News
Trump's Gaza plan will be seen as flying in face of international law
Could US criminals be sent to El Salvador's mega-jail?
Google drops pledge on AI use for weapons
How does fentanyl get into the US?
US Postal Service stops accepting parcels from China and Hong Kong
Billionaire and spiritual leader the Aga Khan dies
RFK Jr clears first vote towards Senate confirmation
Five people shot at school in central Sweden
First glimpse inside burnt scroll after 2,000 years
'It's like hell': Race to evacuate residents from Ukraine front-line city
100,000 eggs stolen from one US grocer as bird flu drives up prices
Trump faces moment of reckoning on trade after delaying tariffs
Five ways China is hitting back against US tariffs
Banksy fan badger wins hearts in wildlife photo competition
Ghana wants more for its cashews, but it's a tough nut to crack
Could Trump axe the Department of Education? His plans explained
India looks on nervously as Trump wields tariff threat
What we know so far about Sweden school shooting
Man who ran length of Africa reveals new challenge
Barbie maker warns Trump tariffs may drive up prices
I will not stop working, Anna Wintour tells King
French man on death row in Indonesia returns home
More than 10 lawsuits expected against Diddy in coming days, lawyer says
Palestinian gunman kills Israeli soldiers as UN warns over W Bank operation
PC at centre of Kerr trial challenged over motives
Business
The opening salvos have been fired in Trump's trade war - what comes next?
DeepSeek: The Chinese AI app that has the world talking
Estée Lauder ramps up job cuts as warns on tariffs
Turmoil as Trump and Musk take aim at top US aid agency
Australia bans DeepSeek on government devices over security risk
South Africa's president calls Musk to calm Trump land row
Why employees smuggle AI into work
Trump's trade war with neighbours is delayed - what did they all get out of it?
US sovereign wealth fund could buy TikTok, Trump says
Share falls ease after Trump tariff turmoil
US and Mexico reach deal to put tariffs on hold - for now
Ontario ends contract with Musk's Starlink over US tariffs
UK not choosing between US and EU, says Starmer
What are tariffs and why is Trump threatening to use them?
Bill Gates: We've given away $100bn, but my children won't be poor when I'm gone
Innovation
The little bug with a big appetite turning organic waste into sustainable fertiliser
UN monitors asteroid with a tiny chance of hitting Earth
The Sims at 25: How a virtual dollhouse took over the world
Major breast cancer screening AI trial to begin
How the brain's little blue dot regulates your sleep
DeepSeek: What lies under the bonnet of the new AI chatbot?
For sale: An iPhone with TikTok installed, $50,000
January 2020: The scanners used to stop Covid's deadly spread
How America fell in love with China's memes
How to read the Doomsday Clock
Springy poles and forehead straps: How to carry more than your own bodyweight
Nasa onboard with world's deepest pool plans
Southeastern to use AI to help build new fleet
'It could illuminate an area the size of a football stadium': How Russia launched a giant space mirror in 1993
AI sensors used in homes of vulnerable people
AI-generated child sex abuse images targeted with new laws
Why Dynasty Warriors makers scrapped sequel to reinvent series
Nasa needs saving from itself – but is this billionaire right for that job?
Culture
Man accused of blinding Salman Rushdie to go on trial
'She thought of herself as the Queen of America': The redemption of Mary Todd Lincoln, the US's most vilified First Lady
Emmerdale and Coronation Street schedules face cut backs
Woman files civil lawsuit against Neil Gaiman and ex-wife
Mill's 'surprise' at Eilish sporting its cap cloth
Eisenberg: I don't want to be associated with Zuckerberg
Asa Butterfield: After Sex Education I wanted to do something different
Captain America: Brave New World to Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy - 10 of the best films to watch this February
The White Lotus to Zero Day: 11 of the best TV shows to watch this February
Will Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofía Gascón's offensive X posts derail the Oscar favourite's chances?
'The truth is she did the right thing': The mystery of why Jane Austen's letters were destroyed – by her own sister
Six Nordic paintings that can help us rethink winter
'It was an escape into excellence': How music saved the life of a teenage Jewish cellist in Auschwitz
'The baddies reflect the worries of today': How TV spy thrillers are booming in an age of distrust
Museum to stay open as council budget finalised
Monet masterpiece on tour of English galleries
Beyoncé's Grammy-winning Cowboy Carter highlights the long history of Texas' Black cowboy culture
'Three of my songs are shortlisted for Eurovision'
Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni: What you need to know
'Music helps keep young people off the street'
Memories of Bob Dylan's controversial 'Judas' tour
Anora star Mikey Madison: Oscar talk is 'overwhelming and amazing'
Actor 'excited' ahead of new Boarders series
Arts
RSC announces world premiere of Roald Dahl's BFG
Mona Lisa to be moved as part of major Louvre overhaul
Alan Cumming: 'I'm the Pied Piper of Pitlochry'
Sitcom actor Brian Murphy dies aged 92
Light festival brings colour to city centre
First fountain since 1960s unveiled by Titchmarsh
Cedric Morris works going under the hammer
'Misfits of the 1990s' celebrated in exhibition
Disused theatre receives seats but future at risk
Travel
Five extraordinary night-time experiences around the world
North Yorkshire mayor backs tourist tax calls
Call for urgent repairs to Alderney airport runway
Genoa route one of Aurigny's 'fastest-selling'
Holiday resort challenges expansion plan refusal
From sweatpants to cosplay, here are some surprising twists of Vienna's annual ball season
The ancient discovery that put a Silk Road city back on the map
The five best places to see Boston's African American culture and history
Angelababy's guide to Hong Kong
Tia Carrere's family guide to visiting Hawaii
A beauty mogul's guide to luxury self-care in Dubai
Khapse: A sweet believed to bring peace and tranquility
Butrint: The ancient site helping Albania reclaim its identity
Why do people risk their lives to summit the world's deadliest mountains?
Swede dreams: How Sweden is embracing its sleepy side
A new life for the US's abandoned railway stations
Earth
Why scientists are counting tiny marine creatures, from Space
Spending on flood defences set to rise to record levels
Miliband 'took no part' in solar farm approval
Second woman confirmed dead in Australia's floods
Broadband fix could take another fortnight
MP calls for pylon route to go underground
Which is worse for wildlife, wind farms or oil drilling?
A new life for empty offices: Growing kale and cucumbers
UK unprepared for climate change impacts - fire chiefs council
How the climate is changing the taste of beer
How a month of abstinence can lead to 'meat disgust'
Could the UK actually get colder with global warming?
Colossal squid: The eerie ambassador from the abyss
No targets for aviation or farming in UK climate plan
How wildlife survives after wildfires
Climate change made LA fires worse, scientists say
Eat the peel: Why you might be throwing away the best bit of your fruit
When US President Donald Trump began speaking 10 days ago of Gaza as a demolition site, calling to "clean out that whole thing", it wasn't clear how far these were off-the-cuff remarks.
But in the lead up to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit, in his Oval Office comments before the meeting, and in the press conference itself, it's now clear he is profoundly serious about his proposals.
They amount to the most radical upending in the established US position on Israel and the Palestinians in the recent history of the conflict; and will be seen as flying in the face of international law.
As well as how the announcement will be absorbed by ordinary people on the ground, it could also have a significant impact on the more immediate phased ceasefire and hostage release process, at a critical juncture.
Since the 7 October 2023 attacks on Israel, these groups – leaders of whom have been part of Netanyahu's coalition – have demanded the war against Hamas continues indefinitely, vowing ultimately to re-establish Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip.
They have continued their calls and opposed the current ceasefire and hostage release deal.
In his White House press conference with the Israeli prime minister, Trump went further even than his recent growing calls for the Palestinians in Gaza to be "relocated" to Egypt and Jordan, saying that the United States would then take the territory over and rebuild it.
When asked whether Palestinians would be allowed back, he said "the world's people" would live there, saying it would be an "international, unbelievable place", before adding "also Palestinians".
His Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff earlier in the day summed up much of the tone around the proposal, saying of Trump "this guy knows real estate".
Trump said it would be the "Riviera of the Middle East".
Asked whether American troops would be involved in the take over of Gaza, Mr Trump said "we'll do what is necessary".
His proposals amount to the most radical transformation in the US position on the territory since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the war of 1967, which saw the start of Israel's military occupation of land including the Gaza Strip.
Gaza was already home to Palestinians who fled or were forced from their homes in the wars surrounding Israel's creation.
They and their descendants make up the vast majority of Gaza's population to this day.
Trump's proposals, if enacted, would involve that population, now more than two million people, being forced elsewhere in the Arab world or even beyond, says Trump, to "resettle… permanently".
The proposals would wipe out the possibility of a future two-state solution in any conventional sense and will be categorically rejected by Palestinians and the Arab world as an expulsion plan.
Much of Netanyahu's political base and the ultranationalist settler movement in Israel will champion President Trump's words, seeing them as the fulfilment of a means as Netanyahu puts it to stop "Gaza being a threat to Israel".
For ordinary Palestinians, it would amount to a mass act of collective punishment.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio could not have been more complimentary about the deal he struck with the president of El Salvador on Monday.
The Trump administration's top diplomat appeared delighted yet stunned by the fact that President Nayib Bukele should have "agreed to the most unprecedented, extraordinary, extraordinary migratory agreement anywhere in the world".
Bukele had offered to take in people deported from the US, regardless of their nationality, and house them in El Salvador's mega-jail.
"We can send them and he will put them in his jails," Rubio said.
While that was already a win for President Donald Trump, whose priority has been to speed up the removal of undocumented migrants from the US, the real surprise came in the part of the deal Rubio mentioned next.
"He [Bukele] has also offered to do the same for dangerous criminals currently in custody and serving their sentences in the United States even though they're US citizens or legal residents," Rubio said.
The Salvadorean leader later confirmed that he had "offered the United States of America the opportunity to outsource part of its prison system".
He clarified that El Salvador would be "willing to take in only convicted criminals" and that his government would do so "in exchange for a fee".
Bukele also revealed where he would house those deported from the US: "our mega-prison".
The mega-jail, also known as Cecot (short for Terrorism Confinement Centre), has become emblematic of Bukele's iron-fist approach to crime and punishment.
The maximum-security prison, one of the largest in Latin America, opened in January 2023 and can house 40,000 inmates, according to government figures.
Inmates are confined to windowless cells, sleep on bare metal bunks and are constantly monitored by armed guards - some of whom watch over them from atop the lattice ceiling.
BBC News Mundo's Leire Ventas, who was allowed to take an official tour of the facility last year after the BBC had repeatedly asked for access, described how temperatures in the cells would reach 35C.
Take a look at graphics and maps of the mega-jail
With access to the prison severely restricted and journalists only allowed on occasional and carefully choreographed official tours, the number of inmates per cell is not clear.
Some rights groups put it at 80 prisoners while others say it can go up to more than 150.
Asked by our journalist what the maximum capacity was, the prison's director responded "where you can fit 10 people, you can fit 20".
Prisoners are locked up inside their cells 24 hours a day - except for 30 minutes of group exercise in a windowless corridor.
The layout of the jail is no coincidence.
Following a particularly bloody weekend in 2022, when more than 70 people were killed in the small Central American nation, President Bukele wrote on social media: "Message for the gangs: because of your actions, your "homeboys" will not be able to see a ray of sunshine".
Building of the Cecot mega-jail was started shortly afterwards.
Conditions at the jail and the treatment of inmates has come under severe criticism from human rights groups.
Miguel Sarre, a former member of the United Nations Subcommittee for the Prevention of Torture, has described it as a "concrete and steel pit".
So could the Trump administration send US citizens there?
Bukele's offer was met with approval by Elon Musk, a close Trump adviser who retweeted Salvadorean leader's socia media post with the comment: "Great idea!".
But any attempt to deport US citizens or people lawfully resident in the US to a foreign jail is bound to face legal challenges.
US citizens who were born in the United States enjoy legal protection from deportation.
There are some cases, however, in which naturalised citizens - those who were not born in the US and who obtained US citizenship after birth through a legal process - can have their citizenship revoked.
This tends occur when the person in question used fraud to obtain the citizenship in the first place.
Alex Cuic, an immigration lawyer and professor at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, told the BBC that naturalised US citizens suspected of ties to criminal gangs or terrorist organisations -- such as the Tren de Aragua criminal gang or the Mara Salvatrucha, known as MS-13 - could also, in theory, be stripped of US citizenship.
"If they find out you were a member of any group that persecuted or threatened to persecute others, they can try to denaturalise you," Mr Cuic added.
"So, if you had gang ties and never disclosed them, they could use that as a reason to denaturalise you."
Once a person has been "denaturalised", they are at risk of deportation.
Mr Cuic pointed out that any such move would have to be preceded by a "formal court process" conducted in a federal court.
But the lawyer warned that "citizenship is not something that is definitively forever if you are naturalised".
He stressed though that he had "never heard" of cases of natural-born US citizens being sent abroad for imprisonment for crimes committed and prosecuted in the US.
Shev Dalal-Dheini, the director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, similarly said that she had "never heard of such a suggestion" as sending US citizens to serve US prison sentences overseas.
While she acknowledged that there were various scenarios in which naturalised US citizens could lose their citizenship, she said that "you can't denaturalise a natural-born citizen".
The status of lawful permanent residents in the US, however, is more precarious than that of US citizens.
They can be deported if they violate certain provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which include committing drug offences, violent crimes or crimes such as theft, fraud or assault.
Like naturalised citizens, they can also be deported if they obtained their residency through fraud.
Permanent lawful residents who are involved in terrorism, espionage or any activity threatening US national interest could also be at risk of deportation.
This last point is important in light of the executive order President Trump issued on his inauguration day in which he designated drug cartels as "foreign terrorist organisations".
Two criminal organisations named in the executive order, Tren de Aragua and MS-13, were also mentioned last week by Trump's special envoy for Latin America, Mauricio Claver-Carone.
Speaking at a briefing about Marco Rubio's trip to El Salvador, Claver-Carone not only praised Bukele's handling of the MS-13 - a gang which is deeply rooted in El Salvador and has long terrorised its citizens - but also said that Bukele could offer the answer on how to deal with the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
Claver-Carone also appeared to argue that the mere prospect of being sent to a Salvadorean jail could drive Venezuelan gang members back to their homeland.
"I bet they're going to want to go back to Venezuela instead of dealing with the Mara prisons in El Salvador," he said of members of the Tren de Aragua gang.
Marco Rubio, too, seemed to stress that the Trump administration would first and foremost want to send members of these two notorious gangs to El Salvador's prisons.
"Any unlawful immigrant and illegal immigrant in the United States who is a dangerous criminal -- MS-13, Tren de Aragua, whatever it may be -- he has offered his jails," Rubio said after his talks with Bukele.
While it is by no means clear who - if anyone - will being sent from the US to El Salvador's mega-prison, what is certain is that with his "unprecedented offer of friendship", Bukele has landed firmly in the Trump's favour at a time when relations between the US and its neighbours have been rocked by the US president's threats to impose tariffs on their goods.
With additional reporting by the BBC's Bernd Debusmann Jr in Washington, DC.
Alphabet, the parent company of technology giant Google, is no longer promising that it will never use artificial intelligence (AI) for purposes such as developing weapons and surveillance tools.
The firm has rewritten the principles guiding its use of AI, dropping a section which ruled out uses that were "likely to cause harm".
In a blog post Google senior vice president James Manyika, and Demis Hassabis, who leads the AI lab Google DeepMind, defended the move.
They argue businesses and democratic governments need to work together on AI that "supports national security".
There is debate amongst AI experts and professionals over how the powerful new technology should be governed in broad terms, how far commercial gains should be allowed to determine its direction, and how best to guard against risks for humanity in general.
There is also controversy around the use of AI on the battlefield and in surveillance technologies.
The blog said the company's original AI principles published in 2018 needed to be updated as the technology had evolved.
"Billions of people are using AI in their everyday lives. AI has become a general-purpose technology, and a platform which countless organisations and individuals use to build applications.
"It has moved from a niche research topic in the lab to a technology that is becoming as pervasive as mobile phones and the internet itself," the blog post said.
As a result baseline AI principles were also being developed, which could guide common strategies, it said.
However, Mr Hassabis and Mr Manyika said the geopolitical landscape was becoming increasingly complex.
"We believe democracies should lead in AI development, guided by core values like freedom, equality and respect for human rights," the blog post said.
"And we believe that companies, governments and organisations sharing these values should work together to create AI that protects people, promotes global growth and supports national security."
The blog post was published just ahead of Alphabet's end of year financial report, showing results that were weaker than market expectations, and knocking back its share price.
That was despite a 10% rise in revenue from digital advertising, its biggest earner, boosted by US election spending.
In its earnings report the company said it would spend $75bn ($60bn) on AI projects this year, 29% more than Wall Street analysts had expected.
The company is investing in the infrastructure to run AI, AI research, and applications such as AI-powered search.
Google's AI platform Gemini now appears at the top of Google search results, offering an AI written summary, and pops up on Google Pixel phones.
Originally, long before the current surge of interest in the ethics of AI, Google's founders, Sergei Brin and Larry Page, said their motto for the firm was "don't be evil". When the company was restructured under the name Alphabet Inc in 2015 the parent company switched to "Do the right thing".
Since then Google staff have sometimes pushed back against the approach taken by their executives. In 2018 the firm did not renew a contract for AI work with the US Pentagon following a resignations and a petition signed by thousands of employees.
They feared "Project Maven" was the first step towards using artificial intelligence for lethal purposes.
President Donald Trump has imposed sweeping tariffs on Chinese goods, citing Beijing's failure to stop the export of chemicals used in the production of the powerful opioid fentanyl.
The US has long accused Chinese corporations of knowingly supplying groups involved in the creation of the drug. Beijing has hit back with tariffs of its own.
The White House has also accused Canada and Mexico of failing to prevent criminal gangs from smuggling fentanyl into the US.
Trump had planned tariffs against both those countries but he suspended that threat after winning some concessions on increased border security.
How serious is the fentanyl crisis in the US?
Fentanyl is a synthetic drug manufactured from a combination of chemicals. US regulators approved it for use in medical settings as a pain reliever in the 1960s, but it has since become the main drug responsible for opioid overdose deaths in the US.
Over 74,000 Americans died in 2023 after taking drug mixtures containing fentanyl, according to the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
It is frequently mixed with other illicit drugs, leading many users to be unaware that the substances they are consuming contain fentanyl.
As little as a two milligram dose of fentanyl - roughly the size of a pencil tip - can be fatal.
Over the past decade, the global fentanyl supply chain has expanded, making it harder for law enforcement and policymakers to control.
China is the primary source of the precursor chemicals used to produce fentanyl.
Most fentanyl enters the US via Mexico
Since September, 4,500lb (2,040kg) of fentanyl have been seized in the US, according to figures published by US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP).
Almost all (98%) was intercepted at the southwest border with Mexico. Less than 1% was seized across the northern US border with Canada. The remainder was from sea routes or other US checkpoints.
According to the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Mexican criminal organisations - including the Sinaloa Cartel - play a key role in producing and delivering fentanyl, methamphetamine and other illicit drugs into the US.
The chemicals used to make fentanyl are sourced from China by traffickers and turned into the finished product in labs in Mexico before being smuggled into the US.
According to the DEA, the Sinaloa Cartel uses a variety of tactics to conceal shipments coming into Mexico, such as hiding the chemicals among legitimate commercial goods, mislabelling the containers, using front companies, and shipping through third party countries.
The Trump administration has accused the Mexican government of colluding with the drug cartels. Mexico's President Sheinbaum says the claims are "slander."
In December, shortly after Trump had threatened Mexico with tariffs, the country's security forces announced their largest ever seizure of fentanyl - equivalent to around 20 million doses.
China is the main source of fentanyl chemicals
In 2019, China classified fentanyl as a controlled narcotic and later added some of the chemicals used to make it to the list.
Canada's role in the fentanyl trade
President Trump has accused Canada - alongside Mexico - of allowing "vast numbers of people to come in and fentanyl to come in" to the US.
According to data from the US Customs and Border Patrol, only about 0.2% of all seizures of fentanyl entering the US are made at the Canadian border, almost all the rest is confiscated at the US border with Mexico.
But in January, Canada's financial intelligence agency reported that organised criminal groups in Canada are increasingly involved in the production of fentanyl by importing chemicals used to make it and lab equipment from China.
The trade in fentanyl takes place in both directions. In the first 10 months of 2024, the Canadian border service reported seizing 10.8lb (4.9kg) of fentanyl entering from the US, while US Border Patrol intercepted 32.1lb (14.6kg) of fentanyl coming from Canada.
In December, the country pledged C$1.3bn ($900m; £700m) for combating fentanyl and enhancing border security.
Additional reporting by Lucy Gilder.
What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?
The US Postal Service (USPS) says it has temporarily stopped accepting parcels from mainland China and Hong Kong.
Letters will not be affected by the suspension, according to a statement on the company's website.
USPS said the suspension will be in place "until further notice" and did not offer a reason for the decision.
It comes after US President Donald Trump imposed an additional 10% tariff on all goods imported to the US from China.
Trump's executive order eliminated an exemption that allowed goods worth $800 (£641) or less to enter the US without having to pay duties or certain taxes.
The so-called "de minimis" tax loophole faced increased scrutiny in recent years as Chinese e-commerce giants like Shein and Temu to reach millions of US customers.
President Trump is expected to speak to his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in the coming days.
"Trump's tariff changes are especially sharp if goods were previously shipped via e-commerce directly from China to the US," said trade expert Deborah Elms.
Close to half of all parcels entering the US under de minimis were sent from China, according to a 2023 report by the US Congressional committee on China.
US officials have pointed out that the large flow of parcels entering the country through this exemption made it increasingly difficult to screen them for possible illegal goods.
USPS did not immediately reply to a BBC News request for comment.
Billionaire philanthropist and spiritual leader Aga Khan has died at the age of 88, his charity the Aga Khan Development Network has announced.
Prince Karim Aga Khan was the 49th hereditary imam of the Ismaili Muslims, who trace his lineage directly to the Prophet Muhammad.
He "passed away peacefully" in Lisbon, Portugal, surrounded by his family, his charity said in a statement on social media.
Born in Switzerland, he had British citizenship and lived in a chateau in France.
King Charles III has been made aware of the death of the philanthropist, who was a friend of both himself and his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II.
It is understood that the King is deeply saddened at the loss of a personal friend of many years and is in touch with the family privately.
The Aga Khan's charities ran hundreds of hospitals, educational and cultural projects, largely in the developing world.
He enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, with a private island in the Bahamas, a super-yacht and a private jet.
The Aga Khan Development Network said it offered its "condolences to the family of His Highness and to the Ismaili community worldwide".
"We continue to work with our partners to improve the quality of life for individuals and communities across the world, as he wished, irrespective of their religious affiliations or origins," it added.
The Ismailis, a Muslim sect, have a worldwide population of about 15 million, including 500,000 in Pakistan. There are also large populations in India, Afghanistan and Africa.
Prince Karim Aga Khan succeeded his grandfather as imam of the Ismaili Muslims in 1957 at the age of 20.
The prince had an estimated fortune of $1bn (£801m) in 2008, according to Forbes magazine. His inherited wealth was boosted by numerous business interests, including horse-breeding.
He became a leading owner and breeder of race horses in the UK, France and Ireland, breeding Shergar, once the most famous and most valuable racehorse in the world.
He was the founder of the Aga Khan Foundation charity prince and gave his name to bodies including a university in Karachi, and the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The Aga Khan Trust for Culture was key to the restoration of the Humayun's Tomb site in Delhi. There is an annual Aga Khan Award for Architecture.
And he founded the Nation Media Group, which has become the largest independent media organisation in east and central Africa.
Shergar won the Derby at Epsom in 1981 by 10 lengths in the Aga Khan's emerald green racing silks with red epaulets but was kidnapped in Ireland two years later and never found.
Despite losing his beloved horse, he told the BBC in 2011 - on the 30th anniversary of Shergar's biggest triumph - that he did not contemplate deserting his Irish breeding operation.
Of Shergar's triumph, he said: "It's a memory that can never, never go away.
"I've seen that film I don't know, tens or hundreds of times. I keep trying to analyse where this remarkable performance came from. Every time I see the film, I feel that I have learned something.
"If you're in racing, the Epsom Derby is one of the greats. It always has been, so to win a race of that quality in itself is an extraordinary privilege. To win it the way he won it was more than that.
"I had watched quite enough races to be able to determine what the jockey was feeling, how the horse was going at the time and when he came around Tattenham Corner, I couldn't believe my eyes, frankly.
"His victory up to this point in time was unique. Two things I found stunning - one was the ease with which that horse moved and second was the fact that during the finishing straight he just kept going away, going away, going away. That was really remarkable."
The Aga Khan went on to win the big race another four times with Shahrastani (1986), Kahyasi (1986), Sinndar (2000) and Harzand (2016).
Other notable successes included the 2008 Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe with the brilliant unbeaten filly Zarkava.
Robert F Kennedy cleared the first hurdle needed to be confirmed as US health secretary when his nomination was approved by a Senate committee Tuesday.
The vote split along party lines, 14-13, with all Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee voting in favour of the vaccine sceptic who threw his support behind Donald Trump after ending a presidential bid of his own and whose health expertise has been questioned.
Kennedy's nomination will now move to a vote of the full US Senate, which Republicans control 53-47.
Senators questioned Kennedy about his views on vaccines and other health issues and tested his knowledge about US public health infrastructure.
During the hearings he insisted that he was not opposed to vaccines, nor a conspiracy theorist, but that he supports more stringent safety tests.
But senators zeroed in on his past comments, including a podcast appearance where he said: "There's no vaccine that is safe and effective."
Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who organises and works with Democrats, praised RFK Jr's "Make America Healthy Again" slogan. But the senator then later showed pictures of baby clothes printed with anti-vaccine messages sold by Children's Health Defence, an organisation that Kennedy headed until recently.
Kennedy responded that he no longer has oversight of the group.
Although RFK Jr's testimony last week did not win over any Democrats to his side, he did manage to win the crucial support of Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy.
Cassidy, a doctor, had expressed scepticism about Kennedy's nomination, but ultimately supported him during Tuesday's committee hearing, clearing the way for a full Senate vote.
Five people have been shot at a school in central Sweden, police say.
The shooting happened in Örebro, 200km (124 miles) west of the capital, Stockholm, on Tuesday afternoon.
Police said "the danger is not over" and warned the public to stay away. The extent of the injuries is unclear - but police say no officers have been shot.
"This is currently seen as an attempted murder, arson and aggravated weapons offence," they said in a statement.
The shooting - which occurred just before 13:00 (12:00 GMT) - apparently targeted a Komvux, or adult education centre.
These centres are attended primarily by people who have not finished primary or secondary school.
Police say students at nearby schools are being kept indoors "for security purposes".
"The news of an attack at Orebro is very serious," Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer told public broadcaster SVT.
A badly burnt scroll from the Roman town of Herculaneum has been digitally "unwrapped", providing the first look inside for 2,000 years.
The document, which looks like a lump of charcoal, was charred by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD and is too fragile to ever be physically opened.
But now scientists have used a combination of X-ray imaging and artificial intelligence to virtually unfurl it, revealing rows and columns of text.
More work is needed to make the scroll fully legible to decipher its contents, but the team behind the project say the results are very promising.
"We're confident we will be able to read pretty much the whole scroll in its entirety, and it's the first time we've really been able to say that with high confidence," said Stephen Parsons, project lead for the Vesuvius Challenge, an international competition attempting to unlock the Herculaneum scrolls.
Some letters are already clearly visible in the ancient text and the team believes it's a work of philosophy.
Hundreds of carbonised scrolls were discovered in Herculaneum, which like its neighbour Pompeii was buried beneath metres of volcanic ash.
In the past, some of the documents, which are made from a thick paper-like material called papyrus, were prised open but they crumbled into pieces.
The University of Oxford's Bodleian Library holds several of the scrolls. Thought to be unreadable, they had been left untouched for decades.
"We've never been convinced before that any of the techniques would be safe enough or effective enough to get any information from the scrolls," explained Nicole Gilroy, head of book conservation.
But the promise of a hi-tech solution prompted the team to get one of the precious scrolls out of storage.
It was placed in a specially made case and taken to Diamond Light Source in Oxfordshire.
Inside this huge machine, which is called a synchrotron, electrons are accelerated to almost the speed of light to produce a powerful X-ray beam that can probe the scroll without damaging it.
"It can see things on the scale of a few thousandths of a millimetre," explained Adrian Mancuso, director of physical sciences at Diamond.
The scan is used to create a 3D reconstruction, then the layers inside the scroll - it contains about 10m of papyrus - have to be identified.
"We have to work out which layer is different from the next layer so we can unroll that digitally," said Dr Mancuso.
After that artificial intelligence is used to detect the ink. It's easier said than done - both the papyrus and ink are made from carbon and they're almost indistinguishable from each other.
So the AI hunts for the tiniest signals that ink might be there, then this ink is painted on digitally, bringing the letters to light.
"We can tell the entire scroll is full of text," said Stephen Parsons.
"Now we can work on making it show up more clearly. We're going to go from a handful of words to really substantial passages."
Last year, a Vesuvius Challenge team managed to read about 5% of another Herculaneum scroll.
Its subject was Greek Epicurean philosophy, which teaches that fulfilment can be found through the pleasure of everyday things.
The Bodleian's scroll is likely to be on the same subject - but the Vesuvius team is calling for more human and computing ingenuity to see if this is the case.
For Nicole Gilroy, the work is providing a link to the past.
"I just love that connection with whoever collected them, whoever wrote them, whoever rolled those scrolls up and put them on the shelves. There's a real human aspect to it that I just think is really precious," she said.
As he prepares to set off on another rescue mission on Ukraine's eastern front, 35-year-old Anton Yaremchuk is grateful for the fog. It will shield him and his colleague Pylyp from Russian drones hunting from the skies. His armoured van will provide more protection – but only up to a point. Every journey could be the last.
In December shrapnel from a drone attack ripped through a clearly marked armoured vehicle used by his team, causing injuries but no deaths.
"We were extremely lucky," he says.
Anton's regular destination these days is the industrial city of Pokrovsk, which he says is "being attacked night and day".
Russian forces are closing in – they are now less than 2km (1.2 miles) away.
"The last few days we were coming in, there was hell," Anton tells us. "There are around 7,000 people still there. We'll try to get some people out of that nightmare."
He's been doing just that since Moscow's full-scale invasion in February 2022.
With his country under attack, the Ukrainian cinematographer left his life and career in Berlin, came home and co-founded a small aid organisation, Base UA. Since then, he and his team have managed to get about 3,000 civilians out of harm's way, taking them away from front lines to safer areas.
Pokrovsk used to be one of those places.
"It's crazy," he says as we head for the city, "because this used to be the haven, the safest city in the region and the biggest hospital. The evacuation train was departing from Pokrovsk."
If and when Russian forces take the city, it will deprive the Ukrainian military of a key supply and transport hub.
Ukraine has already lost the output from a crucial coal mine in the area – the only one producing coking coal for its steel industry. Operations were suspended last month because of the Russian advance.
We join Anton for the journey to Pokrovsk. He has a tourniquet, and a separate medical kit attached to the front of his body armour. His white high-visibility jacket bears the slogan "leave no-one behind".
Before we set off, there's a warning. "When we park, get out of the vehicles and don't stand nearby," Anton tells us, "in case they are targeted."
The closer we get the more explosions we hear. War has left its mark, draining the city of life. Streets are deserted, and houses boarded up. Some buildings have been flattened. There's no smoke from the chimneys on snow-capped rooves. We pass a parked car with a white flag.
But we find Olga, already waiting by the roadside, wrapped up in a lilac winter coat and furry hood. She's one of six people on Anton's list for evacuation this time.
She goes to lock up her home - moving quickly despite her 71 years. And then she gets into the van and does not look back.
"I have been in this house for 65 years," Olga says.
"It's hard to leave everything behind. But it's not life anymore, it's like hell. In the beginning we thought maybe we will sit it out, but now the ground is shaking."
Her children and grandchildren have already fled the bombing. I ask if she thinks she will be able to come back one day. "Who knows," she replies, "but we hope."
Along the way, whenever Anton spots people out on the street – and there aren't many - he urges them to go. He stops the car to hand out leaflets explaining that evacuation is free, and help, including a place to stay and ongoing payments, is available in the city of Pavlohrad to the west. But some are hard to persuade.
"I have to stay," one elderly woman says. "My son has died, and I need to be near his grave."
"I don't think he would want this," Anton says.
We drive on and pass a group of three who have been out collecting water. Anton shouts another warning. "There will be street battles," he says, "unfortunately, I promise you this. I am doing this from the very first day. It's the same everywhere. This is the final stage."
One of the women comes forward to take a leaflet. "God keep you safe," she tells him before going on her way.
Anton moves fast from address to address. When there's no answer at one house, he climbs over a high metal gate to investigate. He knocks. He shouts. He speaks to a neighbour. With no sign of the woman he hoped to evacuate, we drive on.
I ask what he's expecting for 2025, now President Trump is back in the White House and pushing for peace talks.
"I stopped looking too much ahead," he says. "I think nobody really knows what's going to happen. I personally don't think that even if some kind of negotiations will start, they will bring a ceasefire anytime soon."
More than this he expects fighting will worsen if talks do start, as both sides will try to gain leverage.
The last pick up of the day is 75-year-old Lyuba – her white hair peeping out from under a scarf. Her long life is now compressed into a few plastic bags. She looks bereft and flinches at every explosion we hear.
"It has been bad," she tells me. "Bad. We were left alone. There are no authorities. People are just getting killed under the sky," she says, gesturing upwards. "There's no gas, no water, no electricity."
Lyuba is helped into the van, which is now full, with five elderly evacuees – their memories and their fears - and one black cat peering out from a pet carrier. No one speaks.
For Anton this is a familiar picture, but still a painful one.
We first travelled with him in the heat of summer in 2022. He was then evacuating civilians from another front-line city – Lysychansk - as Russian shells rained down.
Now in Ukraine's third winter of war he – and other volunteers – are still trying to outrun moving front lines and save whoever they can.
"To be honest every time I see this I break down," he says, "because it's just these innocent people leaving everything behind. These are human tragedies, and you can never really get used to it. But I am glad that we manage to get people out to safety."
That comes at a cost, and it is increasing.
Since we travelled to Pokrovsk, one of Anton's teams has come under fire from a Russian drone. A 28-year-old British volunteer lost an arm and a leg – saving civilians - but is now stable in hospital.
Following the attack, Anton's group have suspended evacuations from Pokrovsk, and from other front-line areas.
A Ukrainian police unit called the White Angels is still doing rescue missions in the city. They tell us they are "trying to be very cautious and careful".
Inside the city, in freezing basements and unlit homes, the remaining residents – mostly elderly – are at the mercy of Russian glide bombs and artillery, as they wait for Pokrovsk to fall.
Additional reporting from Wietske Burema, Goktay Koraltan and Volodymyr Lozhko
Thieves in the US state of Pennsylvania have stolen more than 100,000 eggs - worth $40,000 (£32,000) - from a single grocer.
The heist targeted the back of a lorry at Pete & Gerry's Organics in Greencastle on 1 February, police say.
It comes as the price of eggs has risen amid a bird flu epidemic, making them an unexpectedly costly menu option. The national chain Waffle House has just hiked their egg charge.
Prices for eggs have surged more than 65% in the last year, US government data shows. The agriculture department predicted the cost will increase by about 20% in 2025.
On Tuesday, Waffle House announced a $0.50 surcharge for customers to shell out per egg.
The US diner chain called it a "temporary targeted surcharge tied to the unprecedented rise in egg prices".
The bird flu epidemic started in 2022 and has led to outbreaks across the US in recent months, according to the agriculture department.
The agency noted prices increased by more than 8% in December alone.
Data from the department also shows the average price for a carton was $2.51 in December 2023 and hit $4.15 a year later. The surge has seen reports of bare shelves in some stores.
The bird flu epidemic has been reported in birds, cattle and mammals across the US, though infection of humans is very rare.
For the first week of Donald Trump's presidency, tariffs - a favourite talking point during last year's presidential campaign - were the dogs that didn't bark.
Trade seemed to take a back seat while the new administration pressed ahead on immigration enforcement, pardons of Capitol riot convictions, a fossil-fuel energy policy and federal workforce upheaval - among a range of other disruptive new measures.
That all changed this past weekend when Trump announced sweeping 25% tariffs on US allies Canada and Mexico, along with 10% duties on Chinese imports.
And while he has since delayed imposing those tariffs on his North American neighbours for a month after both countries agreed new border measures, the president still faces a moment of reckoning in which he will ultimately have to decide whether to match his rhetoric with action.
Trump often talks of the trade deficits between the US and its two neighbours as a key source of his dissatisfaction. If that's the case, then no amount of new border security or drug seizures - whatever the metrics or specific demands - will make the president fully abandon his tariff threats.
Trump has also said he views tariffs not just as a tool to achieve policy objectives, but as a permanent source of US revenue and a means to fund government programmes and reduce the budget deficit. And if that is his ultimate objective, then tariffs on America's largest trading partners may be the only effective answer.
Global financial markets reeled at this prospect on Monday, as the US appeared on the brink of waging a multi-front trade war with some of its closest economic partners.
Global financial markets have calmed considerably since Monday morning's tariff-inspired disruption. Investors, it seems, have concluded that on trade Trump is more bluster than action.
The president may be able to extract more concessions from Canadian and Mexican leaders in a month's time, but they may also conclude at some point that Trump doesn't have the will to follow through on his threats.
Despite claims of success, his sabre-rattling on trade could ultimately produce diminishing returns.
At that point, the president would have a decision to make. Does he shelve his most sweeping tariff plans for good? Were his dreams of returning the US to late-19th century trade policy - which he has said was a golden age of American economic power - unrealistic?
Or does he press ahead with his vision of a new, more America-focused global trade order despite the risk of at least short-term economic pain?
That moment of reckoning has been delayed. But it is coming.
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 trade war between the world's two biggest economies has escalated after China hit back against the introduction of tariffs by the US with measures of its own.
Beijing has set out to target specific American goods with retaliatory taxes, among other measures, following the blanket 10% tariff introduced by President Donald Trump on all Chinese imports to the US.
In some ways, this latest tit-for-tat is nothing new and builds on the long-running trade dispute between the nations, with tariffs having already been imposed and threatened on various goods since 2018.
Trump has said he plans to speak to Chinese President Xi Jinping, so a deal could yet be struck. But if China proceeds with its response on 10 February as planned, what could the impact be?
Coal, oil and gas
Agricultural machinery, pick-up trucks and big cars
As well as fuel, China has slapped a 10% tariff on agricultural machinery, pick-up trucks, and some large cars.
But China is not a big importer of US pick-ups and it gets most of its cars from Europe and Japan, so a 10% tariff on an already small number of imports would not hit consumers too hard.
In recent years, China has increased investments in farm machinery to enhance production and reduce reliance on imports, and to strengthen its food security.
So the introduction of tariffs on agricultural machinery might be another move to try to boost domestic industry.
Julian Evans-Pritchard, head of China economics at consultancy Capital Economics, said all the tariff measures were "fairly modest, at least relative to US moves".
He suggests that China's targeted goods represent about $20bn (£16bn) worth of annual imports - around 12% of China's total imports from the US.
"This is a far cry from the more than $450bn worth of Chinese goods being targeted by the US."
But he said China had "clearly been calibrated to try to send a message to the US [and domestic audiences] without inflicting too much damage".
Google probe
The Chinese authorities have also announced some non-tariff measures, one of which is an anti-monopoly investigation into US tech giant Google.
It is unclear what the investigation will involve, but for context, Google's search services have been blocked in China since 2010.
The company still has some business presence in the country through providing apps and games to the Chinese markets by working with local developers.
But China only generates about 1% of Google's global sales, which suggests if it cut ties entirely with the country, it wouldn't be much worse off.
Calvin Klein added to 'unreliable entities' list
Export controls on rare metals
While tariffs have been placed on the companies wanting to import goods from abroad, China has also imposed export controls on 25 rare metals.
Some of the metals are key components for many electrical products and military equipment.
China has mastered the ability to refine such metals, and produced almost 90% of global refined output.
The restricted list includes tungsten, which is difficult to source and a crucial material for the aerospace industry.
While there are restrictions on exports, Mr Evans-Pritchard of Capital Economics, said it was notable that the critical metals China imports from the US, which are used to make high-end chips, semiconductor machinery, pharmaceuticals and aerospace equipment were not targeted in any measures.
The experience of previous rounds of restrictions suggests exports will drop sharply as companies scramble to get licences, a process that takes several weeks.
When it comes to the impact of the restrictions, it appears the US has a plan. On Monday, Trump said he wanted Ukraine to guarantee the supply of more rare earth metals in exchange for $300bn of support in its fight against Russia.
A badger appearing to admire a Banksy - of a badger - has won the Natural History Museum's 2024 Wildlife Photographer of the Year People's Choice Award.
Captured on a quiet road in St Leonards-on-Sea, England by British photographer Ian Wood, the badger appears to glance up at a graffiti version of itself designed by the mysterious artist.
Ian had noticed badgers emerging from a nearby den to forage for food scraps left out for foxes.
"I spent the best part of two years photographing them, and this particular photo came about as an idea. I thought it'd be fun to put the graffiti there and see if I could get a badger walking underneath it," he told the BBC.
Ian sees a deeper message in his photo around the controversial subject of badger culling.
Badger culling has been used to contain bovine tuberculosis but will end in England within five years as part of a shift in the fight against the disease, the government said last year.
Ian called badger culling "a national disgrace" and said: "I would swap this award immediately for the government to rescind all existing badger culling licenses."
The 25 nominated images for this year's Wildlife Photographer of the Year People's Choice Award received a record-breaking 76,000 votes from wildlife photography and nature fans worldwide.
In addition to the winning image, four other finalists were highly commended.
All five images will be displayed online and at London's Natural History Museum until 29 June.
Spiked by David Northall (UK)
A bloodied but determined honey badger pursues a Cape porcupine in Botswana.
After a quick retreat to lick its wounds, the badger returned to finish the job and dragged the porcupine back to its den.
Whiteout by Michel d'Oultremont (Belgium)
Look very closely - can you see the stoat?
It sits proudly in the snow, blending seamlessly with its surroundings in this snowy scene from Belgium.
Michel d'Oultremont had been on the hunt for stoats in the snow for years, fascinated by how they disappear into the white landscape.
After covering himself in a white camouflage net, he got his shot when a curious stoat popped out of its snowy den to check out its territory before heading out to hunt.
Edge of Night by Jess Findlay (Canada)
In this stunning shot, a barn owl flies out of an old barn to hunt in the fields near Vancouver.
Jess Findlay spent several nights quietly observing the owl to learn its habits and set up an invisible beam that would trigger a flash when it took off.
With a slow shutter speed to capture the surrounding light, everything came together perfectly on the tenth night as the owl made its move.
Earth and Sky by Francisco Negroni (Chile)
This amazing shot shows a double lenticular cloud lit up by the lava from the Villarrica volcano in Chile.
Francisco Negroni visits the volcano often to monitor its activity, never knowing what to expect.
On this particular trip, after 10 nights he captured the intense glow of the erupting lava lighting up the sky in a fiery, surreal display.
The stunning images that were also nominated
The Accra street vendor looks at me, bemused.
I'm trying to establish how the rather flimsy 30g bag of roasted cashew nuts she's selling, beside a sweltering highway in Ghana's capital, costs me the equivalent of about 75 cents (60p).
That's obviously not a lot of money for me, a visitor from the UK, but I'm amazed at the mark up.
The price is at least 4,000% higher than the cost of buying the same weight of raw, unshelled cashews from a Ghanian farmer.
"It's incredible," I protest. Yet she doesn't understand my English, or my reasoning.
The price of the nuts was, after all, printed on the packet. And explaining why I thought it was beyond the pale was never going to be easy.
Ghana is the world's third-biggest exporter of unprocessed cashew nuts, behind Ivory Coast in first place, and Cambodia in second.
To produce the crop, around 300,000 Ghanaians make at least part of their living growing cashews.
Nashiru Seydou, whose family have a farm in the country's north-east, some 500 miles (800km) from Accra, is one of them.
He says the work is hard, and unreliable supply chains and volatile wholesale prices make survival difficult.
"We are struggling. We can use the sunlight, the fertile land, to create more jobs," he says. "I'd be happy if the government comes to our aid and helps support our industry."
He tells me that he currently gets around $50 for a large 100kg sack of unshelled cashews.
"It's amazing," says Bright Simons, an entrepreneur and economic commentator in Accra, who has studied the numbers. "Roasters and retailers buy the nuts from farmers for $500 a tonne, and sell to customers [both at home and abroad] for amounts between $20,000 and $40,000 a tonne."
As a whole, Ghana grows about 180,000 tonnes of cashews annually. More than 80% is exported, and in raw, unshelled form. This generates some $300m in export revenues, but means that Ghana misses out on the significantly higher returns you get from roasted, ready-to-eat cashews.
Mildred Akotia is one person trying to increase the amount of cashews that are shelled and roasted in Ghana. She is the founder and CEO of Akwaaba Fine Foods, which currently processes just 25 tonnes a year.
Ms Akotia denies any suggestion that she and others like her are price-gouging. The packaging and roasting machinery a western business would automatically use in this industry, she says, is out of reach for her because of the high cost of credit in Ghana.
"If you go to a local bank, it will cost you 30% interest to get a loan," she complains. "As a manufacturer you tell me how large your margins are that you can afford that kind of interest? We've had to rely on what we can get: soft loans from relatives and grants from donor agencies."
She says that this situation is why less than 20% of Ghana's cashews are processed locally. The bulk are scooped up and exported to big factories in countries like India, Thailand and Vietnam.
Remarkably, some of those packaged nuts are then exported back to Ghana, where they are sold for the same price as domestically roasted cashews. This is despite the 20,000-mile sea freight round trip, and import costs.
It is a similar picture for rice, which is exported to Ghana from Asia and sold at low prices, despite Ghana also growing the crop itself.
Back in 2016 the Ghanaian government experimented with an export ban on raw cashews in order to encourage homegrown processing. However the policy had to be abandoned within a couple of weeks after uproar from farmers and traders.
Without available cheap loans, it wasn't possible for sufficient new Ghanaian roasters to enter the market. So the price of raw nuts crashed, and many started rotting for want of a buyer.
More recently there has been talk of increased tariffs on raw cashew exports and bans on exporters purchasing cashews directly from farms.
But all these policy interventions miss a key point, according to Mr Simons. A big challenge for local producers, he says, is to work harder on the basics of doing business, and growing their companies.
"In order to be efficient at this, you need scale," he says, adding that firms need to promote eating cashews to make it more widespread in the country. "You need a lot of a Ghanaians consuming the nuts, not just a small middle class".
Prof Daron Acemoglu, a Turkish-American economist, agrees that building a strong local market is important for Ghana's cashew industry. He was one of last year's winners of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, for his work on the struggles facing low-income economies, and in particular their home-grown businesses.
Yet he says that the first priority should be improving access to international markets for processed Ghanaian cashews.
"These firms are dealing with workforces that aren't properly skilled, they have infrastructures that aren't working, they are constantly in fear of corrupt officials, or rule changes, and also it's very difficult to reach foreign markets, he says. "They need the foreign market because the domestic market is small, and their own government has very little capacity [to boost it]."
He also wants to see the Ghanaian government improve the network of roads and railways to ease the cost of transportation.
But Mr Simons reckons the onus should now be on Ghanaian businesses themselves, to do the basics to enhance the branding and marketing of cashews. As it is, he says, many of the country's most enterprising business people are just leaving Ghana for better paid opportunities abroad because of the red tape and cronyism in Ghana are so prohibitive.
"There's a massive brain drain," he says. "My theory of why Africa's economic development has been slow is because we focus too much on the supply side, but the real beauty is in demand, creating a consuming class of cashew-eating enthusiasts, and you don't have an entrepreneurial class that can create demand transformation."
He says the same argument applies to Ghana's other bigger exports, like gold and chocolate, neither of which gets much value-addition within Ghana before getting exported to the West.
Mildred Akotia hopes she might be one of those entrepreneurs to buck the trend. She now wants to build her own logistics arm, to be able to process the cashews direct from the farm gate.
"I have a lot of calls from the UAE, from Canada and America. Currently we can't meet demand. We can't get enough kernels to roast.
"There's a ready market both locally and internationally. My branding is good, my marketing is good. My dream is to give a facelift to Ghanaian processed foods."
President Donald Trump is mulling an executive order that would shut down the US Department of Education, according to the BBC's US partner CBS News.
The move would deliver on a promise he made on the campaign trail and end some of the department's programmes, while others would be housed within different parts of the government, CBS and other US outlets reported, citing anonymous sources.
Established in 1979, the Department of Education oversees funding for public schools, administers student loans and runs programmes to help low-income students.
Trump once accused the agency of "indoctrinating young people with inappropriate racial, sexual, and political material".
In December, he nominated former World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) CEO and his transition co-chair, Linda McMahon, as his pick for education secretary. But the Senate has yet to schedule confirmation proceedings for McMahon.
The latest news comes after Trump on Monday took steps toward dismantling the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the country's main overseas aid agency.
Can Trump shutter the department?
What does the Department of Education do?
The Department of Education oversees student loan programmes and administers Pell grants that help low-income students attend university.
The department also helps fund programmes to support students with disabilities and for students living in poverty.
And it enforces civil rights law that prevents race or sex-based discrimination in federally funded schools.
The department's allocation was $238bn (£188bn) in fiscal year 2024 - under 2% of the total federal budget.
Why do Republicans want to abolish it?
The idea has been floated by Republicans for decades. During Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign, he pushed for it to be dismantled.
Republicans have accused the education department of pushing what they describe as "woke" political ideology on to children, including on gender and race. They want the agency's authority handed to the US states, which run most education matters.
Conservatives also argue that other education department functions, such as administering loans, should be handled instead by the US Department of Treasury, and that civil rights infractions are the Department of Justice's domain.
Trump's allies also want to expand school choice, which would allow students and families to select alternatives to public schools.
Last week India further slashed import duties on motorcycles, cutting tariffs on heavyweight bikes with engines above 1,600cc from 50% to 30% and smaller ones from 50% to 40%.
A pre-emptive move designed to further smoothen the entry of Harley Davidsons into India – and, Delhi hopes, ward off any threat of tariffs. US motorcycle exports to India were worth $3m last year.
Donald Trump has marked his return to the White House by brandishing trade measures against America's neighbours and allies as well as its big rival China.
India hopes it is ahead of the game – but will its tariff cuts satisfy Trump, or is trade action still on the table?
"Canada and Mexico are literally two arms of the US. If he has acted against them, he could easily act against India too," says Ajay Srivastava, founder of the Delhi-based think tank Global Trade Research Institute (GTRI).
In their phone conversation late last month, the US president pressed Prime Minister Narendra Modi to buy more US arms and for there to be a fairer trade balance, keeping the pressure on.
And during his first term, Trump fixated on India's steep tariffs. He repeatedly slammed the then 100% duty on Harleys as "unacceptable", making it a rallying point in his crusade against what he saw as unfair trade practices.
In the past he repeatedly branded India a "tariff king" and a "big abuser" of trade ties.
India enjoys a trade surplus with the US, its top trading partner. Bilateral trade crossed $190bn (£150bn) in 2023. Merchandise exports to US have surged 40% to $123bn since 2018, while services trade grew 22% to reach $66bn. Meanwhile, US exports to India stood at $70bn.
But beyond bikes, India has zeroed out import taxes on satellite ground installations, benefiting US exporters who supplied $92m worth in 2023.
Tariffs on synthetic flavouring essences dropped from 100% to 20% ($21m in US exports last year), while duties on fish hydrolysate for aquatic feed fell from 15% to 5% ($35m in US exports in 2024). India also scrapped tariffs on select waste and scrap items, a category where US exports amounted to $2.5bn last year.
Top US exports to India in 2023 included crude oil and petroleum products ($14bn), LNG, coal, medical devices, scientific instruments, scrap metals, turbojets, computers and almonds.
"While Trump has criticised India's tariff policies, the latest reductions signal a policy shift that could enhance US exports across various sectors," says Mr Srivastava.
"With key tariff cuts on technology, automobiles, industrial and waste imports, India appears to be taking steps towards facilitating trade even as the global trade environment remains tense."
Meanwhile India's exports span a diverse range – from textiles, pharmaceuticals and engineering goods to petroleum oils, machinery and cut diamonds. It also ships smartphones, auto parts, shrimp, gold jewellery, footwear and iron and steel, making it a key player in global trade.
"This diverse range of products reflects India's broad export base and its strong trade relationship with the US," says Mr Srivastava.
India was once among the world's most protectionist economies. In the 1970s, American political scientist Joseph Grieco described it as having one of the "most restrictive, cumbersome… regimes regulating foreign direct investments".
This inward-looking approach led to a steady decline in India's export share of global trade, from 2.42% in 1948 to just 0.51% by 1991. As Aseema Sinha, author of Globalizing India: How Global Rules and Markets are Shaping India's Rise to Power, observed, this period was marked by "a self-driven industrialisation drive, export pessimism, and suspicion of global alliances".
India finally opened up in the 1990s and 2000s, cutting average tariffs from 80% in 1990 to 13% in 2008.
But after Modi launched his "Make in India" policy to boost manufacturing in India tariffs have climbed again to about 18% - higher than those set by other Asian nations such as China, South Korea, Indonesia and Thailand.
Trade expert Biswajit Dhar believes India is now a prime target under Trump's "America First" policy, which seeks reciprocal action against high import taxes and reassesses trade with large US deficits.
Agricultural market access remains a sticking point for the US, he says.
India dropped retaliatory tariffs on US-made almonds, apples, chickpeas, lentils and walnuts in 2023, but Trump will likely demand more. However, India may hold firm given domestic political sensitivity around farming.
"This is where we will drive a hard bargain, and problems could arise," cautions Mr Dhar.
That said, India's strategic ties with the US – as a Quad member countering China – could help ease friction. India's willingness to accept the deportation of undocumented Indian migrants in the US without pushing back has also sent a positive signal, Mr Dhar notes.
Experts also point to Modi's warm personal rapport with Trump as an advantage. Some clarity will come when the Indian prime minister visits the White House – this month, according to some reports – at Trump's invitation.
Police say around 10 people have died in a shooting at an education campus in the city of Orebro.
It is the worst school shooting ever to happen in Sweden, where school violence is rare. The suspected gunman is believed to be among the dead.
Details are still emerging, but this is what we know so far:
What happened?
Police first received reports of a shooting taking place in Orebro, a city 200km (124 miles) west of Stockholm, at 12:33 local time (11:44 GMT) on Tuesday.
The shooting was at Campus Risbergska - a type of school for adults known as Komvux in Swedish, which is primarily for people who did not finish primary or secondary education. There are other schools also on the campus.
Teachers have described hearing shots ring out, leading to them fleeing classrooms or barricading themselves inside.
Maria Pegado told Reuters she took all of her 15 students out into the hallway and they started running. "I saw people dragging injured out, first one, then another. I realised it was very serious," she said.
Another teacher, Lena Warenmark, told public broadcaster SVT she was in her study when she heard gunshots: "There were a few shots first in short succession, a short pause and then a few more".
Police locked down six schools and a restaurant in the area, and people were told to stay away or stay inside their homes.
Footage on social media also appeared to show students hiding under desks.
And a video filmed from a balcony also appeared to show the sound of shots fired in quick succession, as people rushed away:
How many people were hurt?
Police said "around 10" people were killed, but added they "could not be more specific" about the number.
All of those who died were found inside the school building, police said at a news conference on Tuesday afternoon. They believe the gunman is among the dead.
It is also still not clear how many people were wounded, but Sweden's justice minister said at a news conference there were "many others injured".
In the first few hours after the attack, there was confusion over the number of people hurt.
Despite media reports of casualties, when the police first gave an official briefing at 15:30 local time, they said only that five people had been injured.
Swedish media continued to report that several people had died, and in a second update at 18:00, police confirmed "around 10" people had died.
What do we know about the gunman?
Police said the attacker was a man who they believe had acted alone. He is believed to be among the dead.
He was not known to police before the shooting and had no connection to a gang, said Roberto Eid Forest, Orebro's local police chief.
Officers also do not believe there was a terror motive to the attack.
"We're working with secret services but as far as I know, it's a person unknown to police," said Forest, when asked if the perpetrator lived in Orebro.
Forest added that he "can't say anything about the kind of weapon" that was used "other than it was a firearm".
Asked about reports the gunman shot himself, police said they did not have any information about that.
What do we know about the victims?
Police say they are still working to identify those killed.
The school it happened at was municipal adult education, which Sweden's national agency for education explains is for people aged over 20 who did not finish primary or secondary school.
Teacher Ms Warenmark said there were unusually few students at the school on Tuesday as many had gone home for the day after sitting a national exam.
How rare are school shootings in Sweden?
Very rare. While there have been school shootings in Sweden before, they have not been of this magnitude.
It is "the worst school shooting in Sweden's history" said Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, as he urged people not to speculate about the motive.
Last September, there was a school shooting south of Stockholm, when a 15-year-old is suspected to have wounded a classmate - although that attack was linked to Sweden's problem of gang violence.
A man who ran the entire length of Africa has announced his next challenge – running the full length of New Zealand.
Russ Cook, nicknamed Hardest Geezer, completed his previous endurance challenge in April last year after 352 days.
The 27-year-old, from Worthing, West Sussex, is to run the 1,864 mile (3,000km) Te Araroa Trail in March, which will see him take on 60 ultramarathons while navigating mountains, forests, coastlines and cities.
"After a big challenge, it took some time for the body to get back to reality. But I'm feeling fresh and ready for the next one," he said.
'Ready to go again'
Mr Cook added: "Luckily a lovely British diet of sausage rolls and roast dinner really sorted me out.
"I put some timber back on and now we're ready to go again.
"It's going to be a spicy one."
Mr Cook said: "New Zealand is somewhere I have always wanted to go. It's the adventure capital of the world."
"It's going to be an absolute brutal one on the legs, like I've never done before," he said.
He says he expects the 300,000-foot (7,620m) elevation – the equivalent to 10 Mount Everests – to be the most challenging part of his journey.
During the challenge, he is due to bungee jump off Auckland Harbour Bridge, canyon swing in Queenstown and sky dive in Abel Tasman.
Mr Cook raised more than £1m for charity during his previous challenge in Africa, despite complications with visas, health scares, geopolitical issues and an armed robbery.
The extreme challenge began at South Africa's most southerly point on 22 April 2023, and finished more than 10,190 miles (16,400km) north in Tunisia.
He had originally planned to complete the equivalent of 360 marathons in 240 days, but extended the challenge due to the complications.
His New Zealand challenge is due to begin in March and is expected to take about 10 weeks to complete.
Follow BBC Sussex on Facebook, on X, and on Instagram. Send your story ideas to southeasttoday@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp us on 08081 002250.
Toy making giant Mattel says it may increase its prices in the US to make up for the impact of tariffs imposed by Donald Trump.
It comes after the US President imposed 10% tariff on all imports from China, where just under 40% of the firm's production is based.
On top of potential price increases, the maker of Barbie and Hot Wheels says it could have to implement changes to its supply chain.
Consumer and business groups in the US have warned that the tariffs may disrupt supply chains and lead to higher prices.
"Guidance includes the anticipated impact of new US tariffs... announced on February 1st, and mitigating actions we plan to take, including leveraging the strength of our supply chain, and potential pricing," Mattel said in its quarterly report.
The toy industry has been facing slower sales in 2024, as a higher cost of living meant shoppers had less cash to spend on toys.
Despite this, Mattel's shares jumped nearly 10% in extended trading in New York, after the company forecast better profits for next year than had been expected by Wall Street analysts.
Vogue editor Dame Anna Wintour has "firmly" told King Charles she will not stop working, as she removed her signature sunglasses to receive an award at Buckingham Palace.
Dame Anna, the longest-serving editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine, was made Companion of Honour for her services to fashion.
She was honoured in the 2023 King's Birthday Honours and joins the likes of Dame Judi Dench, Sir Elton John, David Hockney and Sir Paul McCartney in the select group.
"It makes me even more convinced that I have so much more to achieve," she said.
Dressed in Alexander McQueen, Dame Anna told reporters on Tuesday she was "completely surprised and overwhelmed" to receive her second accolade at Buckingham Palace.
She was made a dame in 2017 by Queen Elizabeth II, who honoured her for her contribution to fashion and journalism.
"The last time I was here the Queen gave me a medal and we both agreed that we had been doing our job a very long time, and then this morning His Majesty asked me if this meant I was going to stop working and I said firmly, no," she said.
Tracey Emin, 61, one of Britain's most acclaimed artists, was also honoured at the investiture ceremony on Tuesday as she was made a dame.
Speaking afterwards, she said her 2020 bladder cancer diagnosis had made her focus on "helping other people".
In March 2023 her Tracey Emin Foundation opened its doors in Margate, offering rent-free space to art students.
"I think if you come from an impoverished background, it's almost impossible to even get your qualifications and get into university," said Dame Tracey.
"But one thing I would say is: do not be put off by the fees.
"Go to university and worry about it afterwards, because otherwise, if you don't have the education, you can't change anything."
Her notable works include My Bed, an art installation at the Tate Gallery exhibiting her own unmade bed and a floor littered with empty vodka bottles, cigarette butts and condoms.
The work, shortlisted for the 1999 Turner prize, sold at auction for £2.2m.
A French national held on death row in Indonesia since 2007 for drug offences is returning to France on Tuesday as part of an agreement made between both countries.
Serge Atlaoui, 61, was accused of being a "chemist" by Indonesian authorities and arrested in 2005 at a factory in Jakarta, where dozens of kilos (pounds) of drugs were found.
An agreement was made between Indonesia and France on 24 January to extradite the father-of-four on "humanitarian grounds" because he has cancer and has been receiving weekly treatment at a hospital.
"It's a miracle," his wife Sabine Atlaoui told France's RTL radio. "He survived 19 years of incarceration. He survived an execution."
The 61-year-old was handed over to French police at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Jakarta and took off on a commercial flight to Paris at 19:35 local time (12:35 GMT), an official told the AFP news agency.
When he lands on Wednesday morning, Atlaoui will be presented to prosecutors "and most likely detained while awaiting a decision" about his future sentencing, his lawyer Richard Sedillot told AFP.
In France, the maximum punishment for a similar crime is 30 years, Indonesia human rights minister Yusril Ihza Mahendra told Reuters.
It will be up to Paris to grant "clemency, amnesty or a reduced sentence", he said.
Mr Sedillot told AFP he was "delighted" with the extradition and "will now work to ensure that the sentence is adapted to conditions which will allow his release."
Atlaoui told his family he does not want to meet them at the airport, his wife said.
"He wants to see his family again when he is free," she told RTL. "Unfortunately, we do not know how long it will take."
Atlaoui, a welder from Metz in north-eastern France, has always denied being a drug trafficker.
He claimed to be installing machinery in an acrylic factory, but told AFP in 2015 he "thought there was something suspicious".
Originally sentenced to life in prison, the verdict was changed to death on appeal by the Indonesian supreme court.
His execution was scheduled for 2015, but paused thanks to pressure from the French government.
Recently, Indonesia has released a number of high-profile detainees imprisoned under the country's strict drug laws.
Mary Jane Veloso, a Filipina mother who spent nearly 15 years on death row for carrying 2.6kg (5.7lb) of heroin through an Indonesian airport, was extradited in December.
The five remaining members of the "Bali Nine" drug ring returned to Australia the same month.
There are currently 90 foreigners still on death row in the country, including one woman, according to the Ministry of Immigration and Correction.
Imprisoned rapper Sean "Diddy" Combs is expected to face more than 10 new civil lawsuits in the coming days, according to a lawyer who represents dozens of accusers.
The announcement from Tony Buzbee came as he filed another legal case in New York on behalf of an unnamed male, who claims he was assaulted by the music mogul in 2015.
The lawsuit states the accuser, a 23-year-old man, was performing at an event that Combs was attending, and hoped to be signed to his label, Bad Boy Records. The accuser said he was drugged at an afterparty and assaulted, the suit states.
A spokesperson for Combs did not immediately respond but the rapper has vehemently denied the allegations against him - which has included drugging, assaulting and raping people.
He's also facing federal charges in a racketeering and sex trafficking scheme, to which he has pleaded not guilty.
Israel's military says two soldiers have been killed in a shooting attack in the occupied West Bank, as its forces continue a major operation against Palestinian armed groups in the north of the territory.
Another eight soldiers were wounded when a Palestinian gunman opened fire at a checkpoint in Tayasir village, 2km (1.2 miles) north of Tubas, a military statement said. The attacker was shot dead, it said.
Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad praised the attack as a response to the Israeli operation in Tubas, Jenin and Tulkarm, but neither said they were behind it.
Meanwhile, a UN official warned the situation in Jenin's refugee camp was heading in a "catastrophic direction".
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the start of a large-scale operation to "defeat terrorism" in Jenin on 21 January, three days after the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip took effect. The operation was expanded into Tulkarm and Tubas last week.
The Palestinian health ministry says Israeli forces have killed 70 Palestinians across the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, since the start of the year.
The figure includes the 25 reported killed in the Jenin area and 13 in the Tubas and Tulkarm areas over the past two weeks.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said it killed about 55 "terrorists" and arrested 380 wanted individuals across the West Bank in January.
Israeli media reported that the Palestinian who carried out Tuesday's shooting attack in Tayasir was able to sneak up to a military post next to the checkpoint before opening fire with an M16 rifle at soldiers stationed there.
Soldiers fired back and a gun battle lasted several minutes before the attacker was killed, they said.
The IDF named the two soldiers who were killed as Sgt Maj Ofer Yung, 39, and Sgt Maj Avraham Friedman, 43.
Two of the eight wounded soldiers were in a serious condition in hospital, it said.
During a visit to the scene later on Tuesday, the IDF's Chief of Staff, Lt Gen Herzi Halevi, promised it would "investigate and draw conclusions" from what he described as the "serious attack".
"We will increase the counterterrorism activity and expand it to additional areas," he added.
Hamas praised what it described as the "heroic and qualitative operation carried out by a Palestinian resistance fighter" in Tayasir, saying that it showed "the crimes of the occupation and its aggression against the northern occupied West Bank will not go unpunished".
On Monday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's spokesman alleged that the Israeli operation was part of a wider effort aimed at "displacing citizens and ethnic cleansing".
Speaking to reporters in Geneva on Tuesday, Juliette Touma of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) warned of the deteriorating situation at Jenin refugee camp.
Hundreds of Israeli security forces backed by helicopters, drones and armoured bulldozers have been carrying out raids in the camp, long seen as a stronghold of armed groups.
"Large parts of the camp were completely destroyed in a series of detonations by the Israeli forces. It is estimated that 100 houses were destroyed or heavily damaged," Ms Touma said.
"This detonation that happened on Sunday was when children were supposed to go back to school," she added.
The IDF said on Sunday that it had "dismantled" 23 structures where explosives laboratories, weapons, observation posts and other infrastructure belonging to armed groups were located.
Ms Touma also said that Unrwa, which has been unable to provide services in the camp since early December, had received no prior warning of the explosions from Israeli authorities.
On Thursday, two laws passed by Israel's parliament last year which bans Unrwa activity on Israeli soil and forbids contact between Israeli officials and Unrwa employees came into force. Israeli officials accuse Unrwa of being complicit with Hamas - an allegation the agency denies.
Ms Touma said the Israeli government had "not communicated to Unrwa how they intend to implement" the laws, and that Unrwa teams were currently "staying and delivering".
There has been a spike in violence in the West Bank since Hamas's deadly attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 and the ensuing war in Gaza.
Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed as Israeli forces have intensified their raids, saying they are trying to stem deadly Palestinian attacks on Israelis in the West Bank and Israel.
Israel has built about 160 settlements housing some 700,000 Jews since it occupied the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war. The settlements are considered illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.
A police officer has denied he claimed to have experienced harassment from Chelsea and Australia striker Samantha Kerr "purely to get a criminal charge over the line".
The footballer, 31, denies causing racially aggravated harassment to PC Stephen Lovell during an incident at Twickenham police station in south-west London in the early hours of 30 January 2023.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) authorised the Met Police to charge Ms Kerr after PC Lovell submitted a second witness statement, a jury at Kingston Crown Court heard.
The CPS initially ruled that the evidence did not meet the threshold to charge Ms Kerr following the officer's first statement, given 10 months before the second.
Footage from the officer's body-worn camera was played to the jury on Monday, in which Ms Kerr uses an expletive and tells the officer he is "stupid and white".
The court heard that PC Lovell gave a witness statement on 30 January 2023 and a second on 5 December.
Grace Forbes, defending, questioned PC Lovell about his two statements.
She told the court: "Your first statement made no mention of stupid and white having had an impact."
PC Lovell confirmed it did not.
When asked if he was "determined" to pursue Ms Kerr "through the criminal courts", the officer replied: "Yes."
"The CPS identified that there was no evidence of harassment, alarm or distress being caused," Ms Forbes said.
"[I am] going to suggest you are claiming to have experienced this impact purely to get a criminal charge over the line."
PC Lovell denied this.
Prosecution barrister Bill Emlyn Jones KC asked PC Lovell if he had been concerned about describing his feelings when he gave his first statement.
On re-examination, PC Lovell said Ms Kerr's words made him feel "belittled and upset".
He added: "I didn't make something up to get a charge over the line."
PC Lovell told the court that in his second statement he said Ms Kerr's words had left him feeling "shocked, upset and humiliated" and that her comments about race "were too far and I took great offence to them".
He was asked by the prosecution if that statement was true, to which he answered "yes".
Ms Kerr confirmed she had been drinking on a night out with her partner, fellow footballer Kristie Mewis, when she was sick out of the window of a taxi on the way home.
The pair were driven to Twickenham police station by the taxi driver who complained the passengers refused to pay clean-up costs and smashed the vehicle's rear window, it is alleged.
The court was played the audio recording of a voluntary police interview given by Ms Kerr on 30 January 2023.
Ms Kerr said that she had felt "very threatened for my life" in the taxi, saying the driver had locked the doors, and that she "didn't feel heard or protected in the police station".
Ms Kerr initially said she did not recall saying the words "stupid and white" to PC Stephen Lovell.
After she was played the police body worn footage she was asked if she had made PC Lovell feel harassed, alarmed or distressed.
She said: "No, not at all."
Asked if she was aware her words could be perceived as racist, she replied in the interview: "I am aware anything could be perceived as racist for sure".
"I was obviously intoxicated and I shouldn't have been so front-footed," she added.
The trial continues.
Listen to the best of BBC Radio London on Sounds and follow BBC London on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to hello.bbclondon@bbc.co.uk
Just a day ago, Donald Trump was threatening a multi-front trade war with Canada, Mexico and China that would take the global economy into uncharted territory.
Twenty-four hours later, we're in a rather different place with the tariffs - or taxes - against America's closest neighbours and trading partners on hold for 30 days.
But the 10% tariffs on all goods imports from China have gone ahead, and Beijing has responded in kind. So what are the potential economic consequences of these opening salvos and could this turn into a broader trade war?
China is subject to significant US tariffs already and has been since Trump's first term. But the blanket nature of today's new levies from the White House on every single goods import from China - from toys, to mobile phones, to clothes - is new and significant.
Beijing's promised tariff retaliation - including new levies on imports from the US of oil, agricultural machinery and some cars - is far less sweeping. Yet the retaliation moves us into the arena of tit-for-tat action, where the country experiencing the tariffs feels it has no choice but to hit back to show its own citizens it can't be pushed around by a foreign power.
This is the dictionary definition of a trade war - and economic historians warn they tend to generate their own momentum and can rapidly spiral out of control.
Trump has used just about every justification under the sun for tariffs, from raising more tax revenue to boosting American manufacturing and rebalancing trade. But one thing recent days confirm is the new president regards them as a powerful way to compel other nations to do what he wants.
He threatened massive and punitive tariffs on Colombia when it initially refused to accept US flights of its deported nationals, but he lifted the threat when Bogota acquiesced.
The White House might also point to the response of Mexico and Canada yesterday as evidence tariff threats yield results. He had threatened to ride roughshod over his own North American free trade deal unless those nations tightened up on border control. Although how much extra those two countries actually promised yesterday on border security relative to what they were already doing is open to question.
Yet the problem with the White House using tariff threats in this way is that if other countries don't back down - or agreements are not reached - Trump might well feel he has no choice but to follow through or risk losing all credibility. And the targeted country might feel it has to respond with its prepared countermeasures, even if they would prefer not to.
That high-risk dynamic - where things could slip out of control in an atmosphere of distrust and political pressure - is why many analysts and economists are far from comforted by how things have played out with Mexico and Canada this week.
The other reason many economists fear Trump's intimidatory tariff diplomacy is its potentially chilling impact on business investment and confidence. US car firms have a deeply integrated industrial base across America, Mexico and Canada. Automotive parts cross those borders multiple times in the vehicle assembly process.
The levying of 25% tariffs on each of those movements would be disastrous for these businesses. Those North American tariffs have been paused for now, but it's very hard to see US or Canadian automotive executives committing to further investment in those cross-border supply chains any time soon - and perhaps for many years to come.
That will have negative implications for their productivity - and also for the wages of their employees in all three countries. The view of many economists is having cross-border supply chains makes these firms more productive than they would otherwise be and this raises US workers' wages relative to where they would be if they only manufactured in America.
These same effects apply on a global scale. In light of Trump's tariff threats against the European Union, how many US firms are likely to be going ahead with planned investments in Europe - and vice versa?
Countries such as Vietnam and Malaysia benefitted indirectly from the US tariffs imposed on China in Donald Trump's first presidential term, as multinationals shifted manufacturing out of China and into their territories to avoid the taxes and to continue exporting to America. But what if Trump now threatens tariffs against them too?
The huge uncertainty Trump's tariff threats have injected into the global economy - even if they don't always translate into actual new taxes - will likely already be doing damage.
What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?
DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) startup, made headlines worldwide after it topped app download charts and caused US tech stocks to sink.
In January, it released its latest model, DeepSeek R1, which it said rivalled technology developed by ChatGPT-maker OpenAI in its capabilities, while costing far less to create.
Its popularity and potential rattled investors, wiping billions of dollars off the market value of chip giant Nvidia - and called into question whether American firms would dominate the booming artificial intelligence (AI) market, as many assumed they would.
President Donald Trump described it as a "wake-up call" for US companies.
What is artificial intelligence?
To understand why DeepSeek has made such a stir, it helps to start with AI and its capability to make a computer seem like a person.
A machine uses the technology to learn and solve problems, typically by being trained on massive amounts of information and recognising patterns.
The end result is software that can have conversations like a person or predict people's shopping habits.
In recent years, it has become best known as the tech behind chatbots such as ChatGPT - and DeepSeek - also known as generative AI.
These programs again learn from huge swathes of data, including online text and images, to be able to make new content.
But these tools can also create falsehoods and often repeat the biases contained within their training data.
Millions of people use tools such as ChatGPT to help them with everyday tasks like writing emails, summarising text, and answering questions - and others even use them to help with basic coding and studying.
What is DeepSeek?
DeepSeek is the name of a free AI-powered chatbot, which looks, feels and works very much like ChatGPT.
That means it's used for many of the same tasks, though exactly how well it works compared to its rivals is up for debate.
It is reportedly as powerful as OpenAI's o1 model - released at the end of last year - in tasks including mathematics and coding.
Like o1, R1 is a "reasoning" model. These models produce responses incrementally, simulating how humans reason through problems or ideas.
Deepseek says it has been able to do this cheaply - researchers behind it claim it cost $6m (£4.8m) to train, a fraction of the "over $100m" alluded to by OpenAI boss Sam Altman when discussing GPT-4.
It has also seemingly be able to minimise the impact of US restrictions on the most powerful chips reaching China.
DeepSeek's founder reportedly built up a store of Nvidia A100 chips, which have been banned from export to China since September 2022. Some experts believe he paired these chips with cheaper, less sophisticated ones - ending up with a much more efficient process.
DeepSeek also uses less memory than its rivals, ultimately reducing the cost to perform tasks for users.
That combination of performance and lower cost helped DeepSeek's AI assistant become the most-downloaded free app on Apple's App Store when it was released in the US.
The same day, it was hit with "large-scale malicious attacks", the company said, causing the company to temporary limit registrations.
Its website also experienced outages.
Like many other Chinese AI models - Baidu's Ernie or Doubao by ByteDance - DeepSeek is trained to avoid politically sensitive questions.
When the BBC asked the app what happened at Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989, DeepSeek did not give any details about the massacre, a taboo topic in China, which is subject to government censorship.
Who is behind DeepSeek?
DeepSeek was founded in December 2023 by Liang Wenfeng, and released its first AI large language model the following year.
Not much is known about Mr Liang, who graduated from Zhejiang University with degrees in electronic information engineering and computer science. But he now finds himself in the international spotlight.
He was recently seen at a meeting hosted by China's premier Li Qiang, reflecting DeepSeek's growing prominence in the AI industry.
Unlike many American AI entrepreneurs who are from Silicon Valley, Mr Liang also has a background in finance.
He is the CEO of a hedge fund called High-Flyer, which uses AI to analyse financial data to make investment decisions - what is called quantitative trading. In 2019 High-Flyer became the first quant hedge fund in China to raise over 100 billion yuan ($13m).
In a speech he gave that year, Liang said, "If the US can develop its quantitative trading sector, why not China?"
In a rare interview last year, he said China's AI sector "cannot remain a follower forever" of US AI development.
Asked why DeepSeek's model surprised so many in Silicon Valley, Liang said: "Their surprise stems from seeing a Chinese company join their game as an innovator, not just a follower - which is what most Chinese firms are accustomed to."
But it has drawn scrutiny from global leaders.
Australia has banned DeepSeek on government devices and systems, saying it poses a national security risk.
Several data protection authorities around the world have also asked DeepSeek to clarify how it handles personal information - which it stores on China-based servers.
Italy blocked DeepSeek's app on 30 January and ordered the company to stop processing the personal information of its citizens over data protection concerns.
Why were US companies like Nvidia hit?
How has China reacted to DeepSeek's impact?
DeepSeek's rise is a huge boost for the Chinese government, which has been seeking to build tech independent of the West.
While the Communist Party is yet to comment, Chinese state media was eager to note that Silicon Valley and Wall Street giants were "losing sleep" over DeepSeek, which was "overturning" the US stock market.
"In China, DeepSeek's advances are being celebrated as a testament to the country's growing technological prowess and self-reliance," says Marina Zhang, an associate professor at the University of Technology Sydney.
"The company's success is seen as a validation of China's Innovation 2.0, a new era of homegrown technological leadership driven by a younger generation of entrepreneurs."
But she also warned that this sentiment may also lead to "tech isolationism".
Additional reporting by João da Silva and Liv McMahon
Beauty firm Estée Lauder, owner of cosmetics brands Clinique, MAC, and Jo Malone, is shedding twice the number of jobs than planned, pointing to uncertainty around US president Trump's tariffs as cause for concern.
The American multinational was already restructuring the business to tackle its flagging performance, but now says job losses could reach 7,000.
The outlook for firms that trade globally has got tougher in recent days, as US president Donald Trump, launched his promised programme of import taxes.
However, tariffs targeting Canada and Mexico were suspended at the last minute.
The firm, which also owns Bobbi Brown, Aveda and Tom Ford, said it needed to save around $1bn (£805m) as it managed "the risk of recession... including the imposition of tariffs and sanctions".
"We are significantly transforming our operating model to be leaner, faster, and more agile," said chief executive Stéphane de La Faverie.
The firm said rising inflation had driven up costs.
Estée Lauder employs around 62,000 people worldwide, and said the final figure of jobs losses would be between 5,800 and 7,000, with some staff redeployed in new roles.
The company did not say where the jobs would be lost. It employs around 4,400 staff in the UK and Ireland.
The cost-cutting measure was revealed as it also said in its results that it had made a loss of $590m (£474m) in the three months to December as people spent less in China and Korea.
Estée Lauder is the latest company to warn of the impact a tit-for-tat tariff war could have on their fortunes.
Drinks giant, Diageo, which makes Guinness, Johnnie Walker, Baileys and Smirnoff warned on Tuesday that tariffs on Mexico and Canada - if they go ahead - "could very well" impact its business.
Diageo's chief executive, Debra Crew, said the business was taking "a number of actions to mitigate the impact and disruption to our business that tariffs may cause".
Other industries from car makers to avocado growers, are expected to be significantly affected.
Some other consumer brands are more directly affected by the tariffs.
China has added PVH, the American company that owns designer brands Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, to its "unreliable entity" list, saying they had taken "discriminatory measures against Chinese enterprises".
That will make it harder for those brands to do business in China. They may face sanctions, including fines, and having the work visas of their foreign employees revoked.
The Trump administration reportedly intends to merge the US government's main overseas aid agency with the state department, as workers were asked to stay out of its Washington headquarters.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters he was now the acting head of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the agency that distributes billions of dollars in aid around the world.
Democratic lawmakers have called it an "illegal, unconstitutional" move that would hurt poor people abroad, harm national security and reduce US influence on the global stage.
President Donald Trump and one of his top advisers, billionaire Elon Musk, have been strongly critical of the agency.
On Monday, US media - citing unnamed White House sources - said Musk had been given an unpaid job as a part-time "special government employee", a status which would potentially make him subject to several rules about financial disclosures and conflicts of interest.
At the White House, Trump defended Musk's handling of the situation, saying the tech tycoon had "access only to letting people go that he thinks are no good, if we agree with him, and it's only if we agree with him".
"Elon can't do and won't do anything without our approval," he said.
USAID distributes billions in aid to non-governmental organisations, aid groups and non-profits around the world.
With its website down, several key information hubs, including an international famine tracker and decades of aid records, were unavailable.
Top officials have been placed on leave or resigned in the last several days following clashes with Musk's Doge, including over requests that employees of the unofficial department be given access to a highly secure area used for reviewing classified information, the Washington Post and CNN reported this weekend.
"No classified material was accessed without proper security clearances," Katie Miller, Doge spokesperson, wrote on X.
USAID director for security John Vorhees and deputy Director for Security Brian McGill, were both placed on administrative leave as a result, CBS reports.
A top political appointee, USAID chief of staff Matt Hopson, also resigned, the Washington Post reported.
Australia has banned DeepSeek from all government devices and systems over what it says is the security risk the Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) startup poses.
DeepSeek stunned the world in January when it unveiled a chatbot which matched the performance level of US rivals, while claiming it had a much lower training cost.
Billions of dollars were wiped off stock markets internationally, including in Australia, where stocks tied to AI - such as chipmaker Brainchip - fell sharply overnight.
The Australian government has insisted the ban is not due to the app's Chinese origins but because of the "unacceptable risk" it poses to national security.
DeepSeek has been approached for comment.
Australia's move specifically requires any government entities to "prevent the use or installation of DeepSeek products, applications and web services", as well as remove any previously installed, on any government system or device.
That means a wide range of workers will not be able to use the tools in the country, including those working in such varied areas as the Australia Electoral Commission and Bureau of Meteorology.
It is less clear whether it means DeepSeek would be banned from public sector computers in different areas of the economy, such as schools.
The ban does not extend to devices of private citizens.
Growing - and familiar - concerns
Western countries have a track record of being suspicious of Chinese tech - notably telecoms firm Huawei and the social media platform, TikTok - both of which have been restricted on national security grounds.
The initial reaction to DeepSeek - which quickly became the most downloaded free app in the UK and US - appeared to be different.
President Donald Trump described it as a "wake up call" for the US but said overall it could be a positive development, if it lowered AI costs.
Since then, though, doubts about it have started to be voiced.
An Australian science minister previously said in January that countries needed to be "very careful" about DeepSeek, citing "data and privacy" concerns.
The chatbot was removed from app stores after its privacy policy was questioned in Italy. The Italian goverment previously temporarily blocked ChatGPT over privacy concerns in March 2023.
Regulators in South Korea, Ireland and France have all begun investigations into how DeepSeek handles user data, which it stores in servers in China.
The White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has also said the US is now looking into possible security implications.
The US Navy has reportedly banned its members from using DeepSeek - though it has not confirmed this to the BBC.
Generally, AI tools will analyse the prompts sent to them to improve their product.
This is true of apps such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini as much as it is DeepSeek.
All of them gather and keep information, including email addresses and dates of birth.
However, security experts have previously warned that anyone working on confidential or national security areas needs to be aware of the risk of whatever they enter into chatbots being kept and analysed by the developers of those tools.
DeepSeek has also faced accusations it has unfairly used US tech.
OpenAI has complained that rivals, including in China, are using its own work to make rapid progress with their own products.
South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa has moved to defuse a row with the new US administration over a new land law by speaking to Elon Musk.
Mr Musk is a close adviser to US President Donald Trump, who on Sunday threatened to cut all future funding to South Africa over allegations that it was confiscating land and "treating certain classes of people very badly".
The South Africa-born tech billionaire joined in the criticism asking on X why Ramaphosa had "openly racist ownership laws".
Ramaphosa's office said that in the call to Mr Musk the president "reiterated South Africa's constitutionally embedded values of the respect for the rule of law, justice, fairness and equality".
Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.
Follow us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica
Peter (not his real name) is a product manager at a data storage company, which offers its people the Google Gemini AI chatbot.
External AI tools are banned but Peter uses ChatGPT through search tool Kagi. He finds the biggest benefit of AI comes from challenging his thinking when he asks the chatbot to respond to his plans from different customer perspectives.
"The AI is not so much giving you answers, as giving you a sparring partner," he says. "As a product manager, you have a lot of responsibility and don't have a lot of good outlets to discuss strategy openly. These tools allow that in an unfettered and unlimited capacity."
The version of ChatGPT he uses (4o) can analyse video. "You can get summaries of competitors' videos and have a whole conversation [with the AI tool] about the points in the videos and how they overlap with your own products."
In a 10-minute ChatGPT conversation he can review material that would take two or three hours watching the videos.
He estimates that his increased productivity is equivalent to the company getting a third of an additional person working for free.
He's not sure why the company has banned external AI. "I think it's a control thing," he says. "Companies want to have a say in what tools their employees use. It's a new frontier of IT and they just want to be conservative."
The use of unauthorized AI applications is sometimes called 'shadow AI'. It's a more specific version of 'shadow IT', which is when someone uses software or services the IT department hasn't approved.
Harmonic Security helps to identify shadow AI and to prevent corporate data being entered into AI tools inappropriately.
It is tracking more than 10,000 AI apps and has seen more than 5,000 of them in use.
These include custom versions of ChatGPT and business software that has added AI features, such as communications tool Slack.
However popular it is, shadow AI comes with risks.
Modern AI tools are built by digesting huge amounts of information, in a process called training.
Around 30% of the applications Harmonic Security has seen being used train using information entered by the user.
That means the user's information becomes part of the AI tool and could be output to other users in the future.
Companies may be concerned about their trade secrets being exposed by the AI tool's answers, but Alastair Paterson, CEO and co-founder of Harmonic Security, thinks that's unlikely. "It's pretty hard to get the data straight out of these [AI tools]," he says.
However, firms will be concerned about their data being stored in AI services they have no control over, no awareness of, and which may be vulnerable to data breaches.
It will be hard for companies to fight against the use of AI tools, as they can be extremely useful, particularly for younger workers.
"[AI] allows you to cram five years' experience into 30 seconds of prompt engineering," says Simon Haighton-Williams, CEO at The Adaptavist Group, a UK-based software services group.
"It doesn't wholly replace [experience], but it's a good leg up in the same way that having a good encyclopaedia or a calculator lets you do things that you couldn't have done without those tools."
What would he say to companies that discover they have shadow AI use?
"Welcome to the club. I think probably everybody does. Be patient and understand what people are using and why, and figure out how you can embrace it and manage it rather than demand it's shut off. You don't want to be left behind as the organization that hasn't [adopted AI]."
Trimble provides software and hardware to manage data about the built environment. To help its employees use AI safely, the company created Trimble Assistant. It's an internal AI tool based on the same AI models that are used in ChatGPT.
Employees can consult Trimble Assistant for a wide range of applications, including product development, customer support and market research. For software developers, the company provides GitHub Copilot.
Karoliina Torttila is director of AI at Trimble. "I encourage everybody to go and explore all kinds of tools in their personal life, but recognise that their professional life is a different space and there are some safeguards and considerations there," she says.
The company encourages employees to explore new AI models and applications online.
"This brings us to a skill we're all forced to develop: We have to be able to understand what is sensitive data," she says.
"There are places where you would not put your medical information and you have to be able to make those type of judgement calls [for work data, too]."
Employees' experience using AI at home and for personal projects can shape company policy as AI tools evolve, she believes.
There needs to be a "constant dialogue about what tools serve us the best", she says.
President Donald Trump has suspended for 30 days the hefty tariffs on Mexico and Canada that he threatened after last-minute negotiations with the two US neighbours.
He can point to concessions on border and crime enforcement as a victory. But Canada's Justin Trudeau and Mexico's Claudia Sheinbaum also can claim political wins.
A trade war that would send economic shockwaves through North America and beyond is on hold - for now.
So who blinked first and what happens next?
Trump brinkmanship appears to pay off
By Courtney Subramanian, BBC News, Washington DC
President Trump's high-stakes confrontation with the United States' closest trading partners appears to have paid off, with both Mexico and Canada agreeing to stricter border security and taking bigger steps to address fentanyl trafficking.
The strategy to leverage the US economy to force concessions from other countries notches a win for Trump's "America first" agenda, allowing him to follow through on core domestic issues without American consumers feeling the sting of the economic consequences of a continental trade war.
His tariff playbook is hardly new.
Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminium during his first term prompted backlash from Mexico, Canada and the European Union, but economists say those measures were more limited in scope.
This time, Trump has promised sweeping tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada, and China, which is still set to see a 10% tariff increase on goods starting at midnight on Tuesday.
But it remains unclear whether Trump will follow through on his threats to Canada and Mexico once the 30-day deadline is up. That uncertainty stirs fears that could see businesses reducing their reliance on American markets, holding off on investing in building new factories or hiring workers until the trade stand-off becomes more clear.
Lame-duck Trudeau pulls off a trade truce
By Jessica Murphy, BBC News, Toronto
That was not a January Arctic blast from the north - it was a widespread sigh of relief from Canadian politicians and business leaders at the 30-day pause on US tariffs.
While the threat of tariffs remains, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau can claim a political win: a temporary truce in what was shaping up to be a devastating trade war.
Canadian politicians have been scrambling to figure out what exactly would satisfy Trump - a situation not helped by Canada's domestic politics, with Trudeau wrapping up his last weeks in power as a lame-duck prime minister.
The border security measures announced on Monday aren't all new.
In December, Canada announced C$1.3bn ($900m; £700m) in measures that included efforts to disrupt the fentanyl trade, new tools for law enforcement and enhanced co-ordination with US law enforcement.
Canadian surveillance drones and two Black Hawk helicopters recently began patrolling the boundary between the two countries.
Officials have cited those efforts for weeks to show they are taking Trump's border concerns seriously.
A new element appears to be the appointment of a "fentanyl tsar" and a C$200m intelligence directive to fight organised crime and fentanyl.
One question that remains is what this means for the future of the Canada-US relationship. The partnership between the allies has been deeply shaken by Trump's economic threats.
Mexico's Sheinbaum buys herself time
By Will Grant, BBC Central America and Cuba Correspondent, Mexico City
Throughout this trade crisis, President Claudia Sheinbaum has called for "cool heads" and "calm".
Even on Friday, she said she was confident of a last-minute reprieve from the 25% tariffs on Mexican goods. And so it proved, following an early morning telephone call with President Trump.
Announcing the agreement soon after, she could barely wipe the smile from her face and her supporters have heralded what they see as a masterclass in how to negotiate with Donald Trump.
Yes, she agreed to send National Guard troops to the border to focus on fentanyl-smuggling, but crucially she secured what she wanted from Trump, too.
As well as the obvious – a pause on tariffs – she also got Trump to "promise" the US would do more to tackle the traffic of high-powered weapons from the US into Mexico, to prevent them from ending up in the arms of cartel gunmen.
But she also bought herself another vital commodity: time.
She now has several weeks to build on the points agreed in that phone call and turn the temporary hold on tariffs into a permanent one.
The expectation is that now Secretary of State Marco Rubio will visit Mexico soon to discuss these matters and a joint group on fentanyl will be established with Mexican and US health and security officials.
If in fact Sheinbaum does manage to prevent further trade hostilities, it will go down as the first significant victory of her new government, having only been in office since October. And it may set the tone for future interactions with President Trump and his administration.
Get in touch
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.
US President Donald Trump has taken the first step towards setting up a sovereign wealth fund for the United States, and suggested that it could end up buying TikTok.
The president signed an executive order on Monday, to kickstart the process, saying the fund would soon be "one of the biggest".
More than 90 countries have sovereign wealth funds, investing surplus income for the benefit of future generations. However, the US currently runs a budget deficit.
"We're going to create a lot of wealth for the fund," Trump told reporters, without clarifying where the money would come from.
When Trump first floated the idea of a sovereign wealth fund during his election campaign, he suggested it could be funded by "tariffs and other intelligent things".
He has already announced plans to impose tariffs on imports from America's three biggest trading partners - China, Mexico and Canada.
But on Tuesday the levies on Mexico and Canada were paused for 30 days.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the fund would be set up within the next 12 months and that the plan was to monetise assets currently owned by the US government "for the American people".
Saudi Arabia and Norway have two of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds, supported by the proceeds of fossil fuel sales. They invest in companies and projects around the world.
President Trump has previously said that a US sovereign wealth fund would finance "great national endeavours" including infrastructure projects such as airports, roads as well as medical research.
After signing the executive order for the fund's creation, he also floated the idea that it could buy up the social media platform TikTok.
The Chinese-owned social media company was briefly taken offline in the US last month, over national security concerns, after the previous administration ordered its owner to sell its US operations or face a ban.
Trump has delayed the ban, promising to find a solution, after TikTok's US users protested at its shutdown.
"We're going to be doing something, perhaps with TikTok, and perhaps not," Trump said. "If we make the right deal, we'll do it. Otherwise, we won't... we might put that in the sovereign wealth fund."
However, the president has also recently said that technology giant Microsoft was in discussions to acquire TikTok and that he would like to see a "bidding war" over the sale of the social media app.
Other big names in tech, including Larry Ellison and Elon Musk, have also been floated as possible buyers.
US President Donald Trump's plans for tariffs sparked a global sell-off on financial markets on Monday, though a last-minute halt to levies on goods from Mexico brought some relief.
After steep losses earlier in the day, news of the reprieve prompted shares to stage a partial recovery, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average ending the day down just 0.3%.
The rebound followed a sharp slide after Trump issued orders over the weekend to put tariffs on goods from Canada, Mexico and China, and pledged that tariffs on the EU would "definitely happen".
Investors are concerned that tariffs will hit the earnings of major companies and dent global growth but many are still hoping Trump is not serious.
The S&P 500 closed 0.76% lower and the Nasdaq ended the day down by 1.2%.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau held talks with Trump on the tariffs that were due to take effect on his country at midnight.
After the markets closed, Mr Trudeau said the two men had agreed a deal that would pause tariffs for 30 days.
Simon French, an economist at Panmure Liberum said investors had been "pricing in" an agreement with Canada, betting that the threats were "simply a negotiating position from the Trump administration".
Earlier, the US dollar strengthened on the currency markets amid the uncertainty, rising to a record high against China's yuan, while the Canadian dollar plunged to its lowest level since 2003.
Concerns about the tariffs had also hit shares in Asia and Europe.
The German stock market fell 1.4%, with shares in carmakers among the worst hit and France's CAC 40 index dropped 1.2%. In London, the FTSE 100 ended the day down about 1%.
"Investors are rattled at the prospects of a full-blown trade war breaking out," said Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown.
Over the weekend, Trump ordered tariffs of 25% on exports from Canada and Mexico to the US, which were due to come into effect at midnight on Tuesday.
Chinese-made are still set to face a 10% levy, in addition to existing tariffs.
The announcements, which Trump tied to concerns about the flow of illegal drugs and migrants into the US, targeted the United States' three largest trading partners and threaten major disruption in some of the world's biggest economies.
Canada and Mexico said they would hit back with retaliatory tariffs while China promised "corresponding countermeasures" and vowed to challenge Trump's move at the World Trade Organization.
But in a sign of how swiftly the circumstances might change, Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Monday that she had agreed to send 10,000 troops to the border and the tariffs would be on hold for one month, as the two sides continue to negotiate.
Many are still bracing for wider tensions, after Trump said on Sunday that he would "definitely" impose tariffs on the EU, although he said while the UK was "out of line", a deal could be worked out.
On the Dow, which tracks 30 high-profile companies meant to be representative of the economy, Nike and Apple, which both rely on China for manufacturing, were among the hardest hit, with Apple down more than 3%.
Elsewhere, carmakers such as Tesla and General Motors also saw share prices drop.
In Japan, Toyota shares fell 5% and Honda sank 7.2%, while in Europe shares in VW and Stellantis – whose brands include Chrysler, Citroen, Fiat, Jeep and Peugeot – were down roughly 4%.
Shares in drinks maker Diageo - which exports tequila from Mexico to the US - ended the day down 1.9%, trimming earlier losses.
Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, said there was a "sea of red flashing on the markets".
Tariffs could lead to "higher inflation and put a stop to further interest rate cuts for the time being – exactly the opposite of what equity investors want to happen", he added.
"Higher prices could hurt demand, and there might be a trickle-down effect that knocks business and consumer confidence and feeds into weaker economic activity."
The prospect of interest rates staying higher for longer helped to strengthen the dollar.
As well as the dollar rising against China's yuan and the Canadian dollar, the euro fell to more than a two-year low against the US currency.
Oil prices also rose following news of the tariffs, as traders tried to analyse how tariffs on Canada and Mexico - the two biggest sources of oil imports to the US - would affect the market.
Chief investment strategist at investment bank Saxo, Charu Chanana, warned that while tariffs could be beneficial for the US economy in the short term, in the long run they pose significant risks.
"Repeated use of tariffs would incentivise other countries to reduce reliance on the US, weakening the dollar's global role," she added.
US President Donald Trump has delayed introducing 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico for a month while the two countries hold "negotiations".
Trump said he would "immediately pause the anticipated tariffs", which were due to come into force on Tuesday.
The last-minute breakthrough came after a phone call between Trump and President Claudia Sheinbaum, in which the Mexican leader agreed to send 10,000 members of the National Guard to the US-Mexican border to "prevent the trafficking of drugs, in particular fentanyl, from Mexico to the US".
President Sheinbaum said the US had in turn agreed to increase measures to prevent the trafficking of high-powered US weapons into Mexico.
Follow developments on our live page
Sheinbaum broke the news on X, writing she had had a "good conversation with great respect for our relationship and sovereignty" with her US counterpart, which she said had led to the tariffs being put on hold for a month.
The White House had said earlier that President Trump's "bold action" was to hold Mexico - as well as China and Canada, whom he has also threatened with tariffs - "accountable to their promises of halting illegal immigration and stopping poisonous fentanyl and other drugs from flowing into our country".
As well as reinforcing Mexico's northern border, and a commitment by the US that it would "work towards" curbing the flow of weapons to Mexico, Sheinbaum wrote the two countries would start work "today" to reach a deal on "security and trade".
Trump confirmed the pause shortly afterwards, describing his telephone conversation with Sheinbaum as "very friendly".
The tone is markedly different from the one in recent days when Trump accused the Mexican government of having an "intolerable alliance" with drug trafficking gangs.
While Sheinbaum had angrily denounced the allegation as "slander", she also insisted "problems are not solved by imposing tariffs, but by talking".
That strategy seems to have yielded some results and while the threat of US tariffs has not gone away completely, the Mexican leader has gained some breathing space and for now avoided a trade war between the two countries.
The "Plan B" of retaliatory measures the Mexican leader had instructed her economy minister to prepare should US tariffs come into force has been shelved for now, she said.
Sheinbaum appeared both relieved and upbeat during Monday's morning news conference, where her words of "well, you will have seen my tweet" were met with applause by the assembled media.
She also laughed as she told reporters that when President Trump had asked her how long they should pause the tariffs for, she had answered "forever".
While the US president did not agree to take the threat of tariffs off the table for good, Sheinbaum said she was confident "during this month we'll be able to deliver good results for his people and the people of Mexico".
During her news conference, she stressed the two countries' shared aims, which she said were to crack down on drug trafficking from Mexico to the US and to protect their mutual border.
She also welcomed what she said had been a commitment by the US to do more to stem the trafficking of high-powered weapons from the US to Mexico.
"Rocket launchers come here from the US," she told reporters, insisting it was in the interest of both nations to stop providing drug cartels with firepower.
She insisted it was in Mexico's interest to combat the trafficking of fentanyl, a synthetic drug 50 times stronger than heroin that is linked to tens of thousands of overdoses in the US.
Sheinbaum pointed out the deployment of 10,000 members of the National Guard to the US border would "help Mexico" increase its security.
Border security and stemming the flow of undocumented migrants was one of the key issues in President Trump's campaign and since coming to office he has argued voters "gave him a mandate to seal the border".
The leader of Ontario - Canada's most populous province - has said that American companies will be banned from provincial government contracts until the US ends the tariffs President Donald Trump imposed on Canada.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford also emphasised that his government would be "ripping up" its C$100m ($68m; £55.1) contract with Elon Musk's satellite internet company Starlink.
"Ontario won't do business with people hell-bent on destroying our economy," said Ford, who is running in the province snap election he called last week.
Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke on Monday about the 25% import tax on Canadian goods that the US president announced at the weekend.
Trump said in the Oval Office on Monday they had a "good talk" but that he raised a number of issues he saw as trade irritants.
"I'm sure you're shocked to hear that, but Canada is very tough," he said.
"They're very, very tough to do business with, and we can't let them take advantage of the US."
The president has given a number of reasons in recent months for threatening tariffs on Canada, from border security to trade deficits and the country's failure to meet Nato defence spending targets.
The pair are schedule to speak again this afternoon.
The president announced on Saturday that a 25% import tax on goods from Canada and Mexico would begin on Tuesday, along with 10% tariffs on goods from China.
Canadian energy faces a lower 10% tariff.
Trudeau immediately announced counter-tariff plans in response. He said that his government would place C$30bn in tariffs on American goods this week - with an additional C$125bn in 21 days, for a total of C$155bn ($107bn; £86bn) - if the US moves ahead with the levies.
Canada has "no choice but to hit back, and hit back hard", Ford said at a news conference on Monday.
"Canada didn't start this fight with the US, but you better believe we're ready to win it," the Ontario premier added.
Ford has targeted Starlink in that effort after his Ontario government partnered with the internet firm. The province launched a programme with Starlink last November that would offer high-speed satellite internet access to 15,000 eligible unserved and underserved homes and businesses.
Musk, the CEO of SpaceX - Starlink's parent company - is one of Trump's closest allies.
In a post on X, he responded with: "Oh well."
Ford said he believes the province has "a very good case" should Starlink attempt to challenge the move in court, but he is willing for the province to pay a penalty.
"It's the principle," he said.
Other Canadian provinces are taking a similar path.
Officials in Quebec, British Columbia and New Brunswick announced plans to target American booze, removing it from shelves in provincial liquor stores, and said they will revisit provincial contracts for US firms.
On Monday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Trump announced that they had agreed on a one-month delay on tariffs on imports from her country after she promised to send additional Mexican National Guard troops to the border.
A Canadian official told the New York Times that Ottawa is not optimistic it will get a similar reprieve.
The president said tariffs are needed to "protect" Americans from the "major threat of illegal aliens and deadly drugs", including fentanyl.
His administration alleges that Mexican gangs have fentanyl labs in Canada. Trudeau has said less than 1% of fentanyl entering the US comes from his country.
In December, Canada said it would devote C$1.3bn ($900m; £700m) to a new border plan that included strengthened surveillance.
This month, Canadian premiers will travel to Washington DC to lobby against the tariffs and will attend a meeting of US state governors.
All three major stock exchanges in the US tumbled after they opened on Monday. It was the first official trading since Trump issued his orders raising tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico and China.
The UK is "not choosing between the US and the EU", Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said after President Donald Trump threatened the European Union with trade tariffs.
Over the weekend, Trump announced 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico - which have both since been paused - and said he would take similar action against the EU but suggested a deal could be "worked out" with the UK.
Asked if he would be willing to water down attempts to forge closer ties with the EU in exchange for keeping the US on side, Sir Keir said both relationships were important to the UK.
"Now, that for me isn't new, I think that's always been the case and will be the case for many, many years to come," he added.
The prime minister told a press conference in Brussels it was "early days" when it came to tariff talks with the US and that he backed "open and strong trading relations".
Sir Keir was in Belgium to meet Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte and attend talks with EU leaders - the first PM to do so since Brexit.
Asked about tensions between the US and the EU, Rutte said there were "always issues between allies" but that would "not get in the way of our collective determination to keep our deterrent strong".
On Ukraine, he said Nato - the military alliance of Western countries - had to "not only sustain but continue to step up our support" to ensure Ukraine could negotiate with Russia from "a position of strength".
He added that spending 2% of national income on defence was "not enough to keep us safe" and that there was "no time to waste" in boosting funding.
Currently Nato asks every member country to spend a least 2% of GDP on defence, however it is thought only 23 of the 32 members meet the target.
Sir Keir said the UK currently spends 2.3% and that his government would shortly be setting out "the path" towards reaching 2.5%.
Speaking at a European Council dinner, the prime minister called for more military collaboration between the UK and Europe including by improving military mobility and logistics across Europe, focusing on research and development and deepening industrial collaboration.
He also said there should be more co-operation to protect against state threats and sabotage, including on subsea infrastructure. This comes after the UK issued a warning to Russia last month after a spy ship was spotted near undersea cables.
While defence is the focus of his Brussels trip, for Sir Keir it is also part of an ongoing bid to "reset" UK-EU relations.
The UK government wants to forge stronger links with the EU - but that could anger the US and risk the UK getting caught up in a trade war.
Similarly, the EU might object to Sir Keir siding with the US rather than its European neighbours.
Earlier, No 10 said the prime minister trusted Trump and pointed to "a really constructive early set of conversations" between the two men.
"We've got a fair and balanced trading relationship which benefits both sides of the Atlantic," the spokesman added.
"It's worth around £300bn and we are each other's single largest investors, with £1.2tn invested in each other's economies."
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage the prime minister's commitment to industrial collaboration with the EU showed he was "a rejoiner at heart".
The UK should be negotiating a free trade deal with the US instead, he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Tuesday, claiming the EU was "diminishing every year".
"If we start to tie ourselves to industrial collaboration, as it appears was agreed last night, then we find ourselves with less flexibility in doing deals with countries like America.
"My fear is we tie ourselves to EU law."
Following Trump's tariffs announcements over the weekend, European and Asian stock markets fell, with car manufacturers particularly badly hit.
The UK was also impacted but to a lesser extent than the EU.
Analysis produced last year by the University of Sussex suggested the UK could face a £22bn hit to exports if the US imposed a blanket 20% tariff on all imports.
Trump believes imposing tariffs will help grow the US economy and protect jobs, however it could lead to consumers paying more as prices adjust to the taxes.
On Monday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said the imposition of the 25% tariffs had been delayed after reaching an agreement with the US which would see her country deploy 10,000 troops to tackle drug trafficking into the US.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also confirmed that Trump's proposed tariffs of 25% on Canadian goods would be "paused for at least 30 days while we work together".
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU wanted a constructive dialogue with the US but was ready to respond firmly if it was "unfairly" targeted by the new Trump administration.
French President Emmanuel Macron said that if EU interests were attacked, the trading bloc would have to "make itself respected and thus react".
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said there were "no winners in trade wars", but if there was a trade war with the US "then the one laughing on the side is China".
Asked earlier if he would put tariffs on the UK, Tump said: "UK is out of line but I'm sure that one... I think that one can be worked out."
He added his discussions with the British prime minister had "been very nice" adding: "We've had a couple of meetings. We've had numerous phone calls. We're getting along very well."
As well as defence the UK wants to discuss easing restrictions on the trade of food and animal products and co-operation on emission trading schemes with the EU.
The mutual recognition of professional qualifications and allowing touring musicians to travel more easily are also areas of interest.
The EU is keen to set up a youth mobility scheme, which would make it easier for young EU citizens to study and work in the UK and vice versa. However, ministers have so far rejected the idea.
Downing Street has not ruled out joining the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean Convention, which would allow tariff-free trade on some goods.
The Conservatives have accused the government of "trying to reopen the divisions of the past and edge us back into the EU".
In contrast, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey has been urging the government to negotiate a new UK-EU customs union, allowing tariff-free trade between the two sides.
Following the tariff announcements, Sir Ed said the US president was "acting like a playground bully" and the UK should "work with our allies in the Commonwealth and Europe to stand strong against Trump".
Sign up for our Politics Essential newsletter to read top political analysis, gain insight from across the UK and stay up to speed with the big moments.
It'll be delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
President Trump has introduced tariffs on goods from China, which has hit back by announcing similar charges on some US products.
Trump has also threatened to introduce tariffs - a tax on imports - on goods from Canada and Mexico, but paused these for 30 days after both countries agreed to boost border security.
The US president has said tariffs are needed to help the American economy and to "protect" the country from the "major threat of illegal aliens and deadly drugs".
Trump told the BBC tariffs on EU goods could happen "pretty soon" - but suggested a deal could be "worked out" with the UK.
What are tariffs and how do they work?
Tariffs are taxes charged on goods imported from other countries.
Trump introduced a 10% tariff on all goods from China. So, a product worth $10 would have an additional $1 charge applied to it.
The president originally said he would impose a 25% tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico.
Charging a percentage of a product's value is the most common type of tariff. Another type imposes a fixed figure on imports, whatever their value.
Companies that import goods from abroad pay the tariffs to the US government.
Why is Trump using tariffs?
Trump is fulfilling a campaign promise of introducing import duties against some of America's closest trading partners.
The tariffs will boost US manufacturing, protect jobs, raise tax revenue and grow the economy, he argues.
Trump says he is also using tariffs to "combat the scourge of fentanyl", a powerful drug that causes tens of thousands of overdose deaths in the US each year.
His administration says chemicals used to make the drug come from China, while Mexican gangs supply it illegally and have fentanyl labs in Canada.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said less than 1% of fentanyl entering the US comes from his country.
At the same time Trump is placing economic pressure on these trading partners, he has stated a desire for Canada to join America as the 51st state, an idea Trudeau has firmly rejected.
Together, China, Mexico and Canada accounted for more than 40% of imports into the US last year.
What is happening with China, Canada and Mexico?
China
A 10% charge on all goods imported from China to the US took effect on 4 February.
In response, China said it will implement a 15% tariff on US coal and liquefied natural gas products from 10 February. Crude oil, agricultural machinery and large engine cars will see a 10% tariff.
"Trade and tariff wars have no winners," said a spokesperson at China's Washington embassy.
Canada
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Trump's proposed tariffs of 25% on Canadian goods - which were also set to begin on Tuesday - "will be paused for at least 30 days while we work together".
Trudeau's retaliatory 25% tariffs on 155bn Canadian dollars' worth ($107bn; £86bn) of US imports were also halted.
In exchange for the pause, Trudeau said Canada was implementing a "$1.3bn border plan" to add "new choppers, technology and personnel to border," as well as "increased resources to stop the flow of fentanyl".
Much of the border security plan had already been announced in December.
Trump said the delay would allow the US to see "whether or not a final economic deal with Canada" can be reached.
Mexico
The proposed 25% tariffs against Mexico have also been delayed a month, as have measures by Mexico against US goods.
Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum agreed to send 10,000 members of the National Guard to the US-Mexican border to "prevent the trafficking of drugs, in particular fentanyl".
President Sheinbaum said the US had in turn agreed to increase measures to prevent the trafficking of high-powered US weapons into Mexico.
Which products will be affected?
During Trump's previous time in office, he applied less restrictive tariffs on China. This time around, the tariffs appear to apply to all goods from China.
Should the measures against goods from Mexico and Canada ultimately go ahead, a range of items are expected to become more expensive
Car manufacturing could bear the brunt of the effects of tariffs.
Vehicle parts cross the US, Mexican and Canadian borders multiple times before a vehicle is completely assembled.
The average US car price could increase by $3,000 because of the import taxes, financial analyst TD economics suggested.
Other goods from Mexico which could be affected include fruit, vegetables, spirits and beer.
Canadian goods such as steel, lumber, grains and potatoes would also be likely to get pricier.
Canadian energy would be tariffed at 10% instead of 25%.
Will the UK and Europe have to pay tariffs?
On Sunday, Trump told the BBC the UK was acting "out of line", but suggested a solution for the UK could be "worked out".
But, he said tariffs could be imposed on the EU "pretty soon", saying "they take almost nothing [from the US] and we take everything from them".
The UK's business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, said the UK should be excluded from tariffs because the US exports more products to the UK than it imports.
The UK exports pharmaceutical products, cars and scientific instruments to the US.
Last year, the US had a trade deficit of $213bn with the EU - which Trump described as "an atrocity".
The EU has said it would "respond firmly" to any tariffs.
US companies Harley Davidson, which manufactures motorcycles, and whiskey distilleries such as Jack Daniel's have previously faced EU tariffs.
Do tariffs cause inflation?
Economists suggest that a portion of the cost of tariffs ends up being paid by consumers.
Sellers may raise the price of goods they are importing.
From 2018 to 2023, tariffs on imported washing machines saw the price of laundry equipment rise by 34%, according to official statistics, before falling once the tariffs expired.
Some experts suggest that these new tariffs could prompt a wider trade war and exacerbate inflation.
Capitol Economics said the annual rate of inflation could increase from 2.9% to as high as 4% because of the newly announced tariffs.
It's towards the end of our interview that Bill Gates reveals new numbers on how much his charitable Foundation has now spent in its efforts to combat preventable diseases and reduce poverty.
"I've given over 100 billion," he says, "but I still have more to give."
That's dollars, just to clarify, worth about £80bn.
It's roughly equivalent to the size of the Bulgarian economy or the cost of building the whole HS2 line.
But to put it in context, it's also around the same as just one year of Tesla sales. (Tesla owner Elon Musk is now the richest man on the planet, a position Gates held for many years.)
The co-founder of Microsoft and his fellow philanthropist Warren Buffett are combining their billions through the Gates Foundation he originally set up with his now ex-wife Melinda.
Gates says philanthropy was instilled in him early on. His mother regularly told him "with wealth came the responsibility to give it away".
His Foundation's 25th anniversary is in May, and Gates exclusively revealed the $100bn figure to the BBC.
He tells me, for his part, he enjoys giving his money away (and around $60 billion of his fortune has gone into the Foundation so far).
When it comes to his day-to-day lifestyle, he doesn't actually notice the difference: "I made no personal sacrifice. I didn't order less hamburgers or less movies." He can also, of course, still afford his private jet and his various huge houses.
He plans to give away "the vast majority" of his fortune, but tells me he has talked "a lot" with his three children about what might be the right amount to leave them.
Will they be poor after he's gone? I ask him. "They will not," he replies with a quick smile, adding "in absolute, they'll do well, in percentage terms it's not a gigantic number".
Gates is a maths guy and it shows. At Lakeside School in Seattle, in eighth grade, he competed in a four-state regional maths exam and did so well that, at 13, he was one of the best high school maths students of any age in the region.
Maths terminology comes second nature to him. But to translate, if you're worth $160bn, which Bloomberg's Billionaires Index claims he is, even leaving your children a tiny percentage of your fortune still makes them very rich.
I'm with one of only 15 people on the planet who are centibillionaires (worth more than $100bn), according to Bloomberg. We're in his childhood home in Seattle, a mid-century modern four-bedroom house set into a hill, and we're meeting because he's written a memoir, Source Code: My Beginnings, focusing on his early life.
I want to find out what shaped a challenging, obsessive child who didn't fit the norm into one of the tech pioneers of our age.
He's brought along his sisters, Kristi and Libby, and all three excitedly tour the home where they grew up. They haven't been back in some years and the current owners have refurbished (fortunately, the Gates siblings seem to approve of the changes).
But it's bringing back memories including, as they walk into the kitchen, of the now-long-gone intercom system between rooms beloved by their mother. She used it to "sing to us in the morning", Gates tells me, to get them out of their bedrooms for breakfast.
Mary Gates also set their watches and clocks eight minutes fast so the family would work to her time. Her son often rebelled at her efforts to improve him, but now tells me "the crucible of my ambition was warmed through that relationship".
He puts his competitive spirit down to his grandmother "Gami", who was often with the family in this house and who taught him to outsmart the competition early on with games of cards.
I follow him down the wooden stairs as he heads off to find his old childhood bedroom in the basement. It's a neat guest room now, but young Bill spent hours, even days, in here "thinking", as his sisters put it.
At one point, his mum was so fed up with the mess that she confiscated any item of clothing she found on the floor and charged her stubborn son 25 cents to buy it back. "I started wearing fewer clothes," he says.
By this time, he was hooked on coding and, with some tech-savvy school friends, had been given access to a local firm's one computer in return for reporting any problems. Obsessed with learning to program in those nascent days of the tech revolution, he would sneak out at night through his bedroom window without his parents knowing to get more computer time.
"Do you think you could do it now?" I ask.
He starts unwinding the catch and opens the window. "It's not that hard," he says with a smile as he climbs up and out. "It's not hard at all."
There is a famous early clip of Gates in which a TV presenter asks him if it's true he can jump over a chair from a standing position. He does it right there in the studio. I'm in the Gates childhood bedroom for something that feels like "a moment". The guy's nearly 70. But he's still game.
He seems at ease - and it isn't just because we're in a familiar environment. In the memoir, he's revealed publicly for the first time that he thinks if he were growing up today, he'd probably be diagnosed on the autism spectrum.
The only time I met him before was in 2012. He barely looked me in the eye as we did a quick interview about his goal to protect children from life-threatening diseases. There was certainly no pre-interview small talk. I wondered after our interaction whether he was on the spectrum.
The book lays it out: his ability to hyperfocus on subjects he was interested in; his obsessive nature; his lack of social awareness.
He says at elementary school he turned in a 177-page report on Delaware, having written off for brochures about the state, even sending stamped addressed envelopes to local companies asking for their annual reports. He was 11.
His sisters tell me they knew he was different. Kristi, who's older, says she felt protective of him. "He was not a normal kid… he would sit in his room and chew pencils down to the lead," she said.
They're obviously close. Libby, a therapist, tells me she wasn't surprised to hear he believes he is on the spectrum. "The surprise was more his willingness to say 'this might be the case'," she says.
Gates says he hasn't had a formal diagnosis and doesn't plan to. "The positive characteristics for my career have been more beneficial than the deficits have been a problem for me," he says.
He thinks neurodiversity is "certainly" over-represented in Silicon Valley because "learning something in great depth at a young age - that helps you in certain complex subjects".
Elon Musk has also said he is on the spectrum, referencing Asperger's syndrome. The Tesla, X and SpaceX billionaire is famously courting Donald Trump, as are the other modern-day tech bros, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon's Jeff Bezos among other Silicon Valley attendees at Trump's inauguration.
Gates tells me although "you can be cynical" about their motives, he too reached out to the president. They had a three-hour dinner on 27 December "because he's making decisions about global health and how we help poor countries, which is a big focus of mine now".
I ask Gates, himself a target of some pretty wild conspiracy theories, what he thinks of the decision taken by Zuckerberg after Trump's election to dump fact-checking in the US on his sites. Gates tells me he's not "that impressed" by how governments or private companies are navigating the boundaries between free speech and truth.
"I don't personally know how you draw that line, but I'm worried that we're not handling that as well as we should," he says.
He also thinks children should be protected from social media, telling me there's a "good chance" that banning under-16s, as Australia is doing, is "a smart thing".
Gates tells me "social networking, even more than video gaming, can absorb your time and make you worry about other people approving you" so we have to be "very careful how it gets used".
As for Trump's first pick for US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, who claims he isn't anti-vaccination but has promoted debunked claims about vaccines, Gates makes short shrift. He tells me RFK Jr is "misleading people".
The Bill Gates origin story isn't rags to riches. His dad was a lawyer, money wasn't tight, although the decision to send their son to private school to try to motivate him was "a stretch, even on my father's salary".
If they hadn't, we might never have heard of Bill Gates.
He first got access to an early mainframe computer via a teletype machine at the school, after the mothers held a jumble sale to raise the money. The teachers couldn't figure it out, but four students were on it day and night. "We got to use computers when almost nobody else did," he says.
Much later, he would set up Microsoft with one of those school friends, Paul Allen. Another, Kent Evans, Gates' best friend, would die tragically age 17 in a climbing accident. As we walk around Lakeside School, we pass the chapel where they held his funeral and where Gates remembers crying on the steps.
Together, they'd had big plans. When they weren't on computers, they were reading biographies to work out what factors made people successful.
Now Gates has written his own. His philosophy? "Much of who you are was there from the start."
The Making of Bill Gates is on BBC Two at 19:00 on Monday 3 February and on iPlayer
Source Code: My Beginnings is published on Tuesday 4 February
Sign up for our Tech Decoded newsletter to follow the biggest developments in global technology, with analysis from BBC correspondents around the world.
Outside the UK? Sign up here.
These tiny soldiers can eat four times their own weight in organic waste – and turn it into sustainable fertiliser.
With a unique ability to consume nearly any form of organic matter it comes across, one small but mighty insect is becoming a tool to address the growing problem of organic waste and soil degradation. The bug, black soldier fly larvae (BSFL), transforms food waste into nutrient-rich biofertiliser: frass.
Insects have been long been used in agricultural practices as a food source – but now farmers are exploring the potential of bug poo as a sustainable fertiliser. With over 33% of the world's soil currently degraded, depleted of the nutrients necessary for healthy plant growth, frass can play a major role in restoring soil biodiversity and quality.
In May 2024, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) awarded grants to three projects that seek to harness this soldier fly's capabilities. This included Chapul Farms, an Oregon-based project development company that's reweaving insects back into American agriculture to eliminate food waste, restore soil health, and produce high-quality animal feed.
Backed by the Fertilizer Production and Expansion Program (FPEP), the bipartisan support of the use of insects in agriculture highlights the growing recognition of BSFL's potential – for both waste reduction and for enhancing soil health through the production of high quality domestic fertiliser.
But despite the bug's seeming superpowers, the widespread application of BSFL remains limited. The question is: why? And how can companies like Chapul Farms, now equipped with federal support, change that?
BSFL can consume nearly any kind of organic waste, from food scraps to agricultural byproducts. Facilities like Chapul Farms utilise its voracious appetite to process large quantities of waste, with the larvae consuming up to four times their own body waste in organic matter everyday. This happens in a fraction of the time required for traditional composting, which can take up to 10 months. The larvae's efficiency allows for a rapid turnover of organic material into nutrient-rich excrement – or frass.
"They can reproduce pretty quickly too," says Shankar Ganapathi Shanmugam, Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Plant and Soil Sciences at Mississippi State University. "And it [BSFL] grows on dead and decaying material, which means that it can survive on waste."
Shanmugam is spearheading research on the use of frass as a crop nutrient, which until now has not been studied in the US – though it has been studied in other parts of the world, notably in multiple countries across Europe.
Chapul collaborates with neighbouring farms to exchange waste for frass, creating a circular system. It's a mutually beneficial exchange as the farms receive nutrient-rich soil amendment and Chapul receives the fuel for their operation. And it's doing something significant for insect populations too: helping to repopulate them.
This is because insect farming operations create a controlled environment for the bugs to thrive. The frass created from them provides essential nutrients to plants and fosters a more biodiverse soil, which encourages the growth of native plant and insect species, thus supporting the overall ecosystem.
"We could make compost out of anything but the impact of running it through this insect biology has all of these [positive] implications," says Mimi Casteel, an Oregon wine farmer who has been using Chapul's frass. "It's exciting for so many reasons: it's a portable, pretty low cost investment compared to some other things that we're considering as part of dealing with our massive problems with waste, and soldier flies are replacing a missing layer of diversity."
Chapul has worked with local vineyards, researchers and farms to research, educate and promote frass benefits and adoption in the bioregion. TAINABLE, a local soil restoration non-profit, provides laboratory space and farmland to Chapul for their research.
As organic waste production continues to place a massive burden on energy and carbon emissions, there is an increasing need for more efficient and sustainable processing methods. And BSFL's digestive processes can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
"Finding a use for this is important, but if you're going to market frass as a fertiliser, you need to regulate it, which takes time," says Shanmugam. "And to make these regulations you need research."
The US National Organic Program does not include insects as an acceptable additive as of now. This makes it a challenge to share this technique with farmers who use organic practices, though teams like Chapul Farms are in conversations with regulators to increase education around it and usher in its inclusion.
Unlike chemical fertilisers, which often deplete soil over time, frass promotes biodiversity within the soil by introducing a diverse microbial community. This boosts soil resilience, natural plant defence, improves its ability to retain water, and reduces the need for costly synthetic inputs. In sharp contrast, synthetics can wreck soil biodiversity, beneficial bacteria and the soil's natural micro-ecosystem, leaving it dependent on increasingly expensive inputs. They also have intensive fossil-fuel requirements, and reduce soil's carbon carrying capacity.
"We recently saw even more of a push for our government to get projects funded that support domestic fertiliser production," says Aly Moore, Chief Communications Officer of Chapul Farms. "We realise how many health issues are caused by the reduced nutrient density in crops, and all the pesticides used. And on the cost factor, farmers will not only need less fertiliser over time, but also fewer pesticides."
This can all contribute to cost savings and be more incentive for farmers, especially at a time when fertiliser prices are sky high and supply is unreliable. Prices more than doubled between 2021 and 2022. With the US being the world's third-largest fertiliser importer, American farmers felt the brunt of this impact; making it not just a fertiliser issue, but also one of food security.
"In the two years leading up to 2023, there was an 8% reduction in global fertiliser consumption, because people were priced out of the market," says Michael Place, Chief Technology Officer at Chapul Farms. "There were supply disruptions and even unavailability. And FPEP emerged from this sort of emergency."
Soil microbes present an exciting frontier for regenerating soil health, yet less than 1% of total microbes in soil have been cultivated. Frass provides an opportunity to pivot from the reductionist methods of treating soils that perpetuated the soil crisis in the first place, all while bolstering food and agricultural security.
Farmers will eventually need less frass to maintain the same levels of soil productivity, as the microbes in frass proliferate over time, rebuilding soil health and resiliency by improving biodiversity.
More like this:
• The foods that eat up carbon
• A 2,000-year-old method to water crops
• The ignored potential of human poo
Farmers who have begun using frass in their fields are already reporting promising results. Casteel is in the midst of facilitating trials to assess the impact of frass on her crops. While the statistical outcome of the study is still in progress, she has already witnessed perceptible changes.
"Anecdotally, what I can tell you is that in the trials that I've done both with grapevines and in my vegetable farm, the produce itself comes up faster, it has better cellular structure," says Casteel. "So if you actually cut the leaf and put it under the microscope, the cells grow more densely and they have figure lipid membranes. And what that means is that the plant from day one has more structural integrity," she says.
The FPEP funds will support construction and equipment for BSFL facilities located in Oregon and North Dakota. The projects anticipate yielding 10,000 tons of frass per location per year and will generate 59 new jobs, upon its opening which is expected to be in 2026.
One of the greatest challenges facing the nascent insect agriculture industry is the tunnel vision around insects for protein production which has overshadowed the benefits of frass in soil health. While protein from BSFL is a lucrative and fast-growing market, frass remains an underutilised resource in insect agriculture.
The global insect protein market was valued at nearly $1 billion in 2022 (£805m), while global frass was valued at $96 million (£77m) in 2023, and frass's projected growth is substantially higher. Plus, according to the Chapul Farms team, insect farms produce twice as much frass as larvae.
"I think farmers have historically been convinced that insects are problems, and they just don't want to talk about adding more problems to their situation," says Casteel. "But when our farms become more complex, you start to see an exponential rollout of ecological returns."
In addition, insects are keystone species, meaning entire ecosystems would drastically change or collapse without them – and our world would "grind to a halt", as the biologist Dave Goulson wrote in the Guardian newspaper.
"Ultimately, at its core, we cannot survive without insects," says Pat Crowley, CEO of Chapul Farms. "Natural ecosystems cannot flourish... without the insects as a part of them. And that's one of our biggest premises. It's not as simple as: insects will solve the biggest trends in global agricultural health. And at the same time, I think it's one of the biggest levers that we have in making agriculture a more resilient, ecosystem-based model."
--
For essential climate news and hopeful developments to your inbox, sign up to the Future Earth newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights twice a week.
For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
UN planetary defence organisations are closely monitoring an asteroid that has a tiny risk of hitting the Earth.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has said that it has an almost 99% chance of safely passing Earth on 22 December 2032, but a possible impact "cannot yet be entirely ruled out".
The probability that the asteroid, called 2024 YR4, may impact Earth on 22 December 2032 is currently estimated to be 1.3%.
Dr Robert Massey of the Royal Astronomical Society, says that he is "not panicking or losing sleep over it".
"There is no need for alarm," he said. "The thing about this kind of event is that historically they tend to go away when the calculations are refined."
We need to be aware alert and we need to give astronomers the resources they need to track these kinds of threats so that we can take action as soon as possible."
YR4 was detected on 27 December 2024. Astronomers calculated that it was between 40m and 90m across. This would have the power of a nuclear bomb were it to hit the Earth and cause severe damage if the impact was in a populated area.
But it is much more likely that YR4 would fall into the ocean or a remote part of the planet. It is too far away from Earth and there are too many uncertainties at this stage to determine where a potential impact could occur in the unlikely event of a collision.
Since early January, astronomers have been using telescopes to calculate the asteroid's size and trajectory more precisely. YR4 is now rated at level 3 out of 10 on the Torino Impact Hazard Scale: "a close encounter that warrants attention from astronomers and the public". A collision is only certain when it reaches 8, 9 or 10, with the numbers rising in line with the damage likely caused.
When asteroids are initially calculated to have a small probability of hitting the Earth, that impact probability usually drops to zero after additional observations.
This happened in 2004 when an asteroid called Apophis was calculated to have a 2.7% chance of striking Earth in 2029; further observations ruled out an impact.
Any object that may be more than 50m wide and has a greater than 1% chance of hitting the Earth, triggers a set of precautionary measures. These are to ensure that the threat, however tiny, is closely monitored and, if necessary, steps are taken to nullify it.
The first stage is to activate two UN-endorsed asteroid reaction groups: the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN), chaired by Nasa, and the Space Mission Planning Advisory Group (SMPAG), chaired by the European Space Agency.
The SMPAG is having a series of meetings this week to determine its next steps. It has already concluded that it is too early to take immediate action but said that it would "monitor the evolution of impact threat and possible knowledge about the size closely".
Another meeting to take decisions on future activities will be held towards the end of April or early May, or earlier, "if the evolution of the threat merits".
If the asteroid's impact probability remains above the 1% threshold, SMPAG will provide recommendations to the UN and may begin to evaluate options.
In the unlikely event YR4 were headed our way, one option would be to divert it by hitting it with a robotic spacecraft, as was successfully tested out with Nasa's Dart mission in 2022. That changed the course of an asteroid that was not on a collision course with the Earth.
"Nasa's Dart mission showed that we have the means to divert an asteroid, but only if we spot it early enough," says Dr Massey.
YR4 is currently moving away from Earth in almost a straight line, making it difficult to accurately determine its precise orbit before it returns towards Earth.
Over the next few months, the asteroid will begin to fade from view, after which it will be monitored by ground and space telescopes.
According to ESA "It is possible that asteroid 2024 YR4 will fade from view before we are able to entirely rule out any chance of impact in 2032. In this case, the asteroid will likely remain on ESA's risk list until it becomes observable again in 2028."
The Sims was never supposed to be a hit.
Back in the 1990s, when creator Will Wright pitched the game to his bosses, they weren't convinced by his idea of a "virtual dollhouse".
A so-called life simulator where players design their own characters, give them personalities and tend to their needs.
Who wants that?
Quite a lot of people, it turns out.
Now, 25 years from its debut, The Sims is one of the best-selling video game series of all time, with an active community of superfans known as Simmers.
The latest instalment, The Sims 4, has been translated into 18 languages and played by 85 million people worldwide, according to publisher Electronic Arts.
The original game's open-ended nature helped it to become a hit and reach so-called "casual gamers" outside the medium's more dedicated audience.
Players had the freedom to carefully craft a detailed domestic setting for their digital people, managing their love lives, daily routines, basic needs and hobbies in exacting detail.
But it also allowed them to imagine various torments for their virtual pals. One of the most famous - stranding your Sim in a swimming pool without a ladder - remains a popular meme to this day.
UK-based streamer Jesse, best known as Plumbella, says she became obsessed with the legendary trick when she first played the game at five years old.
The Sims has been part of Jesse’s life ever since, thanks, she says, to the community around it.
Players can create modifications or "mods" that alter different elements from the way the game plays to a character's appearance.
Extra height options, having multiple jobs and neurodivergent personality traits are among some of the popular fan-made add-ons.
For dedicated fans, Jesse says, the longevity comes from building on each other's creations.
As she puts it: "Take something and customise it and share it with other Simmers.
"It's really interesting to see the ways that people can come up with to use their game in an interesting way."
The ability to express yourself in The Sims also made it a popular title among its many players from diverse communities.
Even at its launch in 2000, The Sims included same-sex relationships at a time when choices around sexuality or identity in gaming were rare.
Creator Mollie, who streams as TheEnglishSimmer, makes a lot of LGBT-themed content for her channel.
She says developer Maxis has "always been kind of a spearhead in the gaming industry when it comes to telling diverse stories and wanting to show that representation".
Mollie says The Sims has given her a platform to find others like her.
"That's been so wonderful that I have been able to tell my stories and connect with people and they can see themselves represented," she says.
The Sims has come in for more criticism over the years for its racial representation.
American content creator Amira, known as Xmiramira online, created a custom skin tone pack for The Sims 4 that's still used by many players today.
"I couldn't make Sims that either look similar to me or my family, friends. And that's the case in a lot of games," says Amira.
"But the difference between The Sims and other games is I can do something about it."
Amira's Melanin Pack was a hit when it was released, and she's since worked with Maxis and Electronic Arts on officially adopting more skin tones into the game.
"For me that's a big part of why I've played the game for so long," she says.
"I can do what I want, I can make a Sim with any body type, complexion, hair, whatever I want to do, it's one of the most customisable games I have."
Amira says she's noticed more and more games offering the ability to choose different skin tones, body types and hairstyles without the need for third-party add-ons.
While The Sims is often seen as a leader when it comes to inclusivity in gaming, some people are uncomfortable with its approach.
Zoe Delahunty-Light, a video producer at website Eurogamer, commends The Sims for making "great strides" with diversity and working with creators to build authentic representation into the game.
But she does point out that much of the work was done first, for free, by modders.
The official Lovestruck add-on, Zoe says, introduces polyamorous relationships to the game and costs £30 ($37).
"So it can feel like it is squeezing as much money as it can out of people who desire representation the most, which is pretty audacious," she says.
The game has also been criticised over a lack of inclusion for players with disabilities, both in their ability to modify its controls and see themselves on screen.
"The game still lacks the option to change key binds, which is a basic accessibility issue," says Zoe.
Developer Maxis has previously said it's discussing the introduction of more accessibility features to the game.
It has added certain features - such as visible hearing aids - to improve the representation of disability in the game.
As The Sims celebrates its anniversary, the new US government has introduced policies to scale back diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
Critics argue these schemes are discriminatory and used to push political agendas, while supporters argue that they work to combat inequalities.
The tech industry has followed suit, with companies such as Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, scrapping its DEI efforts and also cutting moderation teams.
There's a question over whether this could impact gaming, where companies are often criticised for failing to adequately tackle racial and gender-based harassment on their platforms.
"The bigger concern is that this will be seen as a green light for certain groups of toxic gamers to become more open about their own hateful views, making inclusive spaces more important than ever," says Zoe.
Simmer Amira says it's especially important for a life simulation game such as The Sims to include as many people as possible.
"Everybody should be able to, for the most part, make themselves with little to no issue," she says.
Jesse adds: "A lot of people don't get to experience things that other cultures experience and it's a really great way to implement learning about it in everyday life.
"I think that goes a long way to acceptance as well."
Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays - or listen back here.
Nearly 700,000 women are to be recruited to take part in an NHS artificial intelligence (AI) breast cancer screening trial across the UK.
Five different AI platforms will be tested across 30 sites from April to see if the technology can speed up diagnosis as well as free up radiologists.
It comes as the government launches a call for evidence to help it shape its national cancer plan, which is due to be launched later this year.
AI is already being tested in the NHS in a variety of ways, including helping to deliver cancer treatment, managing waiting lists and checking cancer scans. However, this is the biggest trial yet covering breast cancer.
Women who are already booked in for routine NHS screenings will be invited to take part in the £11m Early Detection using Information Technology in Health (Edith) trial.
Screening is offered to those between the ages of 50 and 53 and then every three years until they turn 71.
At the appointments, X-rays known as mammograms are taken to look for cancers that are too small to see or feel.
Step forward
Currently, two radiologists are required to review the images from each screening to ensure accuracy.
However, it is hoped the AI being trialled will enable one of the speciality doctors to complete the process, freeing up radiologists to see more patients and, in turn, cut waiting lists.
More than two million mammograms a year are carried out under the screening programme, so it could have a major impact on the workload of radiologists.
Department of Health and Social Care chief scientific adviser Prof Lucy Chappell said the study could lead to a "significant step forward".
Health Secretary Wes Streeting said this should just be the start of a wider improvement in cancer care.
He said "urgent action" was needed given cancer survival here was lagging behind other countries, promising to publish a dedicated national cancer plan to "unleash Britain's potential as a world leader in saving lives from this deadly disease".
As part of that, the government has launched a call for evidence, urging patients, staff and experts to contribute ideas on the Change NHS website.
However, the Royal College of Radiologists president Dr Katharine Halliday said while AI had "immense potential", the NHS was still 30% short of the radiologists it needed.
"This study will take time to yield results. The need to build radiology capacity remains urgent," she added.
The locus coeruleus is emerging as a major new area of research interest, with many important functions such as regulating our attention and sleep.
Anyone with insomnia knows the impatience and frustration that accompanies sleeplessness, as you struggle to turn out the lights in your head and mute its inner voice. You long for a button or dial that could instantly dampen all that mental activity.
The idea of a mental dimmer switch is not quite as far-fetched as it might seem. Most neuroscientists now agree that our wakefulness exists on a kind of continuum. It is coordinated by a complex network of brain regions, at the heart of which lies a tiny bundle of neurons known as the "locus coeruleus", Latin for "blue dot".
It is a literal description: the neurons in the locus coeruleus are dyed the colour of sapphire from the production of a particular neurotransmitter, called norepinephrine. This is also a clue to the blue dot's function, since norepinephrine controls our physiological and psychological arousal.
For a long time, scientists assumed that the locus coeruleus was dormant during sleep, but it is now becoming clear that it is never completely quiet, with low levels of intermittent activity that may regulate the depths of our slumbers. A better understanding of this process may help to treat the disturbed sleep associated with conditions like anxiety.
The brain's gear system
The locus coeruleus lies in the brain stem, just above the back of the neck – and contains around 50,000 cells, a tiny portion of the 86 billion neurons in the average central nervous system. Marie Antoinette's physician Félix Vicq d'Azyr was the first to note its existence in the late 18th Century – but for a long time, it failed to attract any further attention.
That began to change in the 20th Century, when it became clear that the locus coeruleus' blue pigment played a key role in brain signalling. Norepinephrine (also known as noradrenaline) raises the chance that a neuron will "spike" with an electric current. When they become active, cells in the locus coeruleus pass bundles of this neurotransmitter along their projections to other regions of the brain – enhancing the communication between the neurons in that area.
There are nuances to this process. Depending on the types of receptors they have, some neurons are more sensitive to smaller amounts of norepinephrine, while others only respond to higher thresholds. This means that, as the locus coeruleus activity rises, it will start to affect some brain areas more than others, which can have dramatic effects on things like our focus, concentration and creativity.
In her book Hyperefficient: Optimize Your Brain to Transform the Way You Work, the neuroscience researcher and writer Mithu Storoni describes the locus coeruleus, and its control over norepinephrine signalling, as the brain's gearbox, with different modes that are best suited to certain kinds of activities.
Gear 1: very gentle activity in the blue dot. The low levels of norepinephrine mean that our attention is diffuse and our mind wanders from thought to thought.
Gear 2: moderate firing in the blue dot, accompanied by occasional spikes in response to the most relevant stimuli. The prefrontal cortex, which is involved in self-control and abstract thinking, is most sensitive to this concentration of norepinephrine. We may find it easier to stay focused on intellectual tasks in this brain state.
Gear 3: constantly high firing in the blue dot, which releases high levels of norepinephrine. This begins to trigger activity in brain regions associated with the "fight or flight response", while the prefrontal cortex starts to shut down. Thanks to the increased communication between neurons, you are extremely sensitive to your environment, but it can be hard to separate signal from noise. It becomes harder to focus, and you may begin to feel overwhelmed.
Many different factors determine which gear we are in, including the time of day, since the blue dot's activity shifts with our circadian rhythm. It tends to be low when we first wake up, rises during the day and falls in the evening.
Nocturnal vigilance
Given the blue dot's role in arousal, it makes sense that it would be quietest at night during sleep. It is not entirely silent, however, but fires sporadically – and recent research by Anita Lüthi at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland suggests that this activity may determine the quality of our slumbers.
Across the night, we alternate between different sleep stages. There is "rapid eye movement" (REM) sleep, which – as the name suggests – is marked by the flickering of our eyeballs. It is associated with vivid dreaming and is thought to be crucial for processing and consolidating memories. Much of our rest, however, is spent in non-REM (NREM) sleep, during which the brain may engage in a deep clean, clearing away cellular waste that may lead to neuronal dysfunction if it is allowed to accumulate.
Measuring brain activity in dozing mice, Lüthi found that NREM sleep was associated with temporary bursts of locus coeruleus activity every 50 seconds. This seemed to galvanise the thalami, a pair of egg-shaped regions which lie in the middle of the brain and are involved in sensory processing. As a result, the animal was more sensitive to outside stimuli, like noises – without fully waking. "It's generating this state of enhanced vigilance," Lüthi says. "It really gives you this idea that wakefulness can be graded in the brain."
Lüthi suggests that these regular periods of increased vigilance to potential threats would be essential for survival in the wild. "Sleep is so fundamentally important, but it has to supplement itself with a mechanism that allows for a certain degree of wakefulness," she says. "You need to remain reactive to the environment."
The onset of REM sleep was almost always associated with low locus coeruleus activity, suggesting that it also plays a central role in transitioning to this dream-filled state of being. "That transition to REM sleep has to be very well controlled," says Lüthi, "because in REM sleep, we have atonia". That's the temporary paralysis of our body, which prevents us from physically acting out our dreams. "We are completely disconnected from the environment."
Lüthi emphasises that her experiments were conducted in rodents, so we still need to confirm that the blue dot plays a similar role in human sleep. If so, she suspects that altered locus coeruleus activity could be implicated in conditions such as anxiety that may contribute to disordered sleep. She found that exposing her laboratory mice to mild sources of stress – such as knocking on their cage – raised the blue dot's activity and increased their vigilance throughout the night, resulting in fragmented sleep.
Finding mental calm
A burgeoning understanding of this neural pathway is leading some scientists to investigate whether different kinds of brain stimulation can calm the blue dot to improve sleep. A team in South Korea, for instance, have recently tested a headset that runs a small electrical current over one of the nerves in the forehead that is connected to the blue dot to temporarily damp down its activity – though it is not yet whether this reduces insomnia.
For now, we can try to think a bit more carefully about our behaviour in the evening, and avoid over-stimulation just before we go to sleep. "If you force yourself to keep going when you are tired, your brain copes by cranking its gear up to provide maximum horsepower for its struggling machinery – so much so that it almost 'gets stuck' at a high setting," writes Storoni in Hyperefficient. Simply letting our minds relax before bedtime – without TV, phones, or tablets – has long been considered good "sleep hygiene".
We may also take advantage of the two-way traffic between the locus coeruleus and the body. The blue dot is part of the autonomic nervous system, which controls unconscious physiological functions such as breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure. This is divided into two arms: the sympathetic nervous system, responsible for triggering a stress response, and the parasympathetic nervous system, which sets the body for rest and relaxation. And it seems that we can selectively activate each arm with different physical activities.
Moderate to intense exercise – walking, running, rowing, cycling, or boxing – is likely to kick the sympathetic arm into action, accelerating the blue dot's activity and increasing our mental arousal. That's great news if you're feeling groggy in the morning and need to wake up, but less useful when you're trying to calm your mind after a hard day's toil. You may think that physical exertion will tire you out, but if you're already having trouble sleeping, late-night gym visits are a bad idea.
Gentle stretching, on the other hand, can promote a relaxation response in the parasympathetic nervous system that simultaneously calms our thoughts and feelings. Controlled breathing exercises, such as pranayama – an ancient breathing technique that stems from yogic practices – appear to do the same job, with slower respiratory rhythms reducing overall arousal.
We can use this to our advantage as we wind down at night. Various trials suggest that meditation and mindful movements can reduce the time it takes to get to sleep, and improve our overall sleep quality, over and above the standard treatments for insomnia.
We do not quite have a physical switch that can turn down our mental activity at will. By managing our daily routine, however, and harnessing the mind-body connection, we will have a much better chance of getting the deep rest that we need.
* David Robson is an award-winning science writer and author. His latest book is The Laws of Connection: 13 Social Strategies That Will Transform Your Life. He is @davidarobson on Instagram and Threads and writes the 60-Second Psychology newsletter on Substack.
--
For trusted insights into better health and wellbeing rooted in science, sign up to the Health Fix newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights.
For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
Tumbling stock market values and wild claims have accompanied the release of a new AI chatbot by a small Chinese company. What makes it so different?
The release of China's new DeepSeek AI-powered chatbot app has rocked the technology industry. It quickly overtook OpenAI's ChatGPT as the most-downloaded free iOS app in the US, and caused chip-making company Nvidia to lose almost $600bn (£483bn) of its market value in one day – a new US stock market record.
The reason behind this tumult? The "large language model" (LLM) that powers the app has reasoning capabilities that are comparable to US models such as OpenAI's o1, but reportedly requires a fraction of the cost to train and run.
DeepSeek claims to have achieved this by deploying several technical strategies that reduced both the amount of computation time required to train its model (called R1) and the amount of memory needed to store it. The reduction of these overheads resulted in a dramatic cutting of cost, says DeepSeek. R1's base model V3 reportedly required 2.788 million hours to train (running across many graphical processing units – GPUs – at the same time), at an estimated cost of under $6m (£4.8m), compared to the more than $100m (£80m) that OpenAI boss Sam Altman says was required to train GPT-4.
Despite the hit taken to Nvidia's market value, the DeepSeek models were trained on around 2,000 Nvidia H800 GPUs, according to one research paper released by the company. These chips are a modified version of the widely used H100 chip, built to comply with export rules to China. These were likely stockpiled before restrictions were further tightened by the Biden administration in October 2023, which effectively banned Nvidia from exporting the H800s to China. It is likely that, working within these constraints, DeepSeek has been forced to find innovative ways to make the most effective use of the resources it has at its disposal.
Reducing the computational cost of training and running models may also address concerns about the environmental impacts of AI. The data centres they run on have huge electricity and water demands, largely to keep the servers from overheating. While most technology companies do not disclose the carbon footprint involved in operating their models, a recent estimate puts ChatGPT's monthly carbon dioxide emissions at over 260 tonnes per month – that's the equivalent of 260 flights from London to New York. So, increasing the efficiency of AI models would be a positive direction for the industry from an environmental point of view.
Of course, whether DeepSeek's models do deliver real-world savings in energy remains to be seen, and it's also unclear if cheaper, more efficient AI could lead to more people using the model, and so an increase in overall energy consumption.
If nothing else, it could help to push sustainable AI up the agenda at the upcoming Paris AI Action Summit so that AI tools we use in the future are also kinder to the planet.
What has surprised many people is how quickly DeepSeek appeared on the scene with such a competitive large language model – the company was only founded by Liang Wenfeng in 2023, who is now being hailed in China as something of an "AI hero".
The latest DeepSeek model also stands out because its "weights" – the numerical parameters of the model obtained from the training process – have been openly released, along with a technical paper describing the model's development process. This enables other groups to run the model on their own equipment and adapt it to other tasks.
This relative openness also means that researchers around the world are now able to peer beneath the model's bonnet to find out what makes it tick, unlike OpenAI's o1 and o3 which are effectively black boxes. But there are still some details missing, such as the datasets and code used to train the models, so groups of researchers are now trying to piece these together.
More like this:
• DeepSeek v ChatGPT – how do they compare?
• When an AI companion wants something more
• Is China's AI tool DeepSeek as good as it seems?
Not all of DeepSeek's cost-cutting techniques are new either – some have been used in other LLMs. In 2023, Mistral AI openly released its Mixtral 8x7B model which was on par with the advanced models of the time. Mixtral and the DeepSeek models both leverage the "mixture of experts" technique, where the model is constructed from a group of much smaller models, each having expertise in specific domains. Given a task, the mixture model assigns it to the most qualified "expert".
DeepSeek has even revealed its unsuccessful attempts at improving LLM reasoning through other technical approaches, such as Monte Carlo Tree Search, an approach long touted as a potential strategy to guide the reasoning process of an LLM. Researchers will be using this information to investigate how the model's already impressive problem-solving capabilities can be even further enhanced – improvements that are likely to end up in the next generation of AI models.
So what does this all mean for the future of the AI industry?
DeepSeek is potentially demonstrating that you don't need vast resources to build sophisticated AI models. My guess is that we'll start to see highly capable AI models being developed with ever fewer resources, as companies figure out ways to make model training and operation more efficient.
Up until now, the AI landscape has been dominated by "Big Tech" companies in the US – Donald Trump has called the rise of DeepSeek "a wake-up call" for the US tech industry. But this development may not necessarily be bad news for the likes of Nvidia in the long term: as the financial and time cost of developing AI products reduces, businesses and governments will be able to adopt this technology more easily. That will in turn drive demand for new products, and the chips that power them – and so the cycle continues.
It seems likely that smaller companies such as DeepSeek will have a growing role to play in creating AI tools that have the potential to make our lives easier. It would be a mistake to underestimate that.
--
For more technology news and insights, sign up to our Tech Decoded newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights to your inbox twice a week.
For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
Following a TikTok ban in the US, phones and iPads with the TikTok app preinstalled are up for sale, and it seems some people are buying. Experts say it's a security disaster waiting to happen.
It may not seem like it, but TikTok is indeed banned in the United States. A law that bars the app went into effect on 19 January, causing it to brielfy go dark in the US before President Donald Trump issued an executive order granting TikTok a 75-day extension.
But Trump's order doesn't actually overturn the ban. Instead, it tells the US attorney general not to enforce the law for now. And that has meant that some key organisations are still being cautious – including the app stores that allow users to download it in the first place. The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act makes it illegal for app stores and internet hosting services to enable the distribution, maintenance or updates of TikTok.
And so far, Apple and Google are complying. In other words, you can still use TikTok if you already have it downloaded on your device. If not, you're out of luck.
But this has led to some people seeing an opportunity. Across the US, people on online marketplaces such as eBay, Facebook Marketplace, Esty and elsewhere are listing used phones with the TikTok app preinstalled – often for astronomical prices. In some cases they are asking for sums more in line with what you'd pay for a new car. You can pick one up for yourself, if you've got the money. The only question is how much of your digital security you're willing to risk.
Some see an opportunity to cash in. One eBay seller, who spoke to the BBC on the condition of anonymity, has a Samsung Galaxy Note9 up for grabs. It's an older model that would normally expect to sell for around $250 (about £200). But with the TikTok app installed, the seller is asking for $50,000 (£40,145). The price is negotiable though. "The lowest I'll go is $15,000," the seller says. So far, they haven't seen any bids.
On TikTok, a number of American users have posted videos encouraging others to try and sell old devices with the app installed, promising big pay days. A Facebook Marketplace seller in New York says the videos inspired him. "I don't know whether the app is really getting banned, but I'm going to try to get something from it," the seller says. His admittedly ancient iPhone is also marked at $50,000. "I did it to see if I get lucky," he says.
Do a simple search on an online marketplace and it is possible to find countless other iPhones, iPads and Android devices with TikTok on them for sale at similar prices. It seems unlikely anyone is going to shell out five figures, but many have sold for more reasonable sums already, at least according to a search of completed items on ebay. But in most cases, phones with TikTok installed aren't fetching any more than their usual price, few hundred to just over $1,000, depending on the model. It is also worth remembering that completed listings shouldn't always be taken at face value. But they can give you an idea of where the market has landed.
The listings make for an amusing anecdote, but there are real consequences at stake, according to Ryan McGrady, a researcher who studies the internet at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in the US.
"You might think 'this is just an app,' but people become attached to online services and act out of desperation when they suddenly get taken away," McGrady says. And where there's desperation, you're sure to find criminals taking advantage. "You just have to go back to the lesson of Flappy Bird," he says.
Flappy Bird was a mobile game where users controlled a bird as it tried to fly between green pipes without hitting them. In 2013, Flappy Bird became such a sensation that the developer Dong Nguyen was reportedly making $50,000 (£30,467) a day, until, out of nowhere, he pulled the game from the app store. At the time, Nguyen said he couldn't handle the stress of managing an "addictive product".
Almost immediately, scammers pounced. Phones with Flappy Bird installed flooded the market, as did copy-cat apps that promised to restore the lost game. The problem was many came loaded with viruses and malware. Some apps took control of the phone's text messages and started texting premium phone numbers, racking up charges on people's phone bills.
"It's a bad actor's dream to sell someone a phone that you know they're going to use all day without wiping it first. There could be anything loaded on these devices," McGrady says. "If people were willing to take risks for Flappy Bird, you can bet they will cut the same corners to reconnect with people on TikTok."
Forlorn TikTok refugees are also sure to encounter instructions online for VPNs, jailbreaking techniques and other promised roads to bring back the app. It would be simple to steer unsuspecting users into a digital trap, McGrady says.
It's an unfortunately predictable outcome, particularly considering what the law banning TikTok was designed to do in the first place, he says.
The US government's concerns about TikTok centred around its Chinese ownership. Specifically, lawmakers warn that China might use the app to harvest data, or influence the content users are seeing.
More like this:
• The ghosts of India's TikTok: What happens when a social media app is banned
• How America's porn wars could change your internet
• What dies with TikTok? As a ban looms, Americans face a cultural void
The laws governing what companies can do with personal data in the US are a cluttered patchwork of rules. Unlike Europe, there is no comprehensive privacy law in the US. By the same token, lawmakers across the world haven't shown any real movement towards meaningful laws about algorithmic transparency, which could assuage fears about the content users are being served.
In TikTok's case, the potential issues haunting people who are looking to skirt around the ban may be short lived. On Monday, President Trump said Microsoft was in talks to make a deal with TikTok that would save the app, and many other buyers are reportedly on the line as well. In the meantime, though, you may want to think twice before you take out a loan for that $50,000 iPhone.
--
For timely, trusted tech news from global correspondents to your inbox, sign up to the Tech Decoded newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights twice a week.
For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
In January 2020, Thai authorities were amongst the first to have to grapple with a worrying new disease. The frontlines included the country's shopping malls.
In January 2020, a new strain of pneumonia that has been worrying Chinese scientists and doctors suddenly becomes a global problem.
On 13 January, Thailand reports the first case of this new respiratory illness outside China: a 61-year-old resident of the Chinese city of Wuhan who had arrived in Thailand five days before. Slowly, the number of cases reported in Thailand increases.
Within a week, other Asian nations such as Japan and South Korea report cases. Within three weeks, the number of cases rises to the point that the disease became a "public health emergency of international concern" according to the World Health Organization (WHO) on 30 January 2020.
It will become much, much worse.
The gradual spread of the disease starts to attract the attention of the world's media. In Bangkok, Mladen Antonov, a Bulgarian photographer who works for the agency Agence France Press (AFP), starts to cover the steadily increasing reaction to the disease.
"Thailand took very early measures," Antonov tells the BBC from his home in Hong Kong in late 2024. "Southeast Asia has a big trauma from previous pandemics, the Sars and all these. So they are very, very cautious about all this."
Antonov says the Thai authorities quickly install body heat monitors in places such as shopping malls. Businesses within the malls, he says, usually pay for the equipment to be installed. The monitors pick up any abnormally high body temperatures, and anyone found to have a fever is reported to the authorities.
"I think it's the 27th of January [when this happens], or something like that. This is just the beginning," says Antonov. "Our job, as journalists for the wire, we had to provide daily [images] of how the world reacts. So I was walking around, going to different places, searching for images to show masks. That was actually what first we start doing, showing pictures with people with masks," he says.
Antonov then walks into a shopping mall, and sees the body heat scanner in operation. "It's not easy to work in commercial properties like this, like in shopping malls, you need special permission," he says. "So it was not easy to take the photo. But of course, I didn't ask. I just went and I start shooting them." Antonov has to move behind the thermal camera, which is being operated by two guards, and take a picture of the screen without them noticing.
"It was a challenging time, as you can imagine, for a photographer, because we had to go to hospitals. We had to be outside when people were really afraid, you know, for any contact you had to go out and even go and push, to go closer," says Antonov.
Thailand is one country that does not adopt the strictest lockdown procedures in early 2020. The thermal cameras soon became a common sight, Antonov says, as people travelled to work or to shop. "They introduced such thermal cameras to every metro station and to bigger shops. They were also using these 'gun thermometers', pointing the guns to your head and measuring the temperature.
"We in the wire business, we cover wars, we cover tragedies, we cover hurricanes, we cover typhoons, we cover earthquakes, things like this," says Antonov. "So this was just another one challenge; yes, very different than anything else that we did previously, but still something were you have to find a way to do it and to be inventive, because it's very repetitive… masks, masks, masks, masks," he says.
Around six weeks after the image is taken, Antonov starts to grasp just how serious the situation is. "We were reporting every day from… 200 offices around the world, so we had from everywhere information, we start counting cases, deaths and things like this."
The invisible virus is a very different challenge to the normal threats war photographers face. "Is it deadly? What does it mean to catch it?" says Antonov, describing the uncertainty at the time. "Because when somebody is shooting next to you, yeah, you know, there are bullets that can hit you, but this is something that you don't see it. You don't know [immediately] when you catch it," he says.
"We were washing our hands. We were using this spray disinfectants. Every one of us had small bottles in their pockets… every day, when you go back, you had to disinfect your camera," says Antonov.
"There was, of course, a kind of a lockdown, but it was not so draconian [in Thailand compared to elsewhere]," Antonov says. "There are a lot of people from the countryside who work in the hospitality industry in Bangkok, for example. So when the rumour came of the lockdown, they [the government] gave them couple of days [to prepare to leave]. People took their leave, they left their jobs and they went back home to their villages."
As the fear of the pandemic rises and the normally bustling shops start to quieten, Antonov sees what he calls "the most haunting image" of the early pandemic. "Grocery stores remained open all the time, and in big shopping malls, there are big supermarkets, and in order to reach the supermarket that is on the seventh floor, you have to pass through the escalators. They were making pathways in the shopping mall where you can go and all the stands, all the displays were covered in clothes," he says.
More like this:
• How Covid-19 myths travelled the world
• 2021: The year of the mask
• Can a civilisation feel 'mass trauma'?
Most of the lights in the shopping mall have been turned off, making the mall feel like the setting for an apocalyptic movie. "It was like… you know when humanity is just on the brink of disappearance, you walk alone in total silence in an enormous shopping mall, take the elevators, and you're alone, and everything is grey, nearly dark. You know, it's unbelievable, so surreal… this happened within a week after this image [of the thermal scanner]… we couldn't imagine that really colourful and bustling shopping mall could really be dehumanised in a week. Just now I have goose bumps when I remember all these images walking with my wife, going to buy groceries from the shop."
Before he leaves Bangkok for Hong Kong, Antonov visits some of Bangkok's usually busy tourist spots to experience their rapid emptying. They are usually filled with visitors watching professional Thai dancers. "You pay them, and they dance to please the gods. They were dancing with masks, with shields," he says.
"Even after I left Bangkok, I continued to do namaste," Antonov says, describing the traditional bowing gesture performed by Buddhists when greeting people. "Bangkok, they do namaste, they don't shake hands. It's a good way not to transmit any germs. But for many years after I stopped hugging. Before, we were hugging with people… I'm working for a French company. and, you know, in France, people love to kiss each other.
"When the pandemic left and when everything stopped, I was continuing to kind of feel awkward when I have to shake hands.
"Now, after five years, I could say, yeah, the dark memories fade somehow, and it stays more a curiosity."
--
If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week.
For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
The US government says Chinese apps and online activities threaten Americans' security. But US internet users can't get enough of Chinese memes.
Industrial food-grade glycine is not a topic you'd typically expect to capture anyone's imagination. But since the summer of 2024, one Chinese amino acid manufacturer has found itself at the centre of a TikTok sensation in the US. American users of the social media site have become preoccupied with posts from the company, Donghua Jinlong, turning them into wildly popular memes as the company coyly played along. And so, word about Chinese industrial glycine quickly spread.
In recent weeks, a looming ban on TikTok in the US also saw Americans flock in surprising numbers to another popular Chinese social media app called RedNote, also known as Xiaohongshu – which literally translates as Little Red Book. Some three million users in the US signed up to RedNote in the days ahead of a law banning TikTok over national security concerns briefly came into force before President Donald Trump gave it a 75-day reprieve.
These self-proclaimed "TikTok refugees" joined around 300 million active users of Xiaohongshu, who are mainly in China, leading to a burgeoning relationship between Chinese and American citizens as they swapped jokes, memes and even helped each other with their homework.
It comes at a time when tensions between the US and China are especially heightened amid concerns over national security and fears of an impending trade war between the two countries. Yet social media appears to be providing American and Chinese citizens with an opportunity to overcome the "Great Firewall" that typically separates their country's internet activities. But could this collision of two rich but very different meme cultures be more than just a laugh? And can it provide a common ground between people so often separated by the rhetoric of their political leaders?
Certainly, while the migration to RedNote is new, American fascination with Chinese memes is not.
In 2024, Chinese memes and content burst into American digital culture in a strange and surprising way. During the summer, "glycine girlies" granted Hebei-based industrial glycine manufacturer Donghua Jinlong unexpected celebrity status. Glycine is an amino acid used in various food products. Separately, meme-makers also embraced bizarre videos about a character named "Little John" who uses galvanised steel beams to carry out absurd home renovations in a running joke that originated on China's BiliBili platform.
Perhaps you've heard of "u swan, he frog"? In August 2024, influencer YourKris published a post on RedNote in which she discussed relationship troubles with her boyfriend. She was met by a flood of supportive comments from Chinese users featuring turns of phrase such as "you swan, he frog". The literally translated idiom was subsequently used by Americans online to describe everything from celebrity relationships to political candidates.
The popularity of Chinese memes reveals how American users are expressing a fascination with China right at the moment when tensions between these two countries, especially in terms of technological dominance, have arguably never been higher. And it is providing the opportunity for some seemingly unlikely interactions that appear to defy the geopolitical narrative.
It is worth noting that while Americans have the right to freedom of expression, Chinese citizens do not enjoy the same levels of free speech and certain phrases or topics are blocked on social media platforms and messaging apps.
According to some American creators who share Chinese content online, the reason it performs well is the same reason any content does well: it's funny, well-made, and feels authentic.
Donghua Jinlong, the glycine manufacturer from Hebei, only became a meme after one of its advertisement videos became an unexpected TikTok hit in mid-2024. Donghua Jinlong's cheery social media marketing for an industrial product that is not even available directly to consumers struck many as bizarre. "We saw that video and we all were just collectively like, this is a thing," says Diana R, the creator behind the popular meme account citiesbydiana. "We spent an entire month pretending we were buying industrial chemicals from China and making influencer-style videos for a product that's only sold business-to-business." The meme was prominent enough that The Washington Post, The New Yorker and several other outlets devoted coverage to it.
Donghua Jinlong coyly played along by sending merchandise packages to creators. The meme spread to platforms beyond TikTok with self-proclaimed "glycine girlies" creating Donghua Jinlong fan content that poked fun at the clichés of social media posting associated with celebrity influencers and brands.
But the American obsession with a Chinese chemical manufacturer may also have a political edge to it. Particularly in an election year in which Donald Trump, who ultimately won the election, campaigned on a promise to impose steep tariffs on businesses like Donghua Jinlong.
China is the country we're not supposed to like," explains Diana. "The government has told us to hate them. But I'm not afraid of them. It's a political statement. They're just like us, and we know they're just like us. It's obviously different cultures, different languages, but at the end of the day, we're all laughing about funny s***."
In the wake of the TikTok ban, US and Chinese users on RedNote have joked about spying on one another and what they say are their governments' attempts to keep them apart. "Grand political narratives lose their power at the level of everyday interaction," says Jianqing Chen, an East Asian languages and cultures researcher at Washington University in St Louis. "Personal, direct engagement through social media enables users to see beyond geopolitical tensions to recognise shared human experiences."
Screenshots of conversations apparently between Chinese and American netizens on RedNote reveal how even seemingly banal interactions have provided a source of fascination in both countries. Some have spent time discussing the cost of healthcare or their English homework – with the interactions going viral on X – while Chinese-language songs have trended across the English-speaking parts of TikTok.
Americans have long wondered what lies on the other side of the "Great Firewall", a term that refers to China's strict internet censorship. American engagement with Chinese memes happens in the context of technical divides, legal restrictions placed by the two countries on each other's tech sectors and, Chen says, "the nature of Web 2.0 platforms, which appear open and connected, but actually function as enclosed ecosystems that create invisible barriers between users".
RedNote, which is one of the only major Chinese platforms the government allows to be available overseas, has often been the entry point for Americans into Chinese internet culture. "The netizens on Xiaohongshu create the most incredible content I've ever seen. I've learned how to be more creative from them and they're a huge inspiration," says Rick, an American who posts videos to TikTok under the username Prognoz Pogodi. He declines to reveal his full name, in order to preserve his anonymity online.
Rick first explored RedNote following a recommendation from a friend he met online. He was immediately impressed.
Rick's TikTok videos redubbing content from Xiaohongshu often focus on educational or food-related posts from the Chinese platform, and use literal translations of Mandarin idioms and phrases.
"I am extremely surprised things took off as much as they did and as quickly as they did," Rick says. "I never thought so many people would be into this."
Some of his posts have millions of views and his videos featuring Fiveish, the talking five-dollar bill who reads artificial intelligence-generated translations of stories from Xiaohongshu, have spawned a slew of imitators including Yapdollar, who mimicked the concept on other platforms.
Like any artform, memes reveal to their viewers what the world looks like through someone else's eyes. And if the affection of American social media users for Chinese memes shows anything, it may be that curiosity remains a fundamental force shaping internet culture, whether you're scrolling through Instagram or X, browsing a news website, or chatting with other netizens on Xiaohongshu.
--
For more technology news and insights, sign up to our Tech Decoded newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights to your inbox twice a week.
For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
The Doomsday Clock depicts how close humanity is to armageddon – but where did it come from, how do you read its time, and what can we learn from it? Existential risk researcher SJ Beard explains.
I first became aware of the Doomsday Clock at school in the mid-1990s when a teacher introduced it to me. She told my class about the grand sweep of history, explaining that if everything that had happened on our planet was compressed into a single year, then life would have emerged in early March, multi-cellular organisms in November, dinosaurs in late-December – and humans wouldn't arrive on the scene until 23:30 on New Year’s Eve. Then she contrasted this great swathe of history with how short our futures might be, and told us how a group of scientists in the US thought we may only have a few metaphorical minutes left until midnight.
It never crossed my mind that someday I might be working on the same problem, as a researcher at the Centre of the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge.
It's a powerful story, and for many years I thought this is what the Doomsday Clock meant: that its hands represented the time we have left before the end. However, that's not quite accurate.
Every year, the scientists responsible for the Doomsday Clock at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists publish their annual judgement of how close its hands sit to midnight. In January 2025, they did it for the 77th time. On each occasion, the announcement highlights the complex web of catastrophic risks facing humanity, including weapons of mass destruction, environmental breakdown and disruptive technologies. In 2020, the Bulletin's president, Rachel Bronson, solemnly announced that its hands had moved closer to armageddon than ever before – only 100 seconds. It remained at that position in 2021 and 2022, only to move 10 seconds closer in 2023, where it stayed the following year. In 2025 it ticked on one more second, bringing the world to just 89 seconds to midnight. But to understand what that really means, you need to understand the story of the Clock, where it came from, how to read it and what it tells us about humanity's existential predicament.
Setting the Clock in motion
The speed and violence with which nuclear technology evolved was breathtaking, even to those closely involved in its development. In 1939, world-renowned scientists Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard wrote to the US president about a breakthrough in nuclear technology that was so powerful, and could have such tremendous battlefield consequences, that a single nuclear bomb, "carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port". It was a possibility too significant to ignore. This letter led to the establishment of an enormous scientific, military, and industrial collaboration, the Manhattan Project, that a mere six years later produced a bomb much more powerful than the one imagined by Einstein and Szilard, capable of destroying an entire city and its population. Only a few years after that, nuclear arsenals were capable of destroying civilisation as we know it.
The first scientific concern that nuclear weapons might have the potential to end humanity came from the scientists involved in the first nuclear tests. They were concerned that their new weapons might accidentally ignite the Earth's atmosphere. These worries were quickly dismissed and, thankfully for all concerned, proved false.
Still, many who worked on the Manhattan Project continued to have strong reservations about the power of the weapons they helped to produce. After the first successful controlled nuclear chain reaction at the University of Chicago in 1942, the team of scientists working on the Manhattan Project dispersed, with many moving to Los Alamos and other government laboratories to develop nuclear weapons. Others stayed in Chicago undertaking their own research, many of whom were themselves immigrants to the US and keenly aware of the intertwining of science and politics. They began actively organising in an attempt to keep the future of nuclear technology safe. For instance, they helped advance the Franck Report in June 1945, which foresaw a dangerous and costly nuclear arms race, and argued against a surprise nuclear attack on Japan. Of course, its recommendations were not accepted by decision makers at the time.
This group went on to establish the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists of Chicago (the Bulletin), whose first issue was published a mere four months after the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With support from the University of Chicago president, and engaging with colleagues in international law, political science, and other related fields, they helped kick off and support a global citizen-scientist movement able to affect the global nuclear order. For instance, it proved remarkably successful at establishing a "nuclear taboo" – in private conversations, the US Secretary of State complained that the "stigma of immorality" prevented the US from using nuclear weapons.
In choosing to remain based in Chicago, the founders signalled their intention to focus on engaging with their fellow scientists and members of the public about the political and ethical challenges of nuclear technology, rather than focusing on the political and military leaders who had been so dismissive of their concerns thus far. They argued that public pressure was key to political responsibility, and education was the best channel to ensure it.
Two years after its founding, the Bulletin chose to switch from a printed newsletter to a magazine format in order to engage a wider readership. It was at this point that they engaged landscape artist Martyl Langsdorf to design a symbol for their new cover, for which she produced the first Doomsday Clock. Married to a Manhattan Project scientist, Langsdorf understood the urgency and desperation her husband and colleagues felt about managing nuclear technology. She created the Clock to draw attention both to the urgency of the threat they faced and also her belief that responsible citizens could prevent catastrophe by mobilising and engaging – the message of the Clock was that its hands might tick forwards or be set backwards.
In 1949, the USSR tested its first nuclear weapons, and in reaction to this the Bulletin’s editor moved the hands of the Clock from seven to three minutes to midnight. In doing so, he activated the Clock, turning it from a static to a dynamic metaphor. The Clock would evolve into a symbol that, according to Kennette Benedict, former executive director of the Bulletin, is a warning to "the public about how close we are to destroying our world with dangerous technologies of our own making. It is a metaphor, a reminder of the perils we must address if we are to survive on the planet".
In 1953, the Clock moved forward yet again, to two minutes to midnight, after the US and Soviet Union detonated the first thermonuclear weapons. This was the closest to midnight the Clock was ever set in the 20th Century.
Reading the Clock
But what do these times and movements really mean? While it’s easy to interpret the Doomsday Clock in the way my schoolteacher did, as a prediction of the time humanity has left, that would be very hard to predict and is of little use if your intention is to prevent doomsday rather than merely predicting it.
A more plausible reading is that the Clock is meant to indicate the current level of risk facing humanity, and some have indeed tried to assess this. In 2003, Martin Rees, the cosmologist and UK Astronomer Royal, argued that "I think the odds are no better than 50:50 that our present civilisation on Earth will survive to the end of the present century". Nor is he alone, a database of such risk assessments collated by a researcher at the University of Oxford currently contains over 100 predictions by various scientists and philosophers who study the matter. However, useful as these estimates might be they are intended as long-range assessments, not real-time snapshots of the current level of risk.
Instead, dedicated clock watchers like myself interpret the movement of the Doomsday Clock rather differently. Its goal is not to tell us how big the risk facing humanity is, but how well we are doing at responding to that risk. For instance, in 1962 the Cuban Missile crisis is generally agreed to have been the closest the world ever came to nuclear war, but its occurrence did not move the Clock at all. On the other hand, the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty saw the Clock's hands shifted back from midnight an entire five minutes.
And this makes sense, at least to researchers of existential risk such as myself. Friends often turn to me for information during times of increased global political attention, such as the 2017 diplomatic crisis between the US and North Korea or the collapse of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018. However, I generally have to disappoint them. Events like this simply are not what we spend most of our time studying or worrying about. In fact, they are perfectly normal fluctuations in international politics and diplomacy. What worries people like me is firstly the existence of weapons that leaders could draw on in such a crisis and secondly the inadequate and sometimes dysfunctional institutions and frameworks to stop them doing so. These problems are not created by individual global crises, they are systemic in nature and this is what the Doomsday Clock is trying to measure.
Though I wasn’t fully aware of it at the time, the point at which I first became concerned about the Doomsday Clock in the mid-1990s coincided with the moment of greatest safety humanity has experienced since World War Two. Between 1987 and 1991, the Clock reversed an astonishing 14 minutes in four years, as declining Cold War tensions allowed the great powers to conclude a series of international measures that provided significant protection against the threat of nuclear war. Most notable amongst these were the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which banned all Russian and US land based ballistic missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500km (312 to 3,416 miles) and saw 2,692 nuclear missiles removed from service, and the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start), which would eventually lead to the removal of around 80% of nuclear weapons.
In 2007, the Bulletin formally began to consider climate change alongside nuclear threats in setting the Clock. Of course, these risks are quite different: a nuclear exchange could happen within minutes while climate risk is accumulating year after year. Similarly, responsibility for the world’s nuclear weapons lies in the hands, or at the fingers, of a very few global decision makers, while we are all engaged in climate change and environmental destruction, even if to a very unequal extent. However, the severity of these two risks, both in terms of their potential to cause global catastrophes and their likelihood of doing so, are undoubtedly comparable. For both risks, we need to consider whether or not the current level of global action being taken to combat them is proportional to this severity and the rising urgency of reducing it.
For many years, the pages of the Bulletin have also considered the challenges posed by new disruptive technologies and these now also influence the hands of the Doomsday Clock. These include artificial intelligence, biological weapons, and nanotechnology. As well as specific technologies, our future is also increasingly imperilled by the convergence of disruptive technologies with existing nuclear and environmental threats.
A second factor for the closer position to midnight is that, as the number and variety of threats facing humanity has multiplied, so have the seriousness of the challenges in governing these risks. In 2015, the Bulletin moved its Doomsday Clock from five to three minutes to midnight, noting three key issues behind this move. Firstly, deteriorating relations between the US and Russia, who together possess 90% of the world’s nuclear arsenal, and the undermining of many of the instruments designed to keep those arsenals safe, such as the successor to the Start treaty (New Start). Secondly, every nuclear weapon state was investing massively in its nuclear weapons systems, including replacement, expansion, and modernisation. Finally, the global architecture needed to address climate threats was nowhere in sight.
In 2016, however, it identified two possible bright spots, with the potential to reverse some of these negative trends: the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate agreement. However, it also noted that neither had been fully implemented. In 2017, they were forced to conclude that the situation had significantly worsened, with both of these bright spots being dimmed by changes in US domestic politics. This was coupled with growing evidence of a global disparagement of expertise and a recklessness about nuclear language and leadership. They thus moved the Clock to two-and-half minutes to midnight, and in 2018 moved it to two minutes due to the continuing deterioration of international diplomacy.
The time since 2023 has reflected the sheer instability of the global situation, and the failure of international institutions to respond to the ticking clock of existential risk. This included the collapse of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty that had marked the beginning of the end of the Cold War. While there may no longer be any clear ideological struggle driving international conflict, the scale of disagreement between the great powers and the lack of institutions for resolving these disagreements, both seem to be as bad as they ever were, and yet the ways in which such disagreements could lead to a global catastrophe continue to multiply.
Read more:
Even if the Doomsday Clock moves no closer to midnight in the next update, we should not be complacent. Covid-19 could have been a crisis that pulled governments together to make all of us safer, as the Cuban Missile Crisis did 60 years ago, but it was not. It's hard to see how things could improve significantly without yet more crises and disasters to finally spur us into action. However, what we learn from the Doomsday Clock is that our ability to deal with such crises is likely worse than it ever has been. The Clock is still ticking, and if we cannot turn back its hands then the chimes of midnight may not be far away.
* SJ Beard is a researcher at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge. They tweet @CSERSJ.
This article was originally published on 20 January 2022. It was updated on 28 January 2025.
--
Join one million Future fans by liking us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter or Instagram.
If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called "The Essential List" – a handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Worklife, Travel and Reel delivered to your inbox every Friday.
Some communities have developed techniques to help them carry heavier loads. Here's what we can learn from them.
The rural farm workers of Vietnam could be seen as almost superhuman. Every day, they shoulder impressive loads strung to a pole before carrying them for up to several miles at a time by foot. The awkward, bulky packages of produce, tools or other materials can often weigh more than their own bodyweight, yet they seem to take the burden in their stride.
It is a feat most of us would struggle to achieve. Lifting something equivalent to our own bodyweight is hard enough, but then walking long distances with it would defeat all but the hardiest of strongmen or women. The Vietnamese farm workers, however, have a secret weapon – their long springy bamboo poles.
The workers adjust their gait so that the load on either end of the poles oscillates in time with their strides. This reduces the amount of effort required to lift the weight with each step by around 18%, according to one study by researchers who studied the farm workers' carrying abilities.
But even with this springy assistance, there can be little doubt that these farm workers are also just supremely strong after years of carrying heavy loads.
Many of us with jobs that don't involve so much fetching and carrying could also benefit from getting stronger, however. So, what does it take to build this kind of strength?
There can be little doubt that humans have a preoccupation with strength. The sport of weightlifting has captivated audiences for more than 4,000 years and can be traced back to ancient Egypt, Greece and China. Writings, statues and artefacts such as halteres (large throwing stones) from ancient Greece show that competitions involving resistance lifting and strength were popular as early as 557BC.
Of course, the sport has come a long way, becoming a permanent fixture in the Olympics at the 1920 Antwerp games.
At the extreme end we could look at Georgian weightlifter Lasha Talakhadze. At the World Weightlifting Championships in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in 2021 he achieved three world records, which he still holds today. During the competition he lifted 267kg (584lbs) in the clean and jerk – more than twice his own bodyweight. For most of us, the idea of lifting that much is incomprehensible.
But increasing your strength by lifting weights can bring benefits. Strength training among older adults, for example, has been shown to improve their health and mobility. It can help to build athletic performance and has been linked to lower levels of mortality from conditions such as cancer and heart disease. Some studies have also suggested strength training could be beneficial for mental health too.
Perhaps the most obvious way of getting stronger and carry more is to build muscle. "Developing big muscles and stabilising those muscles," says Jeffrey Ackerman, an associate teaching professor in mechanical engineering who studies load carrying at the Colorado School of Mines. "Our bodies are adapted to carrying our own body mass, then when you add a lot of weight, you really need to be doing strength training in a consistent way to grow your bigger load-carrying muscles, [such as your core and auxiliary muscles], that support the motion of your body while you're carrying things. The only way to train these muscles is through intensive and progressive strength training."
Indeed, higher levels of skeletal muscle mass tend to correlate with strength, although there are differences according to age, particularly as we get older, and sex. And building big muscles alone isn't enough – it is important to train muscle activation to get the best from them.
But jumping straight into lifting heavy weights is not recommended. Instead, experts recommend focusing on technique and starting with loads that can be comfortably lifted before progressively increasing the training.
Progressive weight training, or progressive overload, is the gradual increase of stress (weight) placed on the body. A higher physiological demand means that you need to exert a greater force to meet it. For example, if you are easily lifting four sets of eight repetitions at a comfortable weight, you need to increase the weight, the number of repetitions or time under tension, to keep improving muscular fitness.
Some studies have shown you can get the same benefits from lifting lighter weights with a larger number of repetitions as heavier weights with fewer repetitions.
Other studies suggest that combining heavy and light loads into training may improve strength and power, while multiple sets are also more beneficial. One review of the science concluded that doing multiple sets with rests of two to five minutes in between appeared to produce the greatest strength-power benefits.
And while most experts recommend a squat technique to lift heavy loads to maximise overall strength, there is some debate over whether this is better for back health or not.
There are other ways, however, of increasing how much you can carry without having to spend hours at the gym. And, much like the farmers in Vietnam, some communities have developed techniques to help them shoulder impressive loads often over long distances.
At the turn of the 20th Century in England, market porters in London's Covent Garden carried baskets of fruit and vegetables on their heads.
Such traditional handling methods are still commonplace today, particularly in developing countries. In north-eastern India, manual load carrying is widely used for transporting goods and materials over long distances, and across difficult terrain – largely due to lack of adequate transport infrastructure and the hilly terrain, but also for economic reasons. In East Africa, women of the Luo people often carry loads equivalent to 70% of their body mass balanced on top of their heads, for hours or sometimes days. Research suggests that they have developed an energy-saving strategy in the way they walk, to limit the muscular work needed to carry such loads.
Famously, sherpas in the Himalayas routinely take on both shoulder and head-supported loads, where a load is slung on the back and supported with a strap across the forehead. The loads carried often exceed their body mass. Professional porters in the region can manage these loads on journeys taking several days, covering around 60 miles (100km) and ascending up to a total of 26,000ft (8,000m) on uneven mountain paths.
While researchers are still grappling with its biomechanical advantages, the act of carrying a heavy load like a sherpa essentially counts as a combination of weight training and cardio – both of which are important for carrying loads for long periods of time. "Many sherpas have been doing it for years and have built up this endurance cardio and core supporting muscle strength," says Ackerman.
One study examined the sherpa method of carrying by testing 10 physically fit agricultural workers, where each carried 10% then 40% of their body weight while walking on an inclined treadmill. It found that using supports such as a hip and shoulder strap meant that the heart rate and oxygen consumption of participants significantly decreased, as opposed to without the straps. Essentially, the straps help sherpas to either carry loads faster, or for a longer distance.
Researchers of load carriage have found that the ability to lift heavy loads depends on a variety of factors, including age, training regimes, gender, muscular strength and body composition, climate, terrain as well as the position of the load on the body. Some engineers have turned to the idea of a spring-loaded or "floating" backpack, to ease the force of loads on the back and shoulders and allowing them to move more naturally with our bodies as we walk.
Military load carrying also offers a fascinating lens into our capability of holding extreme weight.
Soldiers often wear and carry loads that exceed 45kg (99lbs), which consist of equipment and weapons for survival and protection, such as body armour, ammunition, patrol packs and heavy boots. This is particularly true where motor vehicles cannot be used, either due to the terrain or to avoid the risk of detection, and therefore survival and mission success often depends on how quickly soldiers can move while carrying such weight.
A review into the physical effects of training on load carriage performance in a military environment revealed that combined modes of physical training considerably improved their ability to carry heavy weight – particularly when progressive resistance training was combined with aerobic training, at least three times per week over four weeks.
Interestingly, hybrid training, the combination of cardio and strength training, has recently seen a burst of popularity on social media as runners look to incorporate weightlifting into their routine to reap the benefits of both types of exercise.
Indeed, incorporating strength training into your exercise regime is now widely encouraged by national organisations and health bodies. For example, the American Heart Association advocates for the cardiovascular benefits of doing 30 to 60 minutes of resistance training every week. As a general health guideline, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention recommend having two days a week where you incorporate some strength training into your routine, as does the National Health Service in the UK.
This guidance is particularly important in the context of our aging population – by 2030, 20% of Americans will be aged 65 or older. As people age, a natural loss of muscle mass and strength occurs, but if done multiple times a week, strength training can help to preserve bone density, reduce the risk of osteoporosis and improve flexibility, sleep and self-confidence.
While you may never have to carry a load across mountains like a sherpa or have the urge to break world records like an Olympic weightlifter – perhaps the exceptional power of these people will inspire you to pick up a dumbbell and see how much you can lift.
Go on, you might surprise yourself.
--
For trusted insights into better health and wellbeing rooted in science, sign up to the Health Fix newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights.
For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
Nasa's Glenn Research Center has signed an agreement with a company that plans to build the world's deepest pool in Cornwall for sea and space research.
Blue Abyss has applied for planning permission to build the pool on a 10-acre (four-hectare) site at the Aerohub Enterprise Zone at Cornwall Airport, Newquay.
A Blue Abyss spokesperson said the signing of the Space Act Agreement marked an "important step in the future of commercial space training and research".
They added: "Nasa and Blue Abyss will collaborate to explore innovative solutions for training and conducting research that addresses challenges in low Earth orbit, cis-lunar, lunar and Martian environments."
'Significant player'
John Vickers, chief executive at privately-owned Blue Abyss, said: "As we develop next-generation infrastructure, including our proposed facilities in the US and UK, it helps position the UK as a significant player in the space sector."
He also said it supported "industry growth, consultancy, training, and infrastructure development that will attract international clients and foster innovation within the UK space industry".
Ross Hulbert, head of engagement at Spaceport Cornwall, added: "We'd like to extend our huge congratulations to everyone at Blue Abyss on their new partnership with Nasa's Glenn Research Center.
"This collaboration not only showcases their incredible capabilities but also solidifies the UK's role in advanced space and subsea training."
Follow BBC Cornwall on X, Facebook and Instagram. Send your story ideas to spotlight@bbc.co.uk.
Southeastern is to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help with level boarding on a new fleet of trains.
Level boarding allows train carriages to align perfectly with the platform at the same height and can assist passengers with wheelchairs, mobility issues, pushchairs or luggage.
The rail operator, which runs services in Kent, East Sussex and Greater London, plans to replace rolling stock which is over 30 years old and still in use.
The new trains will operate on its Metro network linking London to Dartford, Gravesend, Gillingham, Sevenoaks and Tunbridge Wells.
Bob Coulson, Kent route infrastructure director at Network Rail, said it is an "important step towards creating a more accessible railway".
Southeastern will work with Network Rail and Cordel to build the fleet.
Sensor technology on two Network Rail maintenance units using light detection, ranging and AI-processing will provide 3D models of all station platforms.
Southeastern said platforms vary in height across the network but the AI will provide "detailed analysis" and dimensions of them all.
This will make it easier for customers in wheelchairs, with mobility challenges, with luggage or pushchairs and any other obstacles to boarding and leaving a train.
Mr Coulson said it would give "train manufacturers and suppliers the data they need to support our vision for a better, more reliable and sustainable railway".
Follow BBC Kent on Facebook, on X, and on Instagram. Send your story ideas to southeasttoday@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp us on 08081 002250.
Vladimir Syromiatnikov's bold attempts to light up Siberia with a space mirror captured global attention. The BBC's Tomorrow's World reported on an ambitious experiment that was launched on 4 February 1993.
It sounds like a scheme a James Bond villain might hatch: launching a giant mirror into orbit to harness the Sun's rays, then redirecting them to beam down on a target on Earth. Yet this was exactly what the Russian space agency Roscosmos attempted to do on 4 February 1993.
But the aim of the Znamya (meaning banner in Russian) project was not a dastardly plot to hold the world to ransom. Its more utopian goal, as presenter Kate Bellingham explained on BBC Tomorrow's World before Znamya's launch, was "to light up Arctic cities in Siberia during the dark winter months". Essentially, it would try to switch the Sun back on again for Russia's polar regions after night fell.
Even today this seems a novel concept, yet the idea of using mirrors in space to reflect light onto the Earth's surface was not actually a new one. Back in 1923, German rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth had proposed it in The Rocket into Planetary Space. His self-published book – based on a PhD thesis which Heidelberg University had rejected for seeming too implausible – demonstrated mathematically how a rocket could leave the Earth's orbit. Among the other ideas covered in the publication were the potential effects on the human body of space travel, how satellites could be launched into orbit, and, crucially, the concept of creating a grid of colossal adjustable concave mirrors that could be used to reflect sunlight onto a concentrated point on the Earth. Oberth reasoned that this illumination could help avert disasters – like the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 – or assist with the rescue of their survivors. Oberth also speculated that space mirrors could be used to clear shipping lanes by melting icebergs or even to manipulate the Earth's weather patterns.
This space mirror idea was taken up again by German physicists during World War Two. At the Nazi weapons research centre in Hillersleben, scientists worked on a design to build a terrifying reflective orbiting weapon called the Sonnengewehr or Sun gun in German. In 1945, Time magazine reported that captured German scientists had told US Army interrogators that the Sonnengewehr was meant to act as a death ray, refocusing light from the Sun to set fire to cities or boil away water in lakes. Despite facing evident scepticism from their US interrogators as they handed over their technical drawings, the German scientists had believed that their Sun gun could be operational in 50 years, the chief of Allied technical intelligence, Lieutenant Colonel John Keck, told reporters at the time.
In the 1970s, another German‐born rocket engineer, Dr Krafft Ehricke, again began looking at the concept. Ehricke had been a member of Germany's V-2 rocket team during World War Two. At the end of the war, he surrendered to the US and was recruited as part of Operation Paperclip, wherein 1,600 scientists, engineers and technicians deemed to be valuable were shielded from prosecution, spirited out of Germany, and allowed to continue their work in the US.
Ehricke became part of the US space programme, and in the 1970s he returned to the idea of building a mirror in space. In 1978, he wrote a paper detailing how giant orbiting mirrors could illuminate the night sky, enabling farmers to plant or harvest 24 hours a day, or could be used to deflect sunlight down onto solar panels on Earth to be converted into electricity on demand. He called this idea Power Soletta. Ehricke, a space-travel enthusiast from childhood and a long-time proponent of colonising other planets, died in 1984 without seeing Power Soletta come to fruition. But he would get his long-desired space flight posthumously when his cremated remains were launched into Earth's orbit in 1997 along with Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and 1960s counterculture psychologist Timothy Leary.
Throughout the 1980s, Nasa looked repeatedly at the concept of generating solar power by harnessing sunlight with an orbiting mirror system called Solares, but despite government interest the project was never able to secure funding. However, in Russia the idea of solar mirrors took root.
Sailing through space
At the time, a Russian scientist called Vladimir Syromiatnikov was investigating whether large reflective solar sails could be attached to a spaceship. Syromiatnikov was a pioneering figure in space engineering breakthroughs. He had worked on the Vostok rocket, the world's first crewed spacecraft that took Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into space in 1961. He also developed an ingenious spacecraft docking mechanism, the Androgynous Peripheral Assembly System (APAS). This was used in July 1975 in the Apollo-Soyuz test project, the first joint space flight by the then Cold War enemies, the US and the USSR, in which a US module carrying three astronauts successfully linked with a Soviet Soyuz capsule carrying two cosmonauts in orbit. His APAS was later used to enable US shuttles to dock with the Russian Mir space station and is still used for docking at the International Space Station.
Syromiatnikov thought that if solar sails were attached to a spacecraft they could use the Sun in a similar fashion to how ships' sails use the wind. If the reflective sails could be angled correctly then photons, particles of energy coming from the Sun, could bounce off their mirror-like surfaces and gently propel the craft forward through space without it having to burn any fuel.
However, in Russia during the post-Soviet era, getting funding for ambitious space projects like Syromiatnikov's was difficult unless they could demonstrate a clear economic goal. So Syromiatnikov decided to repurpose his concept. He thought that reflective solar sails on a spacecraft in orbit could act as a mirror, with the craft's thrusters used to angle the sails and keep them in sync with the Sun's position. That mirror could be used to beam down light on Russia's polar regions where the days are extremely short in the winter, illuminating areas shrouded in darkness. The extra sunlight would extend the working day and increase the productivity of farmlands. He also envisioned that the bonus sunshine could reduce the cost of electrical lighting and heating for the area and add to the wellbeing of people in the region.
This turned out to be an idea that the government could get behind. And so, funded by the Space Regatta Consortium, a group of Russian state-owned companies and agencies, and overseen by the Russian space agency Roscosmos, Syromiatnikov began work on making the Znamya space mirror a reality.
The first prototype built, Znamya 1, wasn't actually sent into space, but remained on Earth to be tested so that Syromiatnikov could iron out any technical problems. Znamya 2 was to be the first to go into orbit. Its mirror was made from thin sheets of aluminised Mylar, a lightweight highly reflective material which was thought to be sturdy enough to survive the hostile conditions in space. It was designed to unfurl in eight sections into a circular shape from a rotating central drum mechanism and stay in that form through centrifugal force.
"During the flight the reflector is wrapped tightly around the body of the craft, and to open it the craft will have to spin round rapidly forcing it out like an umbrella," explained the BBC's Bellingham to TV viewers in 1992. "The trick is that at this height the 20m-wide reflector will then be able to capture the Sun's rays which normally bypass the Earth and reflect them down onto the dark side of our planet."
Syromiatnikov's plan was to have multiple Znamya launches, each one with a larger mirror that burned up as it came back to Earth. Russian engineers would be able to study how Znamya's thin reflective sheets performed when they were activated in space, and perfect his design. This would lead to the launch of a permanent Znamya with a massive 200m-wide reflector that would stay in orbit around Earth.
Even brighter than the Moon
The ultimate ambition was to have a grid of up to 36 of these giant mirrors in space with the ability to pivot, enabling them to keep the reflected light targeted on the same spot. A single reflector could be used to light up a peculiar area. "On a clear night the space reflector could illuminate an area the size of a football stadium, bringing some light relief to the long winter nights," said Bellingham. Or multiple reflectors could focus light together to bring greater brightness or illuminate a bigger region. It was estimated that the combined space mirror grid would be able to reflect light 50 times brighter than the Moon and illuminate an area up to 50 miles (90km) across.
On 27 October 1992, the project was ready, and the crewless spacecraft Progress M-15 launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, with Znamya 2 on board. After the cargo supply craft docked with the Russian space station, Mir's crew fitted the drum containing the folded reflective solar sheets into position on the Progress spacecraft. Znamya 2 was due to be trialled towards the end of the year, but its deployment was delayed while the Mir crew conducted tests for other upcoming missions. On 4 February 1993, they were finally ready to put the plan into action.
More like this:
• Training for the Apollo 11 Moon mission
• Britain's mysterious WW2 'island of death'
• The 'alien invasion' that scared the US
The autonomous Progress spacecraft undocked, and once it was at a distance of some 150m from Mir, it began to rotate, unfurling the mirror like a giant fan which caught the Sun's rays and beamed them back down to Earth.
The reflected light had a luminosity roughly equivalent to a full moon and created a spotlight about three miles (5km) wide on Earth. At a speed of five miles per second (8km per second) the patch of light raced from southern France through Switzerland, Germany, and Poland across to western Russia. The crew on Mir were able to see a faint beam of light as it swept through Europe, and despite much of the continent being covered in clouds that day, some people on the ground reported witnessing it as a flash of light. After a few hours, the space mirror deorbited and burned up as it re-entered the atmosphere over Canada.
Back in Russia, the Znamya 2 experiment was hailed as a technical success – but it also demonstrated some significant challenges for the project. Znamya 2's reflected light had proved much less intense than expected and too diffused to provide practical illumination for a large area on Earth. It had also been tricky maintaining Znamya 2's stability in orbital conditions, and its spotlight's rapid journey across the Earth's surface and fleeting visibility made its real-world uses seem limited.
But the mission had provided encouraging results and valuable insights, so Syromiatnikov ploughed ahead with his planned follow-up experiment, Znamya 2.5. This time it would have a 25m mirror, reflecting a luminosity of between five and 10 full moons, and shining a spot of light that would cover an area five miles (8km) wide. The intention was to control the direction of the reflected light beam so it could target a spot on the Earth for several minutes at a time as Znamya 2.5 revolved around the Earth. Two cities in North America were picked to be illuminated by the mirror's sun ray during what would be a 24-hour experiment, as well as several in Europe.
Syromiatnikov was heartened by the progress his team was making, and the launch was planned for October 1998. "We are pioneers in the field," he told The Moscow Times in July 1998. "If the experiment goes according to plan, we propose to send dozens more craft into space in the future on a permanent basis."
Back down to Earth
But even before Znamya 2.5 left the ground, Russian space officials began receiving complaints. Astronomers were worried that the mirror would pollute the night sky with light, dazzling their telescopes and obscure their view of the stars. The Royal Astronomical Society went so far as to protest to the Director General of the Space Regatta Consortium about the experiment. Ecologists also raised concerns that its artificial light might cause confusion to animals and plants, disrupting wildlife and nature cycles.
Despite these misgivings, there was considerable global attention and excitement about the Znamya project's potential implications. "Think what it will mean for the future of mankind," Syromiatnikov told The Moscow Times. "No more electricity bills, no more long, dark winters. This is a serious breakthrough for technology." And so, the Znamya 2.5's launch went ahead as planned, and with Mission Control monitoring from Moscow, the larger space mirror was primed to deploy on 5 February 1999.
At first everything went as planned; the folded-up space mirror had been attached to Progress, which undocked from Mir without a hitch. It smoothly moved into position away from the space station, Progress's thrusters were commanded to fire, and it began to spin to unfurl the foil mirror. Unfortunately, at the same time an extra command was sent to Progress by mistake, telling it to deploy the antenna it used to communicate for docking manoeuvres. As the antenna extended, Znamya 2.5's thin reflective sheets immediately became caught up in it.
Mission Control in Moscow watched in dismay as footage of the tangled mirror beamed back from Mir, and frantic commands were sent to retract the antenna. But by this time, several yards of foil had already become wrapped around it, tearing the mirror in several places. Realising that they were in danger of ripping the reflective sheets further, the commands were paused. A second desperate attempt to spin the mirror free was tried an hour later, but to no avail.
Crestfallen, Mission Control recognised that the Znamya 2.5's torn and crumpled mirror could never be unfurled, and allowed it to fall to Earth still attached to the Progress craft. It burnt up in the atmosphere the following day over the Pacific Ocean. "The mood here is very depressed," Valery Lyndin, a spokesman for the Mission Control in Moscow, told the BBC at the time.
Its fall to Earth did not just destroy Znamya 2.5 but the future of Syromiatnikov's idealistic space mirror project. His planned Znamya 3 with a 70m reflecting surface, which was meant to launch in 2001, could not secure funding and was never built. Syromiatnikov, widely acknowledged as one of the outstanding space engineers of his generation, died in 2006, his dreams of solar sails and mirrors unrealised.
"The failure was especially painful because of the huge worldwide interest that the experiment aroused," Lyndin told the BBC in 1999. "We have forgotten the old principle of Russian space programmes – to do something first and boast about it only after."
--
If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news delivered to your inbox every Friday.
For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
Artificial intelligence (AI) sensors are being used in the homes of vulnerable people in south London to assist in their care.
Sutton Council said the scheme sought to provide a safety net for vulnerable people, allowing them to remain in their own home for longer, while offering peace of mind for their families and carers.
The sensors track movement, temperature, light and the use of appliances, such as kettles and microwaves, to identify routines and alert carers when help is needed.
Margaret Linehan, an 86 year-old with dementia, is in one of 1,287 households in Sutton currently using the tech-enabled care and says she's pleased to have it.
"It's just for if I fall over or anything. It's great," she said.
The software analyses data to detect deviations from established patterns of behaviour.
When a change is detected, such as a missed meal, a forgotten cup of tea, a door left open for too long, or a fall, the system alerts the appropriate people.
Bradley Coupar, a tech-enabled social care manager, said people's routines were "learnt over a period of time" meaning the sensors can recognise "when something may be declining or something significant has happened, like a fall".
In the past year, more than 1,800 falls were detected by the system and referred to the Urgent Community Response Service, the council said.
Margaret's daughter-in-law, Marianne Linehan, uses a linked app to get alerts and check on her activity.
"I can look in in the mornings and detect her movements throughout the night and know that she is moving, she's not on the floor or nothing drastic has happened," she said.
Margaret said on one occasion when she "fancied a cup of tea and a biscuit" at 02:00, her son got in touch to see what was happening.
Margaret said her son asked: "Do you know what time it is?".
She replied: "I didn't think to know what time, I just wanted a cup of tea and a biscuit."
The AI kit does not include cameras or microphones, ensuring privacy is maintained, the council said.
The scheme, which has been running for two years, has been highlighted by the government as a good example of the use of AI in public services as a way of saving money.
Listen to the best of BBC Radio London on Sounds and follow BBC London on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to hello.bbclondon@bbc.co.uk
Four new laws will tackle the threat of child sexual abuse images generated by artificial intelligence (AI), the government has announced.
The Home Office says the UK will be the first country in the world to make it illegal to possess, create or distribute AI tools designed to create child sexual abuse material (CSAM), with a punishment of up to five years in prison.
Possessing AI paedophile manuals - which teach people how to use AI for sexual abuse - will also be made illegal, and offenders will get up to three years in prison.
"What we're seeing is that AI is now putting the online child abuse on steroids," Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.
Cooper said AI was "industrialising the scale" of sexual abuse against children and said government measures "may have to go further."
Other laws set to be introduced include making it an offence to run websites where paedophiles can share child sexual abuse content or provide advice on how to groom children. That would be punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
And the Border Force will be given powers to instruct individuals who they suspect of posing a sexual risk to children to unlock their digital devices for inspection when they attempt to enter the UK, as CSAM is often filmed abroad. Depending on the severity of the images, this will be punishable by up to three years in prison.
Artificially generated CSAM involves images that are either partly or completely computer generated. Software can "nudify" real images and replace the face of one child with another, creating a realistic image.
In some cases, the real-life voices of children are also used, meaning innocent survivors of abuse are being re-victimised.
Fake images are also being used to blackmail children and force victims into further abuse.
The National Crime Agency (NCA) said that there are 800 arrests each month relating to threats posed to children online. It said 840,000 adults are a threat to children nationwide - both online and offline - which makes up 1.6% of the adult population.
Cooper said: "You have perpetrators who are using AI to help them better groom or blackmail teenagers and children, distorting images and using those to draw young people into further abuse, just the most horrific things taking place and also becoming more sadistic."
She continued: "This is an area where the technology doesn't stand still and our response cannot stand still to keep children safe."
Some experts, however, believe the government could have gone further.
Prof Clare McGlynn, an expert in the legal regulation of pornography, sexual violence and online abuse, said the changes were "welcome" but that there were "significant gaps".
The government should ban "nudify" apps and tackle the "normalisation of sexual activity with young-looking girls on the mainstream porn sites", she said, describing these videos as "simulated child sexual abuse videos".
These videos "involve adult actors but they look very young and are shown in children's bedrooms, with toys, pigtails, braces and other markers of childhood," she said. "This material can be found with the most obvious search terms and legitimises and normalises child sexual abuse. Unlike in many other countries, this material remains lawful in the UK."
The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) warns that more sexual abuse AI images of children are being produced, with them becoming more prevalent on the open web.
The charity's latest data shows reports of AI-generated CSAM have risen 380% with 245 confirmed reports in 2024 compared with 51 in 2023. Each report can contain thousands of images.
In research last year it found that over a one-month period, 3,512 AI child sexual abuse and exploitation images were discovered on one dark website. Compared with a month in the previous year, the number of the most severe category images (Category A) had risen by 10%.
Experts say AI CSAM can often look incredibly realistic, making it difficult to tell the real from the fake.
The interim chief executive of the IWF, Derek Ray-Hill, said: "The availability of this AI content further fuels sexual violence against children.
"It emboldens and encourages abusers, and it makes real children less safe. There is certainly more to be done to prevent AI technology from being exploited, but we welcome [the] announcement, and believe these measures are a vital starting point."
Lynn Perry, chief executive of children's charity Barnardo's, welcomed government action to tackle AI-produced CSAM "which normalises the abuse of children, putting more of them at risk, both on and offline".
"It is vital that legislation keeps up with technological advances to prevent these horrific crimes," she added.
"Tech companies must make sure their platforms are safe for children. They need to take action to introduce stronger safeguards, and Ofcom must ensure that the Online Safety Act is implemented effectively and robustly."
The new measures announced will be introduced as part of the Crime and Policing Bill when it comes to parliament in the next few weeks.
It is rare that a video game series becomes so popular it inspires copycats - but it is rarer still that it's so unique it kicks off its own genre.
But that's what happened with Dynasty Warriors, a series which pioneered the so-called "1 vs 1,000" gameplay, in which the player defeats thousands of enemies in each level.
Throughout years of development - the series has been going since 1997 on the original PlayStation - hardware limitations meant at its best only a few hundred enemies could appear on-screen at any one time.
But all that is now changing, with the power of modern consoles enabling as many as 10,000 opponents on-screen at once.
In other words, the "1 vs 1,000" moniker is finally coming true.
And with that new power comes a new game - after seven years in the wilderness, publisher Koei Tecmo is back with Dynasty Warriors: Origins.
Throughout this period the series has faced a problem - despite selling 21 million copies throughout its history - Dynasty Warriors has always sold significantly better in Japan than in the West.
"It's something that we've been trying to get a lot of people overseas to play," the head of developer Omega Force, Tomohiko Sho, told the BBC.
But times may be changing, as the release of Dynasty Warriors: Origins in January 2025 has seen encouraging sales.
In the UK, it broke the top 10 of the retail sales charts, while online it was the top-selling game on PC retailer Steam - with just under 70,000 people playing the game at the same time on launch.
There have been nine numbered entries in the series since it began in 1997, culminating in 2018's Dynasty Warriors 9 on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.
But advances in hardware mean Mr Sho believes now is the time for a sequel.
Though he did not call it a reboot, the team has ditched the numbered titles and simply called the game Dynasty Warriors: Origins - perhaps signalling that the studio believes this is a turning point for the franchise.
It released on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC in January 2025, becoming the first mainline entry in the series in seven years.
Mr Sho told the BBC the team had been working on a sequel - which would have been called Dynasty Warriors 10 - but he felt it was simply too similar to previous games, which fans were "starting to get a bit bored of".
Instead, the long-awaited game was scrapped in order to take advantage of the new hardware.
DW10 cancelled
The reason Dynasty Warriors: Origins seeks to break away from what came before is simple, Mr Sho said - it was a result of fan reaction to the last mainline game released in the series, 2018's Dynasty Warriors 9.
"Either you really liked it, or you didn't," he said.
The unreleased sequel was too similar to what came before, he said, but by the time development was in full swing, a change in the games industry ultimately halted production.
Within two days of each other in November 2020, Sony released the PlayStation 5 and Microsoft launched the Xbox Series X - consoles so powerful Mr Sho ceased development to focus on the new hardware.
"The current technology allows us to have many troops and army officers on the screen," he said.
"This is something I've been wanting to do since Dynasty Warriors 2 and 3."
Those two games, which released on PlayStation 2 back in 2000 and 2001, could at most manage twenty or thirty enemies on-screen at once.
The new hardware can manage a lot more - with PlayStation 5 Pro owners seeing an even bigger leap in performance.
"We're able to have many troops on-screen - not just thousands, but tens of thousands," Mr Sho said.
"With the current generation of consoles, we're able to do that."
But all that power comes with a cost - no multiplayer, which has been a staple of the series since its PlayStation 2 days.
"I am very aware that it is seen as an iconic part of the series," he said.
He felt multiplayer would result in a "performance loss", meaning fewer enemies on screen, so he decided against including it.
But he said that may change if the game were given a sequel.
"If everyone really enjoys the game, then for the next game in the series, we will definitely have multiplayer," he said.
Spin-offs and future
In the interim years between the release of Dynasty Warriors 9 and Dynasty Warriors: Origins, the team has focussed on other things - namely spin-offs.
These are versions of the game, within the 1 vs 1,000 genre, outside of the main series that typically feature different characters - much like how the film franchise Puss in Boots was a spin-off of Shrek.
The company has found success in this area with games featuring characters from series such as Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda and Sega's Persona 5.
Mr Sho said Dynasty Warriors: Origins was a shift in direction as it focused on performance - while spin-offs were about being true to the franchises involved.
"When the teams were approaching development, they weren't thinking about the hardware," he said.
"But more, with Hyrule Warriors and Fire Emblem Warriors being on the Switch, how would we be able to do that best as a Warriors game?"
He said Dynasty Warriors' future was about "getting the most" out of current consoles - perhaps with even more enemies on screen.
Though he laughed off the suggestion that perhaps the studio should consider collaborating on the ultimate "spin-off" - a Sonic the Hedgehog game.
"I also actually like Sonic, just to let you know," he said.
And Mr Sho said if he could make any Dynasty Warriors spin-off, there are two series he's huge fans of - Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.
"If there is a chance, I'd definitely love to take on the challenge," he said.
Billionaire businessman Jared Isaacman has a big vision for the future of humanity.
He set off on his first mission to space in 2021 – a private journey he paid an estimated $200m (£160m) for – and announced that he wanted space travel to be for the masses, not only for the 600 who have experienced it to date – most of them professional astronauts employed by Nasa and the wealthy.
"We want it to be 600,000," he told reporters.
Later, he added: "I drank the Kool-Aid in terms of the grand ambitions for humankind being a multi-planet species… I think that we all want to live in a Star Wars, Star Trek world where people are jumping in their spacecraft."
Mr Isaacman, who made much of his $1.9bn (£1.46bn) fortune from a payment processing company that he founded in 1999 aged 16, is said to have bankrolled the rest of the crew of four aboard the SpaceX craft in the 2021 mission, fuelled by a longstanding love of flying and fascination with space.
Since then, there have been more adventures: last year he demonstrated Captain Kirk-like daring by travelling in an upgraded SpaceX capsule and performing the first commercial spacewalk.
During the mission, he tested an experimental spacesuit and a new cost-saving protocol to exit and re-enter the spacecraft without using an airlock.
The photograph of Mr Isaacman, silhouetted with the world at his feet, is now iconic – it demonstrated that this was not a playboy billionaire paying to act out Star Trek, but someone pushing the envelope of what was possible with current technology.
And yet it is a more recent achievement that has drawn greater attention still – being nominated by Donald Trump in December to be the new head of Nasa.
The question is why Trump chose him and what has he asked him to do – especially in the context that the President has appointed SpaceX owner Elon Musk to a government role to cut $2 trillion (£1.6 trillion) off the Federal budget.
The Nasa post is a presidential appointment, though it requires the confirmation of the US Senate. And if confirmed, Mr Isaacman's appointment will also raise broader questions about the future of humanity in space, given his vision for space travel for the masses. It also has significant implications for the future of the space agency, if Mr Isaacman's role leads to Nasa using the private sector even more than it does now.
Brink of a second space age?
In the past, the heads of Nasa have come from a variety of backgrounds: some, such as the previous incumbent Bill Nelson, have been former astronauts; others, such as Michael Griffin (in charge from 2005 to 2009) came from a government background, and before him Dan Goldin was an entrepreneur, striving to lower costs.
Despite their disparate backgrounds, those who have led Nasa have all been company people, charged with defending the space agency and its values.
And yet Mr Isaacman, along with Mr Musk and Amazon's Jeff Bezos, is among a new wave of billionaires who have been challenging the old order in space.
They have accelerated the pace of innovation and are aiming to dramatically reduce the cost of human space travel.
On the day of his nomination in December, Mr Isaacman posted a statement on X that gave an early glimpse into his vision. "This second space age has only just begun," he wrote.
"There will inevitably be a thriving space economy – one that will create opportunities for countless people to live and work in space… At Nasa, we will… usher in an era where humanity becomes a true spacefaring civilisation."
Many presidents have talked about sending astronauts to the Moon since the end of the Apollo lunar landings of the 1960s and 70s, but Trump was the first to turn talk into action, authorising Nasa's Artemis programme to send humans back to the Moon during his first term. His record suggests that he is a big Nasa fan.
But since then, two factors are likely to have changed his thinking: Nasa's rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), has been delayed and costs have spiralled; at the same time Mr Musk's SpaceX and Bezos's Blue Origin are developing reusable low-cost Moon rockets.
That is a worrying backdrop for Nasa, according to Courtney Stadd of New York-based Beyond Earth Institute think tank.
"You have a government looking to slash," he said at a webinar hosted by Space News. "If you are the new administrator, you are going in in that context, so you are going to have to look at everything that is a drain on your budget…
"This next two years is going to be the equivalent of a tsunami and everything is on the table."
Future of Nasa's moon rocket
One of the biggest questions is what to do with the space agency's SLS Moon rocket. In 2021, Nasa's Office of Inspector General (OIG), which provides oversight of the space agency for Congress, reported that the cost was $4.1bn (£3.3bn) for each and every launch.
By contrast, SpaceX's equivalent rocket system, Starship, is estimated to cost around $100m (£80m) per launch – and Musk has said he aims to bring the costs down further to $10m (£8m) as he develops his system.
Bezos's new Moon rocket, New Glenn, had its maiden test launch at the beginning of January. Blue Origin has not announced its cost per launch, but it is estimated currently to be around $68m (£54.5m).
Competition between the two billionaires is likely to speed up innovation and reduce costs further.
Starship and New Glenn are projected to be cheaper because, unlike SLS, they are designed to be reusable. But "that's only a part of the reason for the disparity in costs", according to Dr Adam Baker, an expert on the space industry at Cranfield University.
"SpaceX is given a sum of money and contracted to deliver on time and on budget," he continues. "They are driven by profit, and they want to minimise costs.
"A Nasa programme is not driven by profit; it is driven by the programme objectives and so those in charge don't think they need to track costs in the same way.
"There is a general acceptance that SLS has no future."
Questions around spiralling costs
The OIG could only come up with a best guess for the full cost of the Artemis programme in its review for Congress because, as it put it: "Nasa lacks a comprehensive and accurate cost estimate that accounts for all programme costs.
"Instead, the Agency's plan presents a rough estimate that excludes $25bn (£20bn) for key activities".
Nasa's project management of SLS is not an aberration – some would say it is typical. For example, the James Webb Space Telescope was given a $1bn (£800m) budget and a launch date of 2010 – but it cost ten times that amount and launched in 2021, earning it the nickname of "the telescope that ate astronomy".
(Other important scientific programmes had to be scaled back, delayed or scrapped entirely to make way for the overruns.)
It was a similar story of delays and budget overruns during the development of the Space Shuttle in the 1970s and the construction of the International Space Station in the 2000s.
Nasa got away with it because it was responsible for arguably America's greatest moment when it sent the first astronauts to the Moon. The Apollo programme laid the foundations for America's technology businesses and ushered in a vibrant new era for the US.
But the world has changed significantly since then, and Nasa has simply not kept up, according to Emeritus Prof John Logsdon, former director of the Space policy Institute at George Washington University. "Changing the way the United States goes about its civilian space programme is long overdue."
New light on the 'old way of doing things'
The current model is to give so-called "cost-plus" contracts to big heritage aerospace companies, such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing, which guarantee to pay the development costs and an agreed profit.
The model gave the firms the financial reassurance they needed for ambitious projects such as the space shuttle, the SLS, and developing parts of the Saturn V rocket that took Apollo astronauts to the Moon, but these contracts provided no incentives to cut costs or increase efficiency. For example, there were no penalties for delays or cost overruns.
Dr Simeon Barber at the Open University, who has worked with Nasa on robotic space missions, was originally sceptical that the new commercial companies would deliver. But he is now a convert to the new way of doing things.
"We were used to big projects falling behind schedule and going over budget. But the new companies have shone a light on the old way of doing things."
Moves to change what some saw as an overly cosy relationship with the heritage space companies gained pace in 2009 when President Obama introduced fixed-price contracts to some private sector firms. The companies were given latitude to innovate to cut costs and increase their profits provided they delivered on schedule and on budget.
Among those firms was the dynamic new start-up, SpaceX, which was awarded a contract to develop its reusable Falcon rockets and Dragon Space capsule to resupply the International Space Station with crew and cargo.
The heritage space company Boeing was also given a similar contract in 2014 to develop its Starliner capsule to do the same job.
SpaceX, with its riskier but faster development processes, began delivering to the ISS within four years of receiving its contract. By contrast, Boeing's Starliner, which had a series of delays due to technical problems and cost overruns, took 10 years – only to have more issues with some of its engines, which left astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams stranded on the space station.
The ultimate humiliation is that they will be brought back to Earth by rival SpaceX's Dragon capsule.
"Starliner is an embarrassment for the traditional way of doing business," says Prof Logsdon. "So, shaking up the system is very positive."
On the brink of a big shakeup?
Prof Logsdon expects big changes under Trump, Mr Musk and Mr Isaacman: scrapping programmes, closing Nasa centres and more contracting out to SpaceX, Blue Origin and other private sector firms. Mr Isaacman has called the SLS "outrageously expensive" and said that the major aerospace contractors are "incentivised to be economically inefficient".
But changes like that are not going to be easy. Nasa's budget is controlled by Congress. Although President Trump's party controls both legislative houses, individual senators and congressmen on the committees that oversee Nasa are from states with jobs and industries dependent on Nasa's $25bn (£20bn) annual budget.
"Party discipline takes second place where there is constituency money involved," says Prof Logsdon, a seasoned watcher of the horse trading that goes on with space politics in Congress.
Although Nasa's projects have been expensive, they have shown us the wonders of the universe and shifted humanity's perception of ourselves and our place in the cosmos.
The creation of the first reusable space shuttle, the construction of an orbiting space station, the images of distant worlds captured by its robotic spacecraft and the awe-inspiring photos from Hubble have all inspired generations and supercharged interest in science. As a result, senators and congressmen know that America and the world owe Nasa an unpayable debt.
"The old way of doing things gave us a lot of success, so you don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There will be significant change, but not the radical change that Mr Musk and Mr Isaacman want to see," argues Prof Logsdon.
"There is a delicate balance between the interests of Nasa, Congress and the White House."
Where that balance will fall will emerge in the coming months: some are speculating that the return-to-the-Moon programme might be scrapped altogether in favour of going straight to Mars, as President Trump alluded to during his inauguration, with the greatest proponent of that policy – Musk – seated nearby.
Others fear cuts in Nasa's Earth Observation programmes, which monitor and model environmental changes from space, and include the impact of climate change; and some worry that the robotic scientific missions to other planets might be cut back to boost efforts for the human spaceflight programme.
Where SpaceX fits in
There is concern in some quarters about the close relationship between Mr Isaacman and Mr Musk. Mr Isaacman paid SpaceX for his two ventures into space. The company has already received $20bn (£16bn) in contracts from government since 2008.
But if SLS is scrapped, and SpaceX were to receive the lion's share of Nasa's Moon programme work, Mr Musk's firm stands to receive contracts that might be ten or even a hundred times greater, possibly at the expense of other private-sector players.
And there are many innovative US start-up companies hoping to build parts for spacecraft and infrastructure in Nasa's return-to-the-Moon programme, including Texas-based Firefly, which has a spacecraft on its way to land on the Moon in March.
But industry analysts say that the US government has a long tradition of breaking up monopolies so that they don't stifle innovation. And in any case, just because Mr Isaacman has worked with Mr Musk, it does not mean that any outcome is inevitable, argues Prof Logsdon.
"Isaacman is his own man," he adds. "He is not a disciple of Elon Musk."
Ultimately, however, it has become painfully clear, even to Nasa's most ardent supporters, that it needs saving from itself. And the need for Nasa reform is not a partisan issue – Democrat and Republican presidents alike have set the wheels in motion.
But the coincidental timing of the success of SpaceX, Blue Origin and other private-sector space firms with a new administration impatient to cut costs and energise the private sector means that Mr Isaacman has a unique opportunity to make some of the biggest changes to Nasa since its inception.
"Nasa truly is a crown jewel, and we aren't doing what we should be doing on behalf of the American people," argued former deputy head of Nasa Lori Garver during the Space News webinar. "That is frustrating for all of us."
Asked if a private sector billionaire was the right person to be entrusted with one of America's greatest national treasures, Ms Garver responded: "Jared is a patriot, and he is doing this for public service.
"The truth of Jared agreeing has something to do with him willing to take on these hard things – and there are so many hard things".
Top image credit: Getty
BBC InDepth is the home on the website and app for the best analysis, with fresh perspectives that challenge assumptions and deep reporting on the biggest issues of the day. And we showcase thought-provoking content from across BBC Sounds and iPlayer too. You can send us your feedback on the InDepth section by clicking on the button below.
The US trial of the man charged with stabbing writer Sir Salman Rushdie two and a half years ago is due to begin on Tuesday after it was twice delayed.
Hadi Matar was charged with attempted murder and assault for the August 2022 attack that left Mr Rushdie blind in one eye.
Mr Matar, 27, has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The jury is due to be selected on Tuesday at Chautauqua County Court in New York. The trial will reportedly see Mr Rushdie give evidence and face the accused in court.
It had originally been scheduled to begin in January 2024 but Mr Matar's defence team appealed for the trial to be delayed on the grounds that Mr Rushdie's then upcoming book - a memoir about the attack - could be used as evidence and the defendant's team wished to review its contents first.
Then in October, the trial was placed on hold after Mr Matar's legal team made a request to move the trial to another county.
As reported by the New York Post, Mr Matar's lawyers argued the defendant risked an unfair trial at the Chautauqua County Court in Mayfield, given the publicity around the high-profile case and the lack of an Arab-American community in the small county.
The request was unsuccessful and the trial will take place in Chautauqua County as planned.
In August 2022, the Indian-born British-American author was put on a ventilator and spent six weeks in hospital after being stabbed up to 10 times on stage at an event in New York state.
Mr Matar, who was 24 at the time, is accused of sprinting on stage and carrying out the attack.
The injuries resulted in damage to Mr Rushdie's liver, lost vision in one eye and a paralysed hand caused by nerve damage to his arm.
The Satanic Verses author, who is due to appear in court during the trial, previously told BBC Newshour he was unsure if he wanted to face his alleged attacker in court.
"I'm in two minds about it," he said. "There's one bit of me that actually wants to go and stand on the court and look at him and there's another bit of me that just can't be bothered."
Henry Reese, moderator of the event Mr Rushdie was attending at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York state, was also injured in the attack.
Separate to the Chautauqua County Court charges, Mr Matar was charged by a federal court with providing material support to the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah, according to an indictment unsealed last July.
Hezbollah is designated a terrorist organisation by Western states, Israel, Gulf Arab countries and the Arab League.
Mr Rushdie, now 77, is an acclaimed writer who previously spent several years in hiding after the 1988 publication of The Satanic Verses - a fictional story inspired by the life of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad - triggered threats against his life.
The surrealist, post-modern novel sparked outrage among some Muslims, who considered its content to be blasphemous - insulting to a religion or god - and was banned in some countries.
A year after the book's release, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini called for Mr Rushdie's execution. He offered a $3m (£2.5m) reward in a fatwa - a legal decree issued by an Islamic religious leader.
Abraham Lincoln's wife was long attacked for everything from her spending to her lack of emotional restraint. But with two new plays about her, she is finally getting better press.
During last month's US presidential inauguration, as ever during these quadrennial celebrations, fierce interest focused on the First Lady. Much was made of Melania Trump's dresses, her enigmatic smiles, and especially the navy-blue wide-brimmed boater-style hat she wore for the swearing-in. Was the hat a deliberate choice, to shield her face from the prying eyes of the public? No one could say, but legions speculated.
How unenviable is the lot of the President's wife, lacking in formal power but constantly judged – expected to be immaculately turned out, and to remain, in conduct, ever above reproach. The court of public opinion has found no First Lady more wanting than Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of Abraham Lincoln. Her husband, who emancipated the slaves, and saved the union, enjoys near-universal adulation, while Mrs Lincoln has been the subject of criticism and disapproval since her first days in Washington in 1861 when she embarked on plans for a lavish redecoration of the White House. She travelled to New York for a shopping spree, and reporters followed her everywhere. One for The New York Herald wrote: "Mrs Lincoln, who has been engaged since her arrival in making large purchases at some of the leading merchants, was out yesterday enjoying herself in the usual way."
Such reports did not go down well in the besieged, wartime capital. Indeed, the loyalty of the First Lady, who hailed from a slave-holding family, and had three half-brothers in the Confederate Army, was questioned throughout the Civil War. Even after her husband was shot on 18 April 1865 by Confederate supporter John Wilkes Booth, as he sat beside her in Ford's Theater, the public didn’t embrace their hero's widow. In 1875, her own son had her committed to an insane asylum.
And yet today, in the era of TikTok, X, Instagram and Facebook, where social esteem rises and falls capriciously on clicks and likes, the maligned Mary Todd Lincoln is getting some compassionate reassessment on the stage, most particularly in Mrs President, a new play by US historian, writer and artist John Ransom Phillips opening this week at London's Charing Cross Theatre.
Her theatrical redemption
This two-hander centres on the relationship between Mary Todd Lincoln (played by Miriam Grace Edwards), and William Brady, considered the father of American photo-journalism (Sam Jenkins Shah) who took iconic pictures of Abraham Lincoln, his family, and the battlefields of the bloody US Civil War. The new play imagines the First Lady, coming to Brady’s studio to sit for her portrait, aware that she is an object of suspicion because of her southern heritage, and seeking an "image that will define history’s view of me". Brady declares he has the power to do that. "I shape the image of people who shape America. Past. Present. Future," he says.
In Ransom Phillips' depiction, Mrs Lincoln demands to be addressed as Mrs President, and engages in an on-going verbal tug of war with Brady over how she should be portrayed. The play asks who controls the revelatory public image, the subject or the artist? This question transcends time and place, but has specific resonance for the former First Lady who sought, and believed she never received, proper recognition during her life for all she had done, and suffered. Later scenes follow Mrs Lincoln into her widowhood, and other controversial historical figures of mid-19th-Century America – abolitionist John Brown, Chief Justice Roger Taney, and naturalist John James Audubon – appear on stage, depicted by Shah. Mrs President is a daringly kaleidoscopic look at the ownership of self.
In truth, Mary Todd Lincoln and Matthew Brady's relationship was a limited one. She did pose for Brady at his studio at 625 Pennsylvania Avenue in November of 1861. When she saw the photographs, she was unhappy with how she looked and instructed that they all be destroyed, except for one she deemed "passable", in which she stands, and her face is seen in profile; Brady ignored this request and kept all the photographs in his archives. And later in Lincoln's term, she returned to the studio a few times, but it's not known if Brady took any other of her portraits, as he deputised much studio work to his assistants.
Ransom Philips tells the BBC his aim with the play wasn't to document history but rather "to rescue Mary Todd Lincoln from ridicule and caricature, and to show her as fully a person, a woman of complexity and depth of feeling – possessing the kind of emotionality that men often lack". And his view of Brady is not totally benign. "Brady is an artist, like I am, and I know artists can be tyrannous."
In a wildly different way, another theatre production currently running in New York is also sympathetic to the 16th First Lady. Oh, Mary! has been a huge word-of-mouth hit since it first premiered at the city's Lucille Lortel Theatre in February 2024, before transferring to Broadway in the summer. This comedy, written by Cole Escola and described by The New York Times as "gleefully tasteless" and an "unhinged historical fantasia", depicts Mary as a lascivious, self-centered alcoholic who yearns to escape the White House and her nasty, neglectful husband so as to become a cabaret star. Until Escola turned over the role to Betty Gilpin last month, they themselves starred as Mary – in drag, shaking a mop-like wig of black barrel curls. All joking aside, and Oh, Mary! has numerous slapstick moments, the play's inspiration was Escola’s own sense of identification with Mary – a woman who could be "too much" and was "trapped in this role she was wrong for", as Escola explained in an interview on NPR last year.
The questions that linger
Perhaps unintentionally, Escola and Phillips have joined a century-long debate among historians over how Mary Lincoln should best be understood. Was she an energetic, ambitious young woman who recognised genius in Lincoln, a rough-hewn country lawyer, and propelled him to greatness? Or was she a volatile wife who made Lincoln's domestic life a living hell, hurling accusations – and on occasion crockery – at him during regular fits of rage? Was she first unhinged by grief in 1850, when she lost her son Eddie at age three to tuberculosis? Or was it the loss of a second son, Willy, 12 years later, that really drove her mental health decline? Did she take bribes and pad expense accounts as First Lady? Or did she act as a valuable helpmeet, giving President Lincoln sage advice?
"In the public imagination she's multiple people – it all depends on who is examining her," historian Jason Emerson tells the BBC. Author of seven books on the Lincoln family, including The Madness of Mary Lincoln, Emerson is currently assembling a complete volume of the former First Lady's letters for the Lincoln Studies Center of the University of Illinois. "Mary was a complex person, very human, and she made mistakes, as Lincoln did too. She is essentially a tragic figure."
Loss haunted Mary's life starting at the age of six, when her mother died. After Mary's father remarried and sired nine children with his new wife, love was a scant commodity in the family home in Lexington, Kentucky. Mary escaped to Springfield, Illinois, where she lived with her elder sister. Vivacious in conversation and praised, too, for her pretty face and milky complexion, young Mary had many admirers. She found in Lincoln a man who shared her passion for poetry, theatre and Whig politics, and who was also nearly 10 years older and more than a foot taller. But rather than provide her with the steady paternal affection she missed out on as a child, Lincoln was often away from home, working as a lawyer on the Illinois judicial circuit. As introverted as his wife was extroverted, Lincoln struggled to respond to her emotional pleas for attention and sympathy.
"Temperamentally they were very different," Emerson says. "And as she aged, her mental problems got worse, consistent with bi-polar issues." Emerson's study of Mary Lincoln and her extended family has convinced him that she suffered from the condition formerly known as manic depressive disorder, not widely diagnosed in the 19th Century.
The stresses on both Lincolns during their time in wartime Washington were immense, and Mary was determined to dress fashionably and entertain lavishly. "She thought of herself as the Queen of America, doing what she was supposed to do as First Lady" says Emerson. "Her narcissism was perhaps her greatest vulnerability." But when their son Willie succumbed to typhoid in 1862, she refused to get out of bed for weeks and grieved so copiously her husband rebuked her.
More like this:
• What do these First Lady portraits reveal?
• The Abraham Lincoln portrait that was a fake
• The 17th-Century painting that unlocks Trump's portrait
Perhaps it was inevitable that this often unrestrained woman, would continue to get bad press after her death in 1882. William Herndon, Lincoln's law partner, reinforced the most unflattering views of Mary Lincoln, in the biography he co-wrote in 1889 titled Herndon's Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life. Herndon and Mary despised each other during Lincoln's lifetime and competed for his attention. In private Herndon called her a "she-wolf".
For many decades, Herndon's interpretation stood – Mary Todd Lincoln was regarded as a harridan married to a saint. But in the 1980s and 1990s, when scholars began to seriously reassess the role of women in history, the troubled First Lady got a fresh look. In 1987, Jean Baker, a historian at Maryland's Goucher College published Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography, portraying the Lincoln marriage as fundamentally tolerant and loving, and Mary as a vital, behind-the-scenes participant in her husband's political career, consoling, advising and encouraging.
That view in turn, was contradicted by renowned Lincoln scholar Michael Burlingame in his 2021 book An American Marriage: The Untold Story of Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd. Burlingame believes Lincoln was made miserable by his wife, who, he believes, at times physically abused him, and posits she seduced Lincoln to force him to marry her – they were wed on a day's notice, their first child born a scant nine months later. And Burlingame is certain, based on evidence in US government archives, that she solicited bribes and sold permits and pardons while in the White House. Yet, the author credits Mary with fuelling Lincoln’s rise. "If he hadn't married a woman who was so ambitious and so willing to prod her husband and to goad him... he may not have gone as far as he did," the historian said in a recent interview for the History Unplugged podcast. Moreover, Lincoln's remarkable ability to deal with difficult people, a gift constantly on display during his Presidency, had been honed by plenty of practice at home, in Burlingame's view.
Author, too, of the definitive Abraham Lincoln: A Life, (2009) Burlingame was among numerous experts consulted by director Steven Spielberg for his 2012 hit film, Lincoln, starring Daniel Day-Lewis as the president and Sally Field as Mary Lincoln. The film portrays the First Lady in a generally positive light, and husband and wife as closely bonded. And yet Burlingame realised that Spielberg and scriptwriter Tony Kushner had closely studied his biography – which included his hypothesis about the hasty Lincoln wedding – when Day-Lewis (as Lincoln) and Field (as Mary Lincoln) argue over their eldest son Robert joining the army. He's in favour, she's opposed, and Mary accuses her husband of never liking the boy. "You've always blamed Robert for being born, for trapping you in a marriage that's only ever given you grief," she says. "I almost fell out of my seat," the historian recalled on the podcast.
But even Burlingame at his most critical considers Mary Todd Lincoln more to be pitied than despised, considering that three of her four sons predeceased her, and her husband was murdered before her eyes. And it's one of the pleasures of the play Mrs President to see the heroine put up a fight for her own identity, and ignore the often harsh and deprecating judgements rained down upon her both before and after her death.
Mrs President is at Charing Cross Theatre, London until March 16. Oh Mary! is booking at the Lyceum Theatre, New York until 28 June.
--
If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news delivered to your inbox every Friday.
For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
ITV soaps Coronation Street and Emmerdale are to see their content cut by an hour a week between them from next year.
Coronation Street currently airs for three hour-long episodes a week, while Emmerdale is four 30-minute episodes plus one hour-long instalment.
From January 2026, both soaps will only air 30-minute episodes, with a "soaps power hour" every week day featuring Emmerdale at 8pm and Coronation Street at 8.30pm.
Episodes will continue to be released at 7am on ITVX before airing on ITV later that evening.
'Streaming-friendly'
ITV boss Kevin Lygo said the change is "viewer-led" and will make the soaps more "streaming-friendly".
Performing arts union Equity said the move, which comes after the cancellation of BBC soap Doctors and changes to Channel 4's Hollyoaks schedule, gives it "further cause for concern", but added that ITV has said it "will not directly impact the cast or result in changes to pay or contracts".
Lygo added: "In a world where there is so much competition for viewers' time and attention, and viewing habits continue to change, we believe this is the right amount of episodes that fans can fit into their viewing schedule, to keep up to date with the shows.
He acknowledged that going from the current six hours a week to five will "have an impact for the people who work on the soaps team".
"We will support our colleagues in ITV Studios as they work through these changes, and will do what we can to mitigate the impact on our people," he said.
"These changes are motivated by doing what we believe is best for the continuing success of these important programmes in the long term.
"They also create headroom in the overall programme budget for investment in programming that can help ITV grow reach in a very, very competitive market."
Emmerdale and Coronation Street have gone through several schedule changes over the years. Both began with only two episodes a week before increasing to six weekly episodes in later years.
While Equity acknowledged the assurance from ITV, the union's TV official Natalie Barker said: "We do know that fewer episodes will mean fewer opportunities for work for our members engaged as guest and supporting artists on these productions.
"This is a significant loss for our members in the North East and North West regions and continues the ongoing trend of fewer opportunities for screen work, especially in the regions and for early career actors."
In the past few years, there has been a downturn in advertising revenue, part of a funding squeeze throughout the TV industry.
Among other long-running dramas, the BBC has axed Doctors and Holby City, and trimmed the number of episodes of Casualty (but has revived Waterloo Road). Channel 5 also axed its funding for Neighbours.
Channel 4's Hollyoaks also went from five episodes to three last year.
A woman has filed civil lawsuits against Neil Gaiman and his ex-wife in the US, accusing the British author of sexually assaulting her.
The lawsuits against Gaiman and Amanda Palmer were filed in Wisconsin, Massachusetts and New York.
The woman alleges the former couple violated laws on federal human trafficking, with complaints of assault, battery and inflicting emotional distress against Gaiman and negligence against Palmer. She is seeking at least $7m (£5.6m) in damages.
Gaiman, 64, whose books Good Omens, American Gods and The Sandman have been adapted for television, has denied allegations of sexual misconduct made by eight women.
He said he has "never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever".
The lawsuits claim the woman was befriended by Palmer when she was 22 and homeless in New Zealand and began working for the couple, which is when the assaults began.
According to the lawsuits, Palmer told the woman there had been previous complaints from more than a dozen different women.
Five women, four of whom were among eight featured in a New York Magazine article in January, made allegations about the writer in a Tortoise Media podcast series published in summer 2024.
Gaiman has denied all of the allegations made against him, posting on his blog, on 14 January: "I've stayed quiet until now, both out of respect for the people who were sharing their stories and out of a desire not to draw even more attention to a lot of misinformation.
"As I read through this latest collection of accounts, there are moments I half-recognise and moments I don't, descriptions of things that happened sitting beside things that emphatically did not happen."
He acknowledged that he was "careless with people's hearts and feelings" and could have "done so much better", but said he does not "accept there was any abuse".
Since the allegations emerged, publisher Dark Horse Comics cancelled upcoming work by Gaiman and a UK stage adaptation of his book Coraline has been pulled.
A West Yorkshire manufacturer has shared its "complete surprise" at superstar Billie Eilish wearing a baseball cap made from its cloth during the Grammy Awards.
The 23-year-old singer's navy hat, worn while she attended the ceremony in Los Angeles, was created with fabric from Abraham Moon & Sons' mill in Guiseley, Leeds.
Nine-time Grammy winner Eilish missed out on any gongs during the 67th Grammy Awards, but took to the stage to perform her hit Birds Of A Feather at the Crypto.com Arena.
"It's really nice to see what is quite traditional cloth being used in such a modern way," said Joe McCann from Moon.
Mr McCann, Moon's brand and product director, said the firm was founded in 1837 and creates cloth which is sold on to global leading fashion and interior designers.
Not all products featuring its cloth carry Moon's label, he said, but Eilish's cap did.
"It has been a hive of activity, the whole office has been absolutely buzzing about it," Mr McCann said.
"It was a complete surprise to us, it was fantastic to see Billie wearing it."
The firm said it was one of the last remaining fully functional "vertical" woollen mills in the UK, meaning a building optimised to ensure efficient movement of material through the manufacturing process.
"It's always really great and a lovely surprise when artists and influential people that you really respect come out and where something like this," Mr McCann added.
"It makes the world of difference and for a company like ours you can't replace the power of an influential figure like Billie wearing a product."
Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North or tell us a story you think we should be covering here.
Jesse Eisenberg, who starred as Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg in 2010 film The Social Network, has told BBC News he no longer wants to think of himself "as someone associated with someone like that".
"It's like this guy is... doing things that are problematic, taking away fact-checking," Eisenberg told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "[There are] safety concerns. Making people who are already threatened in the world more threatened."
Meta announced last month it would no longer use independent fact-checkers on Facebook and Instagram, replacing them with X-style "community notes", where commenting on the accuracy of posts is left to users.
In a video posted alongside a blog post, Mr Zuckerberg said third-party moderators were "too politically biased" and it was "time to get back to our roots around free expression".
But Eisenberg told BBC News he was "concerned".
"These people have billions upon billions of dollars, like more money than any human person has ever amassed and what are they doing with it?" he said.
"Oh, they're doing it to curry favour with somebody who's preaching hate.
"That's what I think... not as like a person who played in a movie. I think of it as somebody who is married to a woman who teaches disability justice in New York and lives for her students are going to get a little harder this year."
Legal settlement
Meta's move came as Mr Zuckerberg and other technology executives sought to improve relations with US President Donald Trump, ahead of his inauguration.
Trump and his Republican allies had criticised Meta's fact-checking policy, as censorship of right-wing voices.
And after the changes were announced, Trump told a news conference he was impressed by Mr Zuckerberg's decision and Meta had "come a long way".
Last week, Trump signed a legal settlement that will see Meta pay out roughly $25m (£20m).
Oscar nomination
He had sued the company and Mr Zuckerberg, in 2021, over the suspension of his accounts after the 6 January Capitol riots.
Eisenberg is promoting A Real Pain, which he wrote, directed and stars in, a film about two cousins who travel to Poland together to visit Holocaust sites.
His screenplay has received an Oscar nomination, as has his co-star, Kieran Culkin.
Eisenberg was also nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of Mr Zuckerberg in The Social Network.
Asa Butterfield may be best known for playing nerdy teenager Otis in Sex Education, but now he is swapping the classroom for the stage as he makes his theatre debut in one-man show Second Best.
The 27-year-old said he was done playing a teenager and "wanted to do something totally different".
He says he perused various theatre scripts and Second Best caught his eye.
"It's the perfect story that explores how you move past that sliding doors moment," he told the BBC.
The show tells the story of a former child actor, Martin, who narrowly missed out on playing Harry Potter when he was younger.
The drama follows Martin as he navigates fatherhood and imagines how his life would have turned out had he got the role.
Butterfield says the play, based on the novel by David Foenkinos and written by Barney Norris, is "funny, touching and relatable as everyone will have thought about the what-ifs at some point in their life".
As we chat in the corner of the stage that he is calling home for the next four weeks, Butterfield is surprisingly relaxed.
"I'm still coming off from the high of being on stage and I don't think I've really processed it so my feelings are a bit TBC," he says.
He appears calm but it's clear he strives to be the best. After the show and before our interview, he heads straight to the director for a debrief on the performance and lists the areas he felt he needed to improve on.
Despite being only 27, Butterfield has been acting for the past two decades.
At 10 he played Bruno in Holocaust drama The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and later starred as the lead in Martin Scorsese's Hugo.
He says he had been "putting theatre off for a really long time" but decided to bite the bullet as he wanted to push himself - and push himself he did as it's no easy feat to stand on an almost empty stage for 90 minutes and perform a monologue.
He is happy with the decision he made as he says he finds being on stage "totally exhilarating".
"After the first performance I didn't sleep at all," he says.
In the running to be Spider-Man
Similar to his character Martin, Butterfield has had to learn how to deal with rejection and says he has been turned down for roles "countless times".
A few years ago he found himself in the running to play Spider-Man, a role that eventually went to Tom Holland.
"At times I think about the auditions I didn't get," he says. "But, I also think that something else will come up. If I had got the role as Spider-Man, I wouldn't have been able to do Sex Education.
"I've learnt that some things are out of your control and as long as you give things your best shot, that's all that matters."
His character Martin could escape Harry Potter in order to not remind himself of the pain of not getting the role, but Butterfield says it is harder to do that in real life due to social media.
"You have to treat social media really carefully as too much exposure to it can really mess with your head," he says.
"I try not to use it very much as I don't want to compare myself to others."
From Captain America: Brave New World to Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, these are the films to stream and watch at the cinema this month.
Becoming Led Zeppelin
There are plenty of films about The Beatles, but Becoming Led Zeppelin is the first ever authorised documentary about the band that took over their mantle as one of the world's biggest and most influential rock groups. An intimate account of the foursome's pre-Zep careers and their early years together, the film is constructed from jovial interviews with the three surviving members, singer Robert Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page and bassist John Paul Jones, while a 1971 interview with John Bonham provides the late drummer's perspective. "It's the personal confidences that stand out" in this "fascinating" film, says Jonathan Romney in Uncut. "A rich vein of anecdotes is found in Page and Jones's busy history as session players, with Jones particularly emerging as an affable raconteur with a juicy portfolio of anecdotes." James Bond trivia alert: as jobbing musicians, both Page and Jones were in Abbey Road Studios when Shirley Bassey recorded the theme song for Goldfinger.
Released on 5 February in the UK and Ireland, and on 7 February in the US, Canada, Australian, Spain and Sweden
Armand
Armand is a provocative and weirdly comic Norwegian drama written and directed by Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel, the grandson of two Scandinavian film legends, Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann. Renate Reinsve, the star of The Worst Person in the World, plays a famous actress who is summoned to her six-year-old son's school after he has been accused of sexually assaulting a classmate. Ushered into a room with the school's senior teachers and the alleged victim's parents, she is subjected to "one of the most harrowing PT meetings ever witnessed", says Jo-Ann Titmarsh in HeyUGuys. And as secret connections and shady agendas emerge, "there is plenty of violence lurking beneath the surface of this middle-class tale". The winner of the prize for best first feature film at last year's Cannes Film Festival, Armand is "troubling, entertaining and at times confounding".
Released on 7 February in the US, on 21 February in Spain, and on 28 February in Turkey
I'm Still Here
I'm Still Here is already one of the stand-out successes of this year's awards season, having been nominated for the best picture, best international feature, and best actress Oscars. A Brazilian political thriller directed by Walter Salles (Central Station, The Motorcycle Diaries), it tells the true story of Rubens and Eunice Paiva and their children. In 1971, they are living happily by the beach in Rio de Janeiro, but Rubens (Selton Mello), a former congressman, has been campaigning against the military dictatorship. When he is removed from his house by a team of policemen, it is up to his wife (the Oscar-nominated Fernanda Torres) to ask where he has been taken – and to keep asking, even when all hope seems lost. A longstanding family friend of the Paivas, Salles has made a "deeply poignant" drama, says Jessica Kiang in Variety, and his "deeply invested film-making is remarkable in its grace and naturalism".
Released on 14 February in the US, and on 21 February in the UK, Ireland and Spain
The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie
The classic Looney Tunes characters have featured in some of the greatest animated short films ever made, but they haven't been in any feature-length cartoons: instead, they've popped up in such animated/ live-action hybrids as Space Jam and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. But now, at last, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig star in their own 91-minute animation, a full nine decades after the characters made their debuts. The idea is that Daffy and Porky (both voiced by Eric Bauza) get a job in a bubblegum factory where they uncover an alien plot to take over the world. "It's not consistently hilarious but it is consistently imaginative, sometimes even breathtaking," says William Bibbiani in The Wrap. "The animation style evokes favourable comparisons to Max Fleischer and Don Bluth, with jaw-dropping backgrounds and fluid, energetic, expressive movement. It's the prettiest animated movie Warner Bros has released since The Iron Giant."
Released on 12 February in France, Belgium and Luxembourg, and on 28 February in the US and India
The Monkey
Inspired by a Stephen King short story, The Monkey stars Theo James as a pair of twin brothers with a cursed wind-up toy monkey: ever since they were children, the toy has somehow caused people to die in extravagantly gory ways. The film is written and directed by Osgood Perkins, who made last year's creepy horror hit, Longlegs, but he promises that his follow-up is completely different. While Longlegs was infused with a gloomy atmosphere of dread and despair, The Monkey revels in the silliness of its premise. "It's deliberately comedic," Perkins said in The Hollywood Reporter. "It's feeling more like an old John Landis movie or a Joe Dante movie or a Robert Zemeckis movie. I saw an opportunity to make a wry, absurdist comedy about death... For me, the movie is a smile from top to bottom."
Released on 21 February in cinemas internationally
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy
It's been 24 years since the first Bridget Jones film, and over eight years since the last one, but Renée Zellweger is back again in the fourth comedy to be based on Helen Fielding's bestselling novels. This time Bridget is a single mother dealing with the death of her husband, Mark Darcy (Colin Firth – who is due to appear in flashbacks). Leo Woodall (One Day) plays her much-younger love interest, Chiwetel Ejiofor is an eligible teacher at her children's school, and Hugh Grant has a cameo as her dastardly former boss, Daniel Cleaver. But will audiences still warm to the bumbling Bridget? Zellweger believes so. "I think maybe folks recognise themselves in her and relate to her struggles and feelings of self-doubt," she said in British Vogue. "Bridget is authentically herself and doesn't always get it right, but whatever her imperfections, she remains joyful and optimistic, carries on and triumphs in her own way. She seems to make her quirky individuality and shortcomings charming, lovable and acceptable – and, in turn, she makes us feel lovable and acceptable, too."
Released on 12, 13 and 14 February in cinemas internationally, and on 13 February on Peacock in the US
Love Hurts
As a boy in the 1980s, Ke Huy Quan had major roles in two blockbusters, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Goonies, but acting work dried up soon afterwards. Decades on, he made a stunning comeback in the multiverse-spanning Everything Everywhere All at Once, and even won an Oscar for best supporting actor. Now he has his first ever leading role. Love Hurts is an action comedy in which Quan plays a geeky estate agent with a secret past as a gangland enforcer. The film's mix of gentle humour and nifty martial artistry seems ideal for him, but he wasn't sure whether to take the role until he consulted an old friend. "I was at an event with Steven Spielberg and he was asking me, ‘Ke, how are you doing?'" Quan told Empire magazine. "I said, 'Steven, I'm not doing so well.' Because of all the love and support that I had gotten during that whole award season, I was so worried that whatever I was going to do next, I would disappoint. I told him about this project and kind of pitched it to him. He said, 'Ke, it's great. Do it.'"
Released on 7 February in cinemas internationally
Captain America: Brave New World
Now that Chris Evans is no longer playing Steve Rogers in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the question is whether audiences will pay to see someone else wielding the character's patented red, white and blue shield. More specifically, will audiences pay to see Anthony Mackie's Sam Wilson, who was Captain America's sidekick in earlier Marvel films, and has now been promoted to the title role? Judging by the trailers and the posters, studio executives seem to be hoping that another character will be the film's big draw. Filling in for the late William Hurt, Harrison Ford co-stars as Thaddeus Ross, a former US Army general – and arch-enemy of the Hulk – who has just been elected as US president. He hopes to count on the new Captain America's support, but their negotiations are interrupted when Ross is transformed into a bright red version of The Hulk. "What we liked was this notion of a man who is trying to do the best he can but can't quite outrun the demons of his past," the film's producer, Nate Moore, told Entertainment Weekly. "Turning a guy who hunted Hulks into a Hulk himself makes him more than an antagonist; it makes him a tragic character."
Released on 14 February in cinemas internationally
The Gorge
A genre-mashing horror-romance-action film, The Gorge is directed by Scott Derrickson (Doctor Strange, The Black Phone), and it stars Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Teller. The concept, as dreamt up by screenwriter Zach Dean, is that two elite snipers are paid to spend a year in separate concrete observation towers on either side of a remote, misty valley. They have no high-tech means of communicating with each other, but they chat and flirt via flashcards and binoculars. The only obstacle in the way of this burgeoning relationship is that the valley is, apparently, "the door to hell", and their job is to stop monsters climbing out of it. The Gorge is a Valentine's Day release, and Teller thinks that it's the perfect film for the occasion, whether or not you're in the mood for love. "Well, I just think it's good alternative programming, as well, to your typical love story," he told Screen Rant. "They meet each other for the first time, and you're going to watch 'em fall in love. But they have to go through some really entertaining, engaging, high-octane, hellacious shit to end up with each other, so that's cool."
Released on 14 February on Apple TV+
Bring Them Down
Christopher Andrews' debut film as writer-director could be the darkest and most brutal thriller about sheep-farming ever made. At its heart are two dysfunctional families with adjacent fields in the rural west of Ireland. Colm Meaney and Christopher Abbott play a taciturn father and son who are scraping a living on one farm; Barry Keoghan plays the feckless son of a rival couple (Nora-Jane Noone, Paul Ready) just down the road. When one family suspects the other of stealing two rams, the ensuing feud is as believable as anything in a down-to-earth kitchen sink drama, but with the twists and tension of a gangster film. And it could put you off eating lamb forever. "Although hardly the first film to address toxic masculinity and the scourge of violence in small-town communities, this grimly compelling drama possesses a scruffy integrity," says Tim Grierson at Screen Daily. "In Andrews' vision, rural Ireland is as harsh as the Old West."
Released on 7 February in the US, UK & Ireland
--
If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week.
For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
From the return of HBO's holiday-resort satire to a political thriller starring Robert De Niro and the latest violent period drama from Peaky Blinders creator Stephen Knight.
1. Miss Austen
After Jane Austen died, in 1817, her sister, Cassandra, destroyed many of her letters, guarding her privacy and setting generations of Janeites' and scholars' hair on fire. Miss Austen, based on Gill Hornby's bestselling novel, imagines what might have been behind all that. The series is wonderfully cast, with Keeley Hawes as Cassandra. It begins years after Jane's death, when Cassandra visits Isabella Fowle (Rose Leslie), the niece of her long-dead fiancé, with the secret purpose of trying to find letters from Jane that might be in the vicarage. In flashbacks, Synnove Karlsen is the younger Cassandra and Patsy Ferran the young Jane. Max Irons and Alfred Enoch are also in the cast, because an Austen story always needs romance. Hawes teased the show in an interview with the Guardian, saying: “It feels like a classic costume drama, in the vein of Colin Firth in Pride and Prejudice. Modern takes like Bridgerton are brilliant, but this feels like part of the Austen canon, so her fans will be pleased." The Austen industry is in overdrive this year, the 250th anniversary of her birth, but few projects are as tempting as this.
Miss Austen premieres 2 February on BBC in the UK and 4 May on PBS in the US
2. Apple Cider Vinegar
Kaitlyn Dever, who has been great at comedy (Booksmart) and drama (2019 miniseries Unbelievable), takes on a bit of both in this fictional version of a true story. She plays Belle Gibson, an Australian influencer and con woman, who falsely said she had brain cancer and was curing it with natural ingredients and lifestyle, turning that lie into a financial empire selling apps and cookbooks. The show goes beyond her to include four other women in her orbit. One of them is under her spell, another becomes a business rival. The series is set in the early 2010s, at the dawn of Instagram, and tackles the rise of social media influencers. You can guess at its appeal. The show seems to echo the Netflix hit Inventing Anna, with Julia Garner as Anna Delvey, who masqueraded as an heiress, and was convicted of grand larceny and theft of services for her cons.
Apple Cider Vinegar premieres 6 February on Netflix internationally
3. Clean Slate
Laverne Cox stars in one of the last projects executive produced by the comedy legend Norman Lear, who died in 2023 at 101. She plays Desiree, a New York art gallery owner whose business collapses, and who returns home to Mobile, Alabama after 23 years away. Putting a new gender spin on some old sitcom tropes, the premise is that her father, Harry (comedian George Wallace), a car-wash owner she hasn't spoken to in all that time, has no idea that the child he thought of as his son has transitioned. Desiree moves into her old room, and the odd-couple, city-girl-in-a-small-town jokes begin, including one that has Harry putting money in a "Pronoun Jar" whenever he accidentally calls Desiree "son". Cox has been a staple of red carpet awards coverage lately. However this series turns out, it's probably time to remember how good she was in Orange is the New Black.
Clean Slate premieres 6 February on Amazon Prime
4. Yellowjackets
This drama about the decades-long aftershocks from a high-school soccer team's plane crash is another show returning after such a long gap, almost two years, that you need a refresher course before watching. Last season, as if being stranded in the woods and resorting to cannibalism when they were teenage girls wasn't enough, the adult versions of the characters faced life-or-death horror at the isolated location where Lottie (Simone Kessell) has formed a cult. As the adult Shauna (Melanie Lynskey, the show's anchor) says in the third season trailer, "Someone wants us dead". Whoever it is already got poor Natalie in season two. The back-and-forth in time continues, with the main cast returning, including Lauren Ambrose as the adult Van, and Liv Hewson as her younger self, Christina Ricci as adult Misty, always up to something suspicious, and Elijah Wood as Walter, her demented citizen-sleuth colleague. Hilary Swank makes some guest appearances in the present day timeline. All we know so far is that she is already drenched in blood.
Yellowjackets premieres 14 February on Paramount Plus with Showtime in the US and Paramount Plus in the UK
5. The White Lotus
Season three of Mike White's mordant social satire is set at the White Lotus resort in Thailand, and now there are snakes and monkeys along with the usual emotional upheaval. Belinda (Natasha Rothwell), the spa manager at the Hawaii White Lotus in the first season, returns to take a training course at the new location. This time the guests include three old friends on a girls' trip, played by Carrie Coon, Michelle Monaghan and Leslie Bibb, along with Jason Isaacs and Parker Posey as a married couple. Lalisa Manobal, better known as Lisa from the South Korean group Blackpink, plays Mook, a health and wellness counsellor at the resort, where health and wellness are undoubtedly in short supply.
The White Lotus premieres 16 February on HBO and Max in the US and 17 February on Sky Atlantic and Now in the UK
6. Zero Day
This political thriller starring Robert De Niro is intriguing and timely. When a cyberattack hits the US, causing devastation and deaths, former president George Mullen (De Niro) is called in to head a commission investigating the source, working against a barrage of problems and forces: big tech, Wall Street, rival political factions and a world of disinformation. Connie Britton plays Mullen's former chief of staff and Jesse Plemons is a former aide with political ambitions of his own. Joan Allen plays Mullen's wife, and Lizzy Caplan their daughter, a member of Congress. The plot deals with the slippery nature of truth itself. "That's the spine of my character in the show," De Niro has said. "Don't dodge anything. Don't play games. Be honest about what's going on so that the public knows what's going on." Angela Bassett plays the US president in casting that would have landed very differently if the US election had gone another way.
Zero Day premieres 20 February on Netflix internationally
7. Win or Lose
In this animated family series from Pixar, eight members of a middle-school co-ed softball team, the Portland Pickles, are preparing for a championship game, with Will Forte as the voice of Coach Dan. Each episode focuses on a different character, from the school-age players to parents and coaches, and looks at their individual hopes, fears and insecurities, in a show whose message is to consider other people's points of view. There was recently a flutter of attention to the series for an extraneous reason, though, after word emerged that lines of dialogue identifying one character as transgender had been cut. Chanel Stewart, the 18-year-old trans actress who voices that character, told Deadline she was "very disheartened", and that "I was excited to share my journey to help empower other trans youth". In a statement, Disney said, "When it comes to animated content for a younger audience, we realize that many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms and timeline."
Win or Lose premieres 19 February on Disney+
8. A Thousand Blows
Steven Knight, the creator of Peaky Blinders, is right in his wheelhouse with another period piece about a criminal gang inspired by real-life stories, this time set in Victorian London and the world of illegal bare-knuckle boxing. Hezekiah (Malachi Kirby of Small Axe) and his friend Alec (Francis Lovehall, also of Small Axe) are Jamaicans who have come to London and who try to seek their fortunes as boxers. Hezekiah finds himself taken up and exploited by Mary Carr, the leader of the all-female band of robbers known as The Forty Elephants. Erin Doherty, who played Princess Anne as a young woman in The Crown, is far from that role as Carr. Stephen Graham stars as a boxer named Sugar Goodman, determined to defend his turf from the upstart Hezekiah. The stalwart Graham has played plenty of gritty characters, in Peaky Blinders and recently in Blitz, but had to bulk up for this role. "Five meals a day, loads of protein, ice baths, I became like a proper athlete," he told Empire.
A Thousand Blows premieres 21 February on Hulu in the US and Disney+ internationally
9. The Americas
David Attenborough's nature documentaries have proven there is an apparently bottomless appetite for the genre. This variation stands apart because it has Tom Hanks narrating, with a sense of wonder. The series is an ambitious 10-part look at the Americas, with each episode focusing on a different area, ranging from Canada to Patagonia, the Atlantic coast to the Amazon. The production was epic, with 180 expeditions that took five years, making it what is likely the most expensive non-fiction show Universal Studios has ever done. Universal co-produced the show with the BBC, which also produces the Attenborough series. The music is composed by Oscar-winner Hans Zimmer, whose movie scores include Gladiator and Dune. But the soundtrack here also includes animal sounds, waves, and Hanks luring viewers in by saying, "A wandering salamander. To find a mate he sets out on an extraordinary journey."
The Americas premieres 23 February on NBC in the US and in 2025 on BBC One in the UK
10. 1923
As Taylor Sheridan's prequel to his mega-hit series Yellowstone returns, the presence of either Harrison Ford or Helen Mirren might be enough to make you want to watch, and despite the near-death of Ford's character in season one, this series still has both. They are back as Jacob and Cara Dutton, who are enduring an especially hard winter on that familiar Montana ranch, not to mention the threat from an evil land-baron played by Timothy Dalton. Meanwhile, their nephew Spencer (Brandon Sklenar), is heading back from his African safari to help out, and Spencer's wife, Alexandra (Julia Schlaepfer), an aristocrat from the UK, is trying to get across the Atlantic to her new home on the range (culture shock awaits). Ford growls in the teaser trailer, "This ranch is under attack. Our whole way of life is under attack," which is pretty much an all-purpose Dutton line, available to use in any Yellowstone iteration.
1923 premieres 23 February in the US and 24 February in the UK on Paramount+
11. Suits LA
Suits, which ran on cable channel USA Network from 2011 to 2019, turned out to be an ideal show to binge. When the series about a firm of high-powered New York lawyers landed on Netflix, it became one of the most streamed series of 2023. We may never know how much that had to do with one of its stars being Meghan Markle, now the Duchess of Sussex. We do know that she is not in this spinoff set on the opposite coast. Neither is the rest of that cast (so far), with the exception of some guest appearances by Gabriel Macht as Harvey Specter. The main character now is Ted Black (Stephen Amell), a former federal prosecutor in New York now running a powerful Los Angeles firm specialising in criminal and entertainment law. Aaron Korsh, the creator of Suits, also created the LA version. At first it was a different series, about Hollywood agents, which NBC passed on. He reconfigured that idea to exist in the same universe as Suits, and here we are.
Suits LA premieres 23 February on NBC in the US
--
If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week.
For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
The unearthing of inflammatory social media remarks by the actress about subjects including George Floyd, Islam and the Oscars itself has caused a storm – and may threaten the film's overall chances at this year's Academy Awards.
Karla Sofía Gascón made Oscars history by being the first trans woman to be nominated in the best actress category. Up until this week, there was a chance that she might make history again by winning the award, too. But now? "I think we can safely say that Karla Sofía Gascón won’t be winning anything," Wendy Ide, film critic of The Observer, tells the BBC.
Gascón plays a trans Mexican drug lord-turned-philanthropist in Jacques Audiard's operatic musical-thriller, Emilia Pérez – a film that has long been one of the favourites to take home the 2025 Academy Awards' biggest prizes, including best picture, but was already clouded in controversy. Some Mexican commentators have objected to the French writer-director's depiction of their country, and to the paucity of Mexican talent in the production, most of which was shot near Paris. That might not have been enough to turn the Academy's voters against Emilia Pérez, which received 13 nominations, but now there's a bigger issue for them to consider.
Earlier this week, Gascón complained in an interview that the social media team working with Fernanda Torres, a best actress nominee for I'm Still Here, was "tearing me and Emilia Pérez down". She then backtracked, claiming that she was "referencing the toxicity and violent hate speech on social media" in general. But the impression lingered that Gascón had attacked a competitor in a way that was against the spirit of the Oscars. Still, that was a storm in a teacup compared to the hurricane of old X posts that were unearthed by journalist Sarah Hagi, and subsequently reported in Variety. Posted during 2020 and 2021, they included numerous offensive remarks about George Floyd, Chinese people, Muslim women and Islam in general, to name but a few of Gascón's targets. To top it all? A post attacking The Oscars themselves. Of the 2021 event, at which Nomadland won best picture, Gascón said: "More and more the #Oscars are looking like a ceremony for independent and protest films, I didn’t know if I was watching an Afro-Korean festival, a Black Lives Matter demonstration or the 8M [a Spanish way of referring to International Women's Day]. Apart from that, an ugly, ugly gala."
The irony is that, because Gascón is trans, and the film offers a sympathetic, nuanced portrayal of a trans protagonist, part of the film's appeal to voters was that it seemed so progressive. But there is nothing progressive about the anti-diversity content of her posts. "Emilia Pérez's chances are strongly linked to its liberal credentials," says Ed Potton, an arts editor at The Times. "Once those are lost, they'll be hard to regain."
On Friday, Gascón released a statement saying that she was "deeply sorry to those I have caused pain", but the damage is done. "She was always an outside chance for best actress," says Ide. "But I would now be very surprised if Emilia Pérez won best picture, and this time last week it felt like a strong contender."
As Ide says, the reverberations of Gascón's social media posts may not just demolish Gascón's chances of winning an Oscar – Emilia Pérez's hopes in other categories may crumble, too. Could this be the first case of a scandal dashing a film’s best picture dreams in the final furlong of the race? "I actually didn't think Emilia Pérez would win best picture, anyway, but that's definitely not going to happen now," says Patrick Heidmann, a film journalist on Berliner Zeitung. "For best international feature, I'm Still Here is now the favourite. The only other question is how and if [Gascón's co-star] Zoe Saldaña will get dragged down by this. She was 100% going to win best supporting actress, but maybe Isabella Rossellini and Ariana Grande can now hope again."
Saldaña responded to the controversy around her co-star at a Q&A event for the film in London on Friday night, saying: "It makes me really sad because I don’t support [it], and I don’t have any tolerance for any negative rhetoric towards people of any group. I can only attest to the experience that I had with each and every individual that was a part, that is a part, of this film, and my experience and my interactions with them was about inclusivity and collaboration and racial, cultural and gender equity. And it just saddens me."
More like this:
• Why some Mexican people are upset about Emilia Pérez
• The secret to making a Hollywood comeback
• The film lifting the lid on the Pope's election
Whatever happens, there is already a danger that the off-screen narratives relating to this year's Oscar nominees might overshadow the stories in the films themselves. This week, Torres apologised for wearing blackface in a Brazilian comedy sketch almost 20 years ago. A couple of weeks ago, the makers of The Brutalist admitted that AI was used to generate some architectural blueprints and to tweak the actors' Hungarian pronunciation – not a good look for a film that has been celebrated for being an artistic labour of love made by a defiantly independent director. (AI was also used, incidentally, to improve Gascón's singing voice in Emilia Pérez.) Meanwhile, several nominees have been tainted by accusations of so-called "category fraud": some commentators have asked whether Saldaña and Grande should have been nominated for best supporting actress in Emilia Pérez and Wicked, respectively, and whether Kieran Culkin should have had a best supporting actor nod for A Real Pain, when all three performers could be more accurately described as co-leads. And Mikey Madison, the star of Anora, was hit by a backlash when she said that she chose not to use an intimacy co-ordinator when filming the sex scenes.
None of this is new. Rather than winning or losing Academy Awards on the basis of quality alone, films and actors are always affected by outside factors. When Paul Newman won the best actor Oscar for The Color of Money in 1987, it was largely due to Hollywood's warm and fuzzy feelings towards a beloved Tinseltown icon. At the other extreme, after Mickey Rourke was recorded using a homophobic slur against a journalist in late-2008, it was no surprise that he didn't win the best actor Oscar for The Wrestler in 2009: Sean Penn won it instead for playing Harvey Milk, the gay rights activist, in Milk.
It's true, too, that film executives and publicists have never been shy about stirring up ugly rumours about the competition. When Harvey Weinstein was the boss of Miramax, he was accused of badmouthing awards rivals, as when his film Shakespeare in Love earned a surprise best picture victory over Saving Private Ryan in 1999. Since then, there have been mutterings that Natalie Portman didn't do enough of her own dancing in Darren Aronofsky's Black Sawn, and didn't give enough credit to her ballet double. The year before last, there were tuttings that the campaigns for two best actress nominees, Andrea Riseborough and Michelle Yeoh, had stretched the rules, even if they hadn't broken them. But this year, things seem to be spiralling out of control.
"I have to say, I do not remember such flagrant dirty pool being played in any previous Oscar race," says Stephanie Bunbury, a film journalist at the Sydney Morning Herald. The scandals bubbling and the insults flying "suggest a new imperative to win by fair means or foul", she adds – but they may have more to do with the prevalence of social media than with concerted smear campaigns. "Whether [the animosity] reflects the desperate state of the industry or just the nastiness of the times in which we live, I really have no idea. But it's certainly bringing a whiff of brimstone to proceedings."
It's bringing a real uncertainty to proceedings, too. In this febrile awards season, when there is no dead cert for the best picture prize, things are suddenly looking up for Conclave and A Complete Unknown, if only because they may seem to the Academy to be safe and uncontroversial choices – so far, at least.
--
If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week.
For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
Austen is one of the greatest writers in the English language – but relatively little is known about her. And that's in part because of an act that infuriates many to this day, which is the subject of new TV drama Miss Austen.
In early January 1796, 20-year-old Jane Austen wrote a gossipy letter to her beloved older sister, Cassandra. It had news of Jane's current crush, "a very gentlemanlike, good-looking, pleasant young man". Tom Lefroy was an Irish lawyer with whom Jane had cut a rug at three balls. She playfully urged her sister: "Imagine to yourself everything most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together." She was already looking forward to their next encounter and she wrote again to Cassandra just a few days later. In this letter, she offered to let their friend Mary have "all my other admirers" because she had eyes only for Tom. However, Tom had to leave the country and in the same note she wrote: "At length the day is come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy, and when you receive this it will be over. My tears flow as I write at the melancholy idea."
These letters, the earliest of Jane's that we have, suggest a vivacious, flirtatious, funny young woman who enjoys parties and dancing and the attention of the opposite sex. It's a vivid picture, and all the more precious because so few of Jane's letters survive. She was a prolific correspondent, estimated to have written thousands of letters during her lifetime, and yet we have only 160 of them. Years after Jane's death in 1817 from an unknown illness, Cassandra, to whom her sister had written most days when they were apart, burned almost all of her letters.
Her deed has puzzled and infuriated historians and biographers. Jane Austen is one of the greatest writers in the English language, second only to Shakespeare in the view of many. Her six novels – witty, withering and psychologically perceptive, pioneering in form and content – are still hugely popular today, as are screen adaptations, of which there are many. Yet beyond basic biographical facts, information about Jane is relatively scant. Was she, as has been claimed, a secret radical? A lesbian? Poisoned? How much more would we know about her had Cassandra, her main champion in life and the keeper of her flame after her death, preserved her letters? What secrets must they have held that Cassandra thought it best to burn them?
The different theories
This mysterious act of destruction is investigated in Miss Austen, a new four-part television drama based on Gill Hornby's best-selling and critically acclaimed novel of the same name. Years after Jane's death, Cassandra (Keeley Hawes) has travelled to the village of Kintbury, in Berkshire, where the Austen family's friends, the Fowles, lived. Cassandra is, ostensibly, there to help Isabella Fowle (Rose Leslie), whose father Fulwar is dying. However this is a house that holds many bitter-sweet memories for her (in real life, this is where she had been staying when Jane wrote to her about Tom Lefroy), and she has an ulterior motive. She wants to retrieve some letters written by the late Jane to their friend Eliza Fowle, Isabella's mother, which she fears might contain details damaging to the novelist's legacy. When she finds the correspondence, it revives powerful memories of the events of years ago. The series takes place in two timelines – in 1830 – with the unmarried Isabella facing eviction from her home after her father's death and Cassandra trying to protect her sister's legacy – and decades previously, with young Cassandra (Synnøve Karlsen) and Jane (Patsy Ferran) navigating romances, family problems, and the ups and downs of life.
Hornby became interested in Cassandra after moving to Kintbury, and learning that "Miss Austen" had been engaged to the son of the vicar of the local church. On the reason for the bonfire of the letters, Hornby tells BBC Culture: "I have my own theory, as put out in the novel, and which I think stands up." Viewers of the series will discover it in due course.
"But there are other, prosaic reasons," she continues. "One is that these letters were newsy, gossipy. Those two shared everything – including very difficult sisters-in-law [Jane and Cassandra had six brothers]. I imagine there would have been a lot of indiscreet mentions of annoying relatives, and Cassandra would have wanted to avoid any future hurt feelings. There would also have been quite a lot of moaning. Jane worried about money incessantly – there are still many mentions left over to prove it. So all in all, they wouldn't necessarily show her in the best light."
More like this:
• What Jane Austen can teach us about resilience
• The racy side of Jane Austen
• 40 of the most exciting books to read in 2025
Devoney Looser is Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University and a respected authority on Jane Austen. "A less often considered theory, which I think probable, is that Cassandra may also have been watching closely, in the early 1840s, the brutal treatment that critics were dishing out in reviews of the recently published letters of the late novelist Frances Burney," she tells the BBC. Burney was a writer of social comedies, who Austen grew up reading and took inspiration from.
"Those cruel reviews would have given Cassandra pause, considering that Jane's letters might have faced similar treatment. They might have been skewered in the early Victorian press, if published then. Of course, almost two centuries later, I think we can be confident that the opposite would eventually have been true – that these additional Austen letters would be welcomed and admired. That part is especially crushing."
However both Looser and Hornby defend Cassandra in what she did. Indeed, Hornby wrote Miss Austen at least partly with the intention of explaining her actions.
"Whatever her motives, the truth is – however biographers might complain – Cassandra did the right thing. Jane was a very private person," says Hornby, pointing to the fact that she chose to be published anonymously for the duration of her lifetime, with her identity only being widely revealed by her brother Henry in December 1817, via the biographical note he wrote for a posthumous edition of Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. "She had no interest in fame, only writing," Hornby continues. "Both sisters would be horrified to think of us knowing their secrets. And the fact that – thanks to Cassandra's bonfire – we know so little about the author has proved wildly successful. That element of mysterious, quiet dignity is crucial to the success of the Jane Austen brand."
Looser says: "Cassandra's reputation as the most notorious destroyer of Jane's letters isn't entirely fair. As a few scholars have recently pointed out, Cassandra is also the only Austen sibling who is known to have saved large numbers of her sister's letters. That said, of course I find it deeply upsetting that any of Jane's letters were ever destroyed. It's clear that they must have held more of her characteristic humour and social insights, as well as requisite everyday news and gossip."
A sisterly love story
Jane and Cassandra, who was older by three years, had a very close bond. They were the only daughters of a Hampshire clergyman. According to their mother, "if Cassandra's head had been going to be cut off, Jane would have hers cut off too". They lived together for much of their lives, and Cassandra was the only person with whom Jane discussed her work. A pencil and watercolour likeness by Cassandra is the only authenticated picture of Jane. The day after Jane's death, Cassandra wrote in a letter: "She was the sun of my life, the gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow. It is as if I have lost a part of myself." Neither woman married.
In fact, the mystery element of Hornby's novel is simply the delivery mechanism for a moving exploration of unmarried women's lack of control over their own lives in this period. They often had little or no money and could well be dependent on the charity of relatives – which might or might not be forthcoming.
"The subjugation of women was the dominant theme in their existence," says Hornby. "Their lives were an obstacle course, and dodging the pitfalls was part of their every day. We don't see it, of course, because we live with so many options ourselves. But Austen's novels are all about the subjugation of women. All of her heroines – bar Emma – are in peril at the beginning. Those Bennet girls [from Pride and Prejudice] – once their father died, they would have no money, no home. Marriage is their only rescue plan – as Mrs Bennet so wisely sees. We read her as a comic creation – and of course, she is played for laughs. But actually, she's the sensible one who can see the great dangers ahead."
Andrea Gibb, who has adapted Miss Austen for the screen, says she fell in love with the book immediately. "It's so beautifully conceived, and could have been written by Austen herself. It has everything. Intrigue, mystery, romance and love. Not just romantic love but the enduring lifelong love that exists between sisters. The female experience is very much at the heart of the story. Women then were totally financially dependent on men. Making a good marriage was a survival mechanism as much as a romantic ideal."
This year is the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen's birth. As well as Miss Austen, the BBC has commissioned The Other Bennet Sister, a Pride and Prejudice spin-off drama about Mary Bennet based on the novel by Janice Hadlow. Netflix is reported to have an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice in the works. And in a book published later this year, Wild for Austen: A Rebellious, Subversive, and Untamed Legacy, Looser hopes to demolish "the continuing myth that Austen was mild, prim and boring," she says. Jane Austen's appeal shows absolutely no signs of abating.
"I think she endures because she deals with universal concerns and she shines a light on society and its inherent contradictions," says Gibb. "I think she has a lot to say to contemporary women. Whether they're young and full of idealism or whether they're older. She's a great recorder of human behaviour and she's also very funny."
And let's not judge Cassandra too harshly. After all, who among us would want our gossipy missives and messages to our nearest and dearest read by all and sundry?
Miss Austen premieres on 2 February on BBC1 in the UK, and on 4 May on MASTERPIECE on PBS in the US.
--
If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week.
For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
Winter isn't all bad – these "sublime" landscapes of the frozen North from the turn of the 20th Century offer us a way into resilience – and an "acceptance of the seasonality of life".
With its bare trees, long nights and icy temperatures, it's perhaps unsurprising that, culturally in the Northern Hemisphere, we seem so conditioned to complain about winter. Yet, as the author Katherine May points out in her 2020 book Wintering, winter is also a valuable time for rest and retreat. "Winter offers us liminal spaces to inhabit," she writes. Its "starkness", she argues, re-sensitises us, and "can reveal colours that we would otherwise miss".
For Nordic countries, where, in some regions, the season can last more than six months, making peace with winter is a necessity, with concepts such as the Norwegian friluftsliv (embracing the natural world) and the Danish hygge (hunkering down with simple comforts) offering fresh perspectives on cold weather.
At the turn of the 20th Century, the frozen North – with its vast fjords, mystical boreal forests and radiant light – became a powerful muse for artists such as Hilma af Klint, Edvard Munch and Harald Sohlberg. These artists immersed themselves in these cold climates, and developed a specifically Nordic style of painting imbued with their emotional responses to the landscape. Around 70 of these intensely atmospheric, expressionist works by artists from Scandinavia, Finland and Canada are being showcased in a new exhibition, Northern Lights, a cross-Atlantic collaboration that debuts at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland, before travelling to New York's Buffalo AKG Art Museum in August.
It was natural that these painters should be drawn to these wintery scenes, Ulf Küster, the exhibition's curator, tells the BBC. "In Nordic landscapes, snow is a very dominant factor of life from October to late April… It's just this massive presence of white and nature and wilderness and vastness that really defines this landscape, and I think these painters have found a very interesting response to that." This burst of Nordic landscape painting was also a response to the changes that the painters perceived as a result of population growth and industrialisation. "There was a big desire in the late 19th Century to return to pure nature and the simple life," explains Küster. "You had these highly industrialised countries and pollution, and the pureness of white snow must have been quite a contrast."
Many of these northern regions were comparatively untouched by change, and featured vast, unpopulated vistas that were inherently painterly. Even today, Norway has a population of just 5.5 million, but a length of around 1,600km; while around three-quarters of Finland is still forested. To convey this scale, these paintings often adopt unconventional compositions where the view appears to stretch beyond the canvas. They are "boundless", says Küster. "They don't have borders". This is reinforced by the bird's-eye view adopted in works such as View from Pyynikki Ridge (1900) by the Finnish artist Helmi Biese. "It's as if the artists have used a drone," remarks Küster.
The height and scope of these unpopulated views also convey a sense of isolation and loneliness. Harald Sohlberg, whose luminescent 1914 version of Winter Night in the Mountains is widely considered to be the national painting of Norway, wrote: "The longer I stood gazing at the scene, the more I seemed to feel what a solitary and pitiful atom I was in an endless universe… It was as if I had suddenly awakened in a new, unimagined and inexplicable world… Above the white contours of a northern winter stretched the endless vault of heaven, twinkling with myriads of stars. It was like a service in some vast cathedral."
It was this search for solitude that doubtless drew the Swedish artist Anna Boberg to the Norwegian archipelago of Lofoten, a remote location steeped in Viking folklore and, according to her 1901 memoir, "the apotheosis of Arctic beauty and wilderness". It was here, dressed head-to-toe in seal and reindeer fur, that she produced her Northern Lights (1901) painting, most likely sketched en plein air. In a commanding scene that speaks to the Romantic notion of "the sublime", prismatic streaks of light descend from the heavens dwarfing the snowy landscape.
Boberg's awe when confronted with this dazzling wintry world with its unique light is clear. "What really drove these people was to find a response to the extremities of nature – the very essence of snow, winter and ice." explains Küster. To achieve this, they would "get as close to nature as possible", he says. Far from hiding from the harsh winter, Boberg and her contemporaries immersed themselves in the landscape. "They are painters who really wanted to paint the experience, to feel the extreme temperature and the snow blindness," says Küster. Munch, he continues, had outdoor studios, and would leave his paintings outside "just to let nature test them", while some of the Canadian painters would paddle out on to lakes and paint from their canoes.
Beautiful and barbaric
Inland, the boreal forest embodied the enchanting duality of these landscapes, which were both beautiful and barbaric. The dark, primeval forests became an emblem of foreboding in Nordic folklore and myth – places where you could get lost, and that concealed unknown dangers. The Nordic winter landscape fed the fairytales of the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. "Below them the wind blew cold, wolves howled, and black crows screamed as they skimmed across the glittering snow," he writes in The Snow Queen (1844). "But up above, the moon shone bright and large."
This storybook quality can be seen in Winter Moonlight (1895) by the Swedish painter Gustaf Fjaestad. Here, his clever use of pointillism makes the snow appear to glitter, while the hand-like branches of the dense, drooping trees look poised to come alive. In The Lair of the Lynx (1908), Akseli Gallen-Kallela, a Finn, also revels in this tantalising, darker side to the landscape, inviting us to scan the canvas for the dark places beasts may be lurking, and to follow their tracks in the snow.
More like this:
• Eight nature books to change your life
• The climate warnings in 19th-Century paintings
• How to transform your home with art
Notable, also, is the power and movement he gives to the snow as it winds in thick layers around the trees. "The brushwork of this painting meticulously reacts to the layers of snow," says Küster. "It's snowing, then it's freezing, there might be some sun and there's a little thaw, and then there's freezing again and more snow comes on top." The painter is clearly entranced by the snow, the layers of paint telling the snow's story. The visual effect, observes Küster, is "like a sort of wedding cake".
As well as drawing inspiration from the landscape's mythical associations, these artists participated in their own myth-making, expressing – through their own strong emotional responses to these unspoilt regions – an often idealised view of the Nordic winter. Some, such as Edvard Munch, nevertheless hinted at the changes threatening these serene expanses. During the winter of 1900, he stayed in Nordstrand on the banks of the Oslofjord. Here he painted his now-famous rendition of its serene waters reflecting a magnificent sky of pink, blue and yellow. But this picturesque, swirling scene, foregrounded by pines, is interrupted by a bulbous trail of white paint, denoting, not snow this time, but, as the title makes clear, Train Smoke.
"When we look back at the landscape works of Gallen-Kallela and Biese, we are reminded of how much of the environment has changed in the intervening century," writes Anna-Maria Pennonen in her essay Changing Landscapes in the exhibition catalogue. "The Baltic Sea no longer freezes every winter, and the period when the ground is covered with snow in Helsinki can be very short, perhaps only a few weeks instead of months." As for the magnificent boreal forest, it continues to be threatened by logging and agriculture.
Recognising the mutability of these environments now adds a powerful new dimension when a modern audience engages with these 100-year-old works. "They ask us to think about the enchanting image of the forest in relation to its past and current transformation, as well as in relation to our own part therein," writes Helga Christoffersen in the catalogue. The works invite feelings of nostalgia and melancholy, and our appreciation that they are endangered only amplifies their beauty and psychological intensity.
Danish artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen, born in 1987, addresses this issue of climate change in Boreal Dreams (2024), an interactive, immersive work and online experience, commissioned for Northern Lights. The work uses virtual reality to connect past, present and future boreal ecosystems. It takes visitors on a journey into five imagined futures for the boreal forest, marrying technology with environmental data to create a visceral experience of nature. Yet, however bleak the future seems, raw nature – these works suggest – can offer something transcendent. "We like to think that it's possible for life to be one eternal summer," writes May in Wintering. "But life's not like that." By confronting and reframing winter, as these artists do, we can accept the seasonality of life, and cope better with the dark periods of our life. "Winter had blanked me, blasted me wide open," she declares. "In all that whiteness, I saw the chance to make myself new again."
Northern Lights is at the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen/Basel in Switzerland until 25 May and at Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, New York, from 1 August 2025 to 12 January 2026. The accompanying catalogue, edited by Ulf Küster, will be published by Hatje Cantz on 13 February.
--
If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week.
For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
The Nazi extermination camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated by Soviet troops on 27 January 1945. Anita Lasker, a Jewish teenager, managed to survive there simply because the camp orchestra needed a cello player.
Now aged 99, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch is the last remaining survivor of the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz. At the age of 19, she was interviewed by the BBC on 15 April 1945, the day of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen death camp where she had been transferred six months earlier. Interviewed in German, the language she grew up speaking, she said: "First, I would like to say a few words about Auschwitz. The few who have survived are afraid that the world will not believe what happened there."
Warning: This article contains graphic details of the Holocaust
She continued: "A doctor and a commander stood on the ramp when the transports arrived, and sorting was done right before our eyes. This means they asked for the age and health condition of the new arrivals. The unsuspecting newcomers tended to report any ailments, thereby signing their death sentences. They particularly targeted children and the elderly. Right, left, right, left. To the right was life; to the left, the chimney."
When she first arrived at the Auschwitz unloading platform known as the ramp, her casual comment that she played the cello was enough to change the direction of her life. "Music was played to accompany the most terrible things," she said.
The then Anita Lasker barely spoke German in public again for 50 years after World War Two, but when she was growing up, her hometown of Breslau was part of Germany. Now known as Wrocław, it has been part of Poland since the end of the war. Lasker's mother Edith was a talented violinist and her father Alfons was a successful lawyer. As the youngest of three daughters, she grew up in a happy home where music and other cultural pursuits were encouraged. She knew at an early age that she wanted to be a cellist, but outside the sanctuary of her family home, darker forces were stirring.
She recalled on a BBC television documentary in 1996: "We were the typical assimilated German-Jewish family. We went to a little private school, and I suddenly heard, 'Don't give the Jew the sponge,' and I thought, 'What is all this?'"
By 1938, as antisemitism took hold in Nazi Germany, Lasker's parents couldn't find a cello tutor in Breslau who would teach a Jewish child. She was sent to Berlin to study, but had to rush back to her parents after a night of murder and mayhem. On 9 November 1938, the insidious persecution of Jewish people turned violent as Nazis smashed the windows of homes, businesses and synagogues on Kristallnacht or "the night of broken glass".
Back at home, Lasker's parents continued to instil a love of culture in their children, as "nobody can take that away from us". Her eldest sister Marianne escaped in 1939 on the Kindertransport, the mission which took thousands of children to safety in Britain just before the war. By 1942, even as "the world was falling to pieces", her father still had Anita and her sister Renate discussing sophisticated works such as Friedrich Schiller's tragic play Don Carlos. However, it was "obvious what was going to happen", she said.
Arriving in hell
In April 1942, the dreaded order came for her parents to report to a certain location within 24 hours. "We walked through Breslau, not just my parents but a whole column of people, to this particular point and said goodbye. That was the end. I only understood what my parents must have gone through when I became a parent myself. By then, one had already started to suppress the luxury of feelings."
Anita and Renate were sent to a Jewish orphanage, but they soon hatched a plan to escape from Nazi Germany. Posing as women on their way home to unoccupied France, they set off with two friends for Breslau railway station clutching forged papers. The plan failed and they were arrested by officers of the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police force. Anita served about 18 months in jail on charges of forgery, aiding the enemy and attempted escape, but at least she was relatively safe there. "Prison is not a pleasant place to be in, but it's not a concentration camp," she said. "Nobody kills you in a prison."
In 1943, because of overcrowding in Breslau prison, any remaining Jewish people were relocated to concentration camps. Anita was put on a train to be taken to Auschwitz, and Renate was sent two weeks later. Anita arrived in the camp at night to find a terrible scene: "I remember it was very noisy and totally bewildering. You had no idea where you were. Noisy with the dogs, people screaming, a horrible smell... You'd arrived in hell, really."
Upon arrival, she was tattooed and shaved by Auschwitz prisoners who were eager for any news about the war. "I said, 'Look, I can't tell you too much because I've been in prison for a long time,' and casually mentioned that I played the cello. And this girl said, 'Oh, that is very good. You might be saved.' The situation was unbelievable, really. I was naked, I had no hair, I had a number on my arm, and I had this ridiculous conversation. She went and got Alma Rosé, who was the conductor of the orchestra, so I became a member of the famous Women's Orchestra."
Alma Rosé was a niece of composer Gustav Mahler, while her father was leader of the Vienna Philharmonic. The violinist ran the camp orchestra with fearsome professionalism, according to Lasker: "She succeeded in making us so worried about what we were going to play and whether we were playing well that we temporarily didn't worry about what was going to happen to us."
Using instruments stolen from other people who had been brought to the camp, the orchestra played its limited repertoire of military music. "Our job was to play marches for the columns that worked outside the camp when they marched out, and in the evening when they came back in," she said.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs in 1996, Lasker said that while Rosé set "enormously high standards", she did not think it was because of a fear of being murdered if they failed to play well. "It was an escape somehow into excellence," she said. "Somehow you come to terms with the fact that eventually they're going to get you, but whilst they haven't got you, you just carry on. I think one of the ingredients of survival was to be with other people. I think anybody on their own really didn't have a chance."
From Auschwitz to Belsen
Rosé did not survive the war, dying of suspected botulism in April 1944. Lasker said: "I think we owe our lives to Alma. She had a dignity which imposed itself even on the Germans. Even the Germans treated her as if she were a member of the human race."
The music stopped in October 1944 when the women were transferred to Belsen, a concentration camp where there was no orchestra. Conditions there were unimaginably awful. Lasker said: "It wasn't actually an extermination camp – it was a camp where people perished. There were no gas chambers there, no need for gas chambers – you just died of disease, of starvation."
The liberation of Belsen by British troops in April 1945 saved her life. "I think another week and we probably wouldn't have made it because there was no food and no water left," she said.
More like this:
• The man who saved 669 children from the Nazis
• Anne Frank's father on his daughter's diary
• How WW2's D-Day began with a death-defying mission
After the war, Anita and Renate contacted their sister Marianne in the UK, and in 1946 they both settled in Britain. Renate went on to work as an author and journalist, moving to France with her husband in 1982. She died in 2021, 11 days shy of her 97th birthday. Marianne, the eldest sister who was brought to safety on the Kindertransport, died in childbirth soon after the war. "Such are the ironies of fate," she told the Guardian in 2005.
Anita pursued a career as a successful musician, becoming a founder member of the English Chamber Orchestra. On a visit to Paris, she was put in touch with Peter Wallfisch, a piano student and fellow refugee whom she remembered from her school days in Breslau. They married in 1952 and had two children, cello player Raphael and psychotherapist Maya. While Lasker and her husband communicated with each other in "a total mixture of languages", she admitted that "it would have been totally impossible for me to speak German to my children".
For decades, she vowed never again to set foot on German soil, fearing that anyone of a certain age could have been "the very person who murdered my parents". With the passage of time, she softened her stance, and by 2018 she was invited to Berlin to address politicians in the Bundestag, the German parliament. She said: "As you see, I broke my oath – many, many years ago – and I have no regrets. It's quite simple: hate is poison and, ultimately, you poison yourself."
--
If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news delivered to your inbox every Friday.
For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
From Netflix mega-hit The Night Agent to Apple TV+'s beloved Slow Horses, tales of secret agents and sinister plots are becoming ever more popular again. That's because they resonate with the times.
If you've sat down to watch a new TV series recently, there's a high chance that it has involved murders, sinister plots, cover-ups, moles, and at least one secret service agent trying to get to the bottom of it all.
In recent months on the small screen, we've had an update of 1970s novel The Day of The Jackal, about the cat-and-mouse game between an assassin and an MI5 operative, and series four of Apple TV+'s brilliant comedy-drama about underdog agents, Slow Horses. There's been The Agency, the US adaptation of the French thriller Le Bureau des Légendes, and the slick London-based Netflix show Black Doves. And last week saw the premiere of both the second series of the conspiracy-laden The Night Agent, which was a huge hit on Netflix first time around, and new Apple TV+ series Prime Target, with season two of Netflix's The Recruit coming before the end of the month. There are so many spy thrillers on television at the moment that you might start to question if you're the only person in the world who's not an undercover agent.
Of course, the popularity of spy thrillers on TV is nothing new – they have long been a staple for broadcasters and streamers, much of which is down to the wealth of espionage literature. Spy novels first came into being at the beginning of the 19th Century, reflecting distrust around political and military conflicts of the time – see James Fenimore Cooper's 1821's The Spy: A Tale of the Neutral Ground, which explored tensions during the American Revolution and fears about Patriots being British spies.
Jumping forward in time, the genre really began to flourish during the 20th Century when two World Wars, followed by the Cold War, plus the creation of national intelligence agencies in the UK and US, provided fertile inspiration. In the Cold War period, British authors such as John le Carré and Len Deighton were big-hitters with celebrated works such as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Ipcress File, while Ian Fleming created the blueprint for all future secret service agents with his James Bond series. Come the 80s and 90s, meanwhile, US spy novelist Tom Clancy became a global phenomenon with his Jack Ryan series.
Now, more than 200 years since popular spy-based literature was first printed, the appetite for spy thrillers has never been stronger. In the UK, the market for espionage novels grew a remarkable 45% in a year to £9.7 million ($12 million) in 2024, according to Nielsen BookData. Philip Stone, head of publisher account management at Nielsen BookData, tells the BBC that, as well as it being boom times for the crime genre as a whole, such a huge uplift in sales of spy thrillers in particular is "in part due to the success of the adaptation of Mick Herron's Slough House series" – the basis for Apple TV+'s Slow Horses.
Given the big ratings for some of the spy shows on TV – season one of The Night Agent was Netflix's seventh most-watched show ever, with 98.2 million views – it's clear, too, that it's not only readers but viewers who are heavily invested in tales of double-crossing, whistle-blowing counter-surveillance. But why is the genre having a particularly successful resurgence right now?
How spy fiction reflects reality
With all their murky goings on, spy dramas could be resonating with viewers as they reflect on the unpredictable and unstable world we live in now; where truth is obscured by disinformation and where trust in governments, authorities and other establishments is at an all-time low. In the UK, a record high of 45% of people quizzed by the National Centre for Social Research in their 2024 survey said they "almost never" trust governments of any party to place the needs of the nation above the interests of their own political party. In the US, it's a similar story, with a 2023 Gallup poll revealing just 8% of the public had a "great deal" of confidence in Congress, while a 2024 Pew Research Center study found only 22% of US adults said they trust the federal government to do the right thing just about always or most of the time.
Joseph Oldham, lecturer in communication and mass media at the British University in Egypt, and author of 2017's Paranoid Visions: Spies, Conspiracies and the Secret State, tells the BBC that there are parallels between the current spy thriller boom and other eras where the genre has especially thrived, such as the run-up to World War One, pre-World War Two and the early Cold War. "What I think these moments in history have in common with each other, and indeed with our present moment, is the background sense of great geopolitical tensions between major global powers running out of control, either with war looming directly ahead or with the threat of apocalypse constantly hanging in the background, and with the tensions getting displaced on to proxy wars and espionage."
People's levels of suspicion of those around them are also at a high – a University of Oxford study found that 27% of respondents believed that there was a conspiracy against them – and conspiracies are a repeated theme in this new selection of shows, such as The Night Agent – not, incidentally, to be confused with Le Carré's The Night Manager, which is set for a second and third series almost a decade after the Emmy-winning BBC adaptation in 2016.
More like this:
• The anti-James Bond that gets to the heart of Britishness
• The 20 best TV shows of 2024
• 11 of the best TV shows to watch this January
Netflix's The Night Agent is a paranoia-stoked thriller focused on the White House in which, to borrow from horror film parlance, the call is coming from inside the house. Adapted from a novel by Matthew Quirk, season one saw low-rank FBI agent Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso) working to expose who in the presidential office was behind a staged "terrorist" bomb on the Metro, and series two places him on the run when the information he has gleaned from a mission is compromised, because of a leak in the CIA. Meanwhile Prime Target – featuring The White Lotus's Leo Woodall as mathematician Edward Brooks – features similar machinations, when Edward finds himself hunted by unknown, sinister forces after he comes close to finding a pattern in prime numbers that holds the key to every computer in the world.
From a psychological perspective, however, people can be drawn to such shows because of the reassurance they in the end offer, cutting through the murk of geopolitics to unmask the real villains, and eventually making clear who is "good" and "bad". "Spy dramas appeal because of the escapism and adrenaline rush they offer, along with the pleasure of following the hero's journey, but one important element is how they fulfil our strong desire to resolve ambiguity and uncertainty. When we do, reward systems in our brain are activated," says Dr Justin Spray, a chartered member of the British Psychological Society, and filmmaker. "The shows also appeal to our curiosity about the unknown and forbidden, but in a world that is becoming increasingly complex and polarised they also allow us to safely navigate – and seek an understanding of – issues of national and global significance."
How the genre is being shaken up
Not that today's spy shows can't sometimes find a funny side to espionage too. Whereas '00s and '10s secret services thrillers like Spooks, Homeland and 24 played the drama extremely seriously, some contemporary spy series like Killing Eve, Mr & Mrs Smith and Black Doves have felt stylistically and tonally very different, folding in a fresh irreverence, self-deprecating characters and a black humour that is not usually found in this type of television, and that feels geared towards a younger audience.
Additionally, they've been notable for their moral ambiguity – so while characters like Killing Eve's Villanelle (Jodie Comer), The Day of The Jackal's The Jackal (Eddie Redmayne) or Black Doves' Sam Young (Ben Whishaw) are hired assassins, there’s something alluring about them that even, perversely, has the viewer rooting for them, as the lines between hero/villain become blurred yet again.
As for the real, big-time villains at play, "It's interesting to note that the baddies in these stories have changed to reflect the worries of today", says Spray, noting that whereas before the genre flourished because of "fears of the actions of the superpowers in the '50s, the plots now reflect concerns such as the climate crisis and human trafficking – [and] a rich vein, of course, is our distrust of our own governments."
More specifically, Oldham is interested in how the powers that spies answer to has changed in some of these shows. "Traditionally, spy fiction has typically been about agents working for the state or the government, whether that's James Bond or George Smiley; or it's a paranoid conspiracy story where they're being hunted down and persecuted by the government. But in something like Black Doves, our main characters all work for this private intelligence service [the eponymous Black Doves], and they spend a lot of the story not actually knowing who they are serving. These are characters who are separate from the institutions of state, and this seems to speak to the privatisation of so much of public life, and the sense that governments seem increasingly ineffectual in the face of these capitalist concerns."
This "privatisation" of the spy world in Black Doves was just one unique aspect to this stylish original series, written by Joe Barton, which saw the renegade assassin and spy duo of Whishaw's Young and Helen Webb (Keira Knightley) rallying together against unknown forces to find out who killed Helen's lover, as they realised that they could equally be dispensed, even by those who employ them. It has been another big Netflix hit, and unusually a second series was commissioned by the platform before the original had even streamed.
These faceless, private companies who try to control the chaos can also be seen in Killing Eve with The Twelve – 12 anonymous people who order assassinations from Eve – or in Mr & Mrs Smith, with the mysterious computer system called HiHi who organises the missions and the killings, leading some fans to wonder if HiHi is actually AI. That would certainly be an interesting and very timely conspiracy theory to explore in the second series, which has been given the greenlight, with Mark Eydelshteyn (one of the stars of the Oscar-tipped Anora) playing one of the leads this time around.
All told, given the huge numbers that these modern espionage stories are pulling in for all the streamers – and the sheer amount of novels written and sold in this genre – it doesn't take a secret agent to uncover that we're going to continue to see many more stories of deception and covert operations on TV.
And while these shows might only offer outlandish, flight-of-fantasy solutions for complex geo-political issues, they're a comfort to many, nonetheless. "There's a lovely quote from [cultural historian] Michael Denning who says 'the secret agent returns agency to a world that seems less and less the product of human action'," Oldham says.
--
If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week.
For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
A Leeds museum which was threatened with closure under council budget proposals will now stay open after a "passionate" response from the public.
Abbey House Museum in Kirkstall opened in 1927 and is known for its replica Victorian streets and vintage penny slot machines.
Leeds City Council ran a consultation on the future of the museum as it tried to address "unprecedented financial pressures" - but said plans to close the attraction had now been withdrawn.
Final budget plans for the coming year include £67m in extra funding but the council said the impact of rising costs, pressures and demand for services means it needs to save £103.8m overall.
The budget will be presented to the council's executive board next week and to the full council on 26 February.
It includes an increase in council tax of 4.99% and a review of children's centres and transport services for children and families.
The council said it would introduce a "pay as you feel" admission charge at Leeds City Museum, Leeds Art Gallery and Leeds Discovery Centre, and is considering charging for entrance to Kirkstall Abbey.
It will also hand over the running of Middleton Leisure Centre to a third party.
The extra £67m of funding means the proposed 10% funding cut for neighbourhood networks in Leeds will not be required, and there will be no reduction made to wellbeing and youth activity funding.
The council said as well as keeping the museum open, possible changes to bowling green provision in the city are to be further consulted on, with the aim of looking at ways to raise income and reduce the number of proposed closures.
The council received nearly 10,000 responses to its consultation about the museum.
Councillor Salma Arif said the feedback had been "incredibly passionate".
"The overriding sentiment has been that people across Leeds clearly recognise the unique social value of our museums and galleries to their communities and local heritage."
She added: "What we need now is for people channel the passion and enthusiasm they have demonstrated during the consultation into visiting and engaging with the site as much as possible over the coming months so we can all work to support its future."
The museum will remain open as usual.
The current exhibition is called Story Time and includes a huge variety of historic books and games, each exploring the magical world of children's stories.
However, a council spokesperson said: "Savings still need to be made, and alternative options to secure to the savings required are currently being reviewed."
Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North or tell us a story you think we should be covering here.
A Monet masterpiece from the National Gallery is to be exhibited in four galleries around England.
The Petit Bras of the Seine at Argenteuil, painted in 1872, will be displayed at venues including the Ferens Art Gallery, Hull.
The work depicts a winter's day on the banks of a river on the outskirts of Paris.
The tour, which will being in the autumn and run throughout next year, will also take in the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich, South Shields Museum and Art Gallery and the Grundy Art Gallery in Blackpool.
It will be only the second time the artwork has left the London collection in 20 years.
As part of the exhibition, the Ferens' will hold a "multi-sensory immersive space" featuring smells, sounds and touchable works designed for disabled and neurodivergent visitors, Hull City Council said.
Councillor Rob Pritchard said: "It is a great honour to be part of this prestigious partnership with the National Gallery, offering residents and visitors to Hull a chance to see such a significant piece of artwork up close."
The painting is due to be displayed at the Ferens for three months from 19 June next year.
It will be the fourth stop on the National Gallery "Masterpiece" tour, which is due to begin in Norwich in September this year, before moving on to South Shields (from January 2026) and Blackpool (from March 2026).
Claude Monet, who died in 1926, was a founder of impressionism. His most famous works include his Water Lilies and Haystacks series.
In 2019, a Haystacks painting of 1890 sold at Sotheby's for $110.7m (£85.7m).
National Gallery Director Sir Gabriele Finaldi said more than a million people had attended previous Masterpiece exhibitions.
"The National Gallery's collection belongs to all of us," he said.
"It is part of our duty and our honour to look after these paintings and to bring them to where people are, not just expect them to come to us."
Listen to highlights from Hull and East Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North or tell us about a story you think we should be covering here.
Anyone confused about Beyoncé's foray into the country genre has only to visit her home state of Texas to learn about Black Cowboy culture
Anyone confused about Beyoncé's 2024 foray into country music need only visit her home state of Texas to get a clearer understanding of the link between the pop star and the country and western vibe of her album, Cowboy Carter, which won three awards at the 67th Grammy awards in Los Angeles: Best Country Album, Best Country Duo/Group Performance and the long-coveted Best Album of the Year. Though Beyoncé herself said upon the album's release, "This ain't a country album… it's a Beyoncé album," it clearly draws from many sources, including the long history of Black country music and Black cowboy culture.
Texas – and the singer's hometown of Houston, in particular – has long been associated with cowboys. The city, which hosts one of the largest rodeos in the world, the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, has undeniable cowboy credentials, as does the African American community in Texas and the greater American West. However, for a long time, the image of the cowboy has largely had a white face.
"I think that there are these narratives about what America is, and that's always been coded as white," said Francesca Royster, a professor of English and Critical Ethnic Studies at DePaul University and the author of the book Black Country Music: Listening for Revolutions. "The cowboy has been this heroic image to justify Western expansion, and it just seems necessary to make that figure white, even though there were always Black cowboys."
Many people are not aware of how deep cowboy culture runs in the Black community, both historically and today. Beginning in the early 1800s, one out of every four cowboys was Black and horsemanship was an important part of many African American communities well into the 1950s. Even rodeo steer wrestling, known as "bulldogging", a technique where a bull is wrestled to the ground using its horns for leverage, was invented by a Black cowboy named Bill Pickett. He was the first African American man to be inducted into the National Rodeo Hall of Fame.
"I hope it will change things." Royster said, referring to how Beyoncé's dive into the country genre. "Thinking about Beyoncé's Instagram post where she talked about feeling unwelcome in country music spaces. As someone who's been studying Black country music, that to me was a familiar refrain. But I really feel like things are moving fast in terms of changing the culture around country music for diverse listeners and audiences as well as performers."
In recent years other musicians from Lil Nas X to Blanco Brown have delved into the genre, and their successes have served to highlight the work of musicians like banjo player Rhiannon Giddens and singer-songwriter Brittany Spencer, who have been playing with the genre for years, and are featured on Cowboy Carter. And now, the Texas Hold 'Em singer, who at the album's debut made history as the only Black woman to be at the top of Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart, is the latest to carry the torch forward.
"There's a welcome home happening, and it's for everyone," said actor and Black cowboy Brandon Alexander, about the new visibility of Black country music and cowboy culture. "Whether you get on a horse or you wear the boots or you don't, this is a welcome home. This is a reconnection. This is a, 'we're not forgotten'. This is a 'we helped to shape America, we helped to shape the West'. It wasn't just the John Waynes and the Clint Eastwoods. They were there, but we were also there. So don't forget our stories."
The best way to honour these stories is to learn about them first hand on a visit to Texas. Here are some ways to experience the history and present-day of the state's Black cowboy culture that led, at least in part, to the creation of Cowboy Carter.
Exploring Texas' cowboy culture
Every year since 1957, the Prairie View Trail Riders Association, named for the historically Black college Prairie View A&M University, have done a trail ride from Hempstead, Texas, to Houston to attend the annual Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. This ride, which visitors can view from Memorial Park in Houston, serves to raise awareness of both the history and the continued existence of Black cowboys and cowgirls. The rodeo itself also hosts a Black Heritage Day every year.
Just outside of Houston, in nearby Rosenburg, Texas, historian and cowboy Larry Callies started the Black Cowboy Museum in 2017 to uncover and preserve the important but little-known history of Black cowboys. In addition to the historical exhibitions available there, the museum also offers opportunities for those interested in continuing cowboy traditions by offering bull-riding classes and hosting an annual Hall of Fame ceremony to honour those Black cowboys still making history in the saddle today.
More like this:
• The forgotten story of the US’ black cowboys
• The black cowboys of Chicago's South Side
• The Kentucky Derby's forgotten Black past
There are also plenty of opportunities to use these skills, or just view them, at Black rodeos in Texas and across the country, including the Texas Black Invitational Rodeo in Dallas, put on by the city's African American Museum, and the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo, which travels across the country and is now celebrating its 40th year.
Alexander emphasized the welcoming nature of Black rodeos for anyone visiting for the first time: "If you haven't been [to a rodeo], get your boots, get your hat, get whoever you want to go [with] and head out. Sing in unison with everybody when they play a song that we all know, go grab yourself something nice to drink. You will hear some of the most amazing stories from complete strangers."
This article was originally published on 4 April 2024 and has been updated to reflect Beyoncé's 2025 Grammy wins.
--
If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news delivered to your inbox every Friday.
Join more than three million BBC Travel fans by liking us on Facebook, or follow us on X and Instagram.
Singer songwriter Emma Gale had been close to giving up writing music when a song she penned about the pandemic went viral.
Four years on, says things have "gone crazy" after three of her songs made it through to the Eurovision Song Contest shortlists of three separate countries.
Next week, Ms Gale who lives in Dorset, will be heading to Norway where her song Sulale, sung by Nora Jabri, will go before a panel and public vote.
Poison Cake, performed by Marko Bosnjak, is also a strong contender in Croatia where judges and viewers will choose their entry later this month.
A third song had been a favourite in the Latvian contest but the performer was forced to pull out of the competition due to illness.
During lockdown Ms Gale recorded a track, Let's see what the Earth has to say, which went viral on Facebook.
"People went crazy for it," she said.
"I just hit the right time - and that led me to where I am today.
"A lot of people did creative things during that time. It gave us the time and space to think about our lives and, for me, it's been amazing - it's changed my life."
She began writing songs for Eurovision two years ago, after meeting a publisher with an interest in the contest.
She said: "It's just gone crazy this year.
"To have one [song] would have been amazing but to have three is pretty unheard of.
"I think Germany had 3,000 entries. Croatia was pretty hard to get into this year because they came second last year."
If successful, the songs will feature at the Eurovision Song Contest in Basel in May.
You can follow BBC Dorset on Facebook, X, or Instagram.
From the moment Justin Baldoni announced in 2019 that he was adapting the best-selling book It Ends With Us into a film, there was a widespread frenzy.
There are few books in recent years that have become as big a cultural phenomenon as Colleen Hoover's novel - it has sold 20m copies and became an internet sensation on TikTok with more than one billion tags on the app.
When Blake Lively, who rose to fame in the 2000s in Gossip Girl, was cast as the main character, fans became even more excited, describing her as the perfect choice to play Lily Bloom, a young woman who grew up witnessing domestic abuse and winds up in the same position years later.
Lily, a florist in Boston, navigates a complicated love triangle between her charming but abusive boyfriend Ryle Kincaid - played by Jane the Virgin's Justin Baldoni - and her compassionate first love, Atlas Corrigan (Brandon Sklenar).
Released last August, the film became a box office success bringing in more than $350m (£280m) globally.
But despite its financial success, everything wasn't running so smoothly behind the scenes. Rumours of a feud between Baldoni and Lively began swirling before the film was even released.
In December, Lively filed a legal complaint against her co-star, accusing him of sexual harassment and starting a smear campaign against her. Baldoni strongly denies that and has sued her in response.
Here is the story so far:
It Ends With Us press tour
For a film about domestic abuse, the press tour for It Ends With Us was probably not what you would have expected. There were pink carpets, flowers galore and the promotion of Lively's new haircare brand and her husband's gin company.
Instead of advocacy on the red carpet, Lively highlighted fashion and florals.
At the London premiere, press were told to keep questions "fun and light-hearted" with one event organiser telling me to "steer away from questions on domestic abuse".
One of her remarks made at the New York premiere - "you are so much more than just a survivor or just a victim" - sparked backlash on social media.
Domestic abuse survivor Ashley Paige criticised Ms Lively's language and told the BBC that Lively was promoting the film like it's "the sequel to Barbie".
Lively was also criticised for her comments in another clumsy promotional tour video where she said: "Grab your friends, wear your florals and head out to see it."
Justin Baldoni's absence
Alongside the press tour being described as "tone-deaf", people started asking questions about why the Lively and Baldoni weren't photographed on the red carpet together at the film's New York premiere.
The pair also did no interviews together during the press tour and at the London premiere, which Baldoni didn't attend, I was warned by Lively's team to not "ask any questions about Justin".
Internet sleuths also spotted that cast members including Lively and author Hoover did not follow Baldoni on social media.
Neither Lively or Baldoni addressed rumours of a feud during the press tour and the only reference to each other was Baldoni telling Today that his co-star was a "dynamic creative".
"She had her hands in every part of this production, and everything she touched made [it] better," he said about the 37-year-old.
'Smear campaign'
During the film's press tour, Baldoni hired a crisis manager, Melissa Nathan, whose previous clients include Johnny Depp and Drake.
Shortly after the press tour, Lively faced a barrage of criticism on social media relating to her comments on that tour as well as from old interviews.
One of the interviews to resurface was one shared by a Norwegian journalist, Kjersti Flaa, who posted a video on YouTube of her interviewing Lively in 2016. It was titled "The Blake Lively interview that made me want to quit my job."
Flaa has since said she had "nothing to do with Justin Baldoni and his smear campaign".
Actor Brandon Sklenar, who plays Atlas in the film, defended Lively and said in a post on Instagram that people had been "vilifying" the women involved in the film online.
He said it was "disheartening to see the amount of negativity being projected" and that someone close to him who had experienced a relationship similar to Lily's had credited the film with "saving her life".
Legal complaint
Four months after the film's launch, Lively filed a legal complaint against Mr Baldoni in which she accused him of sexual harassment.
The complaint also listed Wayfarer Studios, Mr Baldoni's production company which produced It Ends With Us, as a defendant.
The legal filing accuses Mr Baldoni and Wayfarer CEO Jamey Heath of "repeated sexual harassment and other disturbing behaviour". Some other female cast and crew had also spoken up about their conduct, the filing alleges.
It also alleges that Ms Lively, Mr Baldoni and other people involved in the development of the film attended a meeting in January to address "the hostile work environment" on set. Her husband, actor Ryan Reynolds, attended the meeting alongside her, according to the complaint.
At the meeting, attendees agreed to a list of demands, including Mr Baldoni and Mr Heath making "no more descriptions of their own genitalia", requiring an intimacy coordinator on set at all times when Ms Lively was in scenes with Mr Baldoni and no "friends" of the producers and directors being on set during scenes when Ms Lively was in a state of nudity.
The list of demands also implied that Mr Baldoni had asked Ms Lively's trainer how much she weighed and alleged that Mr Baldoni and Mr Heath had spoken about their "pornography addiction" to Ms Lively.
Plan to 'destroy' reputation
In the filing, Ms Lively also alleges that Mr Baldoni and his team attacked her public image after the meeting.
She accuses him of orchestrating a plan to "destroy" her reputation in the press and online, including hiring a crisis manager who led a "sophisticated, coordinated, and well-financed retaliation plan" against her and used a "digital army" to post social media content that seemed authentic.
"To safeguard against the risk of Ms Lively ever revealing the truth about Mr Baldoni, the Baldoni-Wayfarer team created, planted, amplified, and boosted content designed to eviscerate Ms Lively's credibility," her team wrote in the filing.
It adds: "They engaged in the same techniques to bolster Mr Baldoni's credibility and suppress any negative content about him."
In the filing, Ms Lively says that this had led to "substantial harm" that affected "all aspects" of her life.
Mr Baldoni's legal team told the BBC the allegations are "categorically false" and said they hired a crisis manager because Ms Lively had threatened to derail the film unless her demands were met.
Responding to the legal complaint, Mr Baldoni's lawyer, Bryan Freedman, said on Saturday: "It is shameful that Ms Lively and her representatives would make such serious and categorically false accusations against Mr Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios and its representatives."
Mr Freedman accused Ms Lively of making numerous demands and threats, including "threatening to not show up to set, threatening to not promote the film", which would end up "ultimately leading to its demise during release, if her demands were not met".
Support for Lively
Hollywood stars including America Ferrera, Amber Tamblyn and Alexis Bledel have publicly backed Blake Lively after she filed her complaint.
Ferrera, Tamblyn and Bledel, who starred with Lively in 2005 film The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, issued a joint statement on Instagram, on Sunday saying they "stand with her in solidarity".
"Throughout the filming of It Ends with Us, we saw her summon the courage to ask for a safe workplace for herself and colleagues on set, and we are appalled to read the evidence of a premeditated and vindictive effort that ensued to discredit her voice," they wrote.
Colleen Hoover, the author of It Ends With Us, also showed her support, describing Ms Lively as "honest, kind, supportive and patient".
Baldoni's award rescinded
In early December Baldoni was awarded a women's solidarity honour by Vital Voices, a global non-profit organisation that focuses on empowering women.
The organisation has rescinded the award after the legal complaint filed by Lively alleged "abhorrent conduct" by the actor, his studio and a crisis public relations team that it said was "contrary to the values" it held.
And since the legal complaint, Baldoni's podcast co-host Liz Plank announced she was leaving The Man Enough show.
The podcast bills itself as creating "a safe environment" for exploring issues such as how "masculinity" shows up in relationships, as well as "sex, success" and "mental health".
Baldoni sues New York Times for libel
On 31 December Baldoni's lawyers filed a $250m libel lawsuit against New York Times over its reporting of Lively's allegations against him.
The paper published an article on 21 December entitled: "'We Can Bury Anyone': Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine."
Baldoni and nine other plaintiffs including publcist Melissa Nathan accuse the paper of libel and false-light invasion of privacy.
The lawsuit says the paper "'cherry-picked' and altered communications stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead".
A New York Times spokesperson said the story was "meticulously and responsibly reported" and it plans to "vigorously defend" itself.
Baldoni files $400m lawsuit against Lively
On 16 January, Baldoni filed a lawsuit against Lively and her husband Ryan Ryenolds.
He's suing them for $400m (£326m) damages on claims of civil extortion, defamation and invasion of privacy.
His lawyer Bryan Freedman said the actress and her partners had disseminated "grossly edited, unsubstantiated, new and doctored information to the media".
He also said Lively and her team had "attempted to bulldoze reputations and livelihoods for heinously selfish reasons".
In response, Lively's legal team described the lawsuit as "another chapter in the abuser playbook".
Out-takes and voicemail released
On 21 January, Baldoni released three out-takes of a romantic scene from the film as evidence that Lively's claims of sexual harassment are unfounded.
The video's caption says the footage shows both actors "clearly behaving well within the scope of the scene and with mutual respect and professionalism".
However, Lively's lawyers said the footage showed him "repeatedly leaning in toward Ms Lively and attempting to kiss her".
They added that every moment was "improvised by Mr Baldoni with no discussion or consent in advance, and no intimacy co-ordinator present".
"Any woman who has been inappropriately touched in the workplace will recognise Ms Lively's discomfort," they said.
The following week, a voicemail of Baldoni apologising to Lively during an exchange about a script rewrite in April 2023 was also released.
A judge has set a date for their case to trial - 9 March 2026.
Baldoni publishes website with timeline of events
Baldoni has published a website called Lawsuit Info with his amended complaint and a timeline of events related to his lawsuits against Lively and New York Times.
Published on 1 February it contains two legal documents: Baldoni's latest court filings against Lively and Reynolds, and a 168-page document entitled "timeline of relevant events" related to the dispute and the production of the film.
The latter includes alleged text message exchanges between him and Lively.
Baldoni's lawyer, Bryan Freedman, told BBC News that Baldoni amended his lawsuit due "to the overwhelming amount of new proof that has come to light".
Lively's representatives are yet to comment, but a New York Times spokesperson told BBC News that Baldoni's legal filings were "rife with inaccuracies" about the newspaper, "including, for example, the bogus claim that The Times had early access to Ms Lively's state civil rights complaint".
First court hearing
On 3 February, a pretrial meeting was held at a federal court in Manhattan.
The hour-and-a-half hearing became heated as lawyers for each side claimed the other was badmouthing their client outside of court.
Judge Liman said both sides have "given the public plenty to feast upon" and added that if the case ended up being "litigated in the press", he could be forced to make the March 2026 trial date earlier, so jurors do not become prejudiced against either of the defendants.
He also said he is barring the lawyers from making statements publicly that could sway the outcome of a trial.
A reformed youth offender is using music to discourage other young people from committing crimes like graffiti and criminal damage.
JT, from Southampton, said he found himself in trouble with the police multiple times when he was in his teens, but decided to turn his life around and help others.
Now a music mentor and life coach, the 34-year-old works with young people in the city to intercept and reduce patterns of anti-social behaviour.
He hopes the free service, which sees teenagers develop their songwriting and production skills, will help set them "on the right path".
JT said he had a few run-ins with the law after "minor violent crimes" when he was younger.
"When you hang around with other young men who maybe are a bit lost or not on the correct path, inevitably anti-social behaviour does come out," he said.
But in his mid-20s, he decided to change the course of his life.
He now works with charities like the SoCo Music Project, and rents out spaces to run groups and one-to-one sessions with young people.
"Music for me is my creative outlet that has saved me countless times from maybe making the wrong decision," he added.
A 14-year-old attending one of JT's groups, who we are not naming, said he had previously been in trouble with the police.
"I kicked someone's door through," he said, adding: "I was thinking my mates had done it, I might as well do it."
He said he had been told it had been put on his criminal record but would be removed when he turned 18.
"When I actually got caught, my mum made me go to Morrisons and buy [the owners] flowers… I went there and said sorry to the husband and wife."
A 15-year-old, who we are also not naming, said there were not a lot of free activities for people his age to do.
He felt the music classes, where he was able to develop his rap skills, had given him something productive to focus on.
"I don't want to be perceived as a bad kid… JT opened the music world for me," he added.
National funding for the youth sector has been cut by more than £1.2bn over the last 15 years, according to charity Youth UK.
The government said youth centres played "a vital role in enabling young people to take part in a range of activities and to get the support they need".
"We have allocated more than £85 million this year to create welcoming spaces for young people – including at least £26 million through the Better Youth Spaces programme for youth clubs to buy new equipment and undertake essential renovations," it added.
JT said he had seen a number of youth hubs shut across Southampton - and had noticed a rise in anti-social behaviour.
"I remember when I was younger and there was a youth club in SO19 and there was one in SO14... there were youth clubs everywhere," he said.
He said music kept young people off the street, as following the process of creating a song from start-to-finish gave them something to do.
"We're just trying to set them on the right path and give them as much nurturing and care and guidance as we can."
You can follow BBC Hampshire & Isle of Wight on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
Almost 60 years ago folk star Bob Dylan was branded "Judas" after "turning electronic" to unexpecting audiences during his world tour.
Alan Snook, who was seated front centre for the controversial tour when it came to Bristol's Colston Hall, now Bristol Beacon, remembers the audience were "completely shaken".
"I think it was the sheer volume of the sound," said Mr Snook, who has shared his memories of the night with the concert hall.
As the biopic Bob Dylan, A Complete Unknown hits UK cinemas, the Bristol Beacon is celebrating the pivotal moment in music history.
"I remember that they knew that it would be a sell-out concert," said Mr Snook.
"I wanted to be close to the front and the middle so I had a really good view," he said.
Despite being a regular concert goer, he was not a "massive fan" of Dylan, nor a "folky", he said.
"But I just knew he was the big thing and he was likely to be in the future."
Dylan performed the first half of his show "with his harmonica and his guitar, singing the sort of songs that people were familiar with", said Mr Snook.
'Too loud, turn it down'
But when he walked on for the second half, the singer was joined by "a few guitarists, a drummer and goodness knows what else", as well as "huge speakers", "which for those times were pretty unusual", he said.
He added: "The whole thing changed completely.
"The sound levels were so phenomenal the audience was completely taken aback.
"He didn't come on and build up to it. Everybody was completely shaken by this."
He remembers audience members shouting "too loud, too loud, turn it down".
"They took no notice whatsoever," added Mr Snook.
He recalled that at one point between songs it fell silent because the audience were so shocked.
"Somebody shouted out 'say something, say something'.
"Dylan sort of drawled into the mic, 'what do you want me to say?' and then he blasted into the next song," he said.
"I'm not sure that the reaction was against him turning so-called electronic. I certainly didn't have any problem with that.
"I think it was the sheer volume of the sound. I don't think anybody had heard anything like it."
The controversy had first begun at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival in the US, where Dylan was booed when he played electric, but the message had clearly not reached all fans.
Following his performance in Bristol, Dylan played in a few more venues around the UK, before hitting Manchester's Free Trade Hall on 17 May 1966.
Just before the final song of the set, one audience member shouted "Judas", leading the tour to become known as the Judas Tour.
Speaking of the Bristol concert, Andy Boreham, director of audiences at Bristol Beacon, said: "We've been amazed by the vividness with which people can recall that moment even though it's nearly 60 years ago."
He added they had also received memories from people who had "loved the whole concept and and really embraced his new direction".
The concert hall has a story wall, which illustrates the concert as one of the iconic moments that have taken place there since it opened in 1867.
"As this moment reverberated so massively through music history it was only right that it had its place here on this wall as well," said Mr Boreham.
He added the media "had a field day" reporting on it.
The hall has collated some of the local newspaper cuttings, including quotes that say "ear-splitting disaster", and "a dreadful din".
"For generations that come after you can only imagine," Mr Boreham said.
"So to hear from people who were in the room is really special and I'd have loved to have been there and seen it for myself," he added.
Follow BBC Bristol on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to us on email or via WhatsApp on 0800 313 4630.
In many ways Anora feels like a fairy tale. Except that the film's title character - Ani to her friends - is a stripper and occasional sex worker. And her Prince Charming is the spoiled son of a Russian oligarch.
When he spontaneously proposes, and they get married in Las Vegas, it seems all her dreams are coming true. But she quickly finds that a host of people strongly disapprove of the match.
For Mikey Madison though, it is a dream of a part, where she gets to display everything from steely strength to delicate fragility.
"I recognised from the beginning that she's a very complicated character, very nuanced," agrees Mikey Madison.
"I always felt that she was someone who was very vulnerable on the inside. But is constantly covering it up with this hardness or an aggression. But I do think that she's quite soft inside.
"I think that she's hopeful that this is her happily ever after, and I think that it's an opportunity and I like that she doesn't want to let go of them. And so she's going to fight to the end to try to save it."
Both the film, and Madison's performance in particular, have been gaining huge amounts of awards momentum. It started when the movie premiered at Cannes.
"I have been working for almost a decade now, well trying to work. And that was my ultimate dream, to go to Cannes. And we had a film in the main competition, and then we won [the top prize, the Palme D'Or] and that was crazy in itself."
She calls "everything that has followed" an "absolutely wonderful, pleasant surprise".
"Especially because I think I went into it feeling really proud of the film, and like we made something special to us. And the fact that the film is also special to other people is wonderful.
"It's a dream."
Madison was relatively unknown before Anora. She had had small parts in the fifth instalment of the Scream horror franchise and in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon A Time in Hollywood.
The writer and director of Anora Sean Baker had seen her on screen before, and wrote the part of Ani especially for her.
"She's so unique. Not only in her physicality, but there's something about her aura," says Baker. "There's something.. she's actually quite subdued, even in real life. Her demeanour is, she's quite reserved.
"But then suddenly she can explode like no other other person I've ever seen, no other actor I've ever seen.
"And I was always looking forward to those moments shooting the film, knowing that a scene would call for that. You know, to see that you don't detect anything, and then suddenly just total eruption. It was incredible to watch."
The contradictions in Ani, and the shifting genres of the movie were elements that Madison says she embraced strongly during the filming.
"As an actor sometimes I felt like I was shooting a very romantic film, and sometimes it was almost like a horror film, or a drama, or a slapstick comedy. To navigate through my character with all of these different genres was fun. It was a challenge, and I liked it!"
'Oscar talk'
The 25-year-old has been nominated as best actress at every major awards ceremony, including the Golden Globes, the Batfas and the Oscars. And she is probably Demi Moore's main rival for best actress at the Academy Awards.
Speaking before her Oscar nomination, she said it felt astonishing to be part of the awards conversation.
"I know that I'm incredibly overjoyed, honoured, and humbled that our film is being recognised in this way. But I'm just processing it.
"It's overwhelming and amazing, and all of the things," she says, giving every appearance of being overcome by the acclaim her performance has been gathering.
Should Mikey Madison finish off a fairy tale few months by winning best actress at next month's ceremony, she'll be one of the youngest ever performers to win that academy award, beaten only by a handful of stars, including Jennifer Lawrence, Marlee Matlin, and Audrey Hepburn.
Anora is showing in cinemas across the UK
The new series of Boarders sees its characters "excel" as they face new challenges, one of its stars says.
The second series of BBC comedy-drama Boarders, filmed in Bristol, starts on Monday evening.
On the show, characters Toby, Jaheim, Leah, Omar and Femi attend an almost exclusively white private school and find themselves fighting against microaggressions and racial stereotypes.
Bristol actor Myles Kamwendo, Omar on the show, who lives in Bristol, said: "This season I feel like the kids are excelling. They know where they are, it's just a matter of challenges and the drama of life in school."
Talking to BBC Points West ahead of the second series premiere, he said: "I've been acting since I was 14, so quite a while.
"It's been an exciting journey so far and I can't wait to see where the journey takes me."
He added that he enjoyed filming at Clifton College, which features as the private school St Gilbert's on the show.
He said: "It's a grand school, it really sells the image of St Gilbert's.
"It's exciting filming in the classrooms and in the chapel."
Boarders is created and written by the BAFTA-nominated Daniel Lawrence Taylor, who co-stars in the series as Gus, and is produced by Studio Lambert.
The second series of Boarders is available on the BBC iPlayer from 3 February.
Follow BBC Bristol on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to us on email or via WhatsApp on 0800 313 4630.
The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) has announced that it will be adapting Roald Dahl's children novel The BFG for the stage.
Working alongside Chichester Festival Theatre and the Roald Dahl Story Company, the new stage adaptation will open at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon for a 10-week run over the festive season in 2025.
The BFG tells the story of a young orphan named Sophie who befriends a giant and they embark on a mission together to stop other giants from eating children.
The show is the first RSC stage adaptation of a Roald Dahl novel since Matilda the Musical in 2010.
The production will be directed by RSC's co-artistic director Daniel Evans.
Speaking to BBC News, he said he was excited about the show and that it would appeal to both adults and children as "everyone has dreams and the story shows that if you believe hard enough, your dreams can come true".
Another important character in the book is the Queen who helps the BFG and Sophie save the children.
Based on Queen Elizabeth II, Evans said that as adults will have grown up with her as their monarch, there's something "even more poignant" about her character.
Language changes
The BFG was one of Dahl's books to have been amended in 2023 in a bid to make them more suitable for modern audiences.
For example, the line: "You've gone white as a sheet!" has now been rewritten to "you've gone still as a statue!" and the friendly giant no longer wears a "black" cloak.
Across Dahl's novels, words including "fat" and "ugly" were removed after being reviewed by sensitivity readers, who check for potentially offensive content.
Speaking about the changes, Evans said "it's almost irrelevant in theatre".
"The text will be adapted by the playwright who will have a certain vision of how the characters should be presented and the story they want to tell. It might be that the language is changed entirely or even those scenes are cut."
The BFG will be adapted for the stage by playwright Tom Wells whose work includes Broken Biscuits, The Kitchen Sink and Me, As A Penguin.
According to YouGov, The BFG is the 10th most popular children and young adult fiction book and has sold over 21 million copies globally.
The book has previously been adapted for the 2016 fantasy adventure film which was directed and co-produced by Steven Spielberg and starred Sir Mark Rylance as the BFG and Ruby Barnhill as Sophie.
Matilda the musical has been seen by more than 12 million people in 100 cities across the world and has won 101 international awards. It was adapted into a film in October 2022.
The Roald Dahl story company has previously adapted The Magic Theatre, The Witches and The Enormous Crocodile for the stage.
Dahl, who died aged 74 in 1990, remains the number one most popular author of all-time in the UK and has sold more than 300 million books worldwide as of 2023. His works have been translated into 64 languages.
But antisemitic comments made throughout his life led to Dahl being a highly problematic figure.
In 2020, his family apologised, saying they recognised the "lasting and understandable hurt caused by Roald Dahl's antisemitic statements".
The Mona Lisa will be moved to a new exhibition space at the Louvre in Paris as part of a plan to renovate the world's most frequented museum.
Emmanuel Macron stood in front of the masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci as he made the announcement to an audience of dignitaries, with the change to be introduced by 2031 and visitors charged separately to see the painting.
The French president was outlining his New Renaissance project, which will also involve an international competition to design a second entrance to relieve the growing pressure of visitor numbers beneath the famous glass Pyramid.
Tariff changes will also be introduced from next January so non-EU residents - including UK tourists - pay more to visit.
Macron was giving his response to warnings from the Louvre's director Laurence des Cars that the museum was suffering from grave problems of overcrowding and failing infrastructure.
In a letter to the government made public earlier this month, Ms des Cars said the pyramid - which since 1989 has housed the unique access point to the galleries - was "structurally unable to cope" with visitor numbers that now reach more than nine million a year.
She also said that "in the view of everyone, the presentation of the Mona Lisa... is something that needs to be looked at".
About three-quarters of the museum's 30,000 daily visitors go to see Leonardo da Vinci's painting, but the experience has become an endurance test, with a constant crowd being funnelled through the Salle des Etats and getting on average 50 seconds to observe the picture and take photos.
"The public... has no way of comprehending the artist's work, which raises questions over our whole mission of public service," Ms des Cars said in her letter.
Under Macron's project, the eastern facade of the museum - which consists today of a classical colonnade fronted by an artificial moat and a little-used esplanade - will be redesigned.
A new entrance-way will give immediate access to new underground exhibition spaces beneath the Cour Carré, which will in turn connect with the area beneath the pyramid.
Macron said the new front - the biggest change to the museum since President François Mitterrand's Grand Louvre project 40 years ago - would tie in with city plans to create a tree-filled "green" zone on the esplanade.
It would, he said, help integrate the museum into the city and "give it back to the Parisians".
He added that removing the Mona Lisa from its current position would allow the museum to present it properly, and make it easier to view other masterpieces, which are "too often overlooked", on display in the Salle des Etats.
Major renovation work will also be undertaken in the coming years to modernise infrastructure, and provide new toilet, restaurant and rest facilities.
The overall cost is put at several hundred million euros.
Macron said the project would cost the taxpayer nothing, as it would be funded through ticket sales, donations, and the museum's sponsorship deal with the Louvre Abu Dhabi.
His powers significantly curtailed since losing control of the French parliament six months ago, the president has been in search of a new cause with which to assure his legacy.
His much-praised leadership in the post-fire renovation of Notre-Dame cathedral appears to have whetted his appetite for a similar grand projet at the Louvre.
He's best known for TV shows like the Traitors US, The Good Wife or Schmigadoon.
But it was another show entirely which brought actor Alan Cumming back to his roots in Highland Perthshire, to begin a brand new chapter in his life - running Pitlochry festival theatre.
"I was filming an episode of Channel 4's All Aboard Scotland's Poshest trains, and we came to the theatre and spoke to Elizabeth Newman about the work they were doing and afterwards, she asked if I'd ever thought about running a theatre," he recalls.
In 2024, filming for the Traitors and two film projects meant even more time in Scotland so when Elizabeth Newman resigned in July, he quietly applied for the job.
Although Alan grew up a few miles away in Aberfeldy, his work on Broadway and in film and television had long ago taken him to New York, where he lives with his husband Grant Schaffer.
In the last decade, he's been here more and more, thanks to TV work such as hosting the Traitors American version and shows like Burn, Macbeth and The Bacchae with the National Theatre of Scotland.
"I have been living partly here for years and in recent years trying to split my time more evenly between Scotland and New York", he says.
"I was very honest with the recruitment people about what I could offer. I have other things going on, but I can do a lot remotely.
"What really excited me was the theatre's mantra to "share Pitlochry with the world and the world with Pitlochry".
"I thought I can do that. I'm from here. I can go out into the world and bring the world back here."
The news came as a huge surprise and Cumming insisted the announcement should be made ahead of the Emmy awards, for which he and the rest of the team involved with the Traitors won Outstanding Reality Competition Programme.
Wrapped in his trademark tartan plaid, he was able to bring the world's attention to Pitlochry, something he hopes his appointment will continue to do.
"I know I have experience, I'm quite talented, and I know a lot of people but being well known is also important. This helps raise profile, and it'll help with fundraising."
Like the appointment of Nicola Benedetti as director of the Edinburgh International Festival, it also gives the theatre, and the wider theatrical community a stronger voice when it comes to lobbying for support.
Like Benedetti, he plans to appear on his own stage, as well as continuing with his own projects.
His first season won't be announced until later this year, but he's already in discussions, and says he hopes to "be in, or direct shows in every season".
The three day Winter Words festival which he has programmed from 21 February gives a sense of what might be to come in 2026.
Liz Lochhead, Douglas Stuart and Andrew O'Hagan are among those taking part, in a line-up which combines known and unknown.
"It's got some big bold names and newer and more diverse and slightly outside the box things going on as well. It's my ethos for the first season in microcosm.
"Theatre is entertaining but it's also about being challenging and provoking. We will have musicals, but they might be ones you don't know. We might also have Shakespeare and classics.
"It's exciting for me as I want to do things I like but also bring new people in. I'm kind of like the Pied Piper of Pitlochry."
Having made the leap from Highland Perthshire to Broadway himself, he's confident he can do the same with the shows they create.
"One of the things I was asked was what I hoped people would think of my tenure here.
"I hoped they had fun and enjoyed the experience of being there but I also hope they think wasn't it amazing that we saw that show at Pitlochry and then it went to Broadway. And why not?"
His "to do" list since he started the job officially last week includes getting to know the staff and consulting with the community.
He is keen the town and the wider community in Highland Perthshire make better use of the theatre – and not just for plays.
Cumming uses the example of the Tron Theatre in Glasgow, where he and Forbes Masson regularly performed as drama students.
"We've lost that sense of theatres being a community centre, where people can talk, and drink and gather."
Sitting in the theatre café, looking out on Ben Vrackie, there's no need for the digital presentation he's prepared for curious Americans - but he's ready to spread the word.
"People are so excited about coming here," he enthuses.
"A huge part of Pitlochry's allure is the setting.
"It's a magical bubble which I want to share with the world."
Brian Murphy, the actor and comedian best known for his role in the 1970s British sitcoms Man About the House and George and Mildred, has died aged 92.
Murphy, who passed away at his home in Kent on Sunday morning, worked closely with theatre director Joan Littlewood throughout his early career.
More recently, he appeared in episodes of BBC medical drama Holby City, sketch programme The Catherine Tate Show and ITV sitcom Benidorm, as well as comedy show Last of the Summer Wine.
Paying tribute to his "talent and humanity", Murphy's friend and agent Thomas Bowington described him as a "joyful and profoundly good-hearted man".
Born on the Isle of Wight in 1932, Murphy's acting career began in the 1950s when he became a member of the pioneering Theatre Workshop.
Founded by Joan Littlewood and her partner Gerry Raffles, it was dedicated to modernising theatre and reaching working-class audiences.
Murphy performed in many Shakespeare productions directed by Littlewood, and acted in her only feature film, the kitchen sink comedy Sparrows Can't Sing.
He was best known for his role in Man About the House, an ITV sitcom exploring the dynamics of one man and two women flat-sharing in the 1970s.
He went on to star in the spin-off George and Mildred, in which Murphy played a henpecked George Roper opposite fellow Theatre Workshop actress Yootha Joyce as his wife.
He is survived by his wife, Hi-de-Hi! actress Linda Regan, and his two sons.
Ms Regan said: "I was lucky to have in my lifetime found my soulmate. Brian who I will love forever."
The fifth annual Bristol Light Festival has been bringing large crowds ino the city centre, with 10 different installations in a variety of locations.
The event started on 31 January and will run until 9 February.
It covers much of the city centre, with artworks located in the Harbourside, Broadmead, College Green, Queen Square and St Mary Redcliffe.
Katherine Jewkes, creative director of Bristol Light Festival, said: "This year brings such a variety of artworks, but at their core is a real sense of togetherness and connection with audiences."
College Green has become home to a flock of bright flamingos.
Those crossing Castle Bridge can enjoy a piece made of more than 1,800 recycled CDs and DVDs, the artwork inspired by the waters of Sydney Harbour.
The world premiere of The Whilers by Air Giants can be found in St Mary Redcliffe Gardens, where "otherworldly creatures" greet visitors.
The Swing Song installation on Queen Square invites people to sit on illuminated swings.
Somnius by Illumaphoniumresponds reacts to people's movements, making it an interactive experience.
Follow BBC Bristol on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to us on email or via WhatsApp on 0800 313 4630.
A fountain has been replaced for the first time since the 1960s after a "gift" was made to a town.
The new water feature at the top of Brook Street in Ilkley is the first in the location since the original Victorian fountain installed in 1886 was removed after sustaining damage by vandals 60 years ago.
The spot where it had stood was turned into a flowerbed before local artist Juliet Gutch designed a new version which uses water that flows down from Ilkley Moor.
Improving Ilkley, which raised funds for the project, said that broadcaster and TV gardener Alan Titchmarsh would unveil the fountain on 30 April.
The design is inspired by a small plant which inhabits the West Yorkshire moor, well-known for the song it inspired, called 'On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at'
The plant - a spongey "bog moss" called sphagnum moss - holds water and stores carbon, helping to remove it from the atmosphere and permanently store it in peat.
The fountain design is a 5ft (1.5m) galvanised steel structure which is gravity-fed, recycling water coming down the hill from Ilkley Moor.
Louise Hepworth-Wood, from Improving Ilkley, said a team of volunteers planted bulbs around the fountain on Sunday, and installed corten steel name plates around the perimeter.
These plates bear the names of people who donated money to the fountain project.
Ms Wood said: "Over the next few weeks we will be optimising the flow of water, so don't worry if the fountain is turned off while we do this.
"There will be some more planting in advance of our official opening an all are welcome to attend."
Members of Improving Ilkley will be at the fountain on Wednesday 12 February, to answer any questions people may have.
The next phase of the project is to add more seating to the area - known locally as the "monkey rack", as people used to sit on benches there looking like the proverbial three wise monkeys.
The charity added: "We would like to thank all the individuals and businesses that have supported us throughout. The Ilkley Fountain is our gift to the town."
Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North or tell us a story you think we should be covering here.
A never-seen-before artwork has been valued at £30,000 to £50,000 ahead of it going under the hammer next month.
Cambridge-based auctioneers Cheffins will auction off work from Cedric Morris, who founded the East Anglian School of Painting & Drawing in Essex before moving it to Suffolk.
The artwork, a double-sided painting of a Welsh landscape and a Welsh cottage, was believed to have been completed by Morris in the 1930s and he gifted it to Bettina Shaw-Lawrence, one of his students.
Brett Tryner, a director at Cheffins, said works by Morris had increased in value by "at least ten-fold in the past decade" following the sale of three of his paintings as part of David Bowie's estate in 2016.
The work, which will be auctioned off on 27 February, was given to Cheffins to auction by the Shaw-Lawrence family.
Mr Tryner explained Bettina Shaw-Lawrence had been a well-regarded artist in her own right and initially attended art classes by the painter Fernand Léger in 1938.
She returned to London at the outbreak of World War Two and began an on-off relationship with Lucian Freud, also one of Morris's students.
She was a part of the painting and drawing school from 1940 and studied under Morris and his partner Arthur Lett-Haines.
The school had opened in Dedham in Essex, but after a fire it moved to Hadleigh in Suffolk.
'Tidal wave' of interest
The auction will the first time the painting has been available on the open market.
"Cedric Morris is arguably one of the most sought-after artists in the post-modern market," said Mr Tryner.
"With his creation of the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing, Morris would directly influence the works of some of the UK's most famous artists, including Lucian Freud, Maggi Hambling and Prunella Clough.
"There has been a tidal wave of interest in Cedric Morris in recent years and his impact on both art and gardening."
He added the school, otherwise known as the Benton End Group, became a sanctuary for like-minded artists, poets, gardeners and writers.
In 2022, Cheffins' sold another piece by Cedric Morris, which he had gifted to artist Lucy Harwood, for £44,000.
Follow Cambridgeshire news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
A new exhibition celebrating "the misfits and the oddballs who didn't really fit in anywhere" has opened in Liverpool.
For Your Pleasure, which "explores queer club culture of the 1990s", has been curated by Martin Green and James Lawler from DuoVision for the Open Eye Gallery.
The pair, who have worked with the LGBTQIA+ creative community since 2012, curate exhibitions by what they describe as undervalued artists, photographers and designers, aimed at engaging with a wider audience.
They said their creative company was "all about celebrating people from the queer community, the people who don't fit in with anything, but create amazing work".
Club culture was an integral part of their world, as Green was also a DJ and ran the influential '90s club Smashing, while Lawler avidly frequented clubs in London and the North West.
Lawler said: "Both Martin and I have been going out to clubs since the early '80s and the '90s were the pinnacle of our clubbing years and where we draw all our inspiration from, so a lot of the exhibitions we do are all born in those clubs, from that culture.
"The photographs are all pre-internet, pre mobile phones, so no-one was taking pictures apart from a few club photographers, they were the only people recording it, so I think it's quite exciting for a young audience to see these photographs."
The show includes photography and video by Marc Vallée, Jon Shard, Donald Milne, David Swindells and a film by Tim Brunsden.
Green said the 90s were "a very exciting time for me" when he opened his own club, Smashing "for all the misfits and the oddballs who didn't really fit in anywhere and through that club people like Jarvis Cocker and Blur and Oasis would come and hang out and then they started having huge hits and suddenly our scene exploded".
"Once upon a time there were cities where squats were legal, rents affordable and old nightclubs sat empty," the pair said.
"In these recession-hit places, kids from mixed backgrounds played and created together.
"Music was made, clubs were formed, boundaries were broken and great times were had. This was the UK in the early 1990s.''
Bronwyn Andrews, exhibition assistant curator and creative producer, said: "Martin and James are unique curators in that they are part of the community their practice represents.
"Building a network of artists, musicians, and designers over 30+ years, they have played no small role in creating safe, creative spaces for queer people to come together and express themselves."
For Your Pleasure runs until 9 March.
Listen to the best of BBC Radio Merseyside on BBC Sounds and follow BBC Merseyside on Facebook, X, and Instagram, and watch BBC North West Tonight on BBC iPlayer.
A disused Somerset theatre -that campaigners want to bring back to life - has been donated the seating from a venue in Cambridgeshire that is undergoing refurbishment.
Originally, Shepton Mallet's Amulet Theatre had been in line for £1m of government "levelling-up" funding but campaigners admit it is unlikely to go ahead, with an announcement expected next month.
Martin Berkeley, from Let's Buy The Amulet group, says they are continuing with plans and costings in order to be "ahead of the game" should other potential funding streams become available.
The venue, owned by a private property group, is currently half derelict and half in use for the community as a gym and storage facility.
Built in 1975 by the Showerings family, best known for the locally produced drink Babycham, it has not been used as a theatre since 2011.
Campaigners say that although it may now take a lot longer to achieve, they remain hopeful it will one day be returned to entertaining audiences.
The Let's Buy The Amulet group wants to purchase the site and turn it into a community asset in order to then bring in further funding.
Speaking to the BBC, Mr Berkeley said: "The government is talking about local growth, talking about devolution so potential mayoral authorities and funding coming through that way.
"Unfortunately there is going to be some time delay while that transition works through."
The Amulet Theatre was not the only local arts project in line for the levelling-up money, with a total of £5m allocated to the then Mendip District Council.
The now unitary Somerset Council has stated its funding bid was still being reviewed, with a final decision being expected in a matter of weeks.
Follow BBC Somerset on Facebook and X. Send your story ideas to us on email or via WhatsApp on 0800 313 4630.
From fiery festivals to nature's most dazzling "sky-dance", interest in the night skies is booming, with "noctourism" poised to be a major travel trend in 2025.
Interest in the night skies is booming. Booking.com recently named "noctourism" as a top travel trend for 2025, with their survey of more than 27,000 travellers finding that around two-thirds have considered going to "darker sky destinations" to experience things like starbathing (lying down and looking at the night skies) and witnessing once-in-a-lifetime cosmic events.
"The cool thing about night adventures is you see so many different sides to a destination, by just staying up late or rising early," says Stephanie Vermillon, author of the new book 100 Nights Of A Lifetime: The World's Ultimate Adventures After Dark. "Our senses are heightened, and there are things you see at night that you don't see any other time, so everything feels exciting and new."
It was a 2010 trip to Morocco that sparked Vermillon's interest in all things nocturnal. "I grew up in Dayton, Ohio, which has terrible light pollution," she tells the BBC. "Then I went to the Sahara Desert and camped under the stars – I saw the Milky Way and two dozen shooting stars that night. I went home, took an astronomy class and later started hunting Northern Lights, which got me curious about what else happens around the world after dark."
Vermillon believes that major events such as the April 2024 total solar eclipse or the 2024-2025 peak in aurora activity has led to a "bump" in the number of people wanting to experience dark skies. There are also now more than 200 Dark Sky Reserves across the globe. "The great thing about the night sky is the perspective it gives you – it's humbling and grounding," she says. "You can experience pure awe."
Starry skies and aurora borealis might be the headline acts, but there's plenty more to do after dark in cities or out in nature. "You see a city so differently at night," Vermillon says. "I think of it as a city letting its hair down – it's more relaxed. I've also done night safaris, where it's more about listening than just seeing, and I've seen water sparkling with bioluminescence, which looks like magic. Everything at night has a little extra sparkle."
Here are five of Vermillon's favourite after-dark experiences, from fiery cultural festivals to nature's greatest sky dance.
1. Relax with hot spring aurora-hunting in Iceland
Lucky travellers in the right place at the right time can witness one of the most unforgettable experiences on Earth: the aurora borealis, or Northern Lights. Created by charged particles from the Sun colliding with the Earth's atmosphere, the main activity occurs above Earth's magnetic poles, with Iceland right in the thick of the action. During the Northern Lights season (September to April), colourful displays streak across the skies for more than 100 nights, as long as cloud cover doesn't impinge. "I've never felt goosebumps from nature more than when I'm watching the Northern Lights," says Vermillon. "You're watching nature dance. It's the most magical thing."
Strong storms can be seen with the naked eye, though many photographers also create wondrous images using long exposures on cameras. Witnessing or capturing the aurora usually means wrapping up in thick clothing and waiting for hours on a bracing hillside or glacier, far from towns or cities. But there's a warmer alternative: kicking back in Iceland's naturally heated pools. The land of fire and ice straddles the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, with geothermal energy from far below ground creating more than 700 hot springs and pools. "You can see the Northern Lights in warmth and comfort," advises Vermillon. "The water's often over 100F (38C), so you can see your breath and your hair is frosting, but the water heats you from your core. I got out of the water in a swimsuit to check my camera and I wasn't cold at all."
Vermillon particularly recommends Ion Adventure Hotel in Selfoss for outdoor pools overlooking lava fields and snow-capped mountains, noting their Northern Lights Bar that serves a Sweet Black Death cocktail; and Heydalur, a guesthouse on a horse farm in the craggy Westfjords, where shaggy white ponies amble around the open-all-night hot pools.
2. Attend the Up Helly Aa festival in Scotland
Located far out in the North Sea, the Shetland Islands are part of Scotland. But the islands are also geographically and culturally close to Scandinavia. The annual Up Helly Aa festival, which takes place on the last Tuesday of January in Shetland's capital, Lerwick, is a fiery, boozy spectacle that celebrates the island's Viking heritage. Vikings settled here during the 8th and 9th Centuries and lived as farmers for around 600 years before the islands came under Scottish rule in the 15th Century.
After months of preparation, the midwinter celebration's main event is a torch-lit procession where around 1,000 "guizers" (local men) wearing Viking gear and other eye-catching costumes march through the streets, bringing with them a replica Viking longship that will later be set on fire in a grand spectacle. Afterwards, locals fill community halls and pubs for dancing, music and drinking into the early hours of the morning.
"So many cultural festivals are ancient, but this one started around 200 years ago, so it's relatively new," says Vermillon. "They created it as an ode to their Viking heritage. It's cool to see that pride in where people come from. Up Helly Aa's also special for the visuals: night, darkness and fire."
Smaller Up Helly Aa events also also take place across the islands from January to March.
Shetland's northerly location – closer to the Arctic Circle than London – means there's a decent chance of seeing the aurora in the winter months, known locally as the "mirrie dancers", from mirr, whichmeans "to shimmer".
3. Go desert stargazing in Atacama, Chile
The remote Atacama region in northern Chile is the driest nonpolar desert on Earth. With high elevations and an average of 300 clear, cloud-free nights a year, it's a renowned location for professional astronomers. The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), one of the most powerful telescope systems anywhere on Earth, was constructed here to study the universe's great mysteries.
"Atacama has the clearest night skies I've ever seen, and clear skies for as many nights in a row as I've ever had," says Vermillon.
All this means that "there's a community of entrepreneurs who have created incredible experiences around stargazing", says Vermillon, including astrophotography tours and archaeoastronomy sessions featuring Indigenous stories about the cosmos, as well as private observatories where experts teach tourists about Southern Hemisphere constellations and more.
Visiting just before, during or after a new Moon is recommended for the darkest skies and most dramatic starscapes. "You see a blanket of stars, more stars than you've ever seen in your lifetime, with skies that are darker and more pinpricked than I've ever seen," says Vermillon. "But the landscape around you also makes you feel like you're out there among the stars – you look around and you feel like you're on Mars or on the Moon. NASA uses parts of Atacama to test for their missions for life on Mars because Atacama has such 'martian' landscapes. Atacama really is next-level."
4. Take a night safari in Zambia
"Reading the morning newspaper" is how wildlife guides across Africa refer to seeing animal tracks and other signs of activity that show what happened during the night, including scuffles or hunts. But taking a night safari means wildlife-lovers can watch, or listen to, the "news" for themselves.
More like this:
• Eight of the world's most extraordinary tiny hotel rooms
• Five of the world's most beautiful climbing locations
• Australia’s answer to the Northern Lights
Night-time is when many creatures are most active, especially predators such as lions and leopards, who often rest during the heat of the day, and Vermillon recommends heading to Zambia to experience it. "Zambia has so many opportunities for night safaris," she says, picking out South Luangwa National Park, Lower Zambezi National Park and Kafue National Park (Zambia's oldest and largest national park) for chances to see big cats, elephants and other remarkable creatures. "You often see leopards lazing in trees by day, but to actually see a leopard stalking around at night, when there are so few people or vehicles, is so different," Vermillon says. "I like watching hyenas at night because you really see their 'creepy' character. I remember watching hyena circling a lion, trying to steal its prey – incredible."
Plenty of other animals are on the move after dark. "I love bush babies," says Vermillon. "They have such dramatic features – big ears and oversized, cartoon-like eyes – and they're a pretty common night-safari find because they're most active at night to avoid predators. I also love night drives for owls. With day safaris, so much is about seeing, but at night the pressure is off and it's more about listening, too, which is a less appreciated part of the safari experience. I love that period around 02:00 where you wake up in camp to hyena laughs or lion roars. You're, like, "Woah, where am I?". When you're out on night safaris, it's like you're out there among that. You're watching and listening as the animal kingdom does its thing."
5. Visit the night markets in Taiwan
The smells of Taiwan's food markets might hit you before the sights and sounds as dozens of stalls cook up delicacies, sending smoke and steam from grills, pots and pans drifting into the night air. There are more than 100 night markets across the country, with cooks selling xiaochi, the Chinese word for "snacks", to locals and visitors.
Many of the markets are open from late afternoon into the early hours of the morning or even sunrise, but they're particularly busy when local temples finish their services. "The majority of Taiwan's temples are Taoist and Buddhist," explains Vermillon. "The night markets usually have a historic temple in the market or right next to it and the vendors popped up around these gathering areas to sell goods and snacks. Over time, they grew into what they are today. People head there after the service to hang out and eat together. In the US, markets can feel touristy, weird or artificial, but I feel like these markets were built to serve a purpose: the community. The markets are built there authentically for people to gather after the temples but it's a cool experience for tourists, too."
There are more than 30 night markets in the capital, Taipei, including Shilin Night Market, the largest and most popular; and Raohe Night Market, among Taipei's oldest, dating to 1987.
"Almost every market has a different dish they're known for," says Vermillon. "The oyster omelette is a staple at Shilin Night Market. Raohe Night Market is known for its Fuzhou black pepper bun: a crispy pork bun topped with a black pepper sauce and onions." Brave travellers might also want to keep an eye, or nose, out for the fried "stinky tofu", a pungently aromatic fermented bean curd dish that is "very common in the after-hours markets".
The buzzing markets, which also selling clothing, art, crafts and other souvenirs, can get crowded. Be prepared to queue at the best stalls for speciality dishes.
100 Nights of a Lifetime: The World's Ultimate Adventures After Dark by Stephanie Vermillon is published by National Geographic.
--
If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week.
For more Travel stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
York and North Yorkshire's elected mayor has backed calls for a tourist tax to help fund public services and pay for the upkeep of tourist hotspots.
David Skaith has joined senior York councillors and York Central's Labour MP Rachael Maskell in calling for the visitor levy, with the mayor suggesting a county-wide tax.
The Labour representative said mayors would need more powers to raise their own funds as they take on further responsibilities.
The government said it had no plans to give local authorities in England powers to introduce tourism taxes.
Industry body Hospitality Association York previously said the introduction of further costs could "negatively impact the local economy" and may put tourists off.
West Yorkshire mayor Tracy Brabin recently told MPs a visitor levy had been floated in talks with the chancellor about further tax powers for regional authorities.
It follows the introduction of a 5% tax on visitor accommodation charges set to come into effect in Edinburgh in July 2026, with a nightly £1 charge already in use in Manchester.
Skaith said York and North Yorkshire welcomed more than 25m visitors a year, adding: "A modest visitor levy, like those in most European cities, would allow us to invest in public services.
"That would help us to keep our great places attractive for both residents and visitors as well as improving services that residents rely on, such as transport."
The mayor's comments come amid debate about how a potential tourist tax would be implemented in York and who would get powers to levy it.
Labour-run City of York Council's leader and deputy leader - Claire Douglas and Pete Kilbane - have both backed a visitor levy.
Kilbane said the local authority would lobby the government for levy charge powers so it could control how the money was spent.
Maskell estimated that charges of £1 or £2 a night on stays in York could raise £1.7m and £3.4m a year respectively.
But Hospitality Association York warned the hospitality industry already faced mounting costs, including upcoming minimum wage and National Insurance increases.
Rebecca Layton, who is Indie York chair and runs the Galtres Lodge Hotel, said: "Fundamentally we're against it as a business and as the hospitality association.
"One of the problems is there is no real detail behind it - there are various figures flying around, we haven't had the detail to be able to give a proper response."
York-based sales and marketing business owner Keith Rozelle told the Local Democracy Reporting Service he would welcome the charges.
"Something has got to be done because councils' budgets have been pared to the bone," he said.
"The city is an amazing place, I want to keep it amazing."
Listen to highlights from North Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North or tell us a story you think we should be covering here.
An Alderney politician has called for "urgent" work at the island's airport to be brought forward.
The asphalt runway at Alderney Airport was temporarily closed on Friday and Saturday last week for repairs to a defective section of surface.
An online petition, signed by more than 1,000 people, called for urgent action to resurface the Alderney Airport runway by the end of March.
Steve Roberts, the Vice President of Alderney States, said a long-term plan needed to be agreed.
He said: "The longer they leave it, and I think we're getting to an urgency now, I don't think the runways going to last long enough for the refurbishment - that really is going to have to be brought forward.
"Can you imagine what it would be like if the Civil Aviation Authority come in and close it permanently until it is a refurbished? It would be catastrophic for Alderney."
'An emergency debate'
More than £2m has been spent on repairs to Alderney's runway over the last decade.
In response to the public petition Deputy Lyndon Trott, president of the Policy & Resources Committee, said a review of the portfolio of infrastructure projects was "now needed".
"We really need it doing and I'd like to see it [work] brought forward, I'd like to see an emergency debate on it," Roberts said.
He added the island was "totally reliant" on the runway remaining open for its circuit and the elderly.
"They have to go for scans and biopsies, then they have to go for results... the only way of getting there is by very small boat," Roberts said.
"In Alderney, sometimes access to boats is by ladder, and you can understand that these people are ill and elderly and not very agile, can't go up and down ladders and they're frightened so they cannot go until the airport's open."
Follow BBC Guernsey on X and Facebook. Send your story ideas to channel.islands@bbc.co.uk.
A new seasonal route from Guernsey to Genoa has seen 70% of seats sell out in five days, airline Aurigny said.
It said the route, announced on Thursday, was one of the fastest-selling the airline had launched.
The airline said it was offering five return flights between 12 April and 10 May in response to direct community feedback via a survey of more than 1,000 islanders.
The flights were already profitable with the bookings, and the money made would be used to offset the costs of its core lifeline routes helping to keep air fares lower, it added.
Follow BBC Guernsey on X and Facebook. Send your story ideas to channel.islands@bbc.co.uk.
The owners of a holiday resort which boasts its own 18-hole golf course is challenging the decision to refuse permission to expand.
The proposal for an extra 76 holiday lodges at Overstone Park in Northamptonshire was rejected after 163 objections from members of the public.
Council planning officers had recommended approval, but councillors decided to go against their advice.
They had been told the park could decline and eventually close if the plan was turned down.
Overstone Park already has 115 second-home lodges on its 115-acre (46.5 ha) site, but the owners wanted to provide 76 new units.
Thirty of the extra lodges would be similar to those already at the park, but 46 would be "more conventional" in design, the owners said.
Planning agent Joney Ramirez told councillors at the meeting that the business had been in decline for more than a decade.
She added that not getting investment from the proposals could lead to the park's decline and potential closure.
She explained that the applicant had already compromised on the number of lodges, taking them down from the initial proposal of a further 105 units.
The owners of the resort said the increase in value from the new lodges would help them provide a revitalised restaurant, equipment for the gym and studio, a refurbished swimming pool with sauna, modernised changing rooms and a brand new tennis court.
The Local Democracy Reporting Service said the 163 objections received by the council included concerns about the look of the new 'twin-unit lodges' and fears their introduction could have transformed the resort into a 'caravan park'.
Following the appeal against refusal, the final decision on the plans will be taken by the government's planning inspectorate, which has the power to reverse the council's decision.
Final comments on the appeal from both parties are due in the middle of March.
Follow Northamptonshire news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
While the formal dress and classic dances of the Vienna balls have prevailed since the early 1800s, some events are taking unique approaches to the tradition.
Since the early 1800s, locals and visitors have been gathering in the ballrooms of Vienna, Austria, to waltz the night away. Originally organised to entertain distinguished nobles and politicians gathered in the capital after the Congress of Vienna, the annual ball tradition has continued into the present day with thousands of people breaking out their finest clothing and gliding across dancefloors under magnificent chandeliers.
The city's ball season starts in November and continues until Shrove Tuesday (4 March 2025), with January and February marking the peak of the season. More than 450 balls take place in Vienna each year. These are typically formal and ceremonial affairs with a strict dress code of ball gowns and tuxedos, where modern accessories like wrist watches are considered a considered a faux pas. However, in recent years, more unique events have cropped up as well, led largely by a younger generation.
"There are more modern balls – young in both their origins and audience – where the dress codes are more relaxed," says Helena Steinhart, PR manager of the Vienna Tourist Board.
One example is the annual Wiener Hip-hop Ball (15 February 2025). Launched five years ago, this ball is a fascinating blend of old and new, where participants pair traditional formal dress with trainers and dance to hip-hop music rather than the waltz.
For an even more relaxed ball experience, visitors can attend the Sweatpants Ball on 1 March. "The dress code is, quite literally, in the name," quipped Steinhart.
Many newer balls have also been launched to create space for communities who might be uncomfortable at some of the more traditional events. The Rainbow Ball, for example, which took place on 25 January, specifically caters to the LGBT community and features a welcoming atmosphere for same-sex dancing couples.
Other interesting events include the annual Vegan Ball, which includes a vegan gala dinner; and the Comic Con ball, where guests are encouraged to show up in cosplay as their favourite character.
More like this:
• A designer's guide to artisanal shopping in Vienna
• What it's like to live in the world's most liveable cities for 2024
• A queer dance champion's guide to experiencing queer tango in Buenos Aires
Tickets for this year's ball season are still available, though some of the larger and more well-known balls, such as the Opera Ball (27 February 2025) are waiting list only. Resale tickets can sometimes be found online, though Steinhart cautions that this option is best for German speakers as there's no formal website to find them. Visitors can also book a tour package that includes a ball experience; or stay at one of several hotels in Vienna that offer ball-themed packages, such as the one at Almanac Palais.
--
If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week.
For more Travel stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
After unearthing a rare collection of highly prized Silk Road artefacts, a family in the Himalayas has opened a museum dedicated to one of the fabled route's final traders.
Muzzamil Hussain was in grade school when the first bombs fell on the playground outside of his classroom in Kargil, a mountain city in the Indian province of Ladakh. While the violent onset of the 1999 Kargil war between Pakistan and India unfolded around him, Hussain and his family escaped south to the remote Suru Valley.
After India claimed victory later that year and displaced families returned home, Hussain listened as his bedridden grandfather asked the family to visit an old property, originally built by Hussain's great-grandfather, near Kargil's bazaar to make sure it had survived the war. When Hussain's uncles cracked through an old rusty latch and peered through the hand-carved wooden doors, they discovered wooden crates stamped with names of cities around the world. Making space on the dusty floor, the family began to lay out silks from China, silver cookware from Afghanistan, rugs from Persia, turquoise from Tibet, saddles from Mongolia and luxury soaps and salves from London, New York and Munich.
They had found an abandoned treasure trove – a collection that would soon become recognised as one of the finest family-owned collections of Silk Road artefacts in India and a discovery that would change the course of Hussain's life.
That was 25 years ago. Today, centuries after it provided a crucial-yet-harrowing thoroughfare for Silk Road traders, the Himalayan mountain pass of Zoji La connecting Kashmir to Ladakh is still known as one of the most dangerous roads in the world. On a recent visit, my palms began to sweat as our 4x4 groaned its way higher up the mountainside. I glanced nervously out the window towards a glaciated peak at eye level, and the valley floor more than 1,000m below. No matter how close I pressed my nose against the window, I could not find the edge of the dirt road; just air and a long way to fall. In the front passenger seat, Hussain texted one of the many enterprises he runs with his family, including two hotels, two museums, a conservation NGO and a tour guide service. This was a regular commute for him, and one that his family had braved for centuries.
I first met Hussain in 2023 while searching for snow leopards in eastern Ladakh. While sipping pink Kashmiri noon chai in a snow flurry at 4,265m, he told me stories of his own remarkable connection to the Silk Road. His flashbacks began with war, flirted with buried treasure and ended in reconciliation. As an archaeologist enamored with mountain history, I needed to learn more, so two years later, I found myself on the Zoji La in the footsteps of Silk Road traders who, like us, hoped to make it to the historic trading hub of Kargil before nightfall.
The mountainous region of Ladakh is situated in the westernmost corner of the Himalayas amongst the disputed borders of India, Pakistan and China. Towering peaks, steep glacial valleys and sweeping alpine plateaus dominate the landscape. Fields of barley blanket sandy floodplains; blindingly white apple and apricot blossoms paint the shores along the Indus River; and on the ridges above, snow leopards and Himalayan brown bears move like wraiths as they search for their next meal. Because of its location at the crossroads of commerce and conquest, modern Ladakh is home to a blend of cultures including Tibetan Buddhists, Muslims and a number of tribal communities.
The Silk Road refers to one of the world's largest overland trade routes – a network that spanned 6,400km connecting Europe to far East Asia. Although named for the Chinese silks that the Roman elite imported during the 1st Century AD, the cross-continental trade system was established much earlier. Once constructed, the network helped transport ideas, religions, commodities and currencies across the ancient world. While the connection between Europe and East Asia was severed in 1453 when the Ottomans boycotted China, segments of the Silk Road continued to exist regionally in places like Ladakh well into the 20th Century.
A few days after our hair-raising crossing of Zoji La, Hussain and I sat at a small cafe in central Kargil eating dal and sipping masala chai. As the Islamic call to prayer echoed around the mountains of the Zanskar Range and wood smoke drifted in from a nearby bakery, Hussain explain why his family decided to protect and share their great-grandfather's treasure.
At first, Hussain's family was unsure of what to do with the ancient items. In 2002, Florida Atlantic University anthropologists Dr Jacqueline Fewkes and Nasir Khan heard rumours of the collection and travelled to meet Hussain and his relatives. Recognising the artefacts' importance, the anthropologists encouraged the family to preserve the items for future generations. With Hussain's two uncles serving as the director and curator, the family opened the Munshi Aziz Bhat Museum in central Kargil where visitors can explore hundreds of Silk Road artefacts ranging from 18th-Century Ladakhi sheep-horn bows to 19th-Century Chinese copper water pipes. To Fewkes, it is the personal anecdotes and family connection to the collection that makes this museum unique and important.
"The Munshi Aziz Bhat [museum] doesn't have to, and should not, be the British Museum or the Smithsonian because it offers its own perspective that is invaluable to both local and global audiences," Dr Fewkes told me, "The stories [here] are focused on identities that are significant to the descendants … family and local histories provide an alternative understanding about the past than national or international narratives that you would see in larger museums in India or abroad."
While his uncles run the day-to-day operations at the museum, Hussain focuses on research and retracing his family history – a heritage he hopes can provide an opportunity to attract visitors and more importantly, help his community reconcile with a difficult past.
"I think it's very important that everybody try to preserve their own family histories," added Hussain's uncle, Ajaz Munshi. "In the age of modernisation, we are often going away from our roots, and we must try to keep our legacies intact."
Born in Leh in 1866, Hussain's great-grandfather, Munshi Aziz Bhat, travelled to Kargil after finishing school in Skardu (modern-day Pakistan). At that time, Kargil was known as an important hub on the Treaty Road – a branch of the old Silk Road that connected China to Central Asia via Kashmir.
"Kargil has always been tied to many parts of the world," Hussain told me. "Its name literally means 'a place to stop [between kingdoms]'." A successful accountant, Bhat moved to Kargil where he started a small trade outpost that, by 1920, had grown into seven shops, an inn for travellers and a stable for the many camels, horses and yaks used by long-distance traders who had travelled for up to three months from places like Lhasa or Yarkand. At its height, Bhat's hub housed traders and goods moving between Central Asia, mainland India, China, Europe and the Americas.
"I found it interesting to discover how truly globalised this area was during that time," Hussain said. "This region was really cosmopolitan then."
But Bhat's business was not to last. In 1948 the borders between India and Pakistan closed when the countries were partitioned, essentially shuttering all long-distance trade in and out of Kargil. Bhat retired as one of the last-known traders along one of the final sections of the Silk Road to close, dying later that year. "When my great-grandfather closed the building," Hussain said, "the rooms remained under lock and key for almost half a century."
The following day while hiking on a ridge above the Mushkoh Valley, Hussain and I passed rings of rocks and an occasional sandbag that remained from the Kargil war. Since the conflict ended, this area located just a few kilometers from the de facto border with Pakistan, retains a lingering reputation amongst Indians as being war-torn and dangerous.
"In Kargil and other places impacted by war, I think there is an identity crisis and lack of pride," Hussain explained. "I think tourism is a great tool to help because when people from the outside come to your community and appreciate your heritage, history and culture, it can help your pride return."
Hussain and his brother Tafazzul launched Roots Ladakh in 2013, a travel company focusing on the natural and cultural heritage of Kargil. While most visitors to Ladakh stay near the capital Leh to see Buddhist monasteries and search for snow leopards, Hussain hopes to slowly invite more people to his home.
"Our vision is to change the preconceived notion about our region as a warzone through the lens of heritage," he explained, poking at a fresh snow leopard track in the mud. "I reminisce a lot about my ancestors and the interesting people they must have met. Kargil today is a transit location, just like in the past, and I feel like I am continuing that legacy by hosting travellers and guests."
Following the old Silk Road, Hussain and I snaked our way up the Suru Valley towards the isolated Buddhist kingdom of Zanskar. Turning a corner, I saw three elderly women walking beneath the tongue of a massive glacier, carrying large stacks of hay on their backs. They were preparing for winter while chatting and walking to their homes, which were several steep kilometers away. Hussain offered them and their goods a ride. As the women climbed in, one asked what news Hussain had from the outside world.
Just as his great-grandparents had done, Hussain turned towards his multicultural band of weary travellers and began to relay stories of politics, trade and faraway lands.
--
If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week.
For more Travel stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
From Nubian Markets to the National Center for Afro-American Artists, a local tour guide offers his picks for the best places to see Boston's Black culture
Boston is a city of neighbourhoods, and if you wander off the 2.5-mile Freedom Trail that passes through 16 significant sites in US history, you'll find extraordinary stories tucked in every nook and corner. Getting visitors to explore the city's varied cultural districts has long been a goal of Collin Knight, who founded Live Like a Local Tours in 2019. As a native of Roxbury, the neighbourhood that's the beating heart of Boston's Black community, he's working to highlight the city's rich African American culture while also acknowledging Boston's history of racial tensions.
Though Boston is perhaps most famous for its strong Irish roots, the city's Black history runs deep. Prior to the US Civil War, Boston was one of the most important stops on the Underground Railroad. The first chartered branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People civil rights organisation was founded here in 1911. Malcolm X moved to Boston 30 years later, followed by Dr Martin Luther King Jr, who considered the city his "second home" and fell in love with his would-be wife, Coretta Scott King, here. Today, 25 percent of Boston's population is Black – twice the percentage of the Black population in the US.
"When we look at downtown, the city's Eurocentric history is being glorified each and every day. They're not really talking about Native Americans and African Americans and their plight within this country and Boston's connection to slavery," Knight says. "I'm trying to figure out how we can tell the whole history of Massachusetts in the city of Boston instead of just telling one part."
Here are Knight's suggestions of the five best places in Boston to experience the city's vibrant modern-day Black culture, as well as the ties to its past.
1. The National Center for Afro-American Artists
"The National Center for Afro-American Artists (NCAAA) houses art from some of the most prominent African American artists that have lived in the Boston area or are from the Boston area. A lot of people don't know much about it," Knight says. "Dr Barry Gaither has been the curator of that museum since 1968. It was created by Dr Elma Lewis, who was the grande dame of the arts within the Boston area for many years. She was very well known for providing arts and culture to young people of colour within Boston, and Roxbury specifically."
Knight's must-see experiences within the museum include seeing the narrative paintings of Roxbury legend Allan Crite, known as the "Dean of African American artists" in New England, thanks to his nearly 90-year career. Another highlight, says Knight, is the ASPELTA exhibit displaying artefacts from Nubia. The exhibit features scores of 2,600-year-old objects recovered by archaeologists from Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and Harvard University, including a fully-accurate recreation of the interior of a Nubian tomb. "It's pretty incredible," Knight says.
Website: https://ncaaa.org/
Address: 300 Walnut Street, Roxbury
Phone: 1-617-442-8614
Facebook:@themuseum_ncaaa
2. Nubian Markets
This sprawling new grocery store, halal butcher shop and fast-casual cafe, which opened in Roxbury in spring 2023, celebrates the food of the African diaspora. Its shelves are stocked with hard-to-find produce and vegetable items, and more than 30 Black-owned brands. "It's absolutely incredible when you think about it: the halal approach, the restaurant/supermarket approach and the fact that it's a Black-owned supermarket in the middle of Roxbury," Knight says, noting that, historically, most grocery stores in the neighbourhood had been white-owned or run by white conglomerates.
"This is a very powerful thing for us as Black people," Knight added. "It's not something that we've ever had in our own community… They are focused on supporting other local businesses and other vendors of colour across the country."
Cuts of lamb, beef, and goat sold at the shop are raised following Islamic standards to feed the city’s growing Muslim population, and many products on its shelves, sauces and spice mixes, are produced by local artisans like Cameroon native Paulette Ngachoko, founder of Hapi African Gourmet. In the cafe, menu items range from ginger beef and injera bowls to pea fritters and lamb couscous. "I'm just excited about everything they're doing," Knight says.
Website: https://www.nubianmarkets.com/
Address: 2565 Washington Street, Roxbury
Phone: 1-617-608-4940
Instagram: @nubianmarkets
3. Comfort Kitchen
This cosy Black-, immigrant- and woman-owned restaurant opened in January 2023 in Dorchester's Uphams Corner neighbourhood. It was nearly a decade in the making and comes with its own dose of history: it's housed inside a 1912-built building that is on the National Register of Historic Places.
"I love the owners over there. You think about the vibe that's in there, you think about the menu and how it's connected to the African diaspora," Knight says. "[The building] was a comfort station [public restroom] for people travelling from the Dorchester area to the South Shore."
Inside the former bathroom, the chic 30-seat space has curved pale-pink banquettes that are an Instagram favourite. Cocktails feature Equiano, an Afro-Caribbean rum produced in Mauritius and Barbados, or pay tribute to Black engineering pioneer Lewis Latimer, who worked alongside Alexander Graham Bell to develop the telephone in Boston in the 1880s. (Non-alcoholic drinks include a take on Tootsie, a Ghanaian fermented beer or a baobab mocktail.) For dinner, munch on jackfruit sliders, jerk roasted duck or za'atar brown butter trout.
Website: https://www.comfortkitchenbos.com/
Address: 611 Columbia Road, Dorchester
Phone: 1-617-329-6010
Instagram: @comfortkitchenbos
4. Wally's Cafe and Jazz Club
Wally's is an institution in Boston's South End neighbourhood, and when founder Joseph Walcott opened the club in 1947, he was the first African American nightclub owner in New England. Walcott got his start by drawing – and often driving – musicians up from New York City and created one of the few spaces in Boston during the time of segregation where anyone of any race could mingle. Today his grandchildren run the space, which hosts music 365 nights a year, often drawing from talented students at Berklee School of Music, the New England Conservatory and other nearby institutions. It's considered the oldest jazz club in the city.
"What most people don't realise is there were jazz joints and juke joints up and down Massachusetts Avenue. That is the last of a dying breed that we had all over [the area] back in the day. All of the greats came to play," says Knight – among them Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday. Check the schedule for their funk, jazz, and salsa offerings, which run from 17:00 to 01:00 nightly.
Website: https://wallyscafe.com/
Address: 427 Massachusetts Ave., South End
Phone: 1-617-828-1754
Instagram: @wallyscafejazzclub
5. The Embrace
This new, massive bronze sculpture was unveiled on Boston Common this year, celebrating Boston's civil rights legacy and commemorating the period that Dr Martin Luther King Jr lived in Boston. King attended theology school at Boston University in the 1950s and met his wife, Coretta Scott King, who was attending the New England Conservatory of Music, while living in the city.
The sculpture, by artist Hank Willis Thomas, is an abstract depiction based on a photo of the couple embracing after King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. It also recognises a moment in April 1965 when the leader stood on the park before a crowd of 22,000 and called for Boston to live up to its ideals and create a more equitable city.
While the sculpture alone "is a really beautiful piece to tell that history, I think, more importantly, if you look at the grounds of The Embrace, you see all of these names [of people who marched alongside King and helped expand his ideas]," Knight says. "It's really about all of the local community advocates that have made a difference within the Roxbury community and the Boston community at large. So, I think it's an incredible tribute to Dr Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King, but it's also a tribute to our city as a whole, to talk about the Black histories of our city, of our neighbourhoods, and have it be in the middle of the Boston Common."
Website: https://www.embraceboston.org/memorial
Address: Boston Common, 139 Tremont Street
Instagram: @embracebos
This article was originally published on 17 June 2023 and has been updated, including the removal of one business which has since closed, Soleil restaurant.
---
Join more than three million BBC Travel fans by liking us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter and Instagram.
If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter called "The Essential List". A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Worklife and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.
Angelababy has called Hong Kong home since she was a young girl. Here are her local insider picks, from shopping on Hollywood Road to hiking Dragon's Back.
The very name Hong Kong immediately conjures up luxury boutiques, wild nightlife, street food and spectacular architecture. We asked Hong Kong-based Hollywood actress and model Angelababy (Yeung Wing) to help us get to the heart of this dynamic place with so much to offer.
The mega-famous actress and model – known for starring in the Chinese gameshow Running Man as well as various high-profile action films – has lived here since the age of 13, when her father's job brought the family from their native Shanghai.
"When I first arrived in Hong Kong, I was impressed by its skyline and harbour views," reminisces Angelababy. "It's a very dynamic city. I felt that living here would be fun."
The future model soon found her new home was an exciting blend of cultures as well as modern and traditional architecture. "Hong Kong is a real mix of East and West," explains Angelababy, about the former British colony. "This is particularly evident in street names, most of which are directly translated from English and sound quite interesting."
Hong Kong's cultural celebrations include epic festivities like Lunar New Year in January when Victoria Harbour's sky is lit up with fireworks, the centuries old Cheung Chau Bun Festival in May when competitors scramble up a tower of steamed buns filled with lotus paste and the thrilling Victoria Harbour river races of the Dragon Boat Festival in June. "It's the culture that makes the city so special," says Angelababy.
Here are Angelababy's favourite ways to explore Hong Kong.
1. Best for local culture: Cha chaan teng
To find the real Hong Kong, Angelababy recommends looking no further than a cha chaan teng (tea restaurant). "Tea houses are deeply rooted in Hong Kong's culinary culture. Traditional Hongkongers enjoy going to tea houses for lunch with family or friends."
Locals and expats alike sit huddled around tables in these old-school cafes, which are decorated with whirling fans and patterned floor tiles. These iconic Hong Kong spots are known for serving European treats with an Asian twist, so expect cups of strong Hong Kong milk tea made with condensed or evaporated milk, flaky egg tarts and pineapple buns with a cracked surface resembling its spiky namesake fruit. "If you're working on movies in Hong Kong, everybody stops at 15:15 for afternoon tea [and] we'll all enjoy an egg tart or a pineapple bun," says Angelababy. The actress has been hoping to try the newly renovated historic tea house Lin Heung Lau; originally established in the 1920s. "So many friends say it's very good, but because it’s so busy and hard to get a table, I haven't tried it yet," she says. "But I know it will be worth it. You just have to see the videos."
Website: https://linheunglau.shop/
Address: 160-164 Wellington Street, Central District, Hong Kong
Phone: +852 21160670
Instagram: @linheunglau/?hl=en
2. Best culinary experience: Dim sum
Another culinary custom synonymous with Hong Kong culture is dim sum; a traditional Chinese brunch where a dazzling variety of small, savoury bites in bamboo baskets are wheeled through the restaurant on carts, to be shared with the whole table. "[It's] quality time with family," says Angelababy. "It's not just about filling the stomach; it's an experience." Hongkongers tuck into baskets of stewed, roasted or steamed dumplings such as char siu bao (doughy balls of sweet roast pork); siu mai (open-topped steamed dumplings); or soup dumplings filled with richly flavourful broth, which they wash down with tea.
Dim sum, which translates to "touch the heart" is believed to have originated in the port city of Ghangzhou and was brought by traders to Hong Kong in the 19th Century. It is now served across the city in five-star hotels and in tea houses. "Hongkongers have a diverse palate, and dim sum encompasses a wide variety of dishes, perfectly catering to everyone's [tastes]," says Angelababy. "I believe the flavours of Hong Kong dim sum are unique; no matter how people from other countries try to imitate them, they seem unable to replicate those tastes."
Angelababy loves to stop for dim sum at Lung Keen Heen in the newly renovated Four Seasons Hong Kong overlooking Victoria Harbour. "I do prefer a window seat, but I don't mind any seat actually," she says. "As long as I can get a table to dine there, I’ll be happy." Her picks: baked pineapple buns with barbecued pork and pine nuts along with a seasonal soup.
Website: https://www.fourseasons.com/hongkong
Address: 4th floor, Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong, 8 Finance Street, Central, Hong Kong
Phone: +852 3196 8882
Instagram: @fshongkong/?hl=en
3. Best for place for souvenir shopping: Hollywood Road
Hollywood Road was recently dubbed the second coolest street in the world by Time Out for its long history and constantly changing offerings. This historic street running between the Central and Sheung Wan neighbourhoods is filled with landmarks such as the 19th-Century Taoist Man Mo Temple, Michelin-starred restaurants, antique shops and galleries. Angelababy recommends a visit to G.O.D (Goods of Desire), which has quirky home buys. "I love to stop at Hong Kong's creative art hub PMQ," she says, referencing the seven-storey 1950s former "Police Married Quarters", where the police and their families lived. "There are many local designers' studios and workshops at PMQ. It's a very interesting place for creative exploration. [I’ll visit] PMQ's [Night] Market, which has many small items, vintage goods and snacks."
Website: https://www.pmq.org.hk/
Address: 35 Aberdeen Street
Phone: +852 28702335
Instagram: @pmqhkdesign
4. Best place for hiking: Dragon's Back
Hong Kong's hilly and mountainous terrain makes it great for outdoor sport. "If I have visitors in Hong Kong, I will take them hiking," says Angelababy. "That’s one of the special things about Hong Kong. There are not that many cities where you can go hiking in nature in 30 or 40 minutes. You can just [pick up a bottle of] water and go."
Angelababy recommends holidaymakers pull on their hiking shoes and hit Dragon's Back Mountain at Shek O Country Park; a curvy mountain trail that overlooks Tai Tam Bay. "It's not a hard walk and it comes with panoramic views," she says.
Dragon’s Back Mountain can be found on the south-eastern corner of Hong Kong Island. The trek begins with a gentle walk that leads hikers through the forest, along the ridge of the mountain to Dragon's Back Viewing Point where people can see Stanley, Tai Tam Bay and Lamma Islands. "You feel miles away from the city at Dragon’s Back. I feel so relaxed when I'm there," says Angelababy. "I [go] for a walk over Dragon’s Back and then down to the white-sand beach of Big Wave Bay."
Website: https://www.discoverhongkong.com/seasia/explore/great-outdoor/dragon-s-back-a-scenic-hike-from-shek-o-to-big-wave-bay.html
Address: Shek O Country Park
Phone: +852 91878641
Instagram: @discoverhongkong
5. Best for place for island hopping: Tai O
Hong Kong is home to 263 islands, including Lantau Island – known as "the lungs of Hong Kong for its great swaths of indigenous forest – and the idyllic Lamma Island; a popular escape from the chaos of the mainland. Angelababy's Hong Kong island pick is the tranquil island of Tai O.
Home to the Tanka boat people, Tai O's Venice-like canal is lined with 200-year-old fishermen’s stilt houses. The fishermen on this island are famous for producing the island's salty shrimp paste used to add flavour and umami to many curries and sauces. Visitors can observe the fishermen puttering around the island in colourful sampan boats with their fresh daily catch.
Recently, film crews have taken a shine to the historic island with its vintage shophouses; one even appeared on the Netflix show Restaurants on the Edge. But Angelababy loves heading to Tai O to see the island’s famous pink dolphins. Despite their name, these beautiful, endangered creatures are actually white, only appearing pink due to the blood vessels that run close to the surface of their skin.
"I used to visit the island when I was young," she says. " Now I take my son to see the pink dolphins. Last time, we arrived Tai O at 10:00 and then took a 30-minute boat tour out to sea to look for dolphins. I think you need some luck to see them, but not much. If you go there in the good weather, you’ve got a good chance."
Website: https://www.discoverhongkong.com
Address: Tai O island
Phone: +852 2508 1234
Instagram: @discoverhongkong
6. Best place for families: Ocean Park
Proud mum Angelababy recommends that visitors check out Hong Kong Disneyland on Lantau Island or Hong Kong’s own Ocean Park. First opened in the 1970s, this zoological theme park with more than 80 attractions has become one of the biggest theme parks in the world. "It’s really good for families," says Angelababy, who also enjoyed visiting as a teenager. "The park has two parts. It’s so big, you need to take the cable car. You can see Hong Kong south and [the] mountainside."
Found within the park is a grand aquarium with more than 5,000 fish, as well as golden snub-nosed monkeys, penguins and now six pandas. "There are two new pandas, and the park [has] new born [babies] too," says Angelababy. The Thai people may have Moo Deng, but the Hong Kongers have new baby pandas for visitors to peek at in February.
Website: https://www.oceanpark.com.hk/en
Address: Aberdeen, Hong Kong
Phone: +852 3923 2323
Instagram: @khoceanpark
BBC Travel's The SpeciaList is a series of guides to popular and emerging destinations around the world, as seen through the eyes of local experts and tastemakers.
--
If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week.
For more Travel stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
The actress has deep Hawaiian roots and loves sharing her culture via music, films and moments spent with family. Here are her favourite ways to find "ohana" in Hawaii.
Twenty-three years after lending her voice to Lilo's big sister Nani in the Lilo & Stitch animated film, Tia Carrere is coming full-circle as she stars in the upcoming live-action Lilo & Stitch film as a new character, Mrs Kekoa, a no-nonsense social worker. But the role is also a chance for Carrere to do one of the things she loves most: showcase her Hawaiian heritage.
"I was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii," Carrere tells the BBC from Maui's pristine Napili Bay, where she's joined longtime musical collaborator Daniel Ho to perform in George Kahumoku Jr.'s Hawaii Masters Tour. "It informs everything about me."
Carrere's Hollywood career famously began when she was discovered at a supermarket in Waikiki as a 17-year-old. "I always say that people come to Hollywood from somewhere else to become something else," she muses. "I think because I was born and raised in Hawaii, it's really grounded me. It's my grandma's homespun knowledge; the golden rule, very simple… and that's Hawaii. I love Hawaii."
Carrere has lived in Los Angeles for decades but has never forgotten the concept or the feeling of ohana (family). "Family to Hawaiians means a solid base that you can trust to have your back – always," says Carrere, who returns regularly to visit. "… [And] Hawaii is a great place to vacation with your family, because the most delightful things about Hawaii don't have to cost you anything more than just flying here and staying here…. Because you walk out your door and you're in the ocean. The kids can build sandcastles on the beach. They can collect flowers. They can go hiking through a bamboo forest. They can see birds that they've never seen anywhere before. They can snorkel and see fishes and coral that they've never seen before. Anywhere you go, it's absolutely delightful, and it's all just right there… It's the Earth."
Here are Carrere's favourite ways to enjoy ohana in Hawaii.
1. Best nostalgic time capsule hotel: Napili Kai Beach Resort, Maui
"I love this place for families," says Carrere – mother to 19-year-old Bianca and auntie to several nieces and nephews. "You get off the plane here [in Maui] and [a sign says], 'Maui has eight of the 10 most-dangerous beaches in Hawaii for spinal cord injury.' I guess it's the way the water sucks up and comes down. It's a wicked shore break. So it makes it very dangerous, particularly for kids. That's why I love Napili Bay. It's cove-like, it protects you."
Carrere loves staying at Napili Kai Beach Resort in Napili Bay, an idyllic half-moon-shaped resort beach in West Maui that's refreshingly less-crowded than many of its sister beaches. Napili Kai Beach Resort's vintage gabled wooden structure is likewise a throwback to a simpler time.
"It reminds me of when I was a kid," says Carrere of the boutique resort; originally built in the 1960s. "It's not luxe; it doesn't have elevators to get to the second floor with your luggage. But I like it. It's got refrigerators in the room, and whatever you need for kids, but it's mostly about the bay and how simple and charming it is. It's the best quaint time capsule of a hotel in Hawaii."
Napili Kai offers spacious one-room suites with oceanfront, beach and garden views. Visitors can swim, snorkel or relax on the beach, and dine at the property's casual snack bar or award-winning Sea House restaurant. Best of all? The resort offers dining and activity programmes that are free for kids.
Website: https://www.napilikai.com/
Address: 5900 Lower Honoapiilani Rd, Lahaina, HI 96761, United States
Phone: +18086696271
Instagram: @napili_kai
2. Best adventure activity: Volcano House, Volcanoes National Park, Big Island
A geologist's paradise, Hawaii's eight main islands are home to 15 volcanoes; six of which are active. Seasoned adventurers can take volcano expeditions and hike past cavernous craters and eerie eruption sites, culminating in jaw-dropping views of the Pacific Ocean.
Carrere believes Hawaii's volcanoes can be kid-friendly as well when you visit the Unesco-listed Volcanoes National Park on Hawaii's rugged Big Island. The park, a designated International Biosphere Reserve, is also the site of Kīlauea and Mauna Loa – two of the world's most active volcanoes. But for Carrere, the park is a fantastic place for young people to learn about Hawaii's unique volcanic geological features – like lava tubes; natural tunnels formed by solidified lava flow.
"You can go through a lava tube," she says. "It sounds scary, but the lava tube is long extinct. You walk through and there's water dripping, and there's ferns growing off the side. That lava tube is going to be fascinating for kids."
Volcanoes National Park is also where you'll find another of Carrere's favourite family-friendly spots; the Volcano House Hotel. Sitting 1219m above sea level on the edge of the Kilauea Crater, the historic property offers vintage bungalows and cabins on the nearby campsite, allowing visitors to explore the park's natural beauty in comfort.
"There's another part of the volcano that has steam vents. It's freezing cold, and sometimes misty and rainy," warns Carrere. "You have to wear a raincoat. The hot steam could burn your legs if you're not careful. But it's a fascinating place to share science with kids."
Website: https://hawaiivolcanohouse.com/
Address: Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park, 1 Crater Rim Drive, Pāhoa, HI 96718, United States
Phone: +18087569625
Instagram: @hawaiivolcanohouse
3. Best culinary experience: Liliha Bakery, Honolulu
Whenever Carrere returns to Hawaii she has one goal: "I'll eat my way around the island," she laughs. "Every place that I ate when I was a kid!"
Hawaiian cuisine is a reflection of the islands' multicultural heritage. "[There was] a huge plantation culture here," explains Carrere. "All the different cultures came from the Philippines, China, Japan, Portugal. They couldn't speak each other's languages, so the way everybody came together was with their food. Portuguese sweet bread, Filipino rice and fish dishes, Chinese noodles. All the flavours became this delicious mélange of local cuisine.. If you have a macaroni salad here, it's not gonna taste like any macaroni salad you've had anywhere else. The roast pork is a different flavour. Those flavours are just different."
Carrere's Hawaiian culinary picks involve the kid-friendly experience of curating your own meal, like Gina's Hawaiian-style Korean barbeque or St Louis Delicatessen, a Japanese okazuyaestablishment selling prepared foods to pack into a bento (lunch) box. For sweet tooths, Carrere loves shave ice. "I always go to the School Street shave ice off the freeway. But by new favourite is Ululani's," she says. "They have the most delicious all-natural flavours like guava and coconut. They're meticulous with their shave ice. It's very, very fine. I can't stand shave ice that's hard and crunchy… it should melt in your mouth, like the softest snow. That's what shave ice is; a huge block of ice that's scooped around and shaved. That's the only correct way."
But Carrere's first stop off the plane is always Liliha Bakery in Honolulu. "It's the same counter that I grew up at when my grandma took me there; I must have been maybe eight the first time," she says. "I like the hamburger steak plate with rice and macaroni salad and a butter roll and fruit punch…. my grandma used to have the cheeseburger – and of course, the bun is divine, because [it's] homemade. They have the best pancakes for breakfast. The bakery goods, like ensaïmada and lady fingers. Ensaïmada is fantastic; it's a golden sweet bun with butter and sugar on top." She pauses. "I'm dying right now just thinking about this."
Website: https://www.lilihabakery.com/
Address: 515 N Kuakini St, Honolulu, HI 96817, United States
Phone: +18085311651
Instagram: @lilihabakery
4. Best place to learn about Hawaiian history: Bishop Museum and 'Iolani Palace, Honolulu
The human history of the Hawaiian islands began with settlement by Polynesian peoples between 940 and 1200 AD. In the late 18th Century, Kamehameha I unified the islands and became the first ruler of the new Kingdom of Hawaii. The arrival of Europeans in the 17th Century led to the settlement of plantations and, eventually, a forced overthrow of the monarchy in the late 19th Century. Hawaii became a US state in 1959 and attracts millions of visitors with its spectacular beaches, towering volcanoes and laid-back lifestyle.
Carrere recommends families visit Honolulu's Bishop Museum, "if you want to learn about Hawaii and Hawaiian culture. They have an observatory too, with a whole thing about how to circumnavigate when you're on a boat and follow the stars. Bishop Museum for kids, 110%."
For a dive into Hawaii's imperial past, Carrere also recommends families with older children visit Honolulu's 'Iolani Palace; an opulent structure built in the "American Florentine" style which served as the Hawaiian royal palace.
"It's not my most favourite part of Hawaiian history," says Carrere. "It's poignant and painful, but also fascinating [because] it's the only place in the US that was a royal palace. It's where Queen Lili'uokalaniwas imprisoned when [white businessmen] overthrew her monarchy. It's a fascinating period in Hawaiian history, but incredibly painful also to know that sugarcane plantation owners overthrew a sovereign nation by force."
Visitors can explore the palace's first and second floors, which include reception rooms and bedrooms, as well as Queen Lili'uokalani's Imprisonment Room, where she was held under house arrest for nearly eight months after the coup.
Website: https://www.bishopmuseum.org/
Address: 1525 Bernice St, Honolulu, HI 96817, United States
Phone: +18088473511
Instagram: @bishopmuseum
Website: https://www.iolanipalace.org/
Address: 364 S King St, Honolulu, HI 96813
Phone: +18085220832
Instagram: @iolanipalacehi
5. Best view: Halema'uma'u Crater Overlook, Big Island
The views, perfumes and sounds of Hawaii have remained with Carrere her entire life, and even more so since she moved to Hollywood. "I used to take this for granted," she says. "The colours, the blue of the ocean, the green of the trees and the grass. Everything is more vibrant. The air smells more beautiful…. the Earth is much more inviting; it invites you to her pleasures."
For an unforgettable, memory-making sight, Carrere suggest families head to the Hale'mau'mau Crater overlook.
"I love [it]," says Carrere. "I went up there when my kid was small. You have to wake up before dawn to go up to see the sun rise over the caldera. It's stunning."
The Hale'mau'mau Crater is located within the larger Kilauea Caldera. Closed in 2008 due to perilous volcanic activity, Hale'mau'mau's floor sunk 457m after a volcano eruption in 2018. Visitors with kids can drive up to the overlook point, where they can peer down at the immense, otherworldly gaping hole below. Or descend through the rainforest to the Halema'uma'u Trail; a moderate-level hike that takes you to the floor of the caldera.
"It's the adventure of going up there before dawn and up this windy, windy road, and just to stand there and see the majesty of the earth again," says Carrere. "It just takes your breath away… the mountain moonscape of the volcano. It's the way the light hits it. It's magic. It just – poof – opens up before you."
Views like this can create family memories that last a lifetime.
BBC Travel's The SpeciaList is a series of guides to popular and emerging destinations around the world, as seen through the eyes of local experts and tastemakers.
--
If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week.
For more Travel stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
Dubai is synonymous with luxury and pampering, and Huda Beauty founder Huda Kattan knows where to find it. Here are her Dubai picks, from heavenly massages to crystal shopping.
In just half a century, the Emirati city of Dubai has gone from a small fishing village on the banks of the Dubai Creek to a thriving metropolis synonymous with over-the-top luxury. It's home to the Burj Khalifa – the world's tallest tower – and Deep Dive Dubai – the world's deepest pool – and it's now building the $2bn (£1.64bn) mega-mall Dubai Square, the largest in the world.
Beauty blogger, makeup artist and entrepreneur Huda Kattan worked in finance before founding the billion-dollar cosmetics brand Huda Beauty – beloved for its wildly popular eyeshadow palettes and viral products like the Easy Blur foundation. In 2023, she was featured on the BBC's 100 Women list.
But even though it plays hard, Dubai doesn't forget to take care of itself; it was recently named the World's Best Spa Destination 2024 at the World Spa Awards.
To get to the heart of this burgeoning capital of self-care, we spoke to makeup artist-turned beauty mogul Huda Kattan, who has called Dubai home since 2008.
For Kattan, who was born and raised in the United States but lived in the UAE for two years as a child, moving to Dubai was a homecoming. "It's an extremely fast paced, multicultural environment," says Kattan, who travels endlessly around the globe for her work as the founder and CEO of Huda Beauty cosmetics. "It's probably one of the fastest-moving [cities] I've ever seen. When I go to New York, New York is way too slow for me."
Kattan, whose brand headquarters is in Dubai, loves hitting the spa in her downtime. "[It's] the best," she says. "It's about going to the spas, enjoying the massages, doing the hammams, the facials. It's about investing in yourself for sure."
And Dubai's foothold in the beauty world is also growing. Dior opened its first spa in the city in 2024 and the five-star Jumeirah Marsa Al Arab hotel with its three-storey spa will open in 2025. "Dubai is definitely getting a lot more credibility in beauty," says Kattan. "I have big celebrities asking me, 'What is happening in Dubai? What are all the treatments that people are doing?'"
But self-care in Dubai isn't just about spa treatments; its glamorous shops are a strong prescription for retail therapy, while its stunning coastal panoramas refresh mind, body and soul.
Here are Kattan's favourite ways to indulge in self-care in Dubai.
1. Best massage: Guerlain Spa
Kattan experienced her first-ever massage in Dubai 16 years ago and was instantly hooked. "I'd never had a massage in my life until I moved here," she says. "When I got my first massage, I fell asleep and was snoring and slobbering. I was like, 'What is this? This is the best experience of my life'. I now have them regularly."
Visitors will find a massage to suit every budget, from designer spas to at-home mobile massages. Kattan is a fan of both, but enthuses that those looking to splurge can’t go wrong with the Guerlain Spa at the One&Only The Palm hotel found on the tip of the manmade Palm Jumeriah island.
The Guerlain Spa features a leafy Arabic courtyard resplendent with regal fountains and a marble lobby with its own mini Guerlain boutique. Kattan was smitten from the moment she first stepped through the door. "[It's] like a movie. It's amazing," she says.
Kattan usually goes for a deep tissue massage, while her husband, Portuguese businessman Christopher Goncalo, prefers the Thai massage technique. Kattan says she used to enjoy Swedish massages, but now she seeks out a sports massage treatment. "I don't even want the relaxation anymore. I want them to work me out," she says.
Website: https://www.guerlain.com/ae/en-ae/guerlain-spa-one-and-only-the-palm-dubai.html
Address: One&Only The Palm West Crescent, Palm Jumeirah, Dubai
Phone: +971 4 440 1040
Instagram: @guerlain/
2. Best hammam: Talise Ottoman Spa
Hammams – steam-filled public bathhouses – have been part of Middle Eastern culture as early as the 7th Century, serving not only as a place to wash off the desert sand, but a space to socialise.
While modern plumbing has since been introduced, getting scrubbed clean in a room full of steam is still a hallmark of the Middle Eastern spa experience.
Kattan recommends the Talise Ottoman Spa on the West Crescent of The Palm. "I went on my birthday. It was just the best experience," she says.
The cleansing ritual at Talise Ottoman Spa takes place in a domed marble room decorated in mosaics, where clients recline on a heated marble bed to have their skin exfoliated with a kese mitt, then revived with their choice of a honey, lavender and mint mask, or one made with purifying rose or gold.
Afterwards, visitors can relax in one of the private majlis (cabanas) that surround a pool lit by a glittering chandelier. "You sit there and they bring you a yogurt drink, dates and apricots," says Kattan. "I was, like, I'm sure I'm in the 1600s and I'm a princess."
Website: https://www.jumeirah.com/en/stay/dubai/jumeirah-zabeel-saray/wellbeing/signature-talise-ottoman-spa
Address: Jumeirah Zabeel Saray, West Crescent, The Palm Jumeirah, Dubai
Phone: +971 4 453 0455
Instagram: @jumeirah
3. Best sensory indulgence: Buying Arabic perfume
To truly indulge her senses, Kattan loves visiting fragrance stores.
Bedouins have been crafting seductive fragrances like heady oud from resinous woods or earthy frankincense from the gum of the Boswellia tree for centuries. "Abdul Samad Al Qurashi is I think the most luxurious, and they do really beautiful fragrances," says Kattan of the historic Saudi Arabian fragrance house, known for crafting fine fragrances since 1852. "And Ajmal has a really beautiful store in Dubai Mall. There's also Hind Al Oud. [Fragrance is] a big part of the culture."
But Kattan says visitors don’t always need to splurge on expensive scents; they can seek out lesser-known brands: "You can go to the souqs and buy little ones," she says. "They're not necessarily ones you want to wear on a daily basis, but [the bottles are] cute trinkets. I would go to the souqs and buy the oils [and] ouds, and have [those] on my dresser."
Emiratis enjoy layering their fragrance, starting with a base of oil on the pulse points, then spritzing fragrance all over the body and, finally, capturing the scent of bakhoor incense made from wood chips soaked in fragrant oils. "They put their abaya (robe) on [the bakhoor]. Sometimes their hair will just take a little bit of smoke and it's quite beautiful," says Kattan. "I've experienced it. It's amazing."
Website: https://en-ae.ajmal.com/
Address: Ajmal Perfume, first floor, Dubai Mall
Phone: +971-4-457-4111
Instagram: @ajmalperfumes
4. Best for sparkly luxury: OOAKSTONES
Dubai has a global reputation as a go-to destination for luxury jewellery at tax-free prices, but when Kattan craves something sparkly, she splurges on decorative crystals.
"I have crystals everywhere. I'm a big crystal person," says Kattan, who loves placing them on windowsills and in bowls around her home in Dubai. Of the numerous glitzy crystal boutiques scattered throughout town, Kattan has a favourite: "There's one crystal store called OOAKSTONES (One Of A Kind stones)."
Located in Dubai's Alserkal Avenue arts district, OOAKSTONES offers a highly curated selection of crystals, ranging from artisanal jewellery and statement pieces to home decor.
Kattan notes that in Dubai, crystals often cost around one-tenth the price one might spend elsewhere, and she believes visitors should make time for crystal shopping in their schedule. "It's overwhelming and it's amazing and if you're coming to the Middle East [it's definitely something] you should do," says Kattan.
Website: https://ooakstones.com/
Address: Warehouse 20 (Inside Kave), Alserkal Avenue, Dubai
Phone: +971 52 481 6700
Instagram: @ooakstones
5. Best for relaxing outdoors: SAL beach club
From dive-in cinemas and air-conditioned cabanas to loungers emblazoned with fashion brands, Dubai's beach clubs are an unabashedly glamorous affair.
Kattan's go-to beach experience is SAL on the terrace of the seven-star Burj Al Arab Hotel, overlooking the Persian Gulf. "It has a beautiful and calm setting with an amazing view. [It's the] perfect [place] to relax for the day," she says.
SAL is open year-round, though Dubai's beach clubs are most popular during the cooler winter months. The trendy oasis features a stunning infinity pool and is home to the brand-new Sunset Lounge, a chic space with eye-catching mirrored walls. Guests can relax on the club's submerged pool loungers or hole up in one of the private air-conditioned cabanas complete with their own balconies and ensuite bathrooms. SAL also offers several poolside dining menus, with treats ranging from chilled starters and Mediterranean-inspired seafood dishes to decadent desserts, as well as a luxe cocktail list and full shisha bar. Complimentary ice lollies and gazpacho shots add a touch of whimsy to the Gulf's glorious sunsets, and summertime visitors are welcome to stay until dark for a dip under the stars.
Website: https://www.jumeirah.com/en/stay/dubai/burj-al-arab-jumeirah/dining/burj-al-arab-sal
Address: Ground Mezzanine Floor, Burj Al Arab, Jumeirah Street, Dubai
Phone: +971 800 323232
Instagram: @sal_burjalarab
6. Best for high-tech facial treatments: Lucia Aesthetic Dermatology Clinic
The upscale neighbourhood of Jumeriah is home to Lucia Aesthetic Dermatology Clinic; founded by renowned dermatologist Dr Radmila Lukian. Under her watchful eye, the clinic has become one of Dubai's most elite centres for aesthetic medicine, citing celebrities such as Naomi Campbell, Eva Longoria and Lindsay Lohan as loyal clients.
The clinic's menu of treatments runs the gamut from their Express Facial – which has refreshed clients skipping out of the door in 30 minutes – to a 75-minute non-invasive Hydrafacial designed to clarify pores and enrich skin with antioxidants. "I have been going there for a few years now, but they are definitely my favourite clinic. They’re magical," says Kattan. "I don’t go exclusively to Lucia, but, but they’re definitely the best."
Website: https://luciaclinic.com/
Address: Jumeirah 2 Jumeirah Beach Road, Villa 323, Dubai, UAE
Phone: +971 43 854 525
Instagram: @luciaclinic/
BBC Travel’s The SpeciaList is a series of guides to popular and emerging destinations around the world, as seen through the eyes of local experts and tastemakers.
--
If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can’t-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week.
For more Travel stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
This ancient snack is synonymous with Tibetan New Year and will soon be prepared by millions of families.
At the entrance of the Kemgun Gumba monastery in Lukla, Nepal, an indigo-blue sign reads "dining". Inside, nearly a dozen women and a few men are hard at work, hunched over long tables, deftly mixing, rolling and slicing dough into thin rectangular strips. Each strip is slit in the middle, and one side of the dough is pulled into a ribbon-like bow. The rhythmic pounding of dough punctuates the crackle of oil sizzling in a large vessel outside, as boys and girls transform the doughy strips into deep-fried khapse (kha zas in Tibetan), a sweet, crunchy snack central to Tibetan and Sherpa Buddhists.
"Kha means 'mouth', and sey means 'snack'," said chef Yeshi Jampa, co-author of the book Taste Tibet and founder of the eponymous Taste Tibet restaurant in Oxford. "It's a symbol of [Tibetan] New Year," or Losar, he added.
Every year, millions of Tibetan and Sherpa Buddhists in Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, India and elsewhere celebrate Losar (lo means "year" and gsar means "new"). The 15-day festival (which starts 28 February 2025) occurs on the first day of the Tibetan Lunar calendar and celebrates renewal and new beginnings. The first three days of the festival are considered the most important when followers visit monasteries, offer ceremonial scarves, receive blessings from Rinpoches (respected Tibetan teachers or lamas) and prepare special dishes with friends and family – especially khapse.
Eating khapse on Losar is thought to bring warmth, peace and tranquillity in the new year, and preparing it is both an art and a labour-intensive process. The dough (made of wheat flour, butter, sugar and oil with an optional egg) is kneaded, rolled and shaped into designs like flowers, knots and braids before being and fried in ghee (clarified butter).
According to Geshema Delek Dolma, a nun at Dolma Ling Nunnery in northern India's Himachal Pradesh state, the history of khapse is intertwined with early Bon rituals – the indigenous religion practised across the Tibetan plateau before the arrival of Buddhism in the 7th Century CE – where blood offerings were made to deities.
"[Instead] of animal sacrifice, the custom evolved into offering khapse, which was sometimes coloured red as a symbolic gesture," Dolma said. "The practice eventually spread to the other two provinces [Amdo and Kham] of Tibet."
Khapse-making is a communal activity.Itrequires many hands to prepare the honey-golden pastries in large quantities so it can be distributed to friends, family and across the community. So in the days ahead of Losar, family members come together to prepare large batches of khapse.
"It depends on how much quantity [of khapse] you have to make," said Kanchhi Maya Sherpa, who runs the Hotel Sherwi Hyul in Kathmandu. "It's impossible for one [or] two people to make it as we need to knead the mixture together for a long time. Working together in the Gumba [monastery] is community work."
Followers first offer khapse to the deities as part of their religious practice, and afterwards, the crunchy treat is shared with others, including the poor, as a means of charity. "This is always the tradition because Tibetans believe in the service of others before self," said Jampa.
More like this:
• Chhurpi: The world's hardest cheese?
• The world's higest train line
• After 100 hours in Tibet, I knew it was time to leave
As Jamyang Norbu, author of the book Echoes From Forgotten Mountains, notes on his blog, the first piece of khapse isn't actually eaten or offered. Instead, it's customary to shape the dough in a scorpion-shaped cookie, fry it and then place it outside the kitchen until "the 15th day of the New Year to ward off bad luck and possible accidents that could take place during the [khapse]-making".
"Traditionally, it was believed that making khapse could predict success for the upcoming year," explained Dolma. For example, oil spilling during the frying process was considered a bad omen. Jampa recalled an accident from his childhood that ruined his family's New Year celebrations. "[It meant] evil," he said, noting how preparing the snack is steeped in cultural beliefs.
Khapse recipes and the shapes the snack takes vary across regions and families. In Tibet's Markam County, where Jampa grew up, khapse was traditionally sweetened with organic honey from their beehives instead of sugar. Khapse made with honey "makes the biscuit a little softer", he explained. "The sweetness of honey-made khapse arrives more slowly." In contrast, recipes that call for sugar have a crunchier texture.
"Different parts of Tibet mould khapse differently [and] in different shapes," Jampa said. "I am from Kham. In my village, we make less ornate khapse, known as kong-chen – a narrow rectangular piece of dough with a cut in the middle through which one side of the khapse is pulled through." Another style, the hrug-hrug, "are basically just small rectangles or triangles of dough that require no further work", Jampa explained.
Khapse is also deeply connected to Buddhist rituals. During Losar, flowers, fruits, grains, nuts, salt, butter and water are placed on the altar, as offerings to deities, alongside stacks of khapse arranged in towers called derga.
"Derga khapses are different shapes, compared to the khapses that we eat," my Tibetan friend, Tenzin Diki, told me. "We add khapse in the shape of a crescent moon and a sun on the derga. We also add beautiful kharu (smaller, ornately designed pieces of khapse) on the derga, and decorate it with chhurpi [traditional cheese], sweets [and] rock sugar."
Today, these fried cookies have evolved in style and shape and are eaten throughout the year. Khapse is sold year-round at stores in Kathmandu and many families prepare it as a snack outside of Losar. A quick online search for "khapse" or "khapsey" shows legions of home chefs and food bloggers experimenting with moulding the cookies and preparing them with additional ingredients like banana, beetroot, spinach and more.
"These days, people have modernised khapse, using their creativity, adding motifs to shape it differently," Sherpa explained. "The shapes now depend on how much creativity one has. You can make it in any shape you want."
Yet, not everyone embraces these innovations. "We have to keep traditional things traditional," said Jampa. "[Khapse] is a special ceremony snack, a symbol of family effort and [it] reminds us that it is something special."
--
If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week.
For more Travel stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
Once known as "the North Korea of Europe", Albania is turning to its millennia-old sites and rich cultural heritage to recast its image.
After a period of turmoil, places often talk about looking towards the future. However, 40 years after the death of communist dictator Enver Hoxha, Albania is, in many ways, looking to its distant past. A period of extreme isolationism from the 1940s to 1991 led the Balkan nation to close its religious institutions, neglect many of its historical sites and to become known as "the North Korea of Europe". But today, Albania is working hard to reclaim its cultural heritage by preserving its natural landscape and embracing its ancient roots.
The more-than-2,500-year-old ruins of the city of Butrint is one such example. Dating back to roughly 800BC, the site has long stood in the centre of the Western world, surviving conflicts, absorbing different cultures and leaving multiple layers of history to explore. It was likely a Greek city-state before the Romans expanded it into a bustling town complete with a bathhouse. Later, the Byzantines and Ottomans both left their respective marks on it. Butrint's history tells the story of the Mediterranean's shifting politics and its many cultures and religions – all of which have shaped modern-day Albania.
"In 1992, [Butrint] was the first place in Albania declared a Unesco World Heritage site," explained BBC Travel Show host Qasa Alom in a recent episode. "[It preserves] some of the rich cultural history that lies beyond the shadow cast by the events of the last century."
Today, the city's sprawling ruins are part of the larger Butrint National Park, which includes 93-sq-km of forested coastal landscape. In addition to the historic site, the park is also home to 1,200 different plant and animal species. Visitors can explore the ruins of a Hellenistic-era theatre, admire early Christian monuments and then hike the wooded hills or cruise the nearby Lake Butrint.
The preservation of both the ruins and the surrounding parkland are the result of a concerted effort from organisations like the Butrint Foundation and the World Monuments Fund. Donations from both groups have helped restore Butrint and protect the surrounding landscape, while also providing training in historic preservation that created much needed jobs to the local community.
"It has been a struggle the last 30 years to protect the beauty and the history of Butrint, originally [because of] the neglect after the fall of communism… but also with the developers trying to build around the site," Ani Tare, former director of the Butrint National Park told the BBC.
Butrint isn't the only part of Albania that has experienced a restoration. In the nation's capital, Tirana, located 278km (173 miles) to the north, many Hoxha-era monuments have been torn down to make way for new community spaces. Skanderbeg Square, for example, once home to several monuments dedicated to communism and Hoxha's power, is now the largest pedestrian square in the Balkans. Similarly the towering Pyramid of Tirana has been transformed from a museum dedicated to Hoxha into a park and sculpture garden with sweeping views of the city.
More like this:
• A 'mini-Greece' by the sea
• Maderia: The far-flung 'Hawaii of Europe'
• The 25 best places to travel in 2025
Art has also helped Albanians shake off the past and reimagine a new national identity in other ways. At Butrint, for example, programming like their annual drama festival, put on inside of the site's ancient stone theatre, has helped bring back a sense of pride and history among the local community.
"In the beginning [visitors to the festival were] noisy, they didn't understand what was going on and they used to steal the cushions," Tare explained. "In five years, the local people here would come beautifully dressed, nobody makes noise, everyone respected the theatre, nobody stole cushions. Why? Because the culture [of this place] made them aware and gave them a sense of pride."
--
If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week.
For more Travel stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
Historian Natalia Mehlman Petrzela explores life, love and death on Earth's second-tallest peak in the new season of Extreme.
Straddling the border of Pakistan and China in the Karakoram mountain range, K2 is often referred to as the "savage mountain". Towering 8,611m and reaching into the heavens like a snowcapped pyramid, K2 is the world's second-tallest mountain (topped only by Everest) and arguably the hardest to climb. In Peak Danger, the second season of BBC's Extreme podcast, host and historian Natalia Mehlman Petrzela chronicles the harrowing tale of newlyweds Cecilie Skog and Rolf Bae, who scaled K2 in 2008 – and found themselves in a disaster that would see 11 climbers lose their lives in two days.
For Skog, the allure of the mountains came early. She was born surrounded by formidable peaks and explains that even as a child, she often found herself drawn to the alpine heights all around her. Like many climbers, she called the rush of scaling mountains "addictive".
"I grew up in Ålesund, a little town on the west coast of Norway, and surrounding this little town is mountains everywhere. It is really beautiful there," Skog says on the podcast. "These mountains, they should have given it with, like a warning sign: 'this is really addictive.'"
While climbing mountains all over the world, Skog also found love and married climber Rolf Bae. After years of honing their skills, the couple decided their honeymoon would be the perfect opportunity to venture to Asia and attempt to scale K2. Their journey started in Pakistan at the Baltoro Glacier, a near-mythical landscape home to six peaks over 7,900m. The beautiful, nearly untouched scenery is one draw, but it is accompanied by the thrill of high altitude, steep cliffs and breathtaking ascents – and the always-present spectre of cheating death.
"If you are going to take on K2, you got to be at the top of your game. That is why it is known, in climbing circles, as 'the mountaineer's mountain,'" Petrzela says. That reputation was something Skog and Bae were well aware of, as well as the inevitable possibility of facing a life-or-death emergency.
"The most important thing cannot be to summit; the most important thing has to be to come back home alive," Skog says in the podcast.
An ominous start
Upon their arrival to the Karakoram Range, Skog and Bae joined some 30 hopeful, optimistic climbers from far-flung countries such as Serbia, Ireland, France, the Netherlands and South Korea, as well as a team of Nepalese and Pakistani porters. They were experienced and knowledgeable about the conditions, the dangers and the possibility of inclement weather. Avalanches, rockfall and unpredictable blizzards weren't unheard of – but there was another sign: a memorial at the beginning of the journey dedicated to those who had lost their lives while attempting to scale K2.
"When you arrive, you see a huge pile of brown, weathered rocks, all stacked on top of one another. It is adorned with crisscrossing flags, and pictures of fallen climbers," Petrzela says.
The memorial isn't enough to deter climbers, nor is the low oxygen level and bitingly cold temperatures.
"What I experienced was: 'why am I here… am I in the right place?' I questioned myself. I questioned my motivation for being there," fellow climber Dr Eric Meyer says on the podcast. "And then you start to reflect on… is it worth the risk?"
It has never been easier for intrepid travellers to challenge themselves and face K2. Petrzela explains on the podcast that a cottage industry has materialised and offers all the necessities for anyone hoping to be among the few who can say they've summited the mountain. However, that commercialisation has led to concerns over climbers' safety and the sometimes-laissez-faire approach to what is undoubtedly a very dangerous trek.
"There is no rulebook to mountain climbing. No international association telling you what or how to climb. And there is nothing to stop anyone from making mountaineering into big business. Nowadays, for the right price, you too can buy your way onto the slopes of an 8,000m peak," Petrzela says. While there is no association overseeing all climbers, there is the International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation (or UIAA), which "developed standards for over 25 types of safety equipment, including helmets, harnesses and [crampons]".
Summit fever
As the group faced a few unexpected challenges – including a curious case of missing equipment – Skog explains that the prospect of turning around did enter her mind, but she was still drawn to the peak. "[I thought] we should turn around, because this is crazy. But again... we are looking up and we can see the summit there. We are so close," Skog says. "The closer you get to the summit, the harder it is to turn around."
"It is like a kind of compulsion, an inexorable force pulling them further and further up the mountain," Petrzela says.
In what would later be known as the 2008 K2 disaster – coming after a similar 1986 tragedy that saw five people die on the mountain – a massive ice avalanche swept away climbers' rope lines, causing many to fall from an especially treacherous section of the mountain known as the "Bottlekneck". The incident killed 11 climbers, including Bae. Even the ones lucky enough to make it off K2 were dealing with frostbite and other injuries. Survivors, Petrzela explains, felt "shellshocked, like a soldier returning from war."
The names of the climbers were added to the makeshift memorial at basecamp. Reports would call the incident "one of the worst tragedies in Himalayan history".
More like this:
• The big climate moments to look out for in 2025
• Why some of the world's borders are changing
• The mountaineers collecting hard-to-reach data
Still, Skog continued adventuring – partly, she says, to feel the same sense of wonder she shared with her husband. She enlisted friends to trek across Greenland and, later, she completed an unassisted crossing of Antarctica. She has even returned to the Himalayas, though her new perspective has shifted everything, even summit fever.
"I did not have the same feeling being there. I felt that this does not belong to me anymore," she says.
*This article is adapted from a script by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela and Leigh Meyer.
--
If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week.
For more Travel stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
Sweden's long, cold nights might put you off going there in winter, unless, that is, you are in search of that elusive 21st-Century luxury: a good night's sleep.
The ferry cuts through the icy Baltic waters as it makes its way around the Stockholm Archipelago. Place names like Skarpö, Hjälmö and Gällnö are painted on rust-red huts lining the jetties. The suffix "Ö" means island in Swedish, a pictorial representation of a land mass surrounded by sea with two tiny people about to dock.
I am the only person to disembark at Svartsö, one of the few islands in the archipelago where accommodation remains open in winter. I make my way along a snowy track to Skärgårdshotell where I am shown to a cabin on the edge of a forest overlooking the dark expanse of Lake Svartsöfladen. It feels about as far away from it all as you can get.
My room is Swedish simplicity at its most minimal: a bed, a chair and a bedside table. No television, and not much else to distract me from the pristine tranquillity of my surroundings. This is just as well as I am here, primarily, to sleep.
In an age of relentless connectivity, sleep has become the ultimate luxury and spawned a new travel trend: sleep tourism, where sleep-deprived travellers are choosing their hotel on the basis of its pillow menu or booking themselves into away-from-it-all sleep retreats with tailored sleep-inducing activities.
Sweden has a different, more natural approach to sleep tourism, however, taking its cue from the landscape and a more traditional way of life. Often associated with bustling, connected cities like Stockholm and Gothenberg, come winter Sweden embraces its sleepy side and is inviting visitors to do the same.
"The abundance of accessible nature and large areas of peaceful wilderness, combined with dark nights, cool temperatures and a cultural emphasis on relaxation, makes Sweden an ideal location for sleep tourism," explains Christian Benedict, a sleep researcher at Sweden's Uppsala University. "Studies have shown that technology and the way it impinges on our lives has a significant effect on our sleep, and spending more time in nature is tied to better mental health and fewer sleepless nights."
When I decided to try it for myself, I chose the Stockholm archipelago, a nature-lovers paradise with more than 30,000 islands, many of them uninhabited. Svartsö is one of the larger isles but has only around 65 year-round residents. A two-hour ferry ride from Stockholm, in summer it's a popular getaway, luring weekenders and holiday makers with summerhouses, a clutch of restaurants and abundance of nature in which to walk, swim, cycle and kayak.
In the winter months, the Skärgårdshotell is the only accommodation open and its cosy forest cabins, set away from the main building in their own peaceful wooded area, offer the type of peace and quiet that I am after, while not leaving me completely alone in the wilderness.
I am a city dweller with a restless mind. I often wake several times a night and rise early feeling the need to tackle the long list of things that have kept me awake. Here, on the island in winter, there is little for me to do except hike, read and observe the rhythms of the day in a way I can't when surrounded by the bright lights of a city.
Svartsö literally means "the black island", referring to the dark granite bedrock, though in winter the name could simply refer to the dark skies that are completely free of city glare. Darkness, long viewed as a metaphor for fear and depression, is embraced in these Nordic regions. Further north in the Arctic Circle, where the polar night blankets the land in darkness for months, far from staying indoors, inhabitants strap on headlamps and explore snowy trails.
So I do the same, setting out at dusk past fields of sheep, pigs and goats. I head along the edge of the forest and wander down to the seashore, watching as the sun drops into the water and listening as the noisy drilling of a woodpecker stops, almost as if a switch has been flicked. The surrounding forest falls quiet as the Earth settles down for its own good night's sleep beneath a heavy blanket of snow.
I find the hotel sauna discreetly tucked between the trees and end the day in classic Scandinavian style, sweating out all the worries that might keep me awake followed by a plunge in the bracing sea.
After a simple dinner of stångkorv (Swedish sausage and kale), I sit by the fire and get talking to a group of kayakers who have paddled here from Stockholm. "Traditionally, in the darker months, fire was important for warmth and light but also as part of the evening ritual," a woman named Marie tells me. "After dinner people would cosy up around the fire and allow the flicker of flames to sooth away all the stresses of a day's work."
It works for me. In fact, I find it so soporific that by 20:00 I am ready to retire to my cabin where I hunker down under a duvet and cosy woollen blanket and sleep for an unheard-of 10 hours, waking refreshed to see a sliver of moon above the trees outside.
It's easy to think of sleep deprivation as a very 21st-Century problem, but the Swedish legend of the Mara shows that it's as old as the forest. A strange mythical being that was said to torture people in their sleep, causing fear and tight anxiety-ridden chests, Mara gave rise to the word "nightmare". But in modern times, technological distractions have replaced mythical creatures as more and more people struggle to get to sleep.
"Sweden is one of Europe's most digitalised societies and were early adopters of digitalisation," explains Thérèse Cedercreutz, chief commercial officer for Sweden's Scandic Hotels Group. "Our interest in sleep, and especially the lack of it, can be traced to this and an increased awareness of its impact on our health, which we have set out to counteract with a range of measures. We have blackout rooms, sleep-inducing playlists and wellness areas where mobile phones are banned. If our customers don't sleep, our business as well as their health suffers."
More like this:
• Eight of the world's most extraordinary tiny hotel rooms
• Sweden's wild, animal-free safari
• The new travel retreats addressing depression and grief
Around the globe, other, both urban and remote hotels are taking things several steps further.
London's Cadogan Hotel has its own Sleep Concierge service , developed in association with hypnotherapist and sleep expert Malminder Gill, who provides a programme of guided sleep meditation. Mandarin Oriental Geneva has a three-day package, run with a private sleep clinic, that involves studying guests' sleeping patterns and creating individual sleep programmes. In Thailand, amidst the tropical greenery on the Royal Coast, the Civa-Som Hua Hin resort's resident naturopath will guide you through everything from diet to hormones that may be affecting circadian rhythms. Meanwhile, the Carillon Miami Wellness Resort uses electromagnetic and infrared technologies to get guests to sleep.
"Our clients were coming to us saying they felt generally depleted, and this often seemed to be down to lack of sleep," says Stella Photi, founder of holiday company Wellbeing Escapes. "We try to incorporate elements of the local cultures into our sleep programmes. In Buddhist countries such as Thailand or Sri Lanka we offer mediation and mindfulness. In India, Ayurvedic treatments use locally sourced herbs; and in Italy, guided walks through vineyards are part of a sleep-promoting programme of activities."
In Sweden, however, it is the experience of being in nature that forms the bedrock of sleep tourism. "Nature's motto is keep it simple," says Jennie Walker, founder of Walkers Naturturer, a nature-guiding business in Sweden's West Coast Archipelago. "In winter, on the barren outcrops that characterise the Gothenburg Archipelago, there is little vegetation, and the birch and pine trees turn away from the strong west winds. A walk over the boulder fields on a winter's day, perhaps coming across a sunbathing harbor seal on one of the skerries, is the perfect preparation for a good night's rest."
And where traditional sleep retreats focus on unwinding before bedtime, in Sweden the focus on sleep begins at dawn with the possibility of pursuing sleep-inducing activities such as hiking, kayaking and forest bathing.
So, after my mammoth night's sleep, I fuel up with a breakfast of muesli, yoghurt, lingonberry jam and cinnamon buns to hike the Svartsö section of the Stockholm Archipelago Trail. This unique 270km long-distance path traverses 20 islands, from Arholma in the north to Landsort in the south.
On Svartsö, the 18km trail takes me around the island, past a large freshwater lake and through the thick snow-carpeted pine forest where I spot the odd red squirrel, follow deer tracks and step over a tree felled by a beaver's gnawing. The whole day is like an extended forest bathing experience, and by the time I head back to my cabin there is little for me to worry about beyond dinner, sitting by the fire and sleeping well – or "sov gott" as they say in the land of sleep.
And I did. It seems that, for me, gentle exercise in peaceful surroundings with few distractions and taking my cue for bed from nature, provides the perfect Circadian reset.
"Sleep retreats are not just helping people sleep when they are on holiday," says Photi, "The objective is to allow for a relaxing, holistic and personal approach that will set you up with new sleep, and waking habits, with the aim of bringing about long-lasting change."
I'll sleep on that.
--
If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week.
For more Travel stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
Train stations were once the centrepieces of many US cities. After decades of neglect, many places are now reviving them in new, creative ways.
The trains don't stop at Union Pacific Depot anymore. So a hotel, the Asher Adams, was built within the former train station in Salt Lake City, Utah, and opened in October 2024. Refreshed with white and gilt detailing and long wooden benches interspersed with plush seats, the resulting space pulls a bit of a mind trick: are you lingering in a lobby or waiting for a train to arrive?
The Asher Adams is just one of a spate of recently restored train stations across the US that are being reclaimed as hotels, restaurants, museums and more.
From the late 1800s through the 1920s, many of the US's railway barons built grand train stations. These palaces not only testify to the "golden age of American railroading", but serve as a reminder of how the rapid growth of rail travel following the US Civil War helped settle the US West and transform the once-largely rural nation to a coast-to-coast collection of cities. As automobiles and, later, planes became more fashionable than trains, many of these railways consolidated or stopped running, leaving these once-bustling centrepieces of urban life empty.
Some stations burned down. Others were demolished. But over the past decade, cities have been finding creative ways to breathe new life into the historic structures, helping them regain their cultural cachet while offering travellers an intriguing glimpse into the past.
In the case of Asher Adams, tearing down the Union Pacific Depot wasn't an option. "The public had an emotional connection to it," recalled Emir Tursic, a partner with HKS Architects, which led the restoration. "It's part of our cultural heritage."
It's also one of the oldest buildings in Salt Lake City, he noted. Originally built between 1908 and 1909 as a bustling hub to merge multiple railway lines connecting the American North-west and South-west, the brick-and-sandstone structure hadn't been used for as a railway stop for decades. Instead, part of the structure had been converted into office space ahead of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City; another wing became a nightclub. "The rest was abandoned, especially during the pandemic."
What made this structure worth preserving? Aside from its emotional pull and landmarked status, Tursic says its sweeping Second Empire architecture, stained-glass windows, terrazzo floors and two large murals on either side of the hall (including Driving the Golden Spike, depicting the completion of the Transcontinental railroad in 1869).
"The craftsmanship simply doesn't exist anymore," Tursic said. "It has a significant value that would be impossible to replace."
Tursic also believes these revived spaces offer travellers a unique connection to local culture and history. The Asher Adams, for instance, is named after John Asher and John Adams, two cartographers who first mapped railroad routes throughout the West, and as media in Salt Lake have reported, "almost everything in [it is] a nod to Utah and railroad history".
"Today's travellers have more intellectual curiosity," Tursic explained. While a railway station-turned-hotel may not retain its original function, "both are related to travel, and this gives us a chance to restore the original character and spirit of the structure. It tells a story in itself: you can sit in the Great Hall and it takes you back." Not surprisingly, many visitors immediately take out their phones and start taking photos and videos. "That's what people are looking for: memorable experiences that are really hard to replicate."
A second reason for the reuse boom: location, location, location.
"A lot of towns and cities were built up around their train stations," said Glenn NP Nowak, associate professor of architecture at UNLV School of Architecture in Las Vegas, Nevada. As result, many of the structures are located in highly desirable areas. These stations were designed as a "gateway" to then-burgeoning locales, where travellers would disembark and get their first impressions of the city. As a result, many boast generously arched entryways or tall columns that strategically frame what are now historic downtowns or other attractions.
"You had a sense of arrival," said Diana Melichar, president of Melichar Architects in Lake Forest, Illinois, and who has renovated several train stations in smaller communities. "They were the gateways to these 19th- and 20th-Century cities that were growing. Trains were the mode of transportation [and the message was], this is the grand entry to the town."
Perhaps the most expansive example is the recent transformation of Denver's Union Station into a massive hall encompassing a hotel (The Crawford), restaurants and retail spaces. While trains still whisk passengers from the airport to the hotel and the seasonal Winter Park Express train brings travellers and Denverites up to ski country, Union Station is no longer the robust train hub it was in its heyday.
It is, however, an awe-inspiring space. In addition to its enormous scale, it abounds with restored historic details – antique mirrors; subway tiles; the original ticketing office which has been transformed into a bar; and an old barber shop-turned local ice cream purveyor. Built in 1881 in the wake of the Colorado Gold Rush, the structure was remodelled twice; first by urban preservationist Dana Crawford who spearheaded a $38m revitalisation in 2014, followed by another elegant $11m makeover that was unveiled in July 2024.
"[Crawford] had a vision to restore Union Station back to its glory days, when there were 80 trains passing through," recalled Ed Blair, area general manager of Sage Hospitality Group, parent company to both the hotel and Union Station. Revived as "Denver's living room", the renovation has helped lure tourists and locals back to the city's centre.
Today, it's a light-filled, multi-storey space, drawing creatives tapping on laptops and sipping locally roasted coffee from Pigtrain. Perhaps the best perch is after dark, from the Cooper Lounge on the second-storey mezzanine, where visitors have a birds-eye view of the 1900s domed-glass chandeliers and Manhattans arrive on shiny silver trays.
A third reason cited for the boom: sustainability. Most train stations were built for the long haul (pun intended), and to withstand the wear and tear of a steady flow of passengers.
More like this:
• The Swiss hotel cut off from the world for 12 hours a day
• Europe's stunning high-tech luxury train
• A new night train connecting some of Europe's great cities
"Economically and environmentally, it makes a lot of sense to preserve what you have, instead of tearing something down and building up something new," Melichar says. "If they have good bones, these buildings built of stone or brick will last another century."
Of course, not all train stations are palatial. For example, the former Westfield train station in Westfield, New Jersey, about 22 miles west of New York City, is a modestly sized stone-brick building built in 1892 that sits alongside an active commuter rail. Most recently used as office space, it had fallen into disrepair. After a 2.5-year renovation – which included removing dead birds from the roof – it re-opened in October 2024 as the Mexican restaurant Maize Cocina & Cocktails.
"We could have gotten a vanilla box, or a turn-key restaurant," says Jesa Henneberry, partner and executive chef. "But we didn't want to tear down history. We wanted to breathe new life into it. I feel good we did that here."
Nods to the building's roots are sprinkled throughout the restaurant: wooden banquettes are styled like train station-style benches and cushions made from blue-and-white striped fabric evoke vintage train conductor hats. What was once the luggage room has been transformed into the kitchen and the former waiting room is now part of the bar, where visitors queue for margaritas, not train tickets.
Best of all, visitors can explore most of these new incarnations for free – or at least for the small price of a drink or museum ticket, as with the case of Cincinnati's Union Terminal, a dazzling Art Deco landmark now home to the Cincinnati History Museum and the Museum of Natural History & Science.
But most importantly, developing these historic spaces is about looking at current-day needs, and overlaying that with what the building has to offer, the pros say. A train station waiting room can be adapted into a unique cultural space – but only if you have an available train station to adapt.
"We like to say that you can't build history," said Blair.
--
If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week.
For more Travel stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
Scientists say subtle differences in the colour of seawater will enable them to count tiny - but critically important - Antarctic marine creatures, from Space.
The target of the new research effort is Antarctic krill, which are just a couple of inches long and one of the most abundant and important animals on the planet.
Marine wildlife - including whales, penguins, seals and seabirds – all feed on these diminutive creatures.
However, conservation scientists are concerned that fishing and climate change could be having a negative impact on them and say we need new ways to monitor the creatures.
"Antarctic krill are the superheroes of the Southern Ocean," said Rod Downie, chief polar adviser at the wildlife charity WWF-UK.
"They are tiny, unsung heroes that sustain incredible marine life, but climate change and unsustainable fishing are putting them at risk."
Researchers from the University of Strathclyde, WWF and the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) are developing a new way to use satellites to work out how many krill are in the ocean around Antarctica.
The key is in subtle differences in how much light seawater absorbs - depending on how many krill are swimming in it.
Dr Cait McCarry, from the University of Strathclyde, has just returned from a trip to Antarctica, where she caught krill in order to measure this effect.
"We start with seawater, then we add in a krill and take a measurement [of how much light the water absorbs]," she explained. "Then we add another krill and take another measurement."
This analysis of exactly how the density of krill alters the colour of the ocean will, researchers say, allow them to take snapshots of the krill population from satellites - monitoring the population from Space.
Krill are food for some of the largest animals on the planet - including giant whales that migrate thousands of kilometres, to Antarctica, to feed on them.
They are also the foundation of a healthy ocean - part of a virtuous cycle: Whales eat krill, krill eat microscopic plants that live in sea ice, and those plants absorb planet-warming carbon as they grow. When whales poop (in vast quantities), that fertilises the planet-cooling marine plants.
However, as the ocean temperatures rise with global warming, conservation scientists are concerned that this cycle could be disrupted, and that krill could be vulnerable.
Mr Downie said: "We urgently need to better manage the fishery and protect krill habitats within a network of marine protected areas.
"[This project could] give us a new tool to help monitor and safeguard this vital species."
The government says it will spend more than £2.6bn, over the next two years, to protect more homes and businesses in England from flooding - £250m more than previously announced.
The money will be spent on projects ranging from tidal barriers and flood walls to nature-based solutions that slow water flow.
In its latest detailed assessment, the Environment Agency calculated 6.3 million homes across England were currently at risk from flooding from rivers, seas and surface water.
With climate change set to bring more intense storms and heavier rainfall, that could rise to eight million by 2050 - one out of every four properties.
* £43m for Bridgwater Tidal Barrier Flood Defence Scheme, in Somerset
* £35m for a flood-risk-management scheme in Derby
* £3.5m for the Poole Bridge to Hunger Hill Flood Defence Scheme, in Dorset
* £2.5m to support property-flood-resilience schemes across Leics, Derbys and Notts
* £2m to protect communities in Bewdley, Worcs
"With this new funding, we will work closely with the government to deliver the vital projects that are needed across the country, ensuring our investment goes to those communities who need it the most," Alan Lovell, who chairs the Environment Agency, said.
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband played no part in giving the green light to a solar farm in Lincolnshire linked to Labour Party donor Dale Vince, he has told MPs.
In January, the government approved a solar farm at Heckington Fen, on farmland between Sleaford and Boston.
Miliband said he stepped back from from making a decision on the 500MW project, which is being developed by Mr Vince's Ecotricity.
Consultation documents showed the farm – which will cover about 525 hectares (about 1,300 acres) – would generate enough electricity to power more than 100,000 homes.
Miliband was questioned in the House of Commons by shadow frontbencher Joy Morrissey about the project.
Morrissey said: "The secretary of state recently approved a 524-hectare solar farm in Lincolnshire – a farm linked to Dale Vince, a £5.4 million donor to the Labour Party.
"The public have a right to be certain that this decision was carried out properly."
Miliband responded: "I took no part in this decision and recused myself from it."
The government is looking to expand the development of solar farms, and approval of projects has accelerated since Labour took office last year.
Lincolnshire County Council leader Martin Hill previously told the BBC that developers were "queuing up to have more solar farms".
Five large energy farms have already been approved for Lincolnshire and nine more are awaiting decisions.
Miliband quickly approved solar projects at Gate Burton, near Gainsborough, and Mallard Pass, on the Lincolnshire/Rutland border.
A green light was also given to the West Burton Solar Project, which will sit on the Lincolnshire/Nottinghamshire border.
In the Commons on Tuesday, Morrissey asked Miliband whether rural land was suitable for new solar plants, and what communities which objected could do to stop them.
Miliband responded: "Let every person throughout the country know that when energy bills remain high, [the Conservative Party] are opposing the things that will bring them down."
Listen to highlights from Lincolnshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North or tell us about a story you think we should be covering here.
A second woman is confirmed to have died in flooding which has inflicted "incredible" devastation on communities in northern Australia.
Police said the 82-year-old woman's body was found in a cane paddock in Queensland on Tuesday, two days after a 63-year-old woman died when a dinghy she was in overturned during a rescue attempt.
The region has been inundated since Saturday, with parts of northern Queensland seeing nearly 2m (6.5 ft) of rain.
By Tuesday, conditions were starting to ease - although Queensland Premier David Crisafulli warned it was still "a disaster that's going to test the resolve of people" during an interview with broadcaster ABC.
He described the devastation as "incredible", but noted weather conditions had been "really kind" in recent hours. Thousands had begun to return to their homes.
In Townsville, locals woke on Tuesday to grey skies and drizzle, and the news that predicted flooding levels had not materialised there. It was a stark contrast to the intense downpours which have battered the region over the past few days.
"We believe that the danger has passed," Townsville Local Disaster Management Group chair Andrew Robinson told reporters.
Pointing to earlier forecasts which had suggested up to 2,000 Townsville homes could have faced flood risks, Crisafulli said that "the city had dodged a bullet".
Local resident Jo Berry told the BBC she and her family were among those returning home on Tuesday, after spending a sleepless night monitoring the rainfall.
"People talk about PTSD when it rains here and I totally understand," says Ms Berry, formerly from Leicester in the UK.
"We've been in the house here for over 20 years, and have been through a few cyclone events and the 2019 flooding so it is not our first rodeo," she adds, referring to a flooding disaster which caused A$1.24bn (£620m; $770m) in damage.
On Monday night, other local residents told the BBC they were "on a knife edge" as they waited to see whether their houses would survive.
But further north in the state, power outages and damaged roads have made it difficult to assess the full extent of the destruction in towns such as Ingham and Cardwell.
Crisafulli said early reports suggested the damage was "quite frankly incredible" and that Ingham, which is almost entirely without electricity, "remains the biggest challenge".
"There are people who have been inundated at home, in their businesses and in their farms," he told reporters on Tuesday.
Footage published in local media showed long lines at the town's supermarket as people waited for critical supplies. Crisafulli said that amid the blackout the local hospital was operating as normal, and a petrol station was open.
The flooding has caused damage to the area's homes, crops and coastline, local MP Nick Dametto said in a video posted online.
"The inundation is something that I have never seen before," he said.
Home to fewer than 5,000 people, Ingham was already reeling after the 63-year-old woman died when a State Emergency Service (SES) dinghy capsized during a rescue attempt on Sunday.
The second woman's body was found on Tuesday just north of Ingham after a neighbour raised the alarm. She was last seen on Monday night in a house, Queensland Police said in a statement.
More than 8,000 properties remain without power across northern Queensland, according to the state's energy provider, and the partial collapse of a critical highway continues to hinder efforts to assist some of the hardest-hit areas.
Crisafulli said the recovery effort would "take some time" and that the priority in the coming hours would be to work with the army to get power generators to isolated communities and "bring them back online".
He added that federal funding would help reconstruct the battered Bruce Highway - the state's main thoroughfare which stretches 1,673km (1,039 miles) from the south.
Located in the tropics, northern Queensland is vulnerable to destructive cyclones, storms, and flooding.
Speaking to the BBC in Townsville, Scott Heron, a local resident and climate expert, said the latest disaster was not unexpected.
"For a long time, climate scientists have been clear that extreme weather events will become more extreme, and we are seeing that," said Prof Heron , who works at James Cook University and is the Unesco Chair on Climate Vulnerability of Heritage.
Prof Heron urged politicians to consider this as they planned recovery and rebuilding efforts, such as to the Bruce Highway.
It would be "wasting public money" if infrastructure planning, particularly for long-term projects including roads and bridges, did not "incorporate changing threats due to climate change", he said.
Additional reporting by Hannah Ritchie in Sydney.
Some customers in Northern Ireland could have to wait up to another fortnight to have their internet and phone connectivity restored after Storm Éowyn, a Stormont politician has said.
DUP assembly member Deborah Erskine said five telecoms masts had been destroyed during last month's storm.
While electricity has been restored to almost all those affected, Erskine said the loss of connectivity remained a serious problem.
BBC News NI has seen a message from broadband provider Fibrus telling a customer that service in their area will be restored by 17 February - two weeks away.
As of Monday afternoon, Fibrus had about 6,000 customers out of service due to confirmed fibre faults.
It said assessing timelines was challenging "given the dependencies on other providers" but all remaining customers were being given a timeframe.
Elderly and vulnerable
In the assembly on Monday, Erskine - who is the assembly member (MLA) for Fermanagh and South Tyrone - raised concerns about elderly and vulnerable customers who remained without a estimated time for restoration.
"People in my own constituency are forced to travel to access networks at their own expense," she said.
"This is not the time for telecoms companies to hide."
She urged new Economy Minister Caoimhe Archibald to put pressure on the networks to act more quickly.
SDLP MLA for Mid Ulster Patsy McGlone said he had referred a number of customers to Fibrus, including one business that had been told it will be another week before their supply could be repaired.
Archibald said she understood the concerns, but added that telecoms is the responsibility of the UK Government, specifically the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
She added that companies were "working closely" with Northern Ireland Electricity and that services were being restored where it was safe to do so.
"A post-incident review of Storm Éowyn led by the London government will take place on 10 February, and will assess the impacts, lessons learned and future impacts following the storm," said Archibald.
Fibrus has said that more than 50% of all customers out of service as a result of fibre damage have been reconnected.
The provider said it had suffered "unprecedented levels" of damage from the storm.
The network extends to about 400,000 homes across Northern Ireland and Cumbria.
About 40,000 customers were impacted at the peak of the storm, "around three quarters of which were related to power outages and the remainder related to damage to fibre infrastructure".
The provider said 300 people were out in the field to get customers back online as quickly as possible.
"This task is heavily reliant on other infrastructure providers, in particular NIE and Openreach. We have been working closely with NIE as the complete picture of damage to our fibre network only becomes clear as power is fully restored."
BBC News NI has also approached the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology for comment.
'Very frustrating'
SDLP councillor Denise Johnston lives in Mid Ulster and has been without internet since the storm.
She told the Evening Extra programme the situation was "very frustrating" for those in the local community who had been left without broadband.
"We often think that young people are the only people that are really dependent on the wifi, but we have all our businesses."
She added that many older people rely on WhatsApp and Facebook to contact their family.
Fibrus has said that it will be offering compensation on a case-by-case basis to affected customers who have faced service interruptions lasting more than 48 hours.
NIE will restore power to all remaining households
Meanwhile Northern Ireland Electricity (NIE) expects to have restored power to the remaining households and businesses left without power by Storm Éowyn on Monday.
Alex Houston told BBC News that fewer than 100 customers are still without electricity, mostly in County Fermanagh.
Teams are currently in the area completing repairs and all homes are expected to have power by Monday night.
Further shortages for 'safety'
However Mr Houston warned there may be further short outages throughout the week as NIE work to "make the network safe again".
In total 285,000 households and businesses lost power during the storm which brought sustained high winds of 95mph.
At the peak of the disruption, more than 200,000 customers were affected by power cuts.
NIE has brought in 350 additional engineers from across the UK and Europe to assist local teams in repairing damage.
On Tuesday, Communities Minister Gordon Lyons pledged £1m to support communities and individuals affected by Storm Éowyn.
Then Finance Minister Caoimhe Archibald has said conversations on compensation for people who lost electricity for days in the wake of Storm Éowyn are continuing.
Northern Ireland's first and deputy first ministers both called on NIE to issue goodwill payments to those who went several days without electricity.
Archibald said those conversations between Stormont, NIE and the Utility Regulator are ongoing.
Thousands still without power in Republic
In the Republic of Ireland about 30,000 homes, farms, schools and businesses were still without power on Monday evening, according to ESB Networks.
Power was restored to another 2,000 properties throughout Monday.
Fewer than 400 premises are now without water.
Crews from Austria, Finland, France, the UK, Germany, Netherlands and Norway, have come over to help restore power.
The MP for North Shropshire has said that the company behind plans to build a pylon route through the county should consider building it underground.
The Vyrnwy Frankton Project, proposed by energy company Green Gen Cymru, would see a 31-mile line of pylons running from Powys to a new substation near Lower Frankton in Shropshire.
Helen Morgan, Liberal Democrat, said local communities would be affected both visually and by noise.
Green GEN Cymru said engagement with the community was key as the matter progressed, adding it was holding statutory public consultation from 19 February to 16 April.
"We'll be asking people to give us their feedback so we can continue to look at ways to keep effects as low as we can," said Sen Taylor, project manager.
"We know that people can have concerns about new infrastructure so it's important people take part if there are factors they want us to consider.
"We're committed to developing our proposals in a way that seeks to balance the effects on those who live and work close to our proposals, with the policy and technical requirements we must also meet."
Ms Morgan said: "Obviously there's a visual impact - in some instances it goes really close to people's houses... and potentially a noise impact for them as well, because we all know [pylons] hum a little bit in humid weather.
"I would argue that where you have pylons running very close to people's houses they should be [placed underground].
"We underground those bits of infrastructure in areas of outstanding natural beauty and national parks, and companies still go ahead with those projects, they must still be profitable and I would like to see that approach in north Shropshire."
She added that she also believed the pylons could have an adverse impact on the value of residents' houses.
The company said the consultation, which included several community events to be held in local village halls, would show the designs in more detail, and that the design would be open to change.
"This will be a statutory consultation and is likely to be the last route consultation, before Green GEN Cymru applies for planning consent," it added.
Follow BBC Shropshire on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
US President Donald Trump says that wind farms harm birds and whales. Scientists weigh wind power's impacts on wildlife against those of oil and gas.
Aspen Ellis, a seabird biologist at University of California, Santa Cruz, spent a decade doing field work on remote islands off the coast of the United States. She often lived for months amongst thousands of birds, becoming so immersed in their ways that she even learned to tell which predators were nearby from the birds' calls. But as she added her observations to 40 or 50 years of previous research on these colonies, she noticed a worrying pattern.
"Again and again, I just found myself logging the impact of climate change over time," she recalls, from rising sea levels that threatened breeding colonies, to fish moving to cooler areas and leaving seabird chicks starving. "Without addressing this larger issue of climate change, the seabird conversation work we were doing wasn't sufficient to save those populations," she adds. She decided to change focus – and today, studies ways to make clean-energy offshore wind farms safer for birds.
The impact of energy production on wildlife has come into the spotlight again amid US President Donald Trump's plan to pivot the country's supply from renewables such as wind, to oil and gas. In his first days in office, Trump revoked former-president Joe Biden's ban on new offshore oil and gas drilling. "We will drill, baby, drill," Trump promised when he was inaugurated, while putting the brakes on the expansion of wind farms. One of his arguments is that wind farms harm birds and whales. His executive order halting offshore wind farm development cited the importance of marine life as one of the reasons for the decision.
While wind farms can have some adverse effects on local wildlife in the habitats where they are sited, including through noise, Ellis and other scientists specialising in the environmental impact of wind farms challenge the claim that wind power is more damaging to wildlife than fossil fuel extraction. They describe wind energy as a powerful and necessary weapon against climate change, arguing that its impact on wildlife can be understood, managed and reduced. They contrast this with the existential risk posed by fossil fuels driving global warming – along with the ongoing noise and pollution from oil and gas production.
The debate is highlighting one of the most challenging conundrums facing renewable energy projects around the world – to what degree must they balance the impact they can have on local environments with the global effects of climate change? And how do those wind-power related impacts compare with the local effects of oil and gas drilling?
Weighing up the threats
"Fossil fuels, and their effect on climate change, outweigh everything," says Beth Scott, a professor in marine ecology at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, a nation that has become a wind energy powerhouse. "Climate change is by far, by far the worst enemy, to all wildlife, and humans." Speaking from Aberdeen, she points to her window, at a brewing storm due to batter Scotland later in the day. It's too soon to say if this particular storm has been made stronger by climate change, but the overall picture is clear – extreme weather is "only going to get worse" in a warmer world, she says.
Scott and her colleagues are studying the impact of wind power on the marine ecosystem. While that impact exists – more on it later – she also describes wind power especially useful tool in the switch to renewable, climate-friendly energy because it can be built quickly and at scale.
"Once you start construction, in less than two years, you can build a 2GW [offshore wind] farm – the equivalent of a nuclear plant," Scott says. Nuclear power plants can take over a decade to construct. "So, in terms of rapid response to climate change, there's that."
Ellis also sees wind power as especially promising. "There is a lot of consensus [among seabird experts] on the need to move from traditional energy sources to a renewable energy framework, and offshore wind has a really big potential to do that," she says. "We're seeing the industry really boom very quickly, there's a lot of interest in that internationally, there's a lot of capacity for it internationally."
Finding the right location
Wind farms, both on land and in the sea, do pose a risk to birds, however, including habitat loss and collisions with the turbine or their blades. In Scotland, for example, the northern gannet and the black-legged kittiwake are considered at high risk of collision with wind farms.
Seabirds may also suffer indirect effects, for example if they change their routes to avoid wind farms, and then spend more time and energy finding food. How much seabirds avoid wind farms, and how this affects them, may vary significantly and is still subject to ongoing research. Some, such as the red-throated diver, have been reported to avoid wind farms, while others, such as large gulls, have a mixed response to them, research suggests. Others again, such as cormorants, seek out wind farms to forage and roost there. (Read more about how wind farms can be made safer for birds.)
In Scotland, Scott and other scientists are conducting wide-ranging research on the impact of wind farms on the whole food web, including on plankton, using ocean robots and other instruments. Wind power does alter the ecosystem, Scott says, but the impact is not necessarily always negative. Research tracking seals suggests that they now use wind farms as hunting grounds to forage for fish gathering around the turbines, for example, with one seal's tracks showing how the animal made its way through the farm and stopped at different turbines to snack.
Decades of research from around the world suggests that oil production affects birds, whales and other wildlife in many different ways. Apart from the climate factor, there is the risk of oil spills as well as smaller, chronic leaks, scientists say, which can harm seabirds, whales, dolphins and other wildlife. Dolphins exposed to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, for example, suffered health problems including chronic lung disease and abnormal hearts, research has shown.
Kaitlin Frasier, an associate research scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California, San Diego, and other researchers have studied how the unprecedentedly large and deep offshore oil spill has impacted different whale and dolphin species in the long term. They used acoustic sensors to record the clicks emitted by the animals, and from that, estimated their population density in the area. They found that a decade after the spill, seven of eight monitored species groups had declined, including sperm whales (by up to 31%) and beaked whales (up to 83%).
But the sensors also picked up on something else, which you can listen to in the recording below: deafening blasts from oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico.
"[The Gulf of Mexico] is a really noisy area because of all of the surveys that are associated with drilling, they do these seismic surveys that generate a whole lot of noise as they are looking for the oil pockets and understanding how the oil is moving," says Frasier.
Noise pollution at sea
The noise from oil and gas is largely from seismic surveys deploying airguns, which are towed behind ships and blast compressed air through the water every 10 seconds, Frasier says. "They're doing this in deep water, 1,000m (3,280ft) or more, and it's really low frequencies, so theses sound waves travel really far in deep water," she says. The sound is so powerful that "you can hear it all the way across the Gulf of Mexico".
"So, they're surveying off of Texas, you'll hear it off of Florida, you'll hear it in Mexican waters. There's no way to escape that sound," she says.
For whales, dolphins and other marine mammals that rely on sound and echolocation to find their food in dark and murky water, such loud and sudden underwater noise can be deeply disorienting, equivalent to being blinded, as well as being very distressing for them, research has shown.
"If you think about a sperm whale, one of the species in our study, a third of the body of the animal is a sound-production device. That's how important sound is to the animal. Their whole life is centred around the use of sound," says Frasier.
In the Gulf of Mexico, the noise from the airguns as well as vessels may be making it harder for whales and dolphins to forage for food, Frasier suggests. The oil and gas industry, however, maintains that there is no evidence that airgun noise injures or harms marine life, an assertion that environmental groups dispute.
"It's not that we think those sounds are directly killing whales, but those whales use sound in their daily life to find food, to communicate with each other," Frasier says. "Imagine if a light was being blasted into your face every 10 seconds – that would be disruptive as you're trying to go about your day."
Wind farm construction also involves noise, for example during surveying but also when the pile is hammered into the seabed. Studies have shown that seals and harbour porpoises are affected by the noise from pile-driving, causing them to flee for several miles and affecting their ability to feed.
But Frasier highlights that with oil and gas, the surveys happen over a longer time period, not just before but also during extraction.
"We see it in all of our recordings," she says of the oil-related noise, which she describes as a constant backdrop to the whale sounds. "It's very heart-wrenching to listen to."
By comparison, evidence from European offshore wind farms suggests that loud noise from wind farm construction tends to be more temporary and containable, as it happens during the pile-driving phase. In Europe, some countries such as Germany now legally oblige offshore wind farm developers to place devices called bubble curtains around the construction sites to buffer such pile-driving noise, and protect porpoises and other marine animals. (Read about how bubble curtains work, and their effect on wind farm noise).
Once the wind farm is in place, it can keep spinning for decades and then be replaced with new turbines on the same land, whereas oil production moves on once one site is exhausted. There is, however, also ongoing noise in offshore wind farms from the spinning turbines and the supply and maintenance vessels. Ship noise – whether from such maintenance vessels, or shipping generally – can in turn affect marine mammals such as harbour porpoises.
The onshore effects of oil, gas and wind
Liba Pejchar, a professor and conservation biologist at Colorado State University, and her team have compared the effects of inland wind energy and oil and gas on ecosystems in Colorado and neighbouring Wyoming. These states are home to wind farms, as well as oil and gas fields. One of the aspects they studied was habitat loss and fragmentation, meaning, wildlife habitat being lost or broken up through roads as well as the turbines or oil and gas fields themselves.
They found that both onshore wind farms and oil and gas production, caused habitat loss. However, "we found overall that wind energy resulted in less habitat fragmentation than oil and gas and especially, less impacts over the long term", she says. "In the near term, the impacts were often somewhat equivalent, but wind energy is a renewable resource, so once you put in the turbines, they continue to harness that energy for decades to come. Whereas oil and gas have to keep moving, and so those impacts just getting compounded across the landscape."
While wind power hazards for birds, such as collisions, are well-known, preliminary research by Pejchar's team suggests oil and gas production can also negatively affect birds and their habitat, and for example, have impacted ferruginous hawks in Wyoming.
Like the other scientists, Pejchar also highlights how climate change, driven by fossil fuels, is already changing the environment. "There's a higher frequency of these large, catastrophic fires in Colorado in particular," she says. "Sometimes wildlife can benefit from fire, it's a natural form of disturbance, but the scale of these fires and the intensity and frequency – there could be complete state changes, where forests can no longer be sustained because fire is moving through them on such a regular basis. So that's going to have a huge impact on wildlife communities."
Both industries are taking steps to reduce the effect their activities have on the local environments where they operate.
In a 2022 study co-led by Ellis, an international group of scientists and also conservation organisations such as American Bird Conservancy developed a process that allows wind farm developers to identify and minimise the risks to seabirds. They recommended measures to reduce or offset the impact that included choosing sites that are less in the way of seabirds' known flight routes or habitats; wind farm developers building alternative nesting sites; and developers funding conservation programmes to boost the species in other habitats.
"Seabirds are a great case study for this [process], because we have a lot of data about many of these species," Ellis says. In addition, "seabird conservation is very well understood", she says, both in terms of specific threats to seabirds, such as predators and invasive plants, and also in terms of how to effectively address those threats, for example by removing predators such as rats, and clearing invasive plants. The assessment process outlined in the study could then also be used to reduce the impact of wind power on other species, such as bats and whales, with measures that are appropriate for them, she says.
Regarding the environmental impact of fossil fuel extraction, some of the most important measures have aimed at reducing oil spills and chronic oil pollution, which can be catastrophic for birds and other wildlife. Monitoring of beached, oiled birds in Europe's North Sea has revealed a sharp decline in the rate of oiled birds, suggesting a decrease in oil pollution and spills as a result of measures such as requiring oil tankers to have double hulls.
But the attempts to lessen the local effects of energy infrastructure do little to address the wider context of climate change, the threat of which has led to international agreements to phase down fossil fuels. Carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are leading many parts of the world to feel the effects of global warming.
And these are beginning to affect the environments where fossil fuels are extracted too. The Gulf of Mexico, for example, has been in the grip of a climate-change-fuelled marine heatwave, which can make hurricanes more intense.
Alongside the carbon dioxide released from the burning of fossil fuels, the intensity of extracting the oil in the Gulf of Mexico has an additional climate impact from the release of large quantities of methane – an even more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide over a 20 year period.
Although the global supply of renewable power is surging, and demand for oil, gas and coal are all predicted to peak this decade, the race to build energy infrastructure that doesn't harm wildlife looks set to be a challenge for years to come.
How the energy industry responds will be felt in habitats around the world.
--
For essential climate news and hopeful developments to your inbox, sign up to the Future Earth newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights twice a week.
For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
In some cities, as many as one in four office spaces are vacant. Some start-ups are giving them a second life – as indoor farms growing crops as varied as kale, cucumber and herbs.
Since its 1967 construction, Canada's "Calgary Tower", a 190m (623ft) concrete-and-steel observation tower in Calgary, Alberta, has been home to an observation deck, panoramic restaurants and souvenir shops. Last year, it welcomed a different kind of business: a fully functioning indoor farm.
Sprawling across 6,000sq m (65,000 sq ft), the farm, which produces dozens of crops including strawberries, kale and cucumber, is a striking example of the search for city-grown food. But it's hardly alone. From Japan to Singapore to Dubai, vertical indoor farms – where crops can be grown in climate-controlled environments with hydroponics, aquaponics or aeroponics techniques – have been popping up around the world.
While indoor farming had been on the rise for years, a watershed moment came during the Covid-19 pandemic, when disruptions to the food supply chain underscored the need for local solutions. In 2021, $6bn (£4.8bn) in vertical farming deals were registered globally – the peak year for vertical farming investment. As the global economy entered its post-pandemic phase, some high-profile startups like Fifth Season went out of business, and others including Planted Detroit and AeroFarms running into a period of financial difficulty. Some commentators questioned whether a "vertical farming bubble" had popped.
But a new, post-pandemic trend may give the sector a boost. In countries including Canada and Australia, landlords are struggling to fill vacant office spaces as companies embrace remote and hybrid work. In the US, the office vacancy rate is more than 20%.
"Vertical farms may prove to be a cost-effective way to fill in vacant office buildings," says Warren Seay, Jr, a real estate finance partner in the Washington DC offices of US law firm ArentFox Schiff, who authored an article on urban farm reconversions.
There are other reasons for the interest in urban farms, too. Though supply chains have largely recovered post-Covid-19, other global shocks, including climate change, geopolitical turmoil and farmers' strikes, mean that they continue to be vulnerable – driving more cities to look for local food production options.
Office-to-farm conversions have made headlines in recent months. Workers are currently aiming to transform a floor of 32-story historic Niels Esperson building in Houston, Texas, into an indoor farm. In September 2024, US indoor farm startup 80 Acres, which opened its first indoor farm inside a vacant building in Hamilton, Ohio, developed a 200,000-sq-ft (18,600-sq-m) facility inside a former commercial building in Florence, Kentucky.
One obvious use of vacant office space is to convert it to residential housing. But a vertical farm conversion is, perhaps surprisingly, often easier. "When converting an office space into apartments, you need to carve out individual units, each needing access to natural light and plumbing," Seay says. "That's not an easy task in a building designed for cubicles and conference rooms."
On the other hand, the open-plan nature of most modern offices, or warehouses, can be more amenable to indoor farm use. Still, retrofitting, particularly to ensure a space can fit the proper equipment as well as have appropriate electrical, heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVC) systems, can be difficult.
The Calgary Tower project, developed by the company Agriplay Ventures, has worked to overcome these hurdles. Agriplay uses silo technology, made of 1-by-2.5m (4-by-8ft) wide racks rising up to 3m (10ft) tall, that can easily adapt to any space with ventilation. The modular racks are also easy to remove once a project is done, leaving landlords with the option of converting the premises for different uses, says Agriplay's chief executive Adam Morand.
Thanks to artificial light and controlled temperatures, offices are proving surprisingly good environments for indoor agriculture, spurring some companies to convert part of their facilities into small farms. Since 2022, Australia's start-up Greenspace has worked with clients like Deloitte and Commonwealth Bank to turn "dead zones", like the space between lifts and meeting rooms, into 2m (6ft) tall hydroponic cabinets growing leafy greens.
On top of being adaptable to indoor farm operations, vacant office buildings offer the advantage of proximity to final consumers.
In a former paper storage warehouse in Arlington, about a mile outside of Washington DC, Jacqueline Potter and the team at Area 2 Farms are growing over 180 organic varieties of lettuce, greens, root vegetables, herbs and micro-greens. By serving consumers 10 miles away or less, the company has driven down transport costs and associated greenhouse emissions.
This also frees the team up to grow other types of food that can be hard to find elsewhere – such as edible flower species like buzz buttons and nasturtium. "Most crops are now selected to be grown because of their ability to withstand a 1,500-mile journey," Potter says, referring to the average distance covered by crops in the US before reaching customers. "In our farm, we can select crops for other properties like their nutritional value or taste."
Overall, vertical farms have the potential to outperform regular farms on several environmental sustainability metrics like water usage, says Evan Fraser, professor of geography at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada and the director of the Arell Food Institute, a research centre on sustainable food production. Most indoor farms report using a tiny fraction of the water that outdoor farms use. Indoor farms also report greater output per square mile than regular farms.
Energy use, however, is the "Achilles heel" of this sector, says Fraser: vertical farms need a lot of electricity to run lighting and ventilation systems, smart sensors and automated harvesting technologies. But if energy is sourced from renewable sources, they can outperform regular farms on this metric too, he says.
Because of variations in operational setup, it is hard to make a general assessment of the environmental, social and economic sustainability of indoor farms, says Jiangxiao Qiu, a landscape ecologist at the University of Florida and author of a study on urban agriculture's role in sustainability. Still, he agrees with Fraser: in general, urban indoor farms have higher crop yield per square foot, greater water and nutrient-use efficiency, better resistance to pests and shorter distance to market. Downsides include high energy use due to lighting, ventilation and air conditioning.
They face other challenges, too. As Seay notes, zoning laws often do not allow for agricultural activity within urban areas (although some cities like Arlington, Virginia, and Cincinnati, Ohio, have recently updated zoning to allow indoor farms). And, for now, indoor farms have limited crop range. It is hard to produce staple crops like wheat, corn or rice indoors, says Fraser. Aside from leafy greens, most indoor facilities cannot yet produce other types of crops at scale.
But as long as the post-pandemic trends of remote work and corporate downsizing will last, indoor farms may keep popping up in cities around the world, Seay says.
"One thing cities dislike more than anything is unused spaces that don't drive economic growth," he says. "If indoor farm conversions in cities like Arlington prove successful, others may follow suit."
--
For essential climate news and hopeful developments to your inbox, sign up to the Future Earth newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights twice a week.
For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
The UK is not prepared to tackle the impacts of climate change, the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) has warned, as it called on the government to take "urgent action" to ensure the country is protected.
It said fire and rescue teams "play a crucial role" in responding to increasingly common extreme weather events such as wildfires and flooding, "often over prolonged periods of time", causing a strain on their "business as usual" services.
Fire chiefs also warned that limited resources and access to longer-term forecasting data created challenges in how the sector prepared for extreme weather.
The Met Office said 2024 was the fourth warmest on record, and has previously predicted climate change would cause summers to be up to 60% drier and winters to be warmer and wetter.
"It is impossible not to be concerned about the very real and immediate threat climate change poses to our planet and what that will mean for our communities," NFCC chairman Mark Hardingham said.
Global average temperatures for 2024 were around 1.6C above those of the pre-industrial period - the time before humans started burning large amounts of fossil fuels - according to data from the Copernicus climate service.
In the past year, parts of the UK have been hit by bouts of severe weather, most recently Storm Éowyn which brought rare red Met Office weather warnings and widespread disruption in the worst impacted areas. Storm Darragh also brought similar red warnings in December.
The UK's summer was the coolest since 2015, driven by a south-shifted jet stream that brought northerly winds carrying Arctic air, though many areas still saw spells of temperatures up to 34C.
Mr Hardingham said: "Watching the devastation caused by the wildfires in Los Angeles and the number of recent flooding incidents we have seen in the UK, it is impossible not to be concerned about the very real and immediate threat climate change poses to our planet and what that will mean for our communities in the future."
He added that fire crews were "on the frontline" in responding to extreme weather and "repeatedly" went "above and beyond to protect their communities".
The UK recorded temperatures of over 40C (104F) for the first time in 2022 - a heatwave that leading scientists said would have been "almost impossible" without human-induced climate change.
It saw several fire services tackle wildfires on parched parts of land including in South Yorkshire, Norfolk, Surrey, Kent and London. Some services declared major incidents.
Rail services were also cancelled in some areas after tracks overheated or buckled.
The NFCC is seeing the "risks around extreme weather increasing", Mr Hardingham said, adding that without "adequate investment" and government action, its "capacity to keep communities safe and protect infrastructure is at risk".
The NFCC urged the government to review the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, which details how the government prepares and plans for emergencies, and also to ensure there are data analysis mechanisms in place that provide an assessment of the risk and impact of incidents linked to climate change.
The UK has pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, meaning it takes as much of the gases out of the atmosphere as it puts in.
It has made a series of pledges to reach this target, including achieving so-called 'clean' electricity by 2030 through rapidly increasing wind and solar generation, and investing in technology to capture and store carbon dioxide.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced in November 2024 that the country would aim for an 81% cut in its emissions by 2035.
Sign up for our Future Earth newsletter to get exclusive insight on the latest climate and environment news from the BBC's Climate Editor Justin Rowlatt, delivered to your inbox every week. Outside the UK? Sign up to our international newsletter here.
With a fresh fizz and hoppy scent, a cold beer is a drink that touches all of our senses. But as our climate changes, so too might the flavour profile of one of the world's most popular drinks.
With its satisfying, tantalising flavour, few drinks evoke as familiar a feeling as a freshly poured beer. "It's not only bitter, it's not only sweet, it almost invites you to a next sip, and that's a very difficult quality to describe," says Mirek Trnka, a researcher at the Global Change Research Institute Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.
The flavour of beer is created by a complex symphony of chemical compounds from three ingredients; hops, yeast and malted barley. But now climate change is threatening the production of two of those – barley and hops. Trnka and his colleagues say that the traditional crops that brewers rely on to create beer – called noble hops – will become "more difficult to grow".
Trnka’s research shows that production of noble hops has decreased by 20% since the 1970s in some of Europe's biggest hop-growing regions. Alpha acids are the key compound in noble hops that give beer its distinctive bitter flavour and Trnka's study concludes that levels of alpha acids will decrease by 31% by 2050. Is beer facing an existential crisis? Can anything be done to secure its flavour in the future?
Beer, one of the world's favourite drinks, and the most popular alcoholic beverage by volume, has been a part of society since humanity discovered agriculture. Evidence of grain-based fermented alcoholic drinks has been found as far and wide as Jiahu, a Neolithic site in China dating to at least 5700 BC, and prehispanic Andean societies, such as the Moche culture from the Second to the Eighth Century AD. In the Near East, Mesopotamian cuneiform texts and seals depict beer being drunk. In fact, there is evidence of beer being made on every continent in the ancient world.
Whether it was corn, rice or cereal, early farmers learnt that fermenting grain could produce a drink with intoxicating effects. It was as much a social lubricant for people in the ancient world as it is in pubs and bars the world over today.
Initially, hops were added as a preservative, not a flavouring. "It was discovered during medieval ages that hops added an antimicrobial benefit to the beer, preventing the beer from spoiling in a manner that would make it sour – so it added shelf life," says Thomas Shellhammer, a professor of fermentation science at Oregon State University.
Before the Industrial Revolution and the introduction of kilns and stainless steel vats, hops would have been dried over fires which would also have imparted a strong smokey flavour to the beer, says Shellhammer. It was only possible to develop light, hoppy lagers after the Industrial Revolution and the widespread use of steel. Malt has a sweet aroma and flavour, so hops are key to balance out this sweetness with bitter flavours from hops. "The aromatic flavour of hops became as important as other elements, rather than just being functional to the process of making beer."
These early beers would have been weaker in alcohol and highly variable in flavour. In early beer making, a "universe of herbs and spices" other than hops would have been used as alternative flavourings and preservatives, including heather flowers, spruce tips, sage, rosemary and juniper.
The antimicrobial properties are created by some compounds in the hops called alpha acids and beta acids, which are also the source of beer's bitter taste. "During the boiling stage, the alpha acids isomerise [change shape] into another compound, and that chemical reconfiguration makes them more bitter," says Shellhammer. Very bitter beers, like Indian pale ales (IPAs) are made with hops with a high alpha-acid content to really accentuate those bitter flavours.
The popularity of hops really took off after the Industrial Revolution, says Trnka, because the flavour profile shone through in clearer, lighter beers. The consistency with which brewers could make tasty beers with hops pushed this crop ahead of other flavorings in popularity.
Nowhere did lighter beers take off more than in Central Europe – particularly in the regions that are now in Czechia, Slovakia and Germany – where lager was invented. The hops grown here, called noble hops, have become highly esteemed for giving lagers their distinctive flavour. "This is a relatively traditional industry," says Trnka. "You get a premium if you grow these noble hops, these old cultivars, especially in Czechia where it is part of 100 years of tradition."
Trnka and his colleagues' climate research focused on noble hop varieties. Rising temperatures caused by climate change have moved the start of the noble hop growing season in Germany and Czechia by 13 days between 1970 and 2018, and ripening has moved 20 days earlier. Trnka's projections suggest that by 2050 noble hop yields will decline between 4.1 and 18.4% when compared to 1989-2018, along with a similar drop in the alpha acid content, due to rising temperatures and more frequent droughts.
While some effects of higher temperatures and droughts can be overcome with irrigation, says Shellhammer, at very high temperatures of around 46C (116F) plants stop growing, and some diseases thrive in hotter temperatures.
"But, if you want to grow the same hops as our forefathers grew from 19th Century, or even before, these noble hops that are very prized for the light lagers that Czechia is so famous for, there are ways to adapt," says Trnka.
More like this:
• Why veg is growing in empty offices
• The foods that eat up carbon
• Is alcohol a secret polluter?
Hop farmers have a few options: relocating hops to areas with higher water tables, for example in valleys or by streams, where water is more easily taken up by plant roots, adding drip irrigation or switching to more climate-resistant varieties. These have all proven successful strategies in wine-making, where viticulture is also threatened by climate change.
In some ways, says Shellhammer, beer makers are luckier than vintners, who are solely reliant on one ingredient – grapes – while they can adjust yeast, malt and hops to perfect a flavour.
But not all of these solutions will be easy to implement, warns Chuck Skypeck, technical brewing projects director at the Brewers' Association in the US. Irrigation is more common in North America than it is in Europe, and is costly to introduce, says Skypeck. Switching varieties is also easier said than done. Hops are perennial crops, meaning the plant remains in the soil every year. Like other perennial crops, such as tea, coffee or grapes, changing cultivar would require digging up the entire plant, he says. Changing grain cultivars is much easier as each year new crops are sown from seed.
But Shellhammer thinks that switching hop varieties might only result in a couple of years of reduced yield. "In the Northwest United States, I've spoken to growers that say they could switch out a crop and get close to 75% of the yield in the first year," he says. "With wine grapes, you're waiting for a whole grapevine to grow and produce – so it's a multi-year endeavour."
Skypeck adds that breeding programmes in place in North America and all the major hop-growing regions are focused on new varieties for changing flavours and aromas, and finding varieties that are adapted better to changing climatic conditions. Those adaptations include deeper, denser root structures that are more drought resistant. These new varieties are proving popular with artisan brewers and brewers of bitters and ales. "It's driven a lot of the craft and independent beer movement in the US," he says.
New hop varieties are being bred to be more resistant to the changing climate, says Skypeck, but to develop a new hop variety from scratch to full production can take up to 10 years. For example, a new experimental variety may show more heat resistance but might still require a similar amount of water, he says. "Brewers take different approaches as well. US craft brewers rarely only use one variety of hops in their beers, rather layering different flavours and aromas to create the different character you find in many craft beers. On the other hand, more conservative traditional German brewers can be reluctant to adopt new varieties because they don't want to change the character of their beers that has been consistent for years."
Christian Ettinger, founder of Hopworks Urban Brewery in Portland, US, says that one of their typical beers might contain between two and five different varieties of hops, which gives the brewer scope to adjust the recipe to account for changes in yields. "Selecting hops and forecasting is difficult, and it requires you to go spreadsheet by spreadsheet, tune your recipes, look at your overall volumes," he says.
Water scarcity is one major contributor to low yields in the US, which drives the cost of hops up, says Ettinger. "Beer has been the most popular alcohol beverage for 9,000 years, and part of that is it's accessibility and affordability. It's incumbent upon us as cultivators to make sure it's still accessible."
Ettinger has been brewing beer for 30 years and in that time has seen how the industry has adjusted to climate change by introducing regenerative agricultural techniques like cover cropping – which involves growing other crops between the hop plants to suppress weeds, reduce erosion and improve soil health – and biochar – which is the addition of carbon-rich, organic material that improves water retention in the soil. "The beautiful part about sustainability is you're trying to minimise your footprint, because it is better for the planet, and it is less expensive – it makes you more efficient and economically competitive."
A recent trend in the US is for "fresh hop beers" which are produced with hops that celebrate the uniqueness of that year's harvest, says Skypeck. "There's consumers that are interested in experimentation and variety."
Whether consumers embrace a more varied palette of beers or stick to familiar lagers, "it's not going to be the end of the world," says Trnka. "We will still be able to make beer."
--
For essential climate news and hopeful developments to your inbox, sign up to the Future Earth newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights twice a week.
For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
There are some surprising impacts of cutting out meat, even for a short period, which can carry on well beyond the end of abstinence.
It is widely understood that livestock have a heavy impact on the climate and research indicates that switching to a plant-based diet is one of the most impactful steps individuals can take to reduce their carbon emissions from food. Animal products are responsible for 57% of global food-related emissions, compared with plant-based foods which contribute 29% of the total – even though animals provide less than one fifth of the world's total energy from food.
Every year in January, millions of people worldwide choose to start the year by giving up animal products for the month. Others may choose starting the week with each Monday as a meat-free day, or take part in the no-meat-in-the-daytime initiative Vegan Before 6. Besides these initiatives, there are plenty of year-round efforts to reduce meat intake. The "less but better" concept involves eating less meat but ensuring it is more ethically produced. "Reducetarianism", meanwhile, involves people simply reducing their meat, dairy and egg intake.
People have many different reasons for reducing their meat consumption, whether for animal welfare, climate or dietary reasons. Regardless of their motivations, a recent study found that low meat diets can be beneficial across a range of environmental reasons, with vegan diets having lower greenhouse gas emissions, lower water use and lower impacts on biodiversity.
For those making the switch for only a short period, however, those impacts may initially only be lowered during that time. But there are indications that there could also be some surprising lasting impacts that can go well beyond January, Monday, or whichever time period someone might choose to avoid or cut down on animal products.
One of the most well-known campaigns to reduce animal product intake is Veganuary, which encourages people to eat vegan food for the month of January. In 2024, around 25 million people worldwide joined the campaign, according to Veganuary's statistics.
The campaign claims that the effects of a month free of animal products can extend beyond January, resulting in longer-term dietary changes. According to its own survey, the Veganuary campaign claims that 81% of participants said they had maintained a significant reduction in meat consumption six months after taking part.
There are many reasons why these effects could continue beyond the month. Early research has linked participation with increased experience of "meat disgust". A small independent study of 40 participants who normally ate meat found that those who reduced their meat intake in January were more likely to have feelings of disgust towards meat once the month had ended (even though many had lapses). Of the 40 participants, 28 reported an increase in meat disgust.
"The more meat people managed to cut out during Veganuary, the more their meat disgust grew over that month," says study author Elisa Becker, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford in the UK. "When you stop eating meat, that disgust ramps up, which is really interesting. "This suggests that just one month of meat abstinence changes how you view meat."
Becker has also found a connection between increased meat disgust and reduced meat consumption in a larger six-month study carried out at the University of Exeter in the UK, finding 74% of vegetarians were classified as "meat disgusted".
"Both studies show a connection between meat intake and meat disgust – the less meat you eat, the more disgusted by meat you tend to become," Becker says.
The study didn't examine the reasons why participants chose to give up meat, so it is possible they could have already had some concerns that contributed to preexisting feelings of disgust.
Becker's findings have, however, been confirmed and expanded by Sophie Hearn and Natalia Lawrence at the University of Exeter in unpublished research recently presented at a conference and seen by the BBC.
"This is an emerging area of social science research which seems to be revealing something quite interesting and important in terms of the consequences for meat consumption of the 'practice' or actual experience of cutting back or cutting out meat from your diet, for example by participating in Veganuary," says Carol Morris, principal research fellow at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Nottingham in the UK, who has studied less-meat initiatives. "If you engage in meat reduction or elimination for a period it does seem to change your relationship with that foodstuff."
The research field is still in its early stages, but Morris suggests the phenomenon is worth further investigation.
"This could be some preliminary evidence suggesting that abstention from meat can strengthen disgust towards it," says Jared Piazza, a senior lecturer in psychology at Lancaster University in the UK who moral decision making as it relates to society, animals, and food.
"Ultimately, the relationship between meat abstention and disgust is likely a feedback loop. Avoiding meat over time can re-calibrate your appetite towards meat," says Piazza."However, research suggests that in the short term, meat eaters who attempt to abstain from meat within a month-long pledge experience greater cravings for meat than meat eaters who don’t abstain. Thus, one shouldn’t expect abstention to lead to meat disgust immediately. It takes a little time."
How much does meat reduction limit emissions?
In 2023, a team led by Peter Scarborough, professor of population health at the University of Oxford, released a study on the environmental impacts of different diets, which included a large number of vegans and vegetarians from a dataset of 55,000 people in the UK. This real-world data was crucial, Scarborough says. "Quite often researchers just model what a vegan and vegetarian diet might be and make some kind of crazy assumptions, like saying: 'Oh, well, I'm sure vegans eat just the same as meat eaters, but instead of sausages, they eat broccoli.'"
The analysis was the first to review the impact of diets on a range of environmental measures beyond carbon emissions, including land use, water use, water pollution and loss of species.
The research concluded that the vegan diet had the lowest carbon emissions – just 25% of the greenhouse gas emissions of a diet that includes more than 100g of meat per day. Plant-based diets' lower emissions still held even when air miles and the resources taken to grow crops were taken into account. The most carbon-intensive vegan diet still had only 37% of the greenhouse gas emissions of the diet consisting of more than 100g of meat per day. (Read more about the environmental impact of vegan and vegetarian diets here).
Smaller portions and fewer meat meals
For those who don't follow a vegan or vegetarian diet, simply eating less meat had a substantial impact on emissions, Scarborough found. On a population level, these reductions are significant. If big meat-eaters in the UK were to cut some of it out of their diet, it would be equivalent to taking eight million cars off the road, according to Scarborough.
In 2024, researchers in Scotland found that across the UK, the change that made the biggest difference to total meat consumption was reducing meat portion size. The next most impactful measure was fewer meat-eating days, fewer meat consumers (this includes vegans, vegetarians, flexitarians and people who eat meat sparingly) and finally fewer meat-containing meals (for example, including a vegetarian lunch).
Reducing portion size, the researchers say, could be the most impactful action for "meat-oriented consumers", who would be unlikely to forego meat entirely for a day each week, or month each year.
Besides reducing portions, the type of meat and animal products eaten make a difference too. Certain types are lower-carbon than others. Beef has the highest carbon footprint, followed by lamb, as both come from ruminant animals that belch out potent methane when they digest their food. Meat from small, non-ruminant animals, such as chicken, turkey and duck has a much lower carbon footprint. (Read more about which protein-rich foods can help us curb our emissions).
More like this:
• Seven proven ways to help the planet
• The challenge of eating local food on a budget
• The foods that eat up carbon
Scarborough and his colleagues hope their findings will be used to inform public policy. However, he says there is a lack of political appetite inthe UK to introduce meat-reduction policies, which countries such as Denmark have done. Becker agrees there is little public support for meat reduction policies. The meat paradox – the fact that most people oppose animal mistreatment but still want to eat factory-farmed meat – means that people tend to rationalise their meat consumption and defend it quite vigorously, she says.
"Let's be pragmatic about this," says Morris. "For everyone to become plant-based is probably not realistic." And while by far the most impactful dietary change remains to eat a plant-based diet, Morris welcomes other initiatives, from "less but better", to cutting out animal products for a time, if these help people reduce their impact on the planet.
--
For essential climate news and hopeful developments to your inbox, sign up to the Future Earth newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights twice a week.
For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
Of all the possible climate futures, there's a scenario where the United Kingdom and north-west Europe buck the trend of global warming and instead face plunging temperatures and freezing winters.
It's not the most likely outcome, but a number of scientists fear that the chance of it happening is growing, and that the consequences would be so great that it deserves proper consideration.
They are concerned that the ocean currents that bring warm water from the tropics to the North Atlantic could weaken - or even collapse - in response to climate change.
Huge uncertainties remain about when - or even whether - a collapse could happen. So, how likely is it, and what would it mean?
The system of Atlantic currents, called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc), is a key reason why the UK is warmer than Moscow, despite being a similar distance from the Equator.
Forming a vital part of our climate system, this conveyor belt distributes energy around the planet, bringing warm, salty water from the tropical Atlantic to cooler regions south of Greenland and Iceland, and also the Nordic Seas.
The warmth from the ocean is transferred to the air above it, helping keep temperatures milder than they otherwise would be.
As this salty water cools, it becomes denser, and sinks, before flowing back towards the southern hemisphere as a deep ocean current. This water eventually gets pulled back up to the surface, and the circulation continues.
But Amoc appears to be getting weaker.
We don't know for sure, because direct and continuous measurements of Amoc strength have only been taken since 2004. That's not long enough to be able to identify a definite change.
But indirect evidence suggests it could have already slowed by around 15% over the last couple of centuries, although not all scientists agree.
One indication is the sediments on the ocean floor. Larger grains indicate a stronger current. By measuring the size of the grains and calculating their age, scientists can estimate how much Amoc has slowed over time.
Another piece of evidence is the so-called 'cold blob' or 'warming hole' in the north Atlantic. This describes a region which appears to have cooled in recent decades, unlike the vast majority of the world.
A slowdown in Amoc - meaning less warmer water would be transported to this region - is seen as a possible culprit.
This is "a very clear signature and footprint of a classic Amoc slowdown" says Matthew England, professor of oceanography at the University of New South Wales.
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) expects Amoc to weaken this century. But the major concern is that Amoc could suddenly "switch off", as appears to have happened repeatedly in the Earth's past.
Today, global warming appears to be making the water in the north Atlantic less salty, due to extra freshwater from a melting Greenland ice sheet and more rainfall.
As fresher water doesn't sink as easily, this is expected to slow the circulation and so bring less saltwater northwards from the tropics.
Beyond a "tipping point", this loop could lead Amoc to runaway collapse.
"We really want to avoid a tipping point because then there's nothing we can do about it," warns David Thornalley, professor of ocean and climate science at University College London.
Where might the tipping point be?
No one really knows how close it may be.
In 2021, the IPCC said it had "medium confidence" that Amoc would not collapse abruptly this century, although it expected it to weaken.
But some more recent studies have pointed to a growing possibility of Amoc passing a tipping point in the coming decades, beyond which full collapse would be inevitable.
Each study comes with various caveats and uncertainties, and different climate models can give different results for a system as complex as Amoc.
"We don't believe the idea of an Amoc collapse this century has substantially changed because of these new results," cautions Dr Laura Jackson, oceanographer at the Met Office.
But many scientists are growing increasingly concerned. Prof Thornalley argues that, whatever the imperfections of individual studies, taken together they "lead to a conclusion that we maybe need to be worried".
Following the new evidence, more than 40 leading ocean and climate scientists signed an open letter last October calling for wider recognition of the "greatly underestimated" risks.
That is not to say the signatories believe Amoc will pass a tipping point this century. But they warn it is now enough of a possibility to warrant proper consideration.
"I'd say you're looking at a risk of reaching a tipping point in the coming decades that could be at the 10 or 20% level even if we hold the line at 2C warming [above temperatures of the late 19th Century, before humans started significantly warming the climate]," warns Tim Lenton, professor of Earth system science at the University of Exeter.
Given the magnitude of the consequences from Amoc collapse, these probabilities "are not trivial," he adds.
What would happen if Amoc collapsed?
Even the most likely scenario - where Amoc continues to weaken this century - could have serious effects.
"If the Amoc gradually weakens over the next century, you're going to get global warming but less warming over Europe," says Dr Jackson.
That would still mean the UK getting hotter summers with climate change, but a weaker Amoc could also fuel more winter storms as regional temperature patterns change.
A full-scale collapse, meanwhile, would be "like a war situation […] something almost unimaginable," says Prof Lenton.
While it could take a century or more for impacts to play out, temperatures in northern Europe could fall by a couple of degrees a decade.
In the UK, it could "become horribly, horribly cold … like living in northern Norway," Prof Thornalley warns.
"Our infrastructure is not set up for that."
There could be global consequences too, such as shifts to the tropical rain belts.
"That's a big story," warns Prof Lenton.
"If you lost the monsoon or seriously disrupted it, you'd have humanitarian catastrophes, in simple terms, in west Africa [and] probably in India."
How we prepare for this alternative future poses challenges for governments.
Prof Lenton draws parallels with preparations for the Covid-19 pandemic - another major event which scientists had warned about, but had no way of knowing when it might occur.
But a recent report warned the UK has a "glaring national security blind spot for climate threats" such as those posed by Amoc collapse. The government admitted last year that it "has not assessed the effect of any [Amoc] slowing or collapse" on economic planning.
Scientists are clear that the fundamental way to reduce these risks is to cut the greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change.
"We're playing a bit of a Russian roulette game," warns Prof England.
"The more we stack up the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, the more we warm the system, the more chance we have of an Amoc slowdown and collapse.
"And so I think people need to not give up, because there's so much to be gained by reducing emissions.
"The scale of change is just so much worse if we do nothing."
Graphics by Erwan Rivault
The world's largest invertebrate remained hidden from humanity until a tantalising glimpse 100 years ago. It would take decades, however, before we finally came face to face with the colossal squid.
Under sombre, mausoleum lighting at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa rests a monster. Its enormous body lies in a huge glass coffin, thick tentacles trailing beneath a strange, mottled body that once contained two huge staring eyes.
Amongst displays of animals that inhabit the seas around New Zealand, it resembles a creature from another world – reminiscent of the first awestruck description of a Martian by the nameless narrator in H G Wells' The War of the Worlds. The bunches of tentacles beneath a bearlike bulk and a nightmarish beak of a mouth.
But this is no interplanetary visitor, rather something from the inky blackness of our own inner space: a colossal squid. It is the biggest invertebrate on Earth and the rare specimen on display at Te Papa, the shortened Māori name by which the museum is better known, is the first of these mysterious creatures to have been recovered alive – just briefly – in human history.
--
For an animal of such enormous size, the colossal squid has an extraordinary ability to keep itself hidden from human eyes. Its discovery was a gradual process, with hints of its existence stretched out over decades. Then – almost exactly 100 years ago – we got our first glimpse of these almost mythical creatures.
To date, no colossal squid has ever been positively identified as being observed in its natural habitat, though there have been some unconfirmed sightings. In June 2024, scientists from an Antarctic expedition made public that they may have filmed one on a camera attached to a polar tourism vessel in 2023. The brief footage shows what may be a juvenile colossal squid in the frigid waters near Antarctica, but the footage is still being scrutinised by fellow scientists. The fact they can't be sure, underlines just what a solitary and enigmatic creature this huge squid is.
Because the animal lives so deep in an ocean only recently visited by modern humanity, the first clues to its existence were the occasional remains found in the bellies of whales that hunt them. Semi-digested fragments hinted at some huge, strange squid whose arms ended in clubs with sharp, gripping hooks and evoked scenes of titanic battles for survival in the ocean depths as they tussled with whales.
Then, in 1981, a Soviet trawler called Eureka caught an enormous squid in its net while fishing in the Ross Sea off Antarctica. The discovery went largely unnoticed until the end of the Cold War a decade later. In the year 2000, Soviet scientist Alexander Remeslo wrote about the incident on The Octopus News Magazine Online forum, giving first-hand testimony on how the animal was captured.
"It was early morning the 3rd of February, 1981, when I was working in Lazarev Sea near Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica," he wrote. "A fellow scientist rushed into my cabin and pushed me in the ribs, shouting: 'Wake up, we caught a giant squid!' With my cameras slung around my neck I ran on deck. There lay a huge reddish-brown squid. None of the crew members, several of them sea dogs who had been wandering all over the seven seas, had previously seen something like this."
Remeslo's account paints an evocative picture: fine snow was falling on the deck of the ship, and the light was so poor that he struggled to take a properly exposed image of the squid, which had been removed from the net and lay lifeless in front of him.
"Burning with impatience to see the results of my photography, I decided to develop the films immediately on board of the vessel, rather than keeping them for developing in a professional laboratory at home," writes Remeslo, now a scientist at the Atlantic Research Institute of Marine Fisheries and Oceanography in Kaliningrad, Russia, in his account. "The quality of the photos taken that day leaves much to be desired. But the most important thing has been done anyway – to document what was most probably the world's first big specimen of the colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni), which was raised from the depths onto the deck of a vessel and not removed from a sperm whale's stomach!"
A black-and-white image taken by Remeslo and shared alongside his story shows a pair of the Soviet ship's crew crouching next to the dead squid. The creature's two long arms can be seen in the foreground, clenched like fists. According to Remeslo, the squid measured 5.1m (16.7ft), with the mantle alone measuring more than 2m (6.6ft). The squid was described as being a juvenile female, and not yet fully grown.
It would be more than 20 years before another immature colossal squid would be found. This time, in 2003 it attracted worldwide attention. "Super squid surfaces in the Antarctic", wrote BBC News at the time. The squid was found floating dead on the surface in the Ross Sea off Antarctica and was hauled aboard a fishing vessel.
The animal's remains were transported to Wellington, New Zealand's capital, where two scientists – Steve O'Shea and Kat Bolstad of the Auckland University of Technology – reassembled the creature and examined it. It helped turn O'Shea into an internationally recognised authority on giant squids.
"We're sitting there at Te Papa and I've got this bloody enormous thing sitting on a slab," says O'Shea, who now lives in Paris. "It's completely defrosted. I called up a couple of contacts, and I said, 'Look, I've got this colossal squid sitting on a slab here at the department. You want to come and have a look at it?’."
O'Shea was so excited that he hadn't noticed the date: 1 April 2003. Everyone mistook it for an elaborate practical joke. "Nobody took me seriously," he says. "And it wasn't until we sent them a photograph of what we were dealing with on the slab did the press converge on us… my phone didn't stop ringing for a month."
Even for someone like O'Shea, familiar with large cephalopods, the colossal squid was still a dramatic sight. "I'd never seen anything like it before," he says. "I had worked a lot with a fellow called Malcolm Clarke on a number of my documentaries in the past, and he had spent a lifetime studying the stomach contents of sperm whales – and had reported many times their beaks in the stomachs of sperm whales. I was aware of the colossal squid's existence. I couldn't have imagined it looked anything like what we had in front of us."
O'Shea had previously been studying another large squid species – the giant squid, Architeuthis dux, which can reach up to 13m (43ft). What he was faced with in 2003 was a different beast entirely.
"The giant squid, to an extent, I was bored with, because it was just a large, very dull squid," he says. "It's got no real charismatic feature other than its size. And here I am dealing with something that's got these swivelling hooks on the arms and a beak… considerably larger and considerably more robust."
The squid are thought to grow to more than half-a-tonne (500kg) in weight. While the giant squid's trailing tentacles are far longer than the colossal squid's, the colossal's mantle is both larger and heavier.
But the colossal squid is far more than a squid transformed to larger-than-usual size. Its eyes – which can measure 11in (27.5cm) across – are the largest eyes to be found in any animal yet discovered. The beak, made from a protein similar to that found in human hair and fingernails, is a sharp, clawed mouth that cuts off slices of prey. Another organ called the radula, studded with sharp teeth, shreds the chunks into smaller pieces.
On its arms, the squid has prominent hooks. Other squid, including the giant, have teeth within the suction cups. The colossal squid's are far more prominent – curved hooks the squid uses to latch onto its prey. Incredibly, the hooks found on its tentacle suction cups can rotate 360 degrees. Scientists still don't know if the squid can swivel these hooks at will, or whether they move of their own volition when the hook latches onto prey.
O'Shea used the discovery of the squid and the ensuing media coverage as a platform to attack New Zealand's fishing industry and what he called some of its destructive practices in the Southern Ocean. He says this led to some resistance to his involvement when an even bigger squid (the one on display in Te Papa) was recovered a few years later. Amid the furore, however, O'Shea managed to finally give Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni a common name:colossal squid.
Two years after O'Shea stretched a colossal squid on his slab, fisherman nearly landed a live specimen. In 2005, a ship hunting Patagonian toothfish near South Georgia in the South Atlantic caught a colossal squid on one of their lines. Five of the fishermen toiled unsuccessfully to bring the squid aboard. A recording of it thrashing on the surface is believed to be the first footage of a living colossal squid ever captured.
In February 2007, a New Zealand fishing vessel called the San Aspiring, also hunting for Patagonian toothfish in the Ross Sea near Antarctica, pulled up its lines. Tangled amongst them was a colossal squid, fully grown and still alive.
The squid's decision to try and grab a quick meal proved its undoing. "It decided to scavenge a toothfish off the long line and got itself wrapped up in the backbone and trace [part of the fishing line] and was pulled to the surface," says Andrew Stewart, Te Papa's curator of fishes and one of the world's most respected fish scientists. The animal was estimated to weigh up to 450kg (990lb) and measured some 10m (30ft) in length. Some of the boat's fishing equipment had gouged deep cuts into its body, and the squid was badly injured and likely to die if returned to the ocean.
Vessels like the San Aspiring carry New Zealand fisheries scientists on their expeditions, partly in case they come across new or rare species. "They looked at this thing right at the surface, right up against the edge of the boat, and they realised that because the damage it had incurred from the backbone on the trace that, no, this wasn't going to be able to make it away under its own steam," says Stewart. "It was brought on board with great difficulty, because you're dealing with this very floppy specimen. How do you get it up out of the side of a ship and onto the deck, and then, what do you do with it then?"
A colossal squid of this size, relatively intact and still alive when it reached the surface, certainly met the scientist's benchmark for something worth preserving. But then they had the challenge of how to keep it cold and intact while they finished their fishing mission.
"They managed to get it below deck, and they froze it in what's called a pelican bin," says Stewart, who took the initial call from the fisheries observer programme to say a colossal squid had been caught. "These are one-cubic-metre bins (35 cubic ft) that contain fuel oil and things like that. And when they get to the Southern Ocean boundary, these are brought below decks. They're emptied and cleaned, the top is cut off. They're used for putting in offal and scientific specimens. So they just put this half-tonne thing in this cubic-metre bin, and froze it as a giant, colossal squid popsicle."
When the San Aspiring eventually made its way back to Wellington, that made it relatively easy to offload, says Stewart. "All you have to do is run a forklift for a pallet jack and move it," he says. On arrival it was transported straight to Te Papa's walk-in freezing facility.
"We were scratching our heads, going, 'How the hell are we going to handle this thing?'," says Stewart.
Even thawing a frozen specimen this large was an issue, let along trying to preserve it. "The way these things are constructed, and the chemistry of them, it could well rot on the outside with the inside still frozen solid," Stewart explains. "So a giant wooden tank was built and lined with three layers of rubber cement, and then three layers of heavy-duty polythene plastic.
"Stephen [O'Shea'] and co came up with the idea [that] if we make a very chilled brine solution, that means it will slow down the rate of thawing." This gave the scientists much more control over the thawing process.
"If you freeze something, ice expands and breaks down the connective tissue and will certainly make something more gelatinous," O'Shea adds. "When we defrosted that thing, of course, the ice crystals expand, and everything blows up. Then when the ice melts, everything shrinks. As it lay on the slab, defrosting, we could see it losing bulk."
In order to preserve the body, its tissue had to be injected with a formalin solution, but getting the right mix was crucial, says O'Shea. "That was a 4% formalin solution from memory. Once I fixed it from the inside out, we then immersed it into a vat of formaldehyde/seawater solution. And then we had to monitor that thing over the course of the next 48 to 72, hours, monitoring the pH, because the minute the pH goes anything above seven, the calcareous hooks that align in the arms and the suckers start to dissolve."
When the pH of the solution got too acidic, the tank was emptied and then another formalin solution was added. "It preserved the colour," says O'Shea. "It was a beautiful looking specimen."
Te Papa knew the squid could become a star attraction. But the giant defrosted body created an entirely new problem, says Stewart. "One, how do we display it? And two, how do we transport this big floppy thing?"
The colossal squid is adapted to living in the crushing pressure of the deep ocean, meaning its soft body is supported by the surrounding water. In the open air, it collapses.
"If you're not careful, the whole thing could detach," says Stewart.
Te Papa's solution was to contact a glass fabricating company in the nearby city of Palmerston North, which produced a special curved case for the squid using a technique that didn't produce bubbles during its construction.
The case was assembled right next to where the thawed squid was being kept in central Wellington, some 900m (984yds) from the museum itself. The museum's experts then had to work out how it could be both preserved and transported. "What do we preserve it in, display it in, and how do we get it from here down the road?" Stewart says. "We can't display it in alcohol or formalin because of the issues around health and safety and fire risk management and all that kind of stuff." A suggestion by another member of the team was to submerge the squid in polypropylene glycol. While Stewart says this is non-toxic, "they have to add a rather toxic biocide to it in order to stop any bacterial action, fungal action".
While the team were working out how to move their colossal cadaver, something elemental came to their rescue: gravity. Wellington is a hilly city, and the squid was at the top of an incline. They came up with a plan: the squid would be transported to the museum late at night on the back of a flatbed truck in the container, but with all the liquid removed in order to save weight. "It just sort of glided down late at night when there's no traffic, and the traffic lights could be set [to let it through.]" The squid was then safely unloaded and took up residence in Te Papa, an ambassador from an abyssal zone few humans will ever visit.
"Some people have said, 'Oh, it looks bit rough and falling to bits, but it's no worse than once it came out of formalin," says Stewart. "This poor thing had been sort of fairly badly damaged already by the time they got it up to the side of the boat.
"There will be gradual and slow decay of it, you can't stop that. Light will affect it, temperature fluctuations… it will degrade. It does look a bit like Frankenstein's monster, with stitching holding things together," says Stewart. "Peter Jackson [the film director] has taken a few notes."
--
Specimens like the one at Te Papa offer vital clues about the biology and behaviour of this mysterious deep sea mollusc. The colossal squids that have been brought up to the surface to date have nearly always come from deep water. They have either been ensnared in cables or attacked fish caught on fishing lines, attracted by the prospect of an easy meal. Their interactions with humanity have been inadvertent, often violent and dramatically short.
Scientists have been able to slowly piece together fragments of the colossal squid's life cycle and habits. Much, however, remains mysterious. It is like trying to create a coherent story of a person's life through a handful of holiday snapshots – the majority lies beyond the frames.
Colossal squid are highly evolved for a cold and dark environment, and live near the top of the food chain in the bitterly cold waters they call home. They prey on large sub-Antarctic fish such as Patagonian toothfish (also known as Chilean sea bass) – dozens of these fish caught by trawlers between 2011 and 2014 showed wounds characteristic of the squid's hook-covered tentacles, according to Vladimir Laptikhovskiy of the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science in the UK. "Taking into account the size of adult squid, the toothfish probably is its most common prey species, because no other deep-sea fish of similar size are available around the Antarctic," he told New Scientist in 2015. There are some reports, however, of young colossal squid – which live closer to the surface – being found in the diets of penguins and other seabirds.
Few animals are thought to prey upon colossal squid apart from sperm whales and southern sleeper sharks, slow moving but powerful deepwater sharks that can grow up to 4.2m (14ft) long. The colossal squid's size is a form of protective adaptation – the bigger you grow, the less likely you are to be eaten by something else.
And this growth happens quickly. Much like giant squid, colossal squid are not thought to live much longer than five years, although their exact lifespan – like so much about these creatures – is largely a mystery. They appear to live longer than smaller species of squid – most of which live little more than a year – but remarkably short given their great size. This type of growth is known as abyssal gigantism – it's seen across many other species which inhabit cold, deep waters, including spider crabs.
This gigantism, strangely, doesn't require enormous amounts of energy. A study in 2010 from the University of South Florida estimated that a colossal squid could survive for around 160 days on a single 5kg (11lb) toothfish – the equivalent of only 30g (1oz) of food a day, or just 45 calories. The temperature in the deep Southern Ocean where they are found typically hovers around 1.5C (34.7F), and studies suggest the larger animals become in these conditions, the more efficient their metabolism becomes. Research on the metabolic rate of colossal squid suggests they have a slow pace of life, spending much of their time passively floating, waiting to ambush their prey.
The enormous eyes of the colossal squid are thought to have evolved to detect large predators such as sperm whales rather than spot prey at long distances.
Small juveniles are thought to live closer to the surface – above 500m (1,640ft), but as they grow they descend to depths of up to 2,000m (6,560ft).
Much of the squid's life cycle remains hidden from view. One of Te Papa's staff has attempted to fill in the gaps in the squid's life, and written a book about it. Whiti: Colossal Squid From the Deep, a children's book written by Victoria Cleal and released in 2020, tells the story of a colossal squid's life from hatching out of a minuscule egg to becoming the world's largest invertebrate (it was illustrated by Isobel Joy Te Aho-White)
Cleal said she was chosen to write the book because of her experience writing labels for exhibits aimed at children, making them as friendly and informal as possible. "They knew there's basically an insatiable desire amongst children for information about the colossal squid, whether it's in a book or an exhibition label or in a video," she says. "It constantly fascinates visitors. Everyone who comes to the museum wants to see the colossal squid.
"There are now kids who saw it at the beginning who come back as young adults… and I just love the thought that one day they might bring their children back to see it."
Despite the painstaking effort that went into displaying the squid, the years have still taken their toll. "That squid is not looking at its best anymore," Cleal says. "The eyes have been removed and other body parts, there's a lot of stitches. I did want to mention that squid in the book, just to give some connection between the book and Te Papa. But that squid came to a very unhappy ending because it got itself hooked on a line and died."
Telling the story of a different squid – one still roaming the cold watery world off the coast of Antarctica – allowed Cleal to imagine a whole life cycle, even if so much of it is still unknown.
With the help of squid experts like Kat Bolstad, Cleal set to work. Bringing a male squid into the story wasn't possible, because one has never been observed. "But there are things we can imagine, like what it would be like to be 2,000m (6,561ft) down, even though nobody's been down there, in the Ross Sea." She says it was all about keeping Whiti (a Māori word meaning to change or turnover) within the realms of possibility.
Cleal says the squid's enormous size and frightening appearance is part of its allure with a younger audience, but that ultimately this undersea "monster" is relatively harmless. Many descriptions of the colossal squid evoke legends of the mythical kraken terrorising sailors of old, but in reality the creatures live so deep and so far from shore that a human is unlikely to ever find themselves face-to-face with one in the water. But the fact we know so little about the colossal squid and the realm it inhabits only makes them more intriguing, says Cleal. "It's such a mysterious world, I think that captures everybody's imagination. We don't know what's going on down there."
Cleal said she was partly inspired to tell the story of the colossal squid to make children imagine what else might live in the cold, inky depths the squid calls home. "I just think that's great for kids, to be an advocate for science as a career, to think that that there are things to discover. It hasn't all been found yet? And why don't you try to become a marine biologist too?"
--
James Erik Hamilton was a marine biologist, a naturalist and oceanographer who spent much of his life in the Falklands and surrounding islands. He arrived in 1919 to conduct a survey of the fur seal population. He became the Falkland Islands Dependencies administrator a few years later, and spent much of the 1920s working on whaling ships or on the stations that supported them across the South Atlantic islands.
Hamilton would investigate the contents of the whales' stomach as part of his job, and in the winter of 1924/25, found something in the stomach of one sperm whale which he had never seen before: tentacles from some large, mysterious squid that ended in sharp gripping claws.
Hamilton believed they were new to science. He had them preserved and then sent them to the Zoological Department of the British Museum back in London.
A report in the Journal of Natural History soon after reported the creature's arms "furnished with a group of four to nine large hooks" and its hand consisting of "hooks alone, which are capable of rotating in any direction". Hamilton's specimens were the first remains of a colossal squid to be scientifically recorded. The species, described for the first time in 1925 by Guy Coburn Robson, would be named after him. Hamilton died in 1957, decades before a complete colossal squid would be discovered.
While talking to O'Shea, I mention the tentacles Hamilton discovered a century ago. His response is immediate: "Have you seen them yet?" It turns out those first, species-defining tentacles still sit, suspended in a jar, on the shelves of the Molluscs Department at the Natural History Museum in London. An email to O'Shea's friend, Jon Ablett, a senior curator at the molluscs department at the museum, elicits an invitation to see them a few days later.
A couple of weeks later, steers me through the museum's seemingly unending corridors. It is the proverbial needle in the haystack. "Just the molluscs department alone, we have eight million objects," Ablett says cheerily.
In these archival storage units sit dozens upon dozens of jars, each of them containing an animal – or parts of an animal – once new to science. Ablett finds the right door and opens it. There, in a jar with the words "Mesonychoteuthis Hamilton, 1925" lie the remains of the squid that had so intrigued Hamilton a century before. The first scientific evidence of the giant lurking far below the waves.
"Strangely, we don't really know that much about how the specimens were found and recovered," Ablett says. "The way that specimens were collected at the time, it almost wasn't thought of as important. And of course, you also don't know what's important until you realise it's important."
The whale was thought to have been taken off the Falkland Islands, and the tentacles sent off to what was then the British Museum. Robson examined them when they arrived.
"The way we preserve animals hasn't really changed over the last 200 years," Ablett says, noting that alcohol is still sometimes used. "With lots of invertebrate animals, especially deep-sea creatures, the preservation techniques can really distort the features and generally shrink them." The tentacles, now a century old, look lumpen and weirdly coloured, but the swivelling claws that so intrigued Hamilton are still there.
"They are, you know, half-chewed stomach remains… basically the ring of flesh around the mouth, most of bits of the arms, and that's pretty much it," Ablett says. "But he [Hamilton] was able to recognise that they were so distinct from any other known squid that they had to be a new species. And I guess sperm whales are really good at catching things in the deep ocean, much better than we were at the time, and probably even now."
The colossal squid's remains predate molecular classification, and further study of this by-now century-old squid may yield further clues about its life. One of the things scientists do know, Ablett says, is that the colossal squid and the giant squid are entirely different animals. "They're not very closely related," he says.
The giant squid, Ablett says, throws up some intriguing questions about why some squid grow so large, when others remain relatively small. "The thing that always fascinates me is lots of the species related to the giant squid – these are the Cranchiid squids, or glass squids – are very, very small, you know, a couple of inches long. But just this one species is so large."
A century on from the colossal squid's initial discovery, Ablett says, we still know so little about them. In his 20 years of studying this elusive abyssal giant, "they're just not turning up in enough numbers", he says. "They haven't been observed in the wild, in their natural state yet."
Ablett says there are hints in the biology as to how the squid may live their days in the deep, cold waters of the Southern Ocean. "You look at the colossal squid, it's very blobby. It doesn't look particularly sleek." This for him perhaps underlines its status as an ambush predator. "Is it hiding in these dark oceans, waiting for things to pass?" he asks.
Ablett says one thing scientists have found is that where you find colossal squid, you won’t find giant squid. The respective big beasts of the cephalopod world appear to have drawn some invisible line in the world's oceans, which neither crosses. And very cold oceans are something of a hotspot for very large organisms, he says. "It just seems to be a kind of trend with especially polar organisms, that they get very, very big. I mean, one benefit of getting massive is, of course, nothing can eat you."
More like this:
• The unknown giants of the deep oceans
• The new shark species emerging from the deep
• The deep ocean photographer that captured a living fossil
The century-old tentacles preserved in the museum's jar are not the only colossal squid remains the museum has to hand. In the basement, hidden from public view, is a room filled with jars and tanks containing a bewildering array of creatures (you'll have seen it if you've watched the Tom Cruise version of The Mummy). An entire Komodo dragon, a deceased former resident of the London Zoo, floats in a large tank. The heads of deep-sea sharks leer toothily from the interior of huge jars.
Other jars contain bigger remnants of recovered colossal squid. Ablett even frees some of these from the tanks for photographs, the preserved flesh glinting under the strip lights as he holds them in front of the camera.
In another tank – a really, really big tank – the partial remains of another colossal squid are suspended in preserving solution. Much of the rest of the tank is taken up by an entire giant squid, its long, tentacles trailing far beyond the mottled mantle. You could imagine a very long line of visitors filing past it, but this room is out of bounds to the general public. The tank had to be made by specialists usually involved in art installations. If the museum ever finds itself lucky enough to take delivery of a complete colossal squid, they might have to build another. In death, at least, the two squid might actually meet.
In the meantime, scientists will continue to piece together what they can about the world's largest invertebrate. But it also raises questions about what else might be hiding in the depths, still waiting to be discovered.
"Most species discovery tend to be small, because these are the things we miss," says Ablett. "But I'd be lying if I said I don't harbour hope that there is something even bigger than a colossal squid. I mean, what are we going to call it?"
--
If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week.
For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
The UK has restated ambitious plans to reduce its emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases by 81% by 2035, but has not explained how it will achieve the goal.
In a new action plan submitted to the United Nations, the government also signed up to global goals to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030.
However, it has not set targets for sectors like farming, aviation, or energy to address those sectors' contributions to climate change.
The UN called the plans "bold" and told other countries to follow suit.
The announcement from Energy and Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband comes a day after many environmentalists criticised the government's backing of a third runway at Heathrow Airport.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer originally announced the emissions plans in November.
All nations which signed the United Nations' (UN) landmark Paris climate agreement in 2015 are obliged to submit climate action plans, which are called Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in UN jargon, every five years.
Together the strategies are designed to ramp up action globally until the world reaches net zero - the point when no more greenhouse gases are added to the atmosphere - and keeps the global temperature rise at 1.5C.
The government's new NDC lists plans already announced, including a goal of producing 95% of electricity from clean energy sources by 2030.
It also formally signed up the UK to the global goal of tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030.
Dr Robin Lamboll, from Imperial College London, says the UK's plan "doesn't have any nasty surprises", but is not "particularly inspiring".
He also said it gave a sense of "normality" to the Paris agreement after US President Donald Trump pledged to leave the treaty.
Sir Keir was hailed a global climate leader in November when he announced the UK's new emissions target.
The latest plans confirm that position, says Prof Joeri Rogelj, from Imperial College London.
He said it "follows the advice of [the government's] scientific advisory committee", but says that policies must follow, in order to fulfil the ambitious promises.
Miliband said more details will be published soon, and that emissions from international aviation or shipping will be accounted for in plans that begin in 2033 in the Sixth Carbon Budget.
The Budget advises the government on the amounts of greenhouse gas emissions that can be produced between 2033 and 2037 if the UK is to fulfil its climate targets.
UN climate chief Simon Stiell called on other countries to submit their plans, saying "no-one can afford to miss out".
The plans must be received before 10 February, ahead of the next UN climate summit COP30 in Brazil in November.
Sign up for our Future Earth newsletter to get exclusive insight on the latest climate and environment news from the BBC's Climate Editor Justin Rowlatt, delivered to your inbox every week. Outside the UK? Sign up to our international newsletter here.
The biggest danger for wildlife is the aftermath. But many species have evolved to rely on the opportunities created by others.
Stark images from the Californian wildfires have accompanied the headlines over the past few weeks. Alongside burned-out houses and belongings, footage emerged of a baby deer searching for safety amid the smoke, while one photo by Reuters captured a desert tortoise roaming the streets among evacuees.
But though just like humans, wildlife is susceptible to the immediate dangers of fire, from smoke inhalation to heat stress, research has found that there are often surprisingly few animal fatalities as a direct result of fire. Instead, wildlife tends to be most vulnerable in the immediate aftermath, when shelter and food are scarce. How do different species eke out a living among the devastation? And in a world with increasingly large fires, exacerbated by global climate change, is there any way humans can help them?
A natural process
Fire is a serious problem for humans, particularly when they build in fire-prone areas, and the losses of life, property and economies can be immense. The Los Angeles wildfires that occurred in January 2025 are predicted to have cost in excess of $135bn (£109.7bn).
However, it is not intrinsically a problem for wildlife. One study, which looked at the results of 31 research papers from 1984 to 2020, found that 65% of studies did not report any animal fatalities as a direct result of fires. Many species have a strategy for evading the fire itself, ranging from simply running away to hiding in burrows underground or sheltering in the treetops.
Morgan Tingley, professor of evolutionary biology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), stresses that fire is a natural part of many ecosystems. California alone experiences it in a number of different ways: the chaparral habitat of dense, shrubby vegetation, where some of the LA blazes in January 2025 seem to have been sparked, is distinguished by mild wet winters and hot dry summers with occasional, very intense fires; while forests in the north of California are accustomed to more regular low-level burns.
Fire releases nutrients into the soil and creates variation in vegetation patterns across large areas, says Gavin Jones, research ecologist at the Rocky Mountain Research Station, and animals and plants have evolved to live with it around the world. In Australia, for example, echidnas go into a hibernation-like state called "torpor" during bush fires until the danger has passed.
It is not just about survival; many species need fire for reproduction, food and resources. "If we did not have fire in our system,” says Tingley, "we would lose biodiversity."
Researchers at the Pacific Southwest Research Station found pollinators do well after moderate fires in upland forests. Insects fly away or bury themselves underground, and the opening up of gaps in the tree canopy provides a greater variety of flowers for them to feed on and places in which to nest.
Trees such as the giant sequoia rely to such an extent on intense heat to release seeds from their cones and reproduce that their numbers appear to have been dropping in part because of human efforts to suppress fires.
Natural refuges
A number of species thrive under the conditions created after a wildfire, and the black-backed woodpecker is an archetypal example. "It is the most characteristic post-fire bird in western North America," says Tingley. The bird takes advantage of the huge buffet of insects that can be found inside dead and dying trees after a fire has passed through, Tingley explains.
The woodpecker then excavates hollows in damaged trees where it lays eggs, relying on a patchwork of burned land alongside still-green forest for its young to hide from predators. This complex interaction between fire patterns and wildlife is called pyrodiversity, and provides a range of habitats for different species to live in and to go through different parts of their lifecycle.
The cavities that the black-backed woodpecker and related species build to breed in also help repopulate burned forests. The hollows they excavate in trees provide a vital habitat for many other species which are important for regenerating burned areas after wildfires. These include seed-dispersing birds and mammals, insectivorous birds that keep a lid on pests and allow vegetation to recover more rapidly, and small predators. This makes the woodpecker an important "ecological engineer" in fire-prone habitats, just like beavers which help keep fires under control by building dams that spread water through parched landscapes.
The woodpecker is not the only species to thrive in fire-ravaged landscapes. The gopher tortoise digs long burrows that it uses to escape from wildfires in Florida as well as the intense sun; these in turn are used for shelter or food by more than 350 other species.
An increasing threat
This is just one of many ways that animals interact with wildfire, according to a paper led by Claire Foster, research fellow at the Australian National University – a relationship that can be subtle but substantial.
Some ecosystem engineers change the amount, structure or condition of available fuel for a fire; grazing herbivores gobble up dry flammable vegetation, while others dig the ground which helps to break down leaf litter.
And animals do not always act in ways that humans might deem beneficial. In Australia, scientific research has confirmed long-told Indigenous stories of kites spreading fires by dropping burning sticks into unburned areas to flush out prey.
But wildfires are becoming more common, fiercer and larger due to the changing climate as well as changes in land use and management practices. And that makes it harder even for well-adapted wildlife to cope and to perform their ecosystem roles.
Though research suggests overall mortality during the active phase of a wildfire is relatively low, increasingly ferocious and large-scale wildfires can affect wildlife in a number of ways. While the blaze is ongoing, it burns plants, injures and kills some animals directly, and displaces species that can move fast. The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), a US non-profit, is supporting on-the-ground rehabilitation projects in California to protect individual pets and wild creatures. They provide food, immediate medical care and arrange longer term support if needed.
As with smaller wildfires, the biggest impacts occur after the fire has burned out, due to the loss of food, water and shelter. As well as a lack of these essential resources, animals can be pushed out of wild areas and towards urban ones, says Kelly Johnston, senior programme officer for disaster response at IFAW, increasing the risk of conflict with humans.
One study by Jones and colleague Jessalyn Ayars found that Californian megafires in 2020 and 2021 affected the habitat of more than 500 species of vertebrates.
The long-toed salamander had the worst of it, with high-severity fire across 14% of its range. Strikingly, other research has found that though it might survive the initial fire, this species tends to struggle in the post-fire environment, and decline in the two decades that follow.
It is not just vertebrates that are affected. Pollinators in upland forests do not appear to tolerate severe fires nearly as well as they do moderate ones.
Smoke from wildfires is another worrying issue, says Tingley, although its full impact on wildlife is still poorly understood. The community science study Project Phoenix is currently attempting to figure out how it affects birds in California, Oregon and Washington.
While plants and animals can recover from shocks, that becomes harder as fires grow and the interval between them shortens. And climate change is supercharging these kinds of extreme events. In in the wake of the 2025 Californian wildfires, researchers at UCLA wrote a quick response paper. Though it has not yet been peer reviewed, it suggests that climate change may have contributed to a quarter of the "extreme fuel moisture deficit" when the fires began. This meant vegetation was drier and more prone to burning. The World Weather Attribution group, which analyses weather observations and climate models to estimate the influence climate change is having on extreme weather, also concluded that global warming made the hot, dry weather conditions responsible for the LA wildfires about 35% more likely.
A warming planet is just one of many interconnected factors that lie behind changes in wildfire patterns. Other stressors, such as the movement of invasive species, limit how resilient forests are to these kinds of disturbances. However, the spread of invasives in turn is exacerbated by climate change.
Invasive grasses in particular are making fires more common and destructive, says Tingley. He notes that the 2020 Bighorn Fire in Arizona spread into the low Sonoran desert due to the ubiquity of invasive buffelgrass. "This resulted in a catastrophic loss of mature saguaro cactus which normally do not experience severe fire," says Tingley.
Another key factor is forest management practices.
Industrial-scale commercial forests result in evenly spaced trees of similar ages and species that makes it easier for fire to spread, while natural forests are more resilient.
Fire has also been suppressed in many parts of the US to protect human homes and infrastructure, and Indigenous prescribed fire practices have been relinquished, leading to a build-up of flammable material. "Fires have been intentionally removed from the system, and that has created a really changed template for what happens when a fire ignites," says Jones. "It's more extreme than it might have been historically."
There is still a lot more to learn about the complex interplay between animals and fire. But the decline in biodiversity in California – and even more so worldwide – may be a further factor exacerbating wildfires if key species are lost.
While some species might adapt to the changing nature of fire, experts acknowledge that we do not yet know the full long-term impacts of recent conflagrations on wildlife. But we do know that it takes ecosystems longer to recover from severe fires, particularly in a changing climate.
Shifting fire patterns during prehistoric periods of global warming and drying are likely to have driven animals to extinction. The US Fish and Wildlife Service has already listed a small otter-like mammal called the Southern Sierra Nevada fisher and the Sierra Nevada red fox as endangered species in part because of the threat of high-severity wildfires which destroy their habitat and dismantle wildlife corridors through which they can safely move.
Tingley says climate change is rapidly changing the nature of fire even in ecosystems that have evolved with it. The "post-fire specialist" that is the black-backed woodpecker, for example, is finding it difficult to breed successfully because large-scale fires do not leave it with the ideal mosaic of burned land alongside unburned green woods, he says.
That's not just bad for the black-backed woodpecker, but for all the species that depend on it.
There is even a risk of fundamental changes to an ecosystem from forest to shrubland or grassland. This may already be happening to chaparral in southern California, with potentially "far-reaching impacts" on biodiversity and on ecological services critical to human health and society such as water provision, erosion control and carbon sequestration. Such a significant change in vegetation could, in turn, increase the flammability of the landscape.
Natural engineers and artificial 'bunkers'
One approach to humans having to co-exist with fire in a changing climate is therefore to try to maintain healthy, diverse ecosystems. But how that should be done depends on the specific habitat and the part of the world it is in.
In some places that might mean rewilding by reintroducing large herbivores, which one study says "offers a powerful tool for managing the risks of wildfire and its impacts on natural and human values". Targeted grazing is already being tried on grassland in Oregon with some success.
Another paper suggests that the reintroduction of ecosystem engineers such as the numbat and bridled nail tail wallaby in Australia helped diminish the size and spread of fires. "This result has major implications for fire behaviour and management globally," the paper concludes, showing the "need to restore the full suite of biodiversity".
In Australia, several studies have examined the potential of artificial wildlife refuges to deal with a specific threat; invasive mammalian predators like feral cats and European red foxes that prey on native creatures in the aftermath of a fire.
To test their idea, a team of Australian researchers built the artificial "bunkers" in three different habitats – temperate, arid and Mediterranean – located in Otway Ranges and Kangaroo Island in the southeast of the country, and Simpson Desert in central Australia. The shelters were made of wire mesh and covered with cloth, and included remote-sensing camera traps inside and outside. They were placed after a series of wildfires between 2015 and 2020.
While the refuges were used by small birds and reptiles, they do not seem to have helped the overall abundance or diversity of small animals.
Darcy Watchorn, visiting scholar at Deakin University's School of Life and Environmental Science in Australia and threatened species biologist for Zoos Victoria who led on this research, is still interested in this approach. But he warns that artificial interventions can turn into an "ecological trap", potentially luring in animals to be burned and risking prioritising some species over others.
Furthermore, there is an "opportunity cost of putting time and resources into strategies that are promising but do not yet have enough evidence yet," says Watchorn.
Foster says it is "highly improbable" that ecosystem engineers are going to be a silver bullet for fire management. "I would caution, particularly given the horrendous losses so recently experienced in California… that the role of animals in managing fuel and landscape flammability is quite nuanced, and research is lacking as to the magnitude of effects in most systems."
For Tingley, the best current solution to combat the impact of wildfires in the western US is to vastly increase the scale of prescribed burning, rekindling a closer relationship with the land that Indigenous peoples have had for thousands of years.
"A major problem right now is that many of our forests have not been burned for 100 years or more. When combined with even-aged forest management, biodiversity loss and climate change, the result is the type of fire catastrophe that led to the razing of Paradise [in 2018]," says Tingley. "If we bring fire back to these landscapes in controlled and managed ways, then biodiversity will be restored."
--
For essential climate news and hopeful developments to your inbox, sign up to the Future Earth newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights twice a week.
For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
Climate change was a major factor behind the hot, dry weather that gave rise to the devastating LA fires, a scientific study has confirmed.
It made those weather conditions about 35% more likely, according to World Weather Attribution - globally recognised for their studies linking extreme weather to climate change.
The authors noted that the LA wildfire season is getting longer while the rains that normally put out the blazes have reduced.
The scientists highlight that these wildfires are highly complex with multiple factors playing a role, but they are confident that a warming climate is making LA more prone to intense fire events.
"Climate change increased the risk of the devastating LA wildfires," said Dr Clair Barnes, from Imperial College London, the study's lead author.
"Drought conditions are more frequently pushing into winter, increasing the chance a fire will break out during strong Santa Ana winds that can turn small ignitions into deadly infernos."
The Santa Ana winds are strong and gusty east or north-easterly winds that blow from inland California towards the coast.
Around 30 people have died and more than 10,000 homes have been destroyed in the fast-spreading, destructive fires that broke out in early January.
This new study looks at what are termed the fire-prone conditions that can lead to dangerous conflagrations.
It's been carried out by a team of researchers from World Weather Attribution (WWA), a global group that publishes rapid analyses of climate-related weather events.
They use climate models to simulate how the warming that has occurred since the middle of the 19th century is influencing heatwaves, droughts, floods and fires.
The widespread burning of coal, oil and gas in the wake of the industrial revolution has driven billions of tonnes of planet-warming gases into the atmosphere.
Acting like a blanket, these gases have driven up temperatures by around 1.2C since then.
By using climate models and statistical methods along with real world observations, the WWA group have been able to show how much of an influence climate warming has had on extreme events.
In the case of the LA fires, they found that the hot, dry conditions that drove them are expected to occur once every 17 years.
This is an increase in likelihood of around 35% compared to a world that hadn't experienced warming.
"We actually see that the models show very much the same results that the [real world] observations have," said Dr Friederike Otto, the head of World Weather Attribution.
"So there, in this combined index, we are quite confident about the result... we have actually a signal that we can say that we definitely can attribute that, also quantitatively."
The researchers also examined other important variables that can lead to wildfire including the length of the fire season.
By analysing weather observations, the scientists found that this has increased by around 23 days since the world began warming, around 1850.
The team say that this means the dry conditions and the Santa Ana winds that are crucial for the spread of fires, are increasingly overlapping.
Another key element is drought.
Dry conditions in the LA area over the October to December period are now about 2.4 times more likely than before humans starting using fossil fuels on a large scale.
The researchers are clear that climate change increased the probability of the hot, dry conditions that gave rise to the fires.
However, the authors are more cautious about the link between rising temperatures and the longer fire season or decreased rainfall, saying that the models did not show a significant connection.
Despite these reservations, the conclusion is that a warmer world increased the chances of the devastating wildfires occurring - as more fossil fuels continue to be burnt, those chances will continue to rise.
"Overall the paper finds that climate change has made the Los Angeles fires more likely despite some statistical uncertainty," said Prof Gabi Hegerl, from the University of Edinburgh, who was not part of the study team.
"This is a carefully researched result that should be taken seriously," she said in a statement.
The new work builds on research that was published while the fires were still burning fiercely.
That study linked the wildfires to what's termed "climate whiplash."
The idea is that very wet years are followed almost immediately by very dry ones, which increases the risk of fires.
This is what happened in LA, when two wet winters were followed by an extremely dry autumn and winter this year – the wet weather promoted the growth of grass and shrubs that became the fuel for the fires that took off in the gusting Santa Ana winds.
Sign up for our Future Earth newsletter to get exclusive insight on the latest climate and environment news from the BBC's Climate Editor Justin Rowlatt, delivered to your inbox every week. Outside the UK? Sign up to our international newsletter here.
Instead of throwing away edible and nutrient-rich peel of bananas, oranges and other fruits and veg, here are five ways to make the most of them.
It would be strange to needlessly throw away one third of the edible part of a banana every time you have one. But that's exactly what most of us do when we discard the peel, which makes up around one third of the average weight of the total fruit.
The peel of the banana, like many fruits and vegetables, is not only edible but contains useful nutrients. For an orange, around 20% of the fruit is peel – in 2018, around 15.1 million tonnes of orange peel was generated, according to one study (that's nearly 80,000 blue whales or 2,500 giant redwoods). For a kiwi, between 9-13% of the fruit is peel. For a pomegranate, there's almost as much peel as there are seeds.
Globally, about one third of food is lost or wasted, amounting to 1.3 billion tonnes per year. Food loss and waste accounts for 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions (more than triple aviation's contribution). Organic matter rotting in landfill sites also releases large amounts of methane, a potent gas 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide (CO2) over a 20-year time span. Composting food waste instead of sending it to landfill can help reduce the amount of methane released into the atmosphere. But much of what we think of as waste is in fact perfectly edible.
Within the food industry, there's growing interest in making better use of both the nutrients and the energy in the peel that typically gets thrown away. But there are ways to do this at home too.
Perhaps one of the easiest ways to use up peel are recipes that call for all parts of the fruit, not just the flesh – such as a banana and peel breakfast loaf. Here are five more options for cooking with leftover scraps which are too often thrown away.
Orange peel - Isabelle Gerretsen
After the Christmas holiday, I had a huge bowl of oranges left over, so I thought would try making marmalade for the first time. Marmalade is a breakfast staple in my house – I always start my day with a strong English breakfast tea and a slice of toast slathered in butter and the orange preserve. I found a recipe on BBC Good Food for the "English classic as made famous by Paddington Bear" which sounded nice and simple. There were just three ingredients: Seville oranges (1.3kg/2.9lb), the juice of two lemons and a frankly shocking amount of granulated sugar (2.3kg/5.1lb).
I quickly realised that making marmalade is not particularly fast or simple. It took me almost three hours to make two jars and involved quite a few steps, including two hours of simmering the oranges, straining the pulp through a sieve into the juice so that it releases pectin (a naturally occurring starch which helps the marmalade set). I then added in the sugar and the sliced peel and boiled the orange concoction for 20 minutes.
This clearly wasn't long enough, as while my marmalade looked and tasted great (neither too sweet nor too bitter), it remained very runny – not ideal for spreading on my toast. But I've discovered a lovely new breakfast option: marmalade with Greek yoghurt.
I had a couple of oranges left so I also decided to make candied orange peel, by chopping up peel and simmering it in boiling water for 10 minutes. You have to repeat this process three times and rinse the peels with cold water each time to remove the bitter flavour, before you mix in the sugar and water. The candied orange peel was delicious – the perfect sweet snack. I was also left with a tasty orange syrup which I've been using as a cordial in drinks.
I'm pleased that I've managed to transform my bowl of oranges into four tasty food items: marmalade, candied peel, a glass of juice and the orange syrup. An added bonus is that my kitchen smelled incredible – infused with a delicious orange aroma.
Pineapple peel - Lucy Sherriff
Eating a pineapple always feels so wasteful. There seems to be more waste from the core, rinds and top than there's actually fruit. This time I tried putting those rinds to use.
Tepache is an historic Mexican fermented beverage that dates back to pre-Hispanic times. Not only does it use all that waste, but it's also a source of probiotics. It's a fun – and easy – recipe to make, but be careful if you're avoiding alcohol because the fermentation process means there is some alcohol present (although usually less than 1%, depending on fermentation times – the longer you ferment the drink, the higher the alcohol content).
I used a one-gallon (3.8 litre) jar, a large elastic band, and a piece of muslin or cheesecloth that is big enough to cover the jar opening.
First I washed, peeled and cored one pineapple (an organic fruit lowers the risk of pesticide residues on the skin).
Then I combined water with brown sugar or piloncillo (a traditional unrefined cane sugar from Mexico), in a pan and slowly heated until sugar dissolved. Next, I let it cool slightly, and added the pineapple core and rinds into jar, and poured in the sugar and water mixture while it was still warm.
Then you cover it with muslin, a cheesecloth, dishtowel or kitchen paper – basically you want something to keep the flies out but let air in.
Next, I left the mixture to ferment. I was recommended to keep the tepache between 21-25C (70-78F), and to keep checking on it – after 24-36 hours you should white foam on the top which means it's fermenting. The longer you leave it – the stronger the flavour. Once it was ready, I strained the liquid and refrigerated for a refreshing drink.
Tip: You can add ginger, lime, and other fruits for extra flavour. (But if you're adding acid, like lemon or lime, don't add until the mixture is ready as it slows the fermentation process.)
Ginger peel - Lucy Sherriff
Ginger peel, too, is frequently thrown away as food waste.
But it's the peel that gives ginger so many of its beneficial qualities: the peel contains bioactive compounds which have phytochemical properties that include antioxidant, antimicrobial, and anticancer effects. Ginger peel is a rich source of fibre and vitamins, including vitamin C, calcium, iron and others.
So if you're not going to discard the peel, how should you use it?
You can simply use the ginger as normal, with peel attached (in fact, very few recipes specifically say you should use peeled ginger), or you can use the peel in other recipes.
Throw them into a soup to add flavour (but remove before blending or serving). Boil them with water to create a ginger broth, which can be stored in the fridge and added to smoothies, juices, cocktails, sparkling water, or used to steam root vegetables to add an extra kick.
Or for a rich flavour, slow roast the peel in the oven and grind it to a powder (either using a blender with a small grinder attachment or a coffee grinder). You can use this powder to brew a delicious ginger tea – make sure you strain it once it's brewed. The powder can also be used as a spice in cooking and baking.
Tip: try using a teaspoon to peel ginger, rather than a peeler.
Butternut squash peel - Jocelyn Timperley
Many recipes call for winter squashes like butternut squash to be peeled before using, but the peel of all squashes is perfectly edible, as are the seeds. Both are a good source of fibre as well as vitamins and other bioactive compounds.
I usually leave the skin on butternut squash but throw away the seeds, as it seems too much of a hassle to have to clean them. But I wanted to try something different, so I decided to try roasting the skin and seeds to make some hopefully crunchy homemade crisps.
I started one evening as I was cooking dinner, using a butternut squash from my local veg box. I washed it thoroughly then dried it, then cut off the top and bottom. Next I used a vegetable peeler and knife to slither off as thin sections of the peel as I could manage (mainly the knife as the veg peeler didn't really work), which took about 10 minutes. I ended up with a mix of different sized pieces that looked ideal for bite-sized crisps.
Next, I cut open the butternut squash lengthwise and scooped out the seeds and surrounding mushy stringy pulp. I popped these and the peels in separate tubs in the fridge overnight, and used the peeled butternut squash to make a squash and paneer curry.
The next day when I was making coffee and feeling peckish, I separated the seeds from the pulp. I was dreading this part, but they actually came away very easily. I washed the seeds thoroughly then wrapped them up in a clean tea towel to dry. I then repeated this last step after my partner grabbed the tea towel to dry his hands and threw the seeds all over the kitchen floor…
I mixed the seeds and squash skin together in a bowl with some shakes of salt, paprika, smoked paprika, cumin and chilli flakes, then stirred in a few drizzles of olive oil. I cooked the lot using the bake/roast setting of my air fryer at 170C (338F) to avoid burning them and checked on them frequently. After about 20 minutes they were looking nice and crispy.
I was still a bit dubious at this point – but they were delicious. The smaller chips turned out the best as they were super crunchy, and the seeds had an amazing taste. I loved being able to choose which spices I put on them, but I think the ability to use a nice olive oil was what put these miles ahead taste-wise of bought crisps. They would also make a fantastic garnish for soup.
Overall, though, it did feel like a lot of hassle for not a lot of food. Next time I would make sure to separate and wash the seeds ahead of time, and I'd also check on them less now I know how long they need, making this an easier snack. It was useful to use the air fryer, as turning on a whole oven for this amount would feel like rather a waste of energy.
I did really enjoy the final result though, and found it really filling too, and I would definitely use it again for any time I can be bothered peeling a squash. For any tougher peels, it's also worth remembering the peel can be saved in a bag in the freezer along with other edible vegetable leftovers and used to make vegetable stock.
Onion peel - Francis Agustin
The papery skin of an onion is another outer peel we don't typically think twice about before discarding.
I had seen people on social media drying out their onion scraps and grinding them into an onion powder, so I decided to try replicating it. I set aside a portion of the dry outer layer of yellow onion skins for the "powdering".
In short, after a few hours of oven-drying some onions, then throwing them into a food processor, the outcome was disappointing. I ended up adding salt to boost the flavour and then throwing the resulting mixture into a general spice rub where the onion taste was subdued.
As I had a few more onion skins left, I took a swing in an entirely different direction.
Like many peels or skins, onions contain chemicals called flavonoids, which have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. These flavonoids can be boiled and extracted from the vegetable, producing a potent coloured dye. Tannins (the same type of molecules that give wine a dry taste) are also found in the onion's flaky outer layer, its bitter taste deterring hungry critters. But the same way tannins make wine stains a pain to remove, the tannins in onions make an effective dye for fibres like cotton and linen, which typically need to be primed with a fixative called a mordant to ensure the dye lasts.
First, I washed the fabric (I used a clean sock) in a warm water bath to remove any lingering oil or dirt, which could impede the effectiveness of the dye.
After airdrying the fabric, I tossed the onion skins into a large metal pot with about two cups of water (adjust dye and water amounts depending on how big the fabric is). On a medium flame, bring the skins to a boil, and keep the solution at a rolling boil for about 15 minutes, until the water turns a dark amber colour.
When the fabric is mostly dry, turn off the flame and remove the onion skins with a slotted spoon. Submerge the fabric into the hot dye solution so that it is totally covered and leave for 30 minutes to an hour. Without wringing out the fabric, leave it in a cool area to dry. If the amber colour of the fabric isn't strong enough, repeat the submerging process until reaching the desired colour.
I was pleasantly surprised at what this experiment led to, and plan to try it again. My sock came out an autumnal orange colour, but with the use of different types of onions or mordants, fabrics can come out anywhere from a bright mustard yellow to a muted pine green.
--
For essential climate news and hopeful developments to your inbox, sign up to the Future Earth newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights twice a week.
For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.