wake up!”

Alexander Lukashenko is not the sole candidate. There are four others. But they seem more like spoilers, than serious challengers.

I drive four hours from Minsk to meet one of them. Sergei Syrankov is the leader of the Communist Party of Belarus. In the town of Vitebsk I sit in on one of his campaign events. In a large hall Mr Syrankov addresses a small audience, flanked by his party’s emblem, the hammer and sickle.

His campaign slogan is unusual to say the least: “Not instead of, but together with Lukashenko!”

He is a presidential candidate who openly backs his opponent.

“There is no alternative to Alexander Lukashenko as the leader of our country,” Mr Syrankov tells me. “So, we are taking part in the election with the president’s team.”

“Why do you think there is no alternative?” I ask.

“Because Lukashenko is a man of the people, a man of the soil, who has done everything to make sure we don’t have the kind of chaos they have in Ukraine.”

“You’re fighting for power yourself, but you support another candidate. That is…unusual,” I suggest.

“I am certain that Alexander Lukashenko will win a thumping victory. But even if he wins and I don’t, the Communists will be the winners,” responds Mr Syrankov.

“The main Communist in our country is our head of state. Lukashenko still has his old membership card from the days of the Soviet Communist Party.”

Also on the ballot is Oleg Gaidukevich, leader of the right-wing Liberal-Democratic Party of Belarus. He, too, isn’t running to win.

“If anyone dares to suggest the outcome of the election isn’t known, he’s a liar,” Mr Gaidukevich tells me.

“It’s obvious that Lukashenko will win. He has a massive rating….We’re going to battle to strengthen our positions and prepare for the next election.”

Mr Lukashenko’s critics reject the assertion that his popularity is “massive”. But there is no doubt he does have support.

On the edge of Vitebsk is the little town of Oktyabrskaya. Talking to people there I detect concern that a change of leader may spark instability.

“I want a stable salary, stability in the country,” welder Sergei tells me. “Other candidates make promises, but might not keep them. I want to keep what I’ve got.”

“The situation today is very tense,” says Zenaida. “Maybe there are other people worthy of power. But by the time a younger leader gets his feet under the desk, makes those important connections with with other countries, and with his own people that will take a long time.

“God forbid we should end up like Ukraine.”

In Belarus today there is fear of instability, fear of the unknown, and fear of the government. All work in Alexander Lukashenko’s favour.

At some of the many thousands of funerals in Gaza over the past 15 months, mourners have laid a bright orange vest over the body.

The vests are usually well worn and marked by dust, sometimes blood. They belong to the Civil Defence, Gaza’s main emergency service.

Throughout the Israeli bombardment, the Civil Defence was responsible for pulling the living and the dead from the rubble. Along with Gaza’s ambulance service, the rescue workers have taken on some of the most harrowing work in the strip.

And they have paid a steep price. On the first full day of peace on Monday, the agency said that 99 of its rescue workers had been killed and 319 wounded, some with life-changing injuries.

When the Civil Defence buries its own, where possible the vests of the dead are laid on their bodies.

“We put the vest there because our colleague sacrified his soul in it,” said Nooh al-Shaghnobi, a 24-year-old rescue worker, in a phone interview from Gaza City.

“We hope it will show God that this man did good with his life, that he saved others.”

Israel killed more than 47,000 Palestinians in Gaza during the conflict – mostly women and children – and wounded more than 111,000, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures seen reliable by the UN. A recent study published by the Lancet medical journal found that the death toll during the first nine months of the war may have been underestimated by more than 40%.

The fragile ceasefire that came into effect last weekend is holding. But for the rescue workers of the Civil Defence, the next phase of their work is just beginning.

The agency estimates that there are more than 10,000 people buried under the vast sea of rubble across Gaza. The figure is based on information collected throughout the war about who was in each building destroyed by Israel, and who the agency knows to have been recovered already.

In areas that were completely occupied by Israeli forces during the destruction, they do not have detailed information and are relying on residents to help them. In the Tel el-Hawa neighbourhood of Gaza City on Tuesday, rescue worker Al-Shaghnobi found a man with information about the fate of a flattened apartment building.

“He told us seven dead were recovered, but there was an elderly gentleman, a child and an infant left behind,” Al-Shaghnobi said.

“Fortunately there was a privately-owned bulldozer nearby and we were able to excavate the top layer of rubble,” he said. “And underneath we found three skeletons that matched the description.”

Al-Shaghnobi has accrued a large following during the war by sharing his experiences on social media. Though he pixelates some images, others show the horrors he and other young rescue workers have faced.

One video shows him under the rubble, carefully extricating the body of an infant from around the body of another small child, who is alive. Other images he sent to the BBC show the extreme nature of the rescue work.

“You should become numb as time goes on,” Al-Shagnobi said, during a shift in Gaza City. “But I have become worse. I feel more pain, not less. I find it harder to cope. I have seen 50 of my colleagues die in front of me. Who outside of Gaza can imagine this?”

As the first of the Israeli hostages were released from Gaza last week, in exchange for 90 Palestinians from Israeli jails, Israeli authorities described the extensive psychological support waiting for the returning hostages.

But for those experiencing horrors in Gaza, such support is extremely limited. None of the four rescue workers who spoke to the BBC this week from Gaza said they had been offered counselling.

“We all need this,” said Mohammed Lafi, a 25-year-old rescue worker in Gaza City, “but no one talks about it.”

Lafi, who has been with the agency for six years, has a wife and infant son at home. “When I pull the body of a baby from the rubble I scream inside myself if he is the same age as my son. My body shakes.”

Even if counselling were to be widely available, “a year of therapy would not be enough for one day of this job,” said Abdullah al-Majdalawi, a 24-year-old Civil Defence worker who lives with his parents in Gaza City.

Al-Majdalawi said that when he returned to his home between shifts he did small jobs and chores constantly, “because I have become afraid of my own memories”.

“I am very solitary now,” he said. “I do not really talk to others about what I have seen. But I feel that my whole body is becoming tight, and I need some kind of therapy because things are accumulating.”

The Civil Defence workers had come to be viewed from the outside as heroes, Al-Majdalawi said. “But they do not see what is happening inside. Inside I am fighting a war against myself.”

As the ceasefire began, new images from inside Gaza showed scenes of near-total destruction, particularly in the north of the enclave. Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal said that the agency hoped to recover the remaining dead from under the rubble within 100 days, but he acknowledged it was a difficult target, because they have virtually no bulldozers and other heavy equipment yet.

The Civil Defence has accused Israel of deliberately targeting and destroying its vehicles and equipment in strikes – an accusation Israel denies. Rescue workers told the BBC they were currently working with simple hand tools like hammers and had few working vehicles. “We have so little equipment we need another Civil Defence to rescue the Civil Defence,” Al-Majdalawi said.

A spokesman for the agency said on Friday they had been able to recover just 162 bodies since the ceasefire began nearly a week ago.

The UN aid coordination office OCHA has warned that the recovery of the bodies could take years, owing to the lack of equipment, personnel, and what it estimates is 37 million tonnes of rubble littered with unexploded bombs and dangerous materials like asbestos.

The amount of time that many of the dead also hinders the identification process. At the European Hospital in Khan Younis in the south of Gaza, people were searching for loved ones this week among remains brought to the hospital and laid outside on white sheets. In many cases, the only option was to search for shoes, clothes or other personal effects.

“I believe I will recognise my son immediately, even if his face has no features and he is only a skeleton,” said Ali Ashour, a university professor, of his 18-year-old boy Mahjoud.

“I will recognise him because I am his father and I know him better than a million people,” he said.

Ashour still harboured hope that Mahjoud might have been taken prisoner, he said, but he planned to search the dead every day until he knew. “Any time they bring more remains I will come,” he said. “And if I see my son I will lift him out from between the other bodies and carry him away.”

Nisreen Shaaban was searching for her 16-year-old son Moatassem, who she said had left their home in Beit Hanoun for 15 minutes and never returned.

“I have opened every shroud here looking for the clothes he was wearing, trying to smell his scent,” she said. She was surrounded by human remains. “I feel as though I am living in a cemetery,” she said. “It is a city of horrors.”

The Civil Defence agency estimates that nearly 3,000 people may have been incinerated in the bombardment, robbing some families of an end to their search. But there are many more than that who still need to be recovered.

“These people need to be found and honoured,” Al-Shaghnobi, the rescue worker, said. “This work awaits us. All we need is the equipment and we will do it.”

Four young female Israeli soldiers are the next set to be released by Hamas as part of the Gaza ceasefire deal.

Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa, Naama Levy and Liri Albag will be freed in exchange for 180 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

All were serving as observers at the Nahal Oz army base on the border with Gaza when Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, 2023.

Their release will be the second such exchange since the ceasefire came into effect last Sunday. Three hostages and 90 Palestinian prisoners were released in the first swap.

In total, 33 hostages are set to be freed over six weeks of the first phase of the ceasefire, which came into effect on 20 January, 2025.

The ceasefire halted the war that Hamas began with its attack on Israel. About 1,200 people were killed inside Israel and 251 taken back to Gaza as hostages.

More than 47,200 Palestinians, the majority civilians, have been killed in Israel’s offensive, Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says.

Karina Ariev, 20, was serving at the Nahal Oz army base when she was kidnapped on 7 October, 2023.

Her sister Alexandra told the BBC she heard shooting as Karina called her during the attack, and later saw a video showing Karina being taken away in a vehicle.

“She called me to say goodbye, we could hear shooting,” she said.

“She was scared, crying, she was in panic. Her last message was ‘they’re here’, in the bomb shelter. This was the last contact we had with her.”

Alexandra then saw the video circulating on Telegram of her kidnapping. “We identified her, she had blood on her face, she was screaming.

“I would never wish anyone to feel this feeling,” she told the BBC. “Time has stopped.”

Naama Levy, 20, was filmed being bundled into a jeep, her hands tied behind her back. The footage was released by Hamas and circulated widely on social media. According to her mother, the teenager had just begun her military service.

But she had previously been part of an Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative, and her family called her “a peace seeker”.

In a video of her kidnapping from the Nahal Oz army base, she was heard to tell her captors in English: “I have friends in Palestine.”

In May 2024 her brother, Amit, said her family released the footage to “encourage all sides to get back to the table” to solve “an unbearable humanitarian issue”.

“We feel like she’s handling the situation like the true superhero she is, like a hero fighting for her life.”

Daniela Gilboa, 20, was injured in the leg when she was kidnapped along with other female soldiers at Nahal Oz.

She has been seen in several videos, and in one last year asked the Israeli government why she had been “abandoned” and “discarded” while war raged around her.

Ms Gilboa’s mother, Orly, told the Jerusalem Post that the video showed her daughter was “strong and determined” and that wounds suffered on 7 October were not as serious as first feared. However, she said she was concerned about her “poor mental state”.

Meanwhile, her boyfriend’s father told Maariv that his son awaits her return – and planned to propose.

“My son asked her parents for her hand in marriage, to which they answered yes, even though they are only 19-20 years old. Right after that, he shouted to the sky – ‘I’m going to propose to you!'” the father said.

“He prays that she will come back soon and be reunited with him and her family.”

Liri Albag was 18 and had just started military training as an Army lookout when Hamas attacked the Nahal Oz base on 7 October 2023.

Her cousin Aya Albag, a corporal in the army, said she had told her she was “proud” of her passing her observation course before she went to the base

“She was motivated and so happy that she was assigned to Nahal Oz,” she told the Jerusalem Post. “She began her role on Thursday, and a day and a half later, on Saturday morning, she was kidnapped.

Her family say that she has managed to pass messages back to them through released hostages.

In January 2024, footage of Albag, now 19 years old, was released by Hamas.

“I’m only 19 years old. I have my entire life in front of me, but now my entire life has been put on pause,” she is heard to say.

“The world is starting to forget about us. No one cares about us. We’re living in a nightmare.”

Three female Israeli hostages have already been released as part of the latest ceasefire and hostage release deal.

Romi Gonen, 24, was captured as she tried to escape the Nova music festival when it was targeted by the militant group as part of the 7 October 2023 attack.

She has been freed alongside Doron Steinbrecher, 31, a veterinary nurse, and Emily Damari, 28, who holds dual British-Israeli nationality.

All three arrived back in Israel on Sunday after being released by Hamas in Gaza, and were reunited with their families.

A total of 33 hostages are to be freed over the next six weeks.

Romi had travelled from her home in Kfar Veradim, northern Israel, to the Nova festival, which took place in the Negev Desert in the south.

More than 360 people were killed at the festival when Hamas fighters crossed over the border, 2km (1.3 miles) to the west. The desert landscape offered partygoers limited cover and exit routes were blocked by gunmen.

When sirens sounded as the attack unfolded, Romi called her family. Her mother, Meirav, recalled hearing shots and shouting in Arabic in the final call with her daughter.

Romi was ambushed by Hamas militants as she tried to flee.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said Romi had gone to the festival “to do what she loved, to dance” – something she had studied for 12 years, starring in solo performances and becoming an “amazing choreographer”.

A video posted by the families’ forum last November described her as “the girl with the biggest smile, the brightest light, the greatest friend”.

The forum also said that Romi’s bedroom at her home “remains exactly as it was when she left”, awaiting her return.

In a video clip shared by the Israeli military, Romi’s father was seen jumping in the air before breaking down in tears as he watched footage of his daughter’s release on Sunday.

Doron, a 31-year-old veterinary nurse, was abducted from her apartment in Kibbutz Kfar Aza – near Gaza’s north-western border – when Hamas attacked.

The community, one of many Israeli villages along the border, was heavily targeted by armed militants during the 7 October attacks.

Israeli officials said Hamas burned homes and killed civilians, including whole families, as well as taking hostages.

When the assault began, Doron contacted her family and friends via WhatsApp to say she was hiding under the bed as militants advanced, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said.

In her last voice message, she was heard screaming “they’ve caught me” as shouting and gunfire sounded in the background.

Doron’s family received no information about her whereabouts for nearly four months.

“After an unbearable 471 days, our beloved Dodo has finally returned to our arms,” her family said in a statement released by the missing families forum on Sunday.

They added: “We want to express our heartfelt gratitude to everyone who supported and accompanied us along this journey.”

She studied theatre and film in school, and developed a love for animals that led to her becoming a veterinary nurse.

Emily, a 28-year-old British-Israeli national, was also taken hostage from Kibbutz Kfar Aza on 7 October 2023.

She was shot in the hand and taken into Gaza from her home during the attack, and also saw her dog shot and killed. Photographs after her release showed Emily with a bandaged hand and two missing fingers from that attack.

Her mother, Mandy Damari, was also in the kibbutz in her separate home on 7 October. Mrs Damari hid in the safe room and was saved by a bullet hitting the door handle, making it impossible for attackers to get in.

As the assault unfolded, Emily sent her mother a text message containing a single heart emoji – that was the last contact they had.

Emotional images showed Emily reunited with her mother in Israel on Sunday, hugging while on a video call with her brother.

“I want to thank everyone who never stopped fighting for Emily throughout this horrendous ordeal, and who never stopped saying her name,” Mrs Damari said.

“In Israel, Britain, the United States, and around the world. Thank you for bringing Emily home.”

• ‘I just want to hug her’: Family of British-Israeli hostage on news she will be released

Mrs Damari was born and raised in the UK, and met her husband on a holiday in Israel aged 20.

Emily, the youngest of four children, has strong connections with the UK – she is a Tottenham Hotspur fan and would often visit to see relatives.

Before the ceasefire, Israel said 94 hostages remained unaccounted for but it believed only 60 to still be alive.

There are 26 Israeli hostages due to be handed over in the first phase of the ceasefire deal. Israel’s prime minister has said most are believed to be alive.

They have been named by Israel as:

Itzik Elgarat, 69; Agam Berger, 20; Ohad Ben Ami, 55; Arbel Yahud, 29; Alexander (Sasha) Troufanov, 29; Sagui Dekel-Chen, 36; Omer Wenkert, 23; Yair Horn, 46; Oded Lifshitz, 84; Or Levy, 34; Eliya Cohen, 27; Ohad Yahalomi, 50; Tsachi Idan, 50; Keith Siegel, 65; Shlomo Mansour, 86; Gadi Moses, 80; Eli Sharabi, 52; Omer Shem Tov, 22; Tal Shoham, 39; Ofer Kalderon, 53; Yarden Bibas, 34; Shiri Bibas, 33; Ariel Bibas; Kfir Bibas.

The list also includes two men Hisham al-Sayed, 35, and Avera Mengistu, 27, who were captured by Hamas after crossing into Gaza from Israel before the war.

A selection of news photographs from around the world.

The US State Department has issued a halt to all existing foreign assistance and paused new aid, according to an internal memo sent to officials and US embassies abroad.

The leaked notice follows President Trump’s executive order issued on Monday for a 90-day pause in foreign development assistance pending a review of efficiencies and consistency with his foreign policy.

The United States is the world’s biggest international aid donor spending $68bn in 2023 according to government figures. The State Department notice appears to affect everything from development assistance to military aid.

It makes exceptions only for emergency food aid and for military funding for Israel and Egypt. The leaked memo’s contents have been confirmed by the BBC.

“No new funds shall be obligated for new awards or extensions of existing awards until each proposed new award or extension has been reviewed and approved,” says the memo to staff.

It adds that US officials “shall immediately issue stop-work orders, consistent with the terms of the relevant award, until such time as the secretary shall determine, following a review.”

It also orders a wide scale review of all foreign assistance to be completed within 85 days to ensure the aid adheres to President Trump’s foreign policy goals.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio – the US’s top diplomat – has previously stated that all US spending abroad should take place only if it makes America “stronger”, “safer” or “more prosperous”.

One former senior State Department official told the BBC the notice meant a “potentially huge” impact on foreign aid programmes funded by the US.

“One can imagine, for example, the humanitarian de-mining programmes around the world suddenly being told stop work. That’s a pretty big deal,” said Josh Paul, who oversaw Congressional relations on weapons transfers at the State Department until late 2023.

Dave Harden, a former US Agency of International Aid (USAID) mission director in the Middle East, told the BBC the move was “very significant”, saying it could see humanitarian and development programmes funded by the US around the world being immediately suspended, while the review is carried out.

He said it could affect a wide range of critical development projects including water, sanitation and shelter.

“The employees of the implementing partner or the [non-governmental organisation] would be able to be paid, but actual assistance, I think, needs to be halted,” said Mr Harden.

“I have gone through [assistance suspensions] many times when I was the West Bank and Gaza mission director, but that was specific to that account. This is global,” he said.

“Not only does it pause assistance, but it puts a ‘stop work’ order in existing contracts that are already funded and underway. It’s extremely broad,” he added.

The AFP news agency reported the funding freeze could also potentially affect Ukraine, which received billions of dollars in weapons under Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden.

Rubio’s memo, justifying the freeze, said it was impossible for the new administration to assess whether existing foreign aid commitments “are not duplicated, are effective and are consistent with President Trump’s foreign policy”.

Rubio has issued a waiver for emergency food assistance, according to the memo.

This comes amid a surge of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip after a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas began, and several other hunger crises around the world, including Sudan.

The memo also said waivers have so far been approved by Rubio for “foreign military financing for Israel and Egypt and administrative expenses, including salaries, necessary to administer foreign military financing”.

The State Department has been approached for comment.

World leaders, the bosses of the world’s biggest companies and a sprinkling of celebrities gathered in the small Swiss mountain town of Davos for the annual World Economic Forum this week.

On the other side of the Atlantic, President Donald Trump was starting his political comeback as the new US president.

“Nothing will stand in our way”, he declared, as he vowed to end America’s “decline”.

Towards the end of the gathering, President Trump was beamed in straight from the White House webcam to deliver his message of world domination directly to the global elite.

While he charmed, almost seduced the audience with a credible picture of a booming US economy about to scale new technological heights, he simultaneously menaced with threats of tariffs to those who did not choose to shift their factories into the US.

Trillions of dollars of tariffs for the US Treasury for those businesses exporting into the US market from foreign factories.

“Your prerogative” he said, with a smile not out of place in a Godfather movie. And then for one of his own, the Bank of America chief Brian Moynihan, a remarkable public lashing accusing the lending giant of “debanking” many of his conservative supporters.

He awkwardly mumbled about sponsoring the World Cup.

In this first week of his second term, most people at Davos were nodding along, as they cannot think what else to do, just yet.

Two worlds colliding, as the ‘America First’ President was beamed in like a 30-foot interplanetary emperor, into the beating heart of the rules-based international economic order.

It is one thing suggesting that trade deficits are a problem with your domestic electorate. It is quite another to suggest at an internationalist forum that a G7 ally, Canada, become a state of your nation, eliciting gasps in the audience, and not just from Canadians.

The address was, by design, charming and offensive. There was carrot and stick for the rest of the world.

As delegates absorbed the mix of threats, invites and on occasion, praise, many appeared to be trying to decide just how much Trump might damage the global trading system, whilst assessing just how far ahead his America is getting in this tech driven AI boom.

Davos has been for this first week the alternative pole of the Trump second term.

There was a coherence to his agenda to use every means to drive down energy prices including by pressurising the Saudis on oil.

This he said would not just help to lower inflation, but also drain Russia’s war coffers of oil dollars to help end the Ukraine war, by economic means. The ceasefire in the Middle East has already bought Trump some geopolitical credibility in these circles.

Christine Lagarde, David Miliband, and John Kerry shuffled into the hall. Various bank chiefs assembled on stage to praise and then lightly question the President.

The bottom line was this: Is president Trump serious about what sounded like campaign trail threats to the world economic system? The answer will reverberate for the next four years and beyond.

The answer sounded like a most definitely, yes. However, this does not mean it is going to work.

Some leading US CEOs told me that they were preparing for tit-for-tat retaliatory tariffs to be applied to their exports. Their assumption was that the President’s love of a rising stock market would restrict his deployment of tariffs.

But no one really knows. In any event, much is up for grabs. He has already withdrawn from the World Health Organisation.

In the promenades the whisper was of his Project 2025 allies suggesting US withdrawal from the IMF and the World Bank too.

The rest of the world does have some counter leverage, once it decides to get back up after the Trump whirlwind.

The Canadians are now briefing on their retaliatory tariffs. In conversations with both the British business secretary and EU trade minister, Jonathan Reynolds and European Union trade chief, Maros Sefcovic, I detected a desire for calm dialogue.

Both are making similar arguments to try to dissuade Trump from wider tariffs.

Mr Reynolds told me that as the US does not have a goods trade deficit with the UK, there is no need for tariffs.

Mr Sefcovic said that the US should really think about its services surplus too.

But do they not consider the threats to G7 and Nato allies Canada and Denmark (over Greenland) to be straightforwardly unacceptable and as absurd as France claiming back Louisiana? Sefcovic did not want to whip anything up.

Diplomats are making lists of US goods that Europe can now purchase to demonstrate “wins” for President Trump, from arms to gas to the magnets in wind turbines.

It might make some sense for the rest of the G7 to work in unison on retaliation against the tariffs, in order to concentrate the minds of Congress, and the competing factions inside the court of Trump.

There is no sign of that happening.

The US tech supremacy story epitomised by the broligarchy – including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg, Apple leader Tim Cook, and Google chief Sundar Pichar – had top seats at the inauguration this week.

While the US is streets ahead of Europe, its standing against China is more uncertain.

One of the talks of Davos was DeepSeek’s high performing, much cheaper AI model, made in China. The prediction that the tech bros would be tearing strips out of each other in the court of Trump began to come true within hours, rather than months.

Meanwhile, while most, though not all, here in Davos sounded rather seduced by Trump’s tech-fuelled optimism, some in Europe also see a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to attract top researchers who may be rather less than enamoured with the direction of US politics. It was openly suggested by the European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde.

Others sought solace in the fact that Europe no longer has to face Biden’s massive green subsidies, creating a more level playing field again for Europe.

President Trump is changing the terms of world trade. The response of the rest of the world to this is as important as what the Trump administration itself decides.

Hamas has named four hostages to be released on Saturday under the Gaza ceasefire deal.

It says they are soldiers Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa, Naama Levy and Liri Albag. They will be freed in exchange for 180 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

It will be the second such exchange since the ceasefire came into effect last Sunday.

Three hostages and 90 prisoners were released in the first swap.

The ceasefire halted the war which began when Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023. About 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken back to Gaza as hostages.

More than 47,200 Palestinians, the majority civilians, have been killed in Israel’s offensive, Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says.

It was originally thought that a female Israeli civilian, Arbel Yehud, would be included in the list of those to be released on Saturday.

It is unclear why her name is not on the list, though Israeli media reported that Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a separate group, is holding her.

Hamas is expected to provide information about the remaining 26 hostages due to be released over the next five weeks.

This includes the Bibas family – two parents and two children, one of whom, Kfir, was 10 months old when taken captive and is the youngest hostage. It is unclear if this information will include the names or just the number of living or dead hostages.

• Who are the next four Israeli hostages set to be released by Hamas?
• What we know about the ceasefire in Gaza
• Hamas hostages: Stories of the people taken from Israel

The prisoners who will be released are of a more serious category than those freed in the first exchange. They will include those who have killed, some of whom are serving sentences of more than 15 years.

Israel has insisted that no-one who was involved in the 7 October attacks will be freed.

Ariev, Gilboa, Levy and Albag were seized at the Nahal Oz military base which was overrun by Hamas gunmen. Footage showed them among a group of women being tied up with their hands behind their backs. They were seen pleading for help while being taunted by their captors.

The women were part of a unit which surveilled the Israel-Gaza border.

Three weeks ago Hamas released a video of Albag, 19, calling for the Israeli government to reach a deal.

The ceasefire was concluded after months of indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas, led by the US, Qatar and Egypt.

It will be implemented in three stages, with the second stage due to begin six weeks into the truce. About 1,900 Palestinian prisoners will be released during the first stage in exchange for 33 hostages. Israeli forces will also begin withdrawing from positions in Gaza and hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians will be able to return to areas they had fled or been forced from.

The ceasefire is meant to lead to a permanent end to the war in Gaza.

Ninety-one hostages taken on 7 October 2023 are still held in Gaza. Fifty-seven of them are assumed by Israel to still be alive. Three others – two of whom are alive – have been held for a decade or more.

Three female Israeli hostages have already been released as part of the latest ceasefire and hostage release deal.

Romi Gonen, 24, was captured as she tried to escape the Nova music festival when it was targeted by the militant group as part of the 7 October 2023 attack.

She has been freed alongside Doron Steinbrecher, 31, a veterinary nurse, and Emily Damari, 28, who holds dual British-Israeli nationality.

All three arrived back in Israel on Sunday after being released by Hamas in Gaza, and were reunited with their families.

President Donald Trump has revoked security protection for former top US health official Anthony Fauci, who has faced death threats since leading the country’s Covid-19 response.

“You can’t have a security detail for the rest of your life because you work for government,” Trump told reporters, when asked about the decision on Friday. “It’s very standard.”

This week, Trump also revoked security protections for his former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, his former National Security Adviser John Bolton and former envoy Brian Hook, who all faced threats from Iran.

Dr Fauci has now hired his own private security team that he will pay for himself, US media report.

Asked whether he felt responsible for the officials’ safety, Trump said on Friday: “They all made a lot of money. They can hire their own security too.”

Dr Fauci was previously protected by federal marshals, and then a private security company, which was paid for by the government, according to the New York Times.

One of Dr Fauci’s most vocal Republican critics, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, had called for his security to be revoked.

He wrote in a post on X on Thursday that he had “sent supporting information to end the 24 hr a day limo and security detail for Fauci”.

“I wish him nothing but peace but he needs to pay for his own limos,” he said.

Trump has also revoked the security clearances of 51 intelligence officials who had claimed that Hunter Biden’s laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

Under US protocol, former presidents and their spouses are granted security protection for life. But protection for other US officials is decided based on the threat assessment from the intelligence community.

As the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr Fauci faced death threats during and after the coronavirus pandemic, as well as criticism from Republicans over mask mandates and other Covid restrictions.

He led the institute for 40 years, including during Trump’s first term. Trump had also awarded presidential commendations to Dr Fauci who served on the Operation Warp Speed task force during the pandemic.

Before leaving office, then-President Joe Biden issued a preemptive pardon for Dr Fauci.

The doctor told US media that he “truly appreciated” Biden for taking action, adding that the possibility of prosecution had created “immeasurable and intolerable distress” on his family.

“Let me be perfectly clear, I have committed no crime and there are no possible grounds for any allegation or threat of criminal investigation or prosecution of me,” he said.

It doesn’t matter how much you prepare for it. It still takes you by surprise. As the great-granddaughter of a woman who was murdered in Auschwitz, I am meeting the granddaughter of a man who drove Jews to their death. I’m lost for words.

I never got to meet my grandfather Ludvig, who survived the Holocaust, or his mother Rachel. They were put onto a cattle cart to the Auschwitz death camp in 1944. Ludvig, who was about 15 at the time, was separated from his mother and sent to another concentration camp. But Rachel was tortured, gassed and murdered.

I grew up hearing so many stories about them, and spending time with other Holocaust survivors in my family in Australia. They were at the forefront of my mind when I found myself in Germany interviewing Cornelia Stieler.

Cornelia’s grandfather was the main breadwinner in a household with very little income. He originally worked as a coal miner, but after a near-fatal accident which left him trapped under coal for two days, he decided to do something else. Things turned around when he eventually got a job at Deutsche Reichsbahn as a train driver. Cornelia’s mother used to speak of that achievement with pride, saying getting the job was “the chance of a lifetime”.

At first, he was transporting goods for the war effort. But it soon turned into something more sinister. “I believe that my grandfather served as a train driver, commuting between the death camps. He stayed in Liegnitz, now Legnica, in a boarding school, so there was a certain separation from the family and between the death camps.”

Cornelia says that when her grandfather first started the job, he didn’t know what it would become. “I think my grandfather saw a lot of horrible things and didn’t know how to get out of this work, didn’t know how to deal with it.”

After training as a family therapist, she delved into her past and tried to understand him better. She tells me she started asking: “At what point was he a perpetrator? Was he an accessory to perpetrators? When could he have left?”

At this point, my mouth is dry. My heart is racing. Listening to all of this feels like an out-of-body experience. All I can think about is how her grandfather drove trains into Auschwitz, and that’s how my grandfather and great-grandmother ended up there. I’m thinking about all my other relatives – cousins that I know existed but know nothing about – who were murdered in Auschwitz too.

“If I were any younger, I think I’d feel a strong hate towards you,” I tell her, fighting back tears. “But I don’t because saying all of those things must have been really difficult to admit.”

“Give me your hand,” Cornelia says, also welling up. “It’s important. Your tears, and my touch, are touching me… My grandfather was a train driver in Auschwitz. What can I say? Nothing.

“I can’t apologise, it’s not possible,” she adds, implying the crime is too grave. “My grandfather felt very, very guilty, and he died with his guilt.” Cornelia thanks me for my openness and says there’s a need to fully uncover the history.

Then she says something you might not expect – that some Germans from Schönwald, where her family came from, had reacted angrily to her research. The now Polish town renamed Bojków, some 100km from Kraków, hasn’t come to terms with its Nazi past.

Cornelia explains that originally, the town was against the ideology of the Nazi Party, but over time, became consumed by it. Hitler saw Schönwald as a model village – an Aryan village in a land of Slavs. He was hoping that a “fifth column” of ethnic Germans there would become a useful aid in the military.

It was the site of the Gleiwitz incident – a false flag incident staged by Nazi Germany in 1939 to justify the invasion of Poland, one of the triggers of World War Two. And in 1945, towards the end of the war, it was the first German village to be attacked by advancing Soviet forces.

But just before that, it was the scene of one of the Nazis’ so-called death marches.

As Soviets approached Auschwitz, Hitler’s elite guard, the SS, forced around 60,000 prisoners there – mostly Jews – to move further west. Between 19 and 21 January 1945, one of those marches passed through Schönwald. In below freezing temperatures, the prisoners were dressed only in their thin striped uniforms with just wooden shoes on their feet. Those who collapsed from starvation and exhaustion were shot.

Those who survived were put onto open cattle cart trains heading further west, usually to other concentration camps, like Buchenwald. The Nazis wanted to hold onto their slave labour – even at this point, some still believed in an ultimate triumph of the Third Reich.

A local history and religion teacher, Krzysztof Kruszynski, takes me to the main street where the death march passed. People wait to catch their bus outside the main church on Rolnikow Street – known as Bauer-Strasse in German times. He points to ground, and tells me these are the original cobble stones that the prisoners had to walk on.

“It is a silent witness of the death march,” he says. “But the stone cannot talk.”

This history has been buried until now – partly because Germans from Schönwald were forced to flee after the Soviet attack that came soon after and Poles resettled the village. One German-Polish woman in her 80s, Ruta Kassubek, told me how drunk Soviet soldiers had stormed her family home and murdered her father. But there’s another reason: an active suppression of the past.

It didn’t surprise me that some Germans had responded negatively to Cornelia’s research. Germany prides itself on its , or culture of remembrance: mandatory Holocaust education, museums, memorials. But many see that as the job of state and government. And while they’re happy enough to face the past in the abstract, it’s harder to deal with their own family history, says Benjamin Fischer, a former Jewish student leader and political consultant. He calls it the “deindividualisation of history”.

A study by Bielefeld University found that a third of Germans believed their family members helped save Jews during the Holocaust. That’s “ridiculous”, says Benjamin, and “statistically impossible”.

On the ground in Bojków, 80 years after the death march, things are changing. Last week, a delegation of Germans, Jews and Poles, including local authorities, schools and emergency services unveiled a new memorial commemorating those who died in the town’s death march.

Cornelia and Krzysztof were there. For Cornelia the history is deeply personal. She is convinced that studying and remembering it is key to understanding how society could change so rapidly. And I’m grateful for it. Their work and passion gives me hope in a world of rising antisemitism – as I try to keep the memory of how my family came to be murdered alive.

The people of Schönwald believed their town lay at the pinnacle of high culture and spirituality. But then it “folded into immorality”, Cornelia says. “This is a development that we need to understand… They weren’t solely good or evil. People can go into jobs with good intentions but very quickly, [find themselves] on the wrong side.

“We can’t change the past. We can’t turn back time. But it’s important to talk about this, to remind people of what happened, to remind people of what humans can do to one another.”

Japan’s central bank has increased the cost of borrowing to its highest level in 17 years after consumer price rises accelerated in December.

The move by the Bank of Japan (BOJ) to raise its short-term policy rate to “around 0.5 per cent” comes just hours after the latest economic data showed prices rose last month at the fastest pace in 16 months.

The BOJ’s last interest rate hike in July, along with a weak jobs report from the US, caught investors around the world by surprise, which triggered a stock market selloff.

The bank’s governor, Kazuo Ueda, signalled this latest rate hike in advance in a bid to avoid another market shock.

According to official figures released on Friday, core consumer prices in Japan increased by 3% in December from a year earlier.

The decision marks the BOJ’s first rate hike since July and came just days after Donald Trump returned to the White House.

During the election campaign Trump threatened to impose tariffs on all imports into the US, which could have an impact on exporting countries like Japan.

By raising rates now the bank will have more scope to cut rates in the future if it needs to boost the economy.

The move highlights the central bank’s plans to steadily increase rates to around 1% – a level seen as neither boosting or slowing the economy.

The BOJ signalled that interest rates will continue to rise from ultra-low levels.

Neil Newman, the head of strategy at Astris Advisory Japan said: “rates will continue to rise as wages increase, inflation remains above 2% and there is some growth in the economy.”

“We look for another 25-basis point hike in six months,” said Stefan Angrick, a Japan economist at Moody’s Analytics.

Last year, the BOJ raised the cost of borrowing for the first time since 2007 after rates had been kept down for years as the country struggled with stagnant price growth.

That hike meant that there were no longer any countries left with negative interest rates.

When negative rates are in force people have to pay to deposit money in a bank. They have been used by several countries as a way of encouraging people to spend their money rather than putting it in a bank.

Ukraine reportedly hit a Russian oil refinery and targeted Moscow during an attack involving a wave of at least 121 drones, one of the largest single operations of its kind during the war.

Video footage verified by the BBC shows a fireball rising over the refinery and pumping station in the Ryazan region, southeast of Moscow, which Ukrainian officials said was a target.

Russia said it had shot down 121 drones that had targeted 13 regions, including Ryazan and Moscow, but reported no damage.

Elsewhere, Ukrainian authorities said three people were killed and one was injured when a Russian drone hit a residential building in the Kyiv region.

Andriy Kovalenko, head of Ukraine’s centre for countering disinformation, said on Telegram that an oil refinery in Ryazan had been hit, as well as the Kremniy factory in Bryansk that Kyiv says produces missile components and other weapons.

Bloggers on Telegram posted images and videos of fires raging at the Ryazan facility, which covers around 6sq km (2.3sq miles). Verified footage shows people fleeing from the site in cars and on foot as a fireball rises into the sky.

BBC Verify used video footage to establish the location of two fires at the refinery. One video shows a fire near the northern entrance, whose location was matched by the road layout, signs and fences.

Two other videos show a larger fire on the eastern side of the refinery, around 3km (1.6m) away from the first. The location was identified by matching trees, pylons, road and path layouts.

Russian state-owned news agency RIA cited a statement from the Kremniy factory in Bryansk, which said work had been suspended after an attack by six drones. Pavel Malkov, the regional governor, said emergency services were responding.

The Kremlin acknowledged the attacks but made no mention of damage or casualties.

It claimed to have destroyed 121 Ukrainian drones, including six over the Moscow region, 20 in the Ryazan region, and a number over the border region of Bryansk.

Sergei Sobyanin, Moscow’s mayor, said the city’s air defences had intercepted attacks by Ukrainian drones at four locations.

He said air defences southeast of the capital in Kolomna and Ramenskoye had also repelled drones, without specifying how many. He said there was no damage.

Russian news agencies quoted Rosaviatsiya, the federal aviation agency, as saying two Moscow airports, Vnukovo and Domodedovo, had resumed flights after suspending operations for a time. Six flights were redirected to other airports.

In the city of Kursk, Mayor Igor Kutsak said overnight attacks had damaged power lines and cut off electricity to one district.

In Ukraine, officials said that its air defences had destroyed 25 of 58 drones launched overnight by Russia.

The interior ministry said debris from one of the drones had killed two men and a woman in Hlevakha, Kyiv region, and that another person had been injured.

Russia’s justice ministry on Friday designated the BBC Russian service’s Olga Ivshina a “foreign agent”.

Ivshina, who is based in London, is the fourth BBC journalist to be designated by Russia since the full invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022.

Last week BBC Russian’s Anastasia Lotareva, a senior editor in Riga, and Andrey Kozenko, a reporter in London, were added to the list.

Those named as foreign agents are compelled to mark any online content available in Russia as having come from a foreign agent, and to share financial details. Failure to comply can lead to fines or even imprisonment.

A spokesperson for the BBC said the corporation “strongly rejects and will challenge the designation”.

“The role of BBC News Russian journalists, reporting independently and impartially, has never been needed more, and we will support them to ensure they can continue to do their jobs serving Russian-speaking audiences.”

For the past year I’ve been posing as Dan Jones – a member of the far-right group Patriotic Alternative (PA).

I’ve attended protests, a summer camp filled with families, a secretive conference, and when I told them I was sofa-surfing, the group even found me a job.

What I heard while undercover was talk of race wars, threats of violence against migrants, and people planning to arm themselves.

The evidence I secretly filmed has led to calls for a police investigation, and separate calls to change the law and ban the group.

Warning: This article contains graphic accounts of racist and violent language

I had been following members of PA online for months before joining the group.

PA’s organiser in Wales, Joe Marsh, was a veteran member of the far-right who’d had many previous guises, including in the British National Party (BNP) and as a football hooligan.

He was involved with protests outside a hotel in Llanelli, which had been set to house hundreds of asylum seekers.

I wanted to meet him to find out what he would say in private to someone who wanted to join PA.

I chose a fake name, practised my backstory – that I was a sofa-surfing delivery rider who’d been through a bad break-up – and sent my details to PA.

It took less than 24 hours for Mr Marsh to message me.

He invited me to meet him for breakfast in Swansea ahead of a protest against drag queens.

He told me he invited anyone who wanted to join PA to first meet him on his own, joking “you don’t know whether you’ll end up on BBC Wales”.

My stomach dropped.

After a few hours, it felt like I had passed a test. Before I left, he asked if I was following his social media accounts. Then the messages started.

Some were direct to me, some to the groups to which I was added.

They were relentless – day and night, from Mr Marsh and others in the group. And almost every single message was about race.

Some were racist memes.

For example, a drawing of a policeman handing a note to someone at their door.

The note read: “So… we decided to let a Pakistani rape your daughter. Here’s why.”

And there was a constant stream of links to news stories about black and Asian people convicted of crimes.

After a few weeks, I was invited to join PA members for a so-called banner drop – members gathered for no more than about an hour near a road, to wave flags branded with PA logos and other messages.

The messaging on the banners was often fairly benign – they didn’t want to attract the attention of police or counter-protesters.

But the actual conversations I heard were very different.

At my first banner drop, a former civil servant and PA member called Aaron Watkins asked me whether I could fight. He told me I should learn, saying it would be good for me to know I could kill a person.

On another occasion, Roger Phillips – who wasn’t a PA member but attended some of their protests – told me he was buying a pump action shotgun, asking me “who else is going to fight migrants?”

About nine months after joining PA, I was invited to attend the group’s “summer camp”.

About 150 of us – including men, women and children – descended on a campsite in Derbyshire for three days, under the guise of being a hiking association.

The group took over a big section of the campsite and decorated the area with regional flags.

All the leaders of the organisation were there, such as founder Mark Collett and deputy Laura Towler.

Members came from all over Britain. Lots of people brought their children with them and they were allowed to run around the campsite and play while the group discussed things such as the white replacement conspiracy and used racial slurs.

We weren’t the only ones on the campsite.

There was a big scout group next to us who ended up moving because they said the kids felt intimidated by PA.

When that happened, the campsite owners threatened to throw Patriotic Alternative out.

One morning, we went on a group hike, with almost everyone carrying PA flags. We reached the top of one mountain and stopped for a while, before noticing a small group of men of south Asian heritage behind us who happened to be hiking in the same direction.

The hike culminated in unveiling two massive banners on top of a local peak. One read “We will not be replaced” and another read “White Lives Matter”.

One of the last things I did was attend PA’s “special conference”, in October.

It was a three-day event, a lot like a political conference, at a hall the group had hired under the guise of a 50th birthday party.

A few hundred members turned up and there were banners everywhere, as well as speakers from other countries.

One speaker was Blair Cottrell, from Australia – a man with a string of convictions. After his speech, I went to sit at the table he was at.

He spoke about a black criminal in Australia.

He said: “You can’t reason with them, you have to use brute force.”

And as a deterrent, he then made a sickening suggestion: “Literally skin them and hang a few of their bodies up across some traffic lights.”

He said he was speaking theoretically, but added: “That is practically the most effective way to actually send them a message.”

Many of the PA members around him seemed full of admiration. I asked one – Patrick, a former history teacher – whether he bought into the idea of a race war.

He said it was inevitable and, for those migrants who refused to leave the country, “the only way to get rid of them will be to kill every single one of them”.

The undercover operation wasn’t without stress or issues and being undercover for so long took its toll. I was always over-thinking, always tense and my phone was always pinging.

Soon after joining, I started wearing a hidden camera.

Once, while I was at a house in south Wales with Mr Watkins – who had offered me a day’s work helping with a decorating job – I thought I was recording him, until I went to the toilet and realised my camera wasn’t working.

I told him I needed to go outside to call my mum, but instead rang my producer for help.

My BBC colleagues scrambled to find a solution, eventually dropping a new camera into a nearby bush for me to find.

As we worked, Mr Watkins told me he believed migrants coming to the UK should be put into camps until they agreed to leave the country. He suggested those who refused should be shot.

He also admitted to burning his old phone on a BBQ before anti-terrorism police could find it.

At the end of the year, the moment came when our BBC team approached the PA members and revealed the evidence we had against them.

We never told them there had been an undercover journalist, but within 30 minutes they worked out that it was me.

I was kicked out of the private messaging group I’d been added to, and my burner phone fell completely silent. That was that.

Looking back, perhaps the biggest surprise was that many members of PA were not who I expected them to be.

Many were well educated – including a former history teacher, civil servants and NHS workers. They were organised, with leaders in charge of groups across every region of Britain and a centralised leader in Mark Collett.

They’ve tried unsuccessfully to register as a political party. Now their plan, according to leader Mark Collett, is to win people’s trust by engaging in “local activism”.

He said: “Because if you are working in a shitty nine-to-five job worrying about money… then, all of a sudden, you’re worrying about if your daughter is going get raped cos there’s 250 men of fighting age who’ve just turned up eyeing her as she walks to school.

“And then a group who comes in gets it shut down and removes that worry, that’s a positive in people’s lives.”

The group is also fundraising for convicted criminals, like those jailed after the Southport riots.

At least three members I spoke to had been referred to Prevent. But their views clearly hadn’t changed.

Now it’s all over, I’m much more cautious than I used to be. I feel I have to be careful and more aware than before.

Ultimately, the people I met at PA don’t know my true identity – but they know what I look like.

A barrister who has written books on extremism has said some members I recorded could be investigated for inciting racial hatred, and there are calls for the law to change to ban groups like PA who might be spreading hate.

Leader Mark Collett said they were not extremist, did not promote violence and peacefully campaigned for the rights of what he called indigenous British people.

I don’t have any regrets. It feels like, whatever happens, PA members or others like them will continue to find ways to do what they do.

That’s why it’s important to keep showing people who is behind the mask.

Winemaker Maxime Chapoutier would be arrested if he tried to sell two of his newest wines in his native France.

“There would likely be outrage about these wines in France, and that would be a good thing,” he says. “Sometimes you need to be provocative to drive change.”

The two bottles in question, one white and one red, would be illegal in France because they are made from a blend of French and Australian base wines.

Under both French and European Union law it is forbidden to make a wine that combines EU and non-EU fruit. In France in particular, authorities take such things very seriously.

The French wine industry has a celebrated word called “terroir”, which applies to all the environmental factors that effect vines growing in a vineyard, such the soil, the climate, and the elevation. As a result, wines from a specific place are held in the highest esteem.

Add a strict appellation or classification system for France’s wine regions, and the thought of blending French and Australian wine to create a global hybrid would horrify many French wine lovers.

Yet Maxime has done just this, and it is all thanks to one word – Brexit.

For while he cannot sell the two wines in the EU, he can do so in the UK now that London no longer has to follow food and drink rules set by Brussels.

Maxime has created the wines in partnership with UK online retailer The Wine Society, where they are called Hemispheres Red and Hemispheres White. The red is made from syrah grapes, or shiraz as they are called in Australia, while the white is a blend of marsanne and viognier varieties.

The Australian red and white wine components are shipped in bulk to the UK, where they are blended with wine from France’s northern Rhone and Roussillon regions before bottling.

Maxime who works for his family’s celebrated Rhone-based wine company Chapoutier, say that while he respects France’s focus on terroir, there should be room for global blends to also be sold.

“Chapoutier has been making wine for more than 200 years, very terroir driven, and biodynamic,” he says. “But more and more people are turning their back on French wines because they don’t understand the complicated appellation rules.

“We need to adapt for consumers and make wines more accessible, which international blends can help to do. Maybe the EU law will change. It is also more ecological to ship wine from Australia to Europe in bulk, as you don’t have the weight of all the glass bottles.”

Another wine company now making wines by combining grapes from two continents is Australian firm Penfolds. It sells reds made from both Australian and Californian grapes, and others that mix Australian and French. Again they cannot be sold in the EU, but they can in the UK, US, Australia and elsewhere.

Penfolds refers to these blends as “wine of the world”, and says that they “possess an otherness that can best be described as worldly”. Whatever that is supposed to mean.

Unsurprisingly, some more traditional winemakers are not in favour of this development. One such person is Jas Swan, an independent winemaker based in Germany.

While the two-continent blends from Chapoutier and Penfolds are made with care from quality grapes, and priced accordingly, she is fearful that if the trend grows it will mean a lot more cheap, low-grade wine going on sale.

“I believe that those types of wine would have nothing left of any terroir, even before they left their continent,” she says. “Those wines would have seen only machine work, heavy additions to keep them clean, and are manufactured to be easy to drink for the masses.

“Why can consumers not be more demanding? The consumerism is insane.”

Peter Richards, who holds the top global wine industry qualification, the master of wine (MW), is also sniffy. “The notion of cross-country blending for wine isn’t something I find outrageous in itself,” he says. “My concern is more that this is about creating novelty for novelty’s sake.”

His wife, Susie Barrie, who is also an MW, adds: “I remain to be convinced that a wine made by blending grapes from different countries can be great in terms of taste.”

By contrast, wine writer Jamie Goode says that development of two-continent wine “is actually quite a fun idea”.

“If the wines are good, and made well from good vineyard sites – and not simply a gimmick blending together cheap bulk wines and then slapping a huge margin on the wine – then this is quite interesting.

“The fundamental basis for fine wine is the notion of terroir – that wines come from a place, and their flavour expresses this place in unique ways. But not all wines have to be terroir wines, and there’s room for wines like this.

“In some ways, there’s a lot of skill required to blend the right wines together to create something interesting coming from such different places.”

Pierre Mansour, head of buying for The Wine Society, says he and his colleagues came up with the idea of creating two wines made from grapes from different continents as part of the company’s 150th birthday celebrations.

“We were thinking about the future of wine, and we wanted to do something innovative. In the end we thought that one area of innovation is blending, of creating a wine that can mitigate for the impact of climate change on a particular country.

“And from a carbon footprint out of view, it is more environmentally friendly to ship wine in bulk from Australia to the UK. But at the same time we did expect ‘terroirists’ to say ‘hold on this is fundamentally against the French principal of wine’.

“So we approached Chapoutier, thinking that they might say ‘are you mad, how dare you insult us’, but they were great. They were really enthusiastic.”

Jimmy Donaldson – aka MrBeast – was jubilant as he told his tens of millions of TikTok followers about his bid to buy the platform.

“I might become you guys’ new CEO! I’m super excited!” Donaldson said from a private jet. He then proceeded to promise $10,000 to five random new followers.

The internet creator’s post has been viewed more than 73 million times since Monday. Donaldson said he could not share details about his bid, but promised: “Just know, it’s gonna be crazy.”

Donaldson is one of multiple suitors who have expressed interest in purchasing TikTok, the wildly popular social media platform that’s become the subject of a fast-moving political drama in the United States.

Last year, then-President Joe Biden signed a law that gave TikTok’s China-based parent company ByteDance until 19 January to sell the platform or face a ban in the United States.

The legislation addressed concerns about TikTok’s links to the Chinese government and worries about the app being a national security risk.

President Donald Trump has floated the possibility of a joint venture.

“I would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position,” he said in a Truth Social post on Sunday. “By doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to [stay up].”

Trump has since signed an executive order that allows the app to stay operational for another 75 days.

Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that China was considering a TikTok sale to Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a close ally of President Trump, who already owns the social media platform X.

Musk himself wrote on X this week that while he has long been against a TikTok ban, “the current situation where TikTok is allowed to operate in America, but X is not allowed to operate in China is unbalanced. Something needs to change”.

At a news conference Tuesday, Trump was asked by a reporter if he would be open to Musk buying the platform.

“I would be if he wanted to buy it, yes,” the president replied.

“I’d like Larry to buy it, too,” Trump added, referring to Oracle chairman Larry Ellison, a long-time Trump supporter who was on stage with him for a separate announcement.

Oracle is one of TikTok’s main server providers, managing many of the data centres where billions of the platform’s videos are stored.

Last year, Oracle warned that a TikTok ban could hurt its business. The cloud computing giant was also a leading contender to buy the social media platform in 2020, back when Trump was trying to ban it.

Billionaire investor Frank McCourt has also expressed interest in TikTok, and has been doing media interviews about the prospect for several months.

McCourt has said he wants TikTok to run on technology overseen by the Project Liberty Institute, which he founded. He has been critical of data collection practices of social media companies.

Project Liberty is bidding for TikTok without its proprietary algorithm. McCourt told CNBC this week that Project Liberty is “not interested in the algorithm or the Chinese technology” even as he acknowledged that the platform is “worth less” without it.

Ultimately, President Trump is likely to have a major role in selecting a US buyer of TikTok.

“It’s going to be a winner that’s likely to be politically sympathetic to President Donald Trump,” said Anupam Chander, a law professor at Georgetown University.

Prof Chander said the 50-50 joint ownership model does not comport with the law’s requirements, which might prompt Trump to pressure Congress into revising the law.

For now, the platform’s future remains in limbo.

Prof Chander said the Biden administration made an “unforced error” by allowing the law to give the president outsized control over who owns TikTok.

“It was a terrible idea to put the future of a massive information platform into this political maelstrom,” Prof Chander said.

Families of those killed in an oil rig disaster 45 years ago have welcomed a new report that supports their claims of being denied justice.

The Alexander Kielland platform was being used as an accommodation block when it capsized in the Norwegian North Sea during a storm in 1980, killing 123 people, including 22 from the UK.

A study by the University of Stavanger has concluded authorities failed the survivors and victims’ families, for which the Norwegian government has previously apologised.

Laura Fleming, whose father Michael was among those killed, said the report should help get to the truth of what happened.

Mr Fleming, 37, was one of five men from Cleator Moor, in Cumbria, who died when the floating rig capsized about 200 miles (322km) off the Norwegian coast on 27 March 1980.

His daughter Laura, who is part of the Kielland Network of families, said the “shocking truth” of what had happened had only recently been disclosed and she still had many questions.

The University of Stavanger study concluded Norwegian authorities prioritised protecting the reputation of the lucrative oil industry over fully exploring the disaster’s causes.

They said there were more complex factors involved than the simple snapping off of a leg on the four-year-old platform, which was blamed on the French manufacturers.

Ms Fleming, who lives in Durham, said in the wake of the catastrophe families were “pressured” into accepting settlements with “no explanation offered as to how the rig sank” and the “door of power firmly closed to any questions”.

“The Norwegian government made a conscious decision not to do what would naturally and sensibly follow an accident,” Ms Fleming said, adding it did not want to carry out a full investigation as that could affect the industry which provided “wealth and prosperity”.

The Norwegian government has previously apologised for failings in its investigations but in 2021 ruled a fresh inquiry would not yield anything new.

Ms Fleming said she was “grateful” for the “important” new study, adding it may “help in bringing about the truth”.

A$AP Rocky’s assault trial began on Friday in Los Angeles, where the rapper is accused of firing a gun at a former friend.

The rapper, whose real name is Rakim Mayers, faces up to 24 years in prison if convicted on two felony assault charges in the 2021 incident near a Hollywood hotel.

In opening statements on Friday, prosecutors described the rapper as the aggressor and claimed he orchestrated a plan to shoot his childhood friend following a disagreement.

The Grammy-nominated hip-hop star, who is also a fashion mogul and the longtime partner of singer Rihanna, has pleaded not guilty and denied the allegations.

The victim, fellow artist and childhood friend Terell Ephron, testified last year that bullets grazed his knuckles when the rapper opened fire in his direction in Hollywood, just one block from the iconic Hollywood Walk of Fame. He said he decided to seek medical treatment at a hospital after flying back to New York.

Authorities say the shooting happened on 6 November in 2021 after a “heated discussion” in Hollywood between the rapper and Terell Ephron, who were both part of the A$AP Mob hip-hop collective and have known one another since their time together at a New York high school.

A jury of seven women and five men was selected over the course of three days this week before the opening arguments kicked off on Friday.

Mr Mayers, attending the trial in a grey suit, was joined by some members of his family on Friday, but notably absent was singer Rihanna, who he shares two children with. It’s unclear whether she might appear at the trial, but the rapper’s attorney told the court this week that Mr Mayers has tried to keep his family away from all of this.

Deputy District Attorney Paul Przelomiec opened the trial on Friday with a detailed presentation of video evidence, describing the case against the rapper as straightforward. “What will become almost instantly clear is that this is not a complicated case,” he told the jury.

Mr Mayers, along with two friends and Mr Ephron, met up to talk after they had a disagreement the night before. But the meeting turned violent.

The first video, which was partially obscured, showed a confrontation between two men, with two others stepping in to intervene. One man, identified as Mr Mayers, is seen pulling a gun but not firing. Additional footage from later that night captures two gunshots during a scuffle involving the same group.

“If you brought a gun, then you should shoot,” Mr Ephron reportedly told Mr Mayers, according to Przelomiec. Moments later, Mr Mayers is accused of opening fire, allegedly grazing Ephron’s knuckle.

“In his state of mind, he never believed he was going to be shot,” Przelomiec told the court.

Prosecutors also showed the jury text messages exchanged shortly after the incident between the pair, where Mr Ephron accuses the rap star of trying to kill him.

“U try killing me,” he wrote.

Mr. Mayers responded, “wtf iz ut talking about.”

The rapper rejected a plea offer ahead of the trial and said the weapon he was accused of firing was a “prop gun” incapable of firing real ammunition. The AP news agency reported that this would have meant agreeing to 180 days in prison.

Defence attorney Joe Tacopina on Friday said the gun was a starter pistol used as a prop, something the rapper’s security guards advised him to carry to fend off potential attackers. The rapper had been victim of crimes in the past, he said.

Mr Tacopina painted the case as bitter falling out between friends that was wrapped up in money.

“This case is about one man’s jealousy, which lies in green,” he told the jury. “This case is all about money, a clear attempt at extortion. Period, end of story.”

A key point of contention in the case is the police investigation and Mr Ephron’s injuries. The rapper’s attorneys have focused – and did on Friday – on Mr Ephron taking multiple days to report the incident to police and how authorities found no trace of a shooting.

Authorities who responded to the 2021 shooting did not find any bullet shell casings when surveying the area, but Mr Ephron returned to the scene later and gathered two shell casings he said he found in the area. He brought them when he reported the incident two days later.

The defence said the trial’s outcome hinges on Mr Ephron’s testimony, noting, “He’s the witness that this case will rise and fall on”.

The trial is expected to last about three weeks, with Mr Ephron expected to take the stand as a key witness.

The trial is happening at a crucial moment for A$AP Rocky’s career.

In May, he is set to co-chair the 2025 Met Gala alongside big names like Anna Wintour, British race car driver Lewis Hamilton, singer Pharrell Williams and basketball superstar LeBron James.

Later this summer, he is also set to appear in a film directed by Spike Lee called “Highest 2 Lowest” with acting legend Denzel Washington.

The star was previously given a two-year suspended sentence for his role in a brawl in Stockholm in August 2019.

The rapper and two members of his entourage were convicted of kicking and beating a 19-year-old man after an argument. They said they acted in self-defence, but the court rejected their argument.

The case drew worldwide media attention after US president Donald Trump unsuccessfully tried to secure Mr Mayers’s release from prison as he awaited trial.

Born in New York, Mr Mayers was one of the biggest break-out stars of the 2010s, earning eight platinum singles in the US including Wild For The Night, Everyday, LSD and A$AP Forever.

He rose to fame after being championed by Drake, and has worked with artists including Alicia Keys, Lana Del Rey, Skepta, Selena Gomez and Kendrick Lamar.

US President Donald Trump has ordered officials to make plans to declassify documents related to three of the most consequential assassinations in US history – the killings of John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr.

“A lot of people are waiting for this for long, for years, for decades,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday. “And everything will be revealed.”

The order directs top administration officials to present a plan to declassify the documents within 15 days. That does not make it certain it will happen, however.

President John F Kennedy was killed in Dallas in 1963. His brother Robert F Kennedy was assassinated while running for president in California 1968, just two months after King, America’s most famous civil rights leader, was murdered in Memphis, Tennessee.

Many of the documents related to the investigations have been released in the years since, although thousands still remain redacted, particularly related to the sprawling JFK investigation.

President John F Kennedy was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald, a Marine veteran who had defected to the Soviet Union and later returned to the United States.

A government commission determined that Oswald acted alone.

However, unanswered questions have long dogged the case, and have given rise to alternative theories about the involvement of government agents, the mafia and other nefarious characters – as well as more outlandish conspiracy theories.

Opinion polls over decades have indicated that most Americans don’t believe Oswald was the sole assassin.

In 1992, Congress passed a law to release all documents related to the investigation within 25 years. Both Trump in his first term and President Joe Biden released piles of JFK-related documents, but thousands – out of a total of millions – still remain partially or fully secret.

Trump promised to declassify all of the files in his first term, but held back on his promise after CIA and FBI officials persuaded him to keep some files secret. Today’s executive order states that continued secrecy “is not consistent with the public interest”.

• Live updates: Trump returns to power

“As a statement of intention it’s great that the president has put his promise into words on paper. That’s important,” said Jefferson Morley, a former Washington Post journalist, JFK assassination expert and editor of the online newsletter JFK Facts.

“But the details and implementation are everything. This process is just beginning. How exactly this is going to be carried out is not at all clear,” he said.

Recent document releases have revealed new details about the circumstances surrounding the assassination, including about the CIA’s extensive monitoring of Oswald.

In 2023, Paul Landis, an 88-year-old former Secret Service agent who witnessed the assassination at close range, said he took a bullet from the car after Kennedy was shot.

• The assassination of JFK: One of the US’s biggest mysteries
• Ex-Secret Service agent reveals new JFK assassination detail

Experts say the detail complicates the official story that a single bullet hit both the president and Texas Governor John Connally, who was riding in the motorcade and survived the shooting.

Mr Morley said new information has cast further doubt on the theory that Oswald acted alone and predicted that a full release of all the redacted documents could add significantly to public knowledge.

But he said that there may not be a “smoking gun”, and that CIA and other security officials will push to maintain some level of secrecy.

“This story is not over,” he said.

During the signing ceremony at the White House on Thursday, Trump asked for the pen he used to sign the order to be given to Robert F Kennedy Jr, who is RFK’s son, JFK’s nephew and the president’s nominee for health secretary.

RFK Jr has long cast doubt on the official narratives about his uncle’s assassination as well as that of his father, Robert F Kennedy.

Kennedy Sr was killed in a Los Angeles ballroom by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian man angry at US support for Israel. RFK Jr has spoken to Sirhan in prison and has stated that he does not believe Sirhan killed his father, although other Kennedy family members reject that claim.

Martin Luther King Jr was shot to death by white nationalist James Earl Ray. Members of the King family have alleged Ray did not act alone and was part of a larger conspiracy.

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second presidential term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

The latest series of The Traitors is coming to an end, after weeks of wild accusations, wilder betrayals and Claudia Winkleman’s devious looks-to-camera.

Many of us like to think we could handle the pressures and skullduggery of being a traitor in the remote Scottish castle. But could you really make it to the end undetected?

Before you apply for the next series of The Traitors, work through our scenarios to find out if you’ve got what it takes to be a treacherous mastermind, or whether you are far too faithful for that.

An endangered plant known as the “corpse flower” for its putrid stink is blooming in Australia – and captivating the internet in the process, with thousands already tuned in to a livestream to witness its grand debut.

The titan arum plant, housed in the Royal Botanic Gardens of Sydney, blooms only once every few years for just 24 hours.

Affectionately dubbed Putricia, it will release a smell described as “wet socks, hot cat food, or rotting possum flesh”.

The long wait to see Putricia fully unfurl has spawned jokes and even a unique lingo in the livestream’s chat, with thousands commenting “WWTF”, or “We Watch the Flower”.

The livestream attracted more than 8,000 simultaneous viewers on Thursday, doubling within hours as the plant’s appearance slowly changed.

John Siemon, director of horticulture and living collections at the gardens, compared the spectacle to Sydney’s 2000 Olympics, saying “we’ve had 15,000 people come through the gates before it [the flower] even opened”.

“This specimen is around 10 years old. We acquired it from our colleagues in LA Botanic Garden at the age of three, and we’ve been nurturing it for the last seven years,” he told the BBC’s Newsday programme.

“[We’re] incredibly excited to have our first bloom in 15 years.”

After days of inaction, the view on the livestream markedly changed on Thursday as Putricia, comfortably ensconced behind a red velvet rope, began to open up.

As she continues to bloom, viewers can expect to see Putricia unfold a vibrant maroon or crimson skirt, known as a spathe, around her spadix which is the large spike in the middle of the plant.

The gardens has said it is “hard to predict exactly when” Putricia will bloom, but that has not stopped the thousands gathered online.

“I’m back again to see how Putricia is going and I can see she’s still taking her time like the queen she is, fair play,” wrote one commenter. “This is the slowest burlesque ever,” said another.

Yet another person wrote: “Overnight I watched, fell asleep, awoke, watched, fell asleep. I am weak, but Putricia is strong. WWTF.”

Other popular acronyms among viewers are WDNRP (We Do Not Rush Putricia) and BBTB (Blessed Be The Bloom).

The plant can only be found in the rainforests of Sumatra, Indonesia, where it is known as bunga bangkai – or “corpse flower” in Indonesian. Its scientific name is , which is derived from Ancient Greek and means “giant misshapen penis”.

When in bloom, the plant’s long yellow spadix emits a strong odour, often compared to the smell of decaying flesh, to trick pollinators into landing on what they think is rotten meat so they can move pollen between male and female specimens.

It has the world’s largest flowering structure, as it can grow up to 3m (10 feet) tall and weigh up to 150kg. The plant contains several hundred flowers in the base of its spadix.

It is endangered in the wild due to deforestation and land degradation.

Putricia is one of several titan arums in Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens, which last saw one bloom 15 years ago.

But there have been other corpse flower blooms across Australia in recent years, including Melbourne and Adelaide’s botanic gardens, each time attracting thousands of curious visitors keen on having a whiff.

There are also a few housed in Kew Gardens in London, where one bloomed in June last year. The titan arum first flowered outside of Sumatra in 1889 in Kew.

Julia Ramadan was terrified – the war between Israel and Hezbollah was escalating and she’d had a nightmare that her family home was being bombed. When she sent her brother a panicked voice note from her apartment in Beirut, he encouraged her to join him in Ain El Delb, a sleepy village in southern Lebanon.

“It’s safe here,” he reassured her. “Come stay with us until things calm down.”

Earlier that month, Israel intensified air campaigns against Hezbollah in Lebanon, in response to escalating rocket attacks by the Iran-backed armed group which had killed civilians, and displaced tens of thousands more from homes in northern Israel.

Ashraf was confident their family’s apartment block would be a haven, so Julia joined him. But the next day, on 29 September, it was subject to this conflict’s deadliest single Israeli attack. Struck by Israeli missiles, the entire six-storey building collapsed, killing 73 people.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says the building was targeted because it was a Hezbollah “terrorist command centre” and it “eliminated” a Hezbollah commander. It added that “the overwhelming majority” of those killed in the strike were “confirmed to be terror operatives”.

But a BBC Eye investigation verified the identity of 68 of the 73 people killed in the attack and uncovered evidence suggesting just six were linked to Hezbollah’s military wing. None of those we identified appeared to hold a senior rank. The BBC’s World Service also found that the other 62 were civilians – 23 of them children.

Among the dead were babies only a few months old, like Nouh Kobeissi in apartment -2B. In apartment -1C, school teacher Abeer Hallak was killed alongside her husband and three sons. Three floors above, Amal Hakawati died along with three generations of her family – her husband, children and two granddaughters.

Ashraf and Julia had always been close, sharing everything with each other. “She was like a black box, holding all my secrets,” he says.

On the afternoon of 29 September, the siblings had just returned home from handing out food to families who had fled the fighting. Hundreds of thousands of people in Lebanon had been displaced by the war.

Ashraf was in the shower, and Julia was sitting in the living room with their father, helping him upload a video to social media. Their mother, Janan, was in the kitchen, clearing up.

Then, without warning, they heard a deafening bang. The entire building shook, and a massive cloud of dust and smoke poured into their apartment.

“I shouted, ‘Julia! Julia!,'” says Ashraf.

“She replied, ‘I’m here.’

“I looked at my dad, who was struggling to get up from the sofa because of an existing injury to his leg, and saw my mother running toward the front door.”

Julia’s nightmare was playing out in real life.

“Julia was hyperventilating, crying so hard on the sofa. I was trying to calm her down and told her we needed to get out. Then, there was another attack.”

Video footage of the strike, shared online and verified by the BBC, reveals four Israeli missiles flying through the air towards the building. Seconds later, the block collapses.

Ashraf, along with many others, was trapped under the rubble. He began calling out, but the only voice he could hear was that of his father, who told him he could still hear Julia and that she was alive. Neither of them could hear Ashraf’s mother.

Ashraf sent a voice note to friends in the neighbourhood to alert them. The next few hours were agonising. He could hear rescuers sifting through the debris – and residents wailing as they discovered loved ones dead. “I just kept thinking, please, God, not Julia. I can’t live this life without Julia.”

Ashraf was finally pulled from the rubble hours later, with only minor injuries.

He discovered his mother had been rescued but died in hospital. Julia had suffocated under the rubble. His father later told him Julia’s last words were calls for her brother.

In November, a ceasefire deal was agreed between Israel and Hezbollah with the aim of ending the conflict. The deal gives a 60-day deadline for Israeli forces to withdraw from southern Lebanon and for Hezbollah to withdraw its forces and weapons north of the Litani River. As this 26 January deadline approaches, we sought to find out more about the deadliest single Israeli attack on Lebanon in years.

In the apartment below Julia and Ashraf’s, Hawraa and Ali Fares had been hosting family members displaced by the war. Among them was Hawraa’s sister Batoul, who, like Julia, had arrived the previous day – with her husband and two young children. They had fled intense bombardment near the Lebanon-Israel border, in areas where Hezbollah has a strong presence.

“We hesitated about where to go,” says Batoul. “And then I told my husband, ‘Let’s go to Ain El Delb. My sister said their building was safe and that they couldn’t hear any bombing nearby.'”

Batoul’s husband Mohammed Fares was killed in the Ain El Delb attack. A pillar fell on Batoul and her children. She says no-one responded to her calls for help. She finally managed to lift it alone, but her four-year-old daughter Hawraa had been fatally crushed. Miraculously, her baby Malak survived.

Three floors below Batoul lived Denise and Moheyaldeen Al-Baba. That Sunday, Denise had invited her brother Hisham over for lunch.

The impact of the strike was brutal, says Hisham.

“The second missile slammed me to the floor… the entire wall fell on top of me.”

He spent seven hours under the rubble.

“I heard a voice far away. People talking. Screams and… ‘Cover her. Remove her. Lift the stone. He’s still alive. It’s a child. Lift this child.’ I mean… Oh my God. I thought to myself, I’m the last one deep underground. No-one will know about me. I will die here.”

When Hisham was finally rescued, he found his niece’s fiance waiting to hear if she was alive. He lied to him and told him she was fine. They found her body three days later.

Hisham lost four members of his family – his sister, brother-in-law and their two children. He told us he had lost his faith and no longer believes in God.

To find out more about who died, we have analysed Lebanese Health Ministry data, videos, social media posts, as well as speaking to survivors of the attack.

We particularly wanted to interrogate the IDF’s response to media – immediately following the attack – that the apartment block had been a Hezbollah command centre. We asked the IDF multiple times what constituted a command centre, but it did not give clarification.

So we began sifting through social media tributes, gravesites, public health records and videos of funerals to determine whether those killed in the attack had any military affiliation with Hezbollah.

We could only find evidence that six of the 68 dead we identified were connected to Hezbollah’s military wing.

Hezbollah memorial photos for the six men use the label “Mujahid”, meaning “fighter”. Senior figures, by contrast, are referred to as “Qaid”, meaning “commander” – and we found no such labels used by the group to describe those killed.

We asked the IDF whether the six Hezbollah fighters we identified were the intended targets of the strike. It did not respond to this question.

One of the Hezbollah fighters we identified was Batoul’s husband, Mohammed Fares. Batoul told us that her husband, like many other men in southern Lebanon, was a reservist for the group, though she added that he had never been paid by Hezbollah, held a formal rank, or participated in combat.

Israel sees Hezbollah as one of its main threats and the group is designated a terrorist organisation by Israel, many Western governments and Gulf Arab states.

But alongside its large, well-armed military wing, Hezbollah is also an influential political party, holding seats in Lebanese parliament. In many parts of the country it is woven into the social fabric, providing a network of social services.

In response to our investigation, the IDF stated: “The IDF’s strikes on military targets are subject to relevant provisions of international law, including taking feasible precautions, and are carried out after an assessment that the expected collateral damage and civilian casualties are not excessive in relation to the military advantage expected from the strike.”

It had earlier also told the BBC it had executed “evacuation procedures” for the strike on Ain El Delb, but everyone we spoke to said they had received no warning.

Watch on YouTube if outside the UK

UN experts have raised concerns about the proportionality and necessity of Israeli air strikes on residential buildings in densely populated areas in Lebanon.

This pattern of targeting entire buildings – resulting in significant civilian casualties – has been a recurring feature of Israel’s latest conflict with Hezbollah, which began when the group escalated rocket attacks in response to Israel’s war in Gaza.

Between October 2023 and November 2024, Lebanese authorities say more than 3,960 people were killed in Lebanon by Israeli forces, many of them civilians. Over the same time period, Israeli authorities say at least 47 civilians were killed by Hezbollah rockets fired from southern Lebanon. At least 80 Israeli soldiers were also killed fighting in southern Lebanon or as a result of rocket attacks on northern Israel.

The missile strike in Ain El Delb is the deadliest Israeli attack on a building in Lebanon for at least 18 years.

The village remains haunted by its impact. When we visited, more than a month after the strike, a father continued to visit the site every day, hoping for news of his 11-year-old son, whose body had yet to be found.

Ashraf Ramadan, too, returns to sift through the rubble, searching for what remains of the memories his family built over the two decades they lived there.

He shows me the door of his wardrobe, still adorned with pictures of footballers and pop stars he once admired. Then, he pulls a teddy bear from the debris and tells me it was always on his bed.

“Nothing I find here will make up for the people we lost,” he says.

Did the hero Prince slay the tabloid dragon? Or to quote one of its most memorable headlines, was it The Sun Wot Won It?

The dust is still settling on the settlement of Prince Harry’s epic legal battle against News Group Newspapers.

Had the trial gone ahead, Prince Harry would have alleged he had been the victim of unlawful newsgathering by NGN journalists between 1996 and 2011 – and that its leaders covered up wrongdoing by destroying evidence – something that the company denied. But the eight-week trial didn’t happen because the two sides suddenly settled.

He’s scored an apology for intrusion by The Sun, including NGN accepting that there was unlawful information gathering by private investigators working for the newspaper.

NGN has not admitted unlawful activity by journalists or editors – and the settlement means a judge won’t now have to decide if there was, as the Duke’s team alleges, a corporate cover-up of wrongdoing – a claim NGN vehemently denied and said it would fight at trial.

The space between those positions, in which both sides will feel they won something, is now the battleground.

The question is how far, realistically, can a campaign around historical events go? Is this week a reboot of investigations or, in fact, the final chapter?

The main focus of pressure and lobbying will be the police – because campaigners believe Scotland Yard didn’t go far enough in its previous investigations, missing opportunities to widen its focus beyond wrongdoing at The News of the World.

Speaking to the BBC on Friday, actor Hugh Grant – who said the financial risks forced him to settle, with The Sun’s owners last year – said the police’s job was not done “by any means” – and suing the newspapers was never going to get at the full truth.

So all eyes will be on Lord Tom Watson, the former Labour deputy leader, who NGN admits was placed under surveillance by News of the World journalists in 2009.

The last remaining claimant alongside Prince Harry, he says a dossier will go to the Metropolitan Police.

The Met for its part says there is no active criminal investigation into alleged newspaper wrongdoing.

That statement also means there’s no current probe into the separate Mirror Group titles, despite a judge ruling in 2023 that they had used phone hacking to get information on Prince Harry.

So why no investigation?

The police aren’t ruling one out, but Sir Mark Rowley, the Met’s commissioner, told LBC radio on Friday that they would need to see something “radically new”.

And that’s because Scotland Yard takes the view that it carried out a huge investigation 10 years ago.

Team Harry believe this is profoundly myopic. While some of their planned evidence for the NGN trial had come from the police, his lawyers also obtained new documents from NGN itself under rules for a fair trial.

Could that be new evidence? Let’s take the example of the records of the myriad of payments to private investigators.

Team Harry and Watson would have sought to prove at a trial that many were for unlawful activity. On one level you can see that would arguably fit a test of something radically new.

But, in its defence, News Group would have argued that none of this proved journalists or anyone else at the Sun knew information was being unlawfully gathered – far short of a whiff of a criminal enterprise.

What this single episode we had been expecting to see at the trial shows is how each allegation against NGN would have been fought rather than conceded. And if the police knock on the company’s door with its truncheon, they are likely to face a similarly robust response.

And that’s why the thrust of Lord Watson’s promised dossier to the police will become important. It will have to say something really big. And in the absence of a court finding – that challenge becomes larger still.

Other bodies could in theory act. Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee investigated phone-hacking allegations in 2011. It’s likely to face calls to review the evidence of NGN CEO Rebekah Brooks and others – evidence that NGN will stand by because there’s been no finding in court of unlawful activity by journalists, editors or executives.

There’s also the Information Commissioner’s Office. It had a role in the origins of this story, investigating privacy and data breaches by private investigators. The ICO says it has no plans to reopen or review this investigation.

The government has already ruled out launching “Leveson 2”, the second leg of the public inquiry promised by David Cameron. It was meant to investigate “unlawful or improper conduct” across tabloids and whether the police, put simply, had turned a blind eye to it because they had been corrupted by getting too close to journalists who may have been paying them off. But it never happened.

Labour in government won’t revisit it because too much time has passed.