At least three people have been killed when armed men in Haiti opened fire at medical staff, police and journalists during a briefing to announce the reopening of the country's biggest public hospital.

Many others injured were injured in Tuesday's attack in the General Hospital in the capital Port-au-Prince.

Pictures posted online appear to show several people injured or dead inside the building.

The site had been recaptured by Haiti's government in July, after being occupied and destroyed by violent gangs that control much of the city.

Journalists were waiting for the arrival of the health minister when the shooting began.

Reports say two journalists and a police officer were shot dead.

In a video statement, the head of Haiti's presidential transitional council, Leslie Voltaire, said: "We express our sympathy to all the victims' families, in particularly to the Haiti National Police and all the journalists' associations.

"We guarantee them that this act will not remain without consequences."

The people of Haiti continue to suffer with unbearable levels of gang violence, despite the installation of a new transition government in April and the deployment of an international force led by Kenyan police officers six months ago.

Haiti has been engulfed in a wave of gang violence since the assassination in 2021 of the then-president, Jovenel Moïse.

An estimated 85% of Port-au-Prince is still under gang control.

The UN says that as many as 5,000 people have been killed in violence in Haiti this year along, and the country is now on the verge of collapse.

Rude gestures are rare on postage stamps, but Ukraine's best known stamp has one. It shows a soldier raising the middle finger to a Russian warship in reference to a stand-off at Snake Island on day one of the full-scale invasion nearly three years ago.

The Russians demanded surrender but the Ukrainians refused, using unprintable language.

The warship in question, the cruiser Moskva, was sunk by the Ukrainians two days after the stamp was issued, and it sold out within a week of going on sale.

Such is the significance of the stamp that whatever was left was given to government delegations representing Ukraine on the world stage.

Ihor Smilyansky, the head of Ukraine's postal company Ukrposhta, acknowledges it was a risqué step to take.

"It was my decision. I said - I don't care whatever everyone else thinks. I just believe it's the right thing to do," he told the BBC. "I know it's breaking all the philatelic [study of stamps] rules and all the rules. But we're about breaking the rules."

Ukrposhta often tests its designs on the public, and the results of such online polls tend to be very political too.

That was how Ukraine's best-selling stamp came into being, showing a Ukrainian tractor towing a captured Russian tank and featuring the popular wartime greeting: "Good evening, we're from Ukraine."

Ukrposhta has sold about eight million such stamps.

Stamps featuring Ukraine's famous mine-sniffing dog Patron earned Ukrposhta about $500,000 (£400,000): 80% of the money was spent on mine-clearing equipment, and the rest on animal shelters.

Another stamp of a mural left by renowned graffiti artist Banksy on a building devastated by shelling outside Kyiv, helped fund 10 bomb shelters. This stamp features another popular but unprintable Ukrainian slogan - this time directed against Vladimir Putin.

Ihor Smilyansky says a dose of humour is added to Ukrposhta's stamps to maintain Ukrainian morale during the war with Russia.

"Humour has become a fighting force for Ukrainians in this war," he tells the BBC. "Even in the most difficult circumstances you have to take it with a sense of humour. And that's what our stamps are sometimes about."

Oscar Young from UK-based stamp dealers and auctioneers Stanley Gibbons says Ukraine's approach to stamps by focusing them on the war is highly unusual.

"Generally stamps are artistic and polite, but to go out your way and be quite rude, placing profanity and being very gesturous on stamps - that is quite unique to these particular issues," he tells the BBC.

He says the frank image used on the warship stamp is what made the stamp so famous and caused such a stir when it was issued.

The distinctive character of Ukrainian stamps has earned them popularity with collectors worldwide.

Laura Bullivant from Gloucester, in the UK, believes that other stamps look bland by comparison.

"I think they're like the Ukrainian thought process, they're just strong, and they're just not bowing down to whatever's coming into their country," she says.

"At a time of huge worry and awfulness, they are bringing something to the game that no other country could."

Nigel Bates has returned to the BBC soap EastEnders for the first time in 26 years in a special Christmas Eve episode.

The character, played by Paul Bradley, appeared at a community centre where Yolande Trueman, played by Angela Wynter, was volunteering during the episode.

Nigel left the show in April 1998 when he and his adopted daughter Clare left Albert Square to start a new life in Scotland with his partner Julie Haye and her son Josh.

"I'm thrilled and honoured to be back as Nigel," Bradley said.

"Despite it being such a long time ago, I still get recognised as Nigel in the street."

EastEnders' executive producer Chris Clenshaw said it was "fantastic" to welcome back Bradley.

He also teased: "There's a lot of mystery about Nigel's situation and why he's here alone, which will be revealed in the coming weeks."

On Christmas Day, Nigel will be reunited with his childhood best friend Phil Mitchell, played by Steve McFadden, the BBC said.

Bradley said he was having a really good time working with McFadden again.

"I'm a huge admirer of his work, and he sets the bar really high," he added.

During his first run in the show, his character's biggest storylines saw him fall in love with his video shop employee Debbie Tyler, played by Nicola Duffett, before she was killed in a hit-and-run accident, and strike up a friendship with June Brown's Dot Cotton who saw him as the son she never had.

There are fears of water contamination after a bridge collapsed in northern Brazil at the weekend, sending lorries carrying thousands of litres of pesticides and sulphuric acid into the river below.

Four people are known to have died, and more than 10 are missing after the central span of the bridge linking Tocantins and Maranhão states gave way on Sunday afternoon.

It is not clear if or how much the chemicals have leaked from their containers, but diving operations in the river have been halted while the situation is assessed.

Dramatic video filmed by a local councillor who went to the bridge to draw attention to cracks in it showed the start of the collapse.

Councillor Elias Junior said he never expected the bridge to actually collapse when he was there and was "in shock".

Eight vehicles plunged into the river, including the three lorries containing chemicals.

People in the cities of Estreito and Aguiarnopolis, on either side of the river, have been told to avoid collecting water from it.

Rescue operations are being carried out from boats. Four bodies have been recovered, including the female driver of one of the trucks and an 11-year-old girl, the fire service said. One man was rescued alive from the water on Sunday.

The Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira bridge - which is more than half a kilometre (1,600ft) long - was built in the 1960s and is the main link between the two states across the Tocantins river.

There are fears of water contamination after a bridge collapsed in northern Brazil at the weekend, sending lorries carrying thousands of litres of pesticides and sulphuric acid into the river below.

Four people are known to have died, and more than 10 are missing after the central span of the bridge linking Tocantins and Maranhão states gave way on Sunday afternoon.

It is not clear if or how much the chemicals have leaked from their containers, but diving operations in the river have been halted while the situation is assessed.

Dramatic video filmed by a local councillor who went to the bridge to draw attention to cracks in it showed the start of the collapse.

Councillor Elias Junior said he never expected the bridge to actually collapse when he was there and was "in shock".

Eight vehicles plunged into the river, including the three lorries containing chemicals.

People in the cities of Estreito and Aguiarnopolis, on either side of the river, have been told to avoid collecting water from it.

Rescue operations are being carried out from boats. Four bodies have been recovered, including the female driver of one of the trucks and an 11-year-old girl, the fire service said. One man was rescued alive from the water on Sunday.

The Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira bridge - which is more than half a kilometre (1,600ft) long - was built in the 1960s and is the main link between the two states across the Tocantins river.

Actress Blake Lively was arguably the internet's public enemy number one for a couple of weeks in the summer. She's now filed an explosive legal case that she claims lifts the lid on "sinister" tactics used to harm reputations in Hollywood - and which is making people question who and what to believe.

Blake Lively had always been a pretty inoffensive kind of actress.

She had been in successful TV shows and films, like Gossip Girl and The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants. She married fellow superstar Ryan Reynolds. She's friends with Taylor Swift.

Then in August, while promoting her latest movie It Ends With Us, she suddenly became controversial, to the verge of being cancelled.

She was criticised for comments appearing to downplay domestic violence, the film's theme; while awkward old interviews were resurfaced and repurposed as evidence of bullying behaviour.

Public opinion - at least among those who knew and cared - seemed to have turned against her.

Then the film came out, the furore died down, and social media moved on.

But Lively has now filed a legal case that claims she suffered sexual harassment by It Ends With Us co-star and director Justin Baldoni - and that when she complained, he and his studio Wayfarer retaliated by waging a campaign to "destroy" her reputation.

She was the subject of "a sophisticated, co-ordinated, and well-financed retaliation plan" designed "to silence her", involving a "weaponised a digital army" and fake stories being fed to "unwitting reporters", her lawyers have alleged - and that's why she became the focus of negative publicity.

Her lawyers have published text messages sent between Baldoni's publicist Jennifer Abel and Melissa Nathan, a crisis communications specialist hired by his studio to help manage the harassment complaint. They appear to give a rare glimpse into conversations that are normally kept well out of the spotlight.

Nathan pitched a strategy to "start threads of theories" on social media, to "create, seed, and promote content that appeared to be authentic", and engage in "social manipulation", according to the legal papers.

"You know we can bury anyone," Nathan wrote to Abel in one damning discussion.

Now, the people hired to do crisis PR for Baldoni are doing crisis PR for themselves.

Abel has said Lively's lawyers "cherry picked" messages to include in their case without crucial context, and that there was "no 'smear' implemented".

"No negative press was ever facilitated, no social combat plan, although we were prepared for it as it's our job to be ready for any scenario.

"But we didn't have to implement anything because the internet was doing the work for us."

The backlash against Lively occurred naturally and didn't need their help, Abel said.

Lawyer Bryan Freedman, representing Baldoni and his studio as well as Abel and Nathan, echoed that.

He said Baldoni hired a crisis manager due to "multiple demands and threats" allegedly made by Lively, including "threatening to not [show] up to set, threatening to not promote the film, ultimately leading to its demise during release, if her demands were not met".

He said the plan drawn up by Nathan's firm "proved unnecessary as audiences found Lively's own actions, interviews and marketing during the promotional tour distasteful, and responded organically to that, which the media themselves picked up on".

Overall, Freedman called Lively's complaint "shameful" and full of "categorically false accusations".

In recent days, Lively has received support from a string of former co-stars and others in Hollywood.

The name of one of her supporters stands out.

Amber Heard, former wife of Johnny Depp, told NBC: "Social media is the absolute personification of the classic saying, 'A lie travels halfway around the world before truth can get its boots on.'

"I saw this firsthand and up close. It's as horrifying as it is destructive."

Heard was on the receiving end of social media hostility during two high-profile libel trials involving Depp in the UK and US in 2020 and 2022. Nathan also reportedly worked for Depp.

Freedman responded to Heard by saying the only connection between her and Lively was that "for decades every move they have made has been out there for everyone to see" so the public could "make up their own minds - which they did, organically".

Tortoise Media head of investigations Alexi Mostrous, who hosted a podcast called Who Trolled Amber? earlier this year examining the abuse she received, said there were parallels.

"In both the Blake Lively case and the Amber Heard case, you see PR companies working with digital media specialists and other 'contractors' to promote online stories beneficial to their wealthy clients in ways that are opaque and not well understood," he told BBC News.

"It's an unregulated world where all sorts of tactics can take place behind closed doors."

'Common tactic'

Variety said Lively's case "lays bare a show business process that's meant to operate in the shadows – the hiring of expensive crisis communications experts to sway opinion and uplift clients".

Her allegations suggest a "sinister shadow campaign" that went "beyond what most publicity firms in Hollywood see as acceptable", The Wrap's Sharon Waxman wrote.

According to Rory Lynch, partner and head of reputation management law at Gateley Legal, it is "quite a common tactic" in Hollywood and business disputes to "have PRs on both sides planting negative stories, sometimes false stories, about the opposition".

"Even back in the golden era of Hollywood, there were rumours that Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were using PR professionals to negatively brief against each other."

However, the PR people who worked for Baldoni and his studio "dropped the ball a little bit" by discussing tactics in texts, he told BBC News.

"It doesn't surprise me, especially in the US and Hollywood, that you've got quite aggressive crisis PR people.

"But the fact that they put that in writing, I think, was possibly not the wisest thing. Normally they might do something like that over the phone."

Lively herself is "a sophisticated operator" who will "have her own PR people working away in the background as well", Lynch added.

'Our eyes are open'

The New York Times, which broke the story of Lively's complaint at the weekend, said she "denied that she or any of her representatives planted or spread negative information about Mr Baldoni or Wayfarer".

The paper also pointed out that "it is impossible to know how much of the negative publicity" towards Lively was originally seeded by those working on behalf of Baldoni, "and how much they noticed and amplified".

Many fans who turned against Lively now see the situation in a different light.

"We are so able to be manipulated into hating a woman that all it takes is a co-ordinated PR effort for us to switch sides against a domestic abuse victim, or a long-beloved American sweetheart," wrote Maddy Mussen in the Standard.

"Now our eyes are open, will we be harder to fool? Or will we still want any excuse to turn on a famous woman who is suddenly, in our eyes and the eyes of the ones manipulating us, no longer worthy?"

The Guardian's Laura Snapes wrote that she and her friends had now "looked back, horrified, on what we had said about her in recent months".

She added: "Lively's complaint has left my head spinning. What can you really trust?"

A women's solidarity honour that was recently awarded to Justin Baldoni has been rescinded after the actor was accused by his It Ends With Us co-star Blake Lively of sexual harassment and mounting a campaign to "destroy" her reputation.

Baldoni was honoured by Vital Voices, a global non-profit organisation that focuses on empowering women, with the award earlier this month.

The organisation announced Monday evening that it 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" held by the non-profit.

Baldoni's legal team have told the BBC that the allegations are "categorically false" and said they hired a crisis manager because Lively had threatened to derail the film unless her demands were met.

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

The Voices of Solidarity Award was given to Baldoni on 9 December during an awards ceremony in New York, Vital Voices said in a statement. The award was presented by comedian Hasan Minhaj and celebrates "remarkable men who have shown courage and compassion in advocating on behalf of women and girls".

He posted about the award on his Instagram page, saying he was "deeply honoured and humbled" and noting the continued work to needed to be done to help future generations of men.

"My hope is that we can teach our boys, while they are still young, that vulnerability is strength, sensitivity is a super power, and empathy makes them powerful," he says in the post.

In a statement on Monday, Vital Voices explained it had revoked the award and notified Baldoni of the decision.

Less than two weeks after the awards ceremony, Lively, who is best known for her role on the TV show Gossip Girl, filed a legal complaint accusing Baldoni and his team of attacking her public image. She says in the complaint the attacks followed a meeting to address "repeated sexual harassment and other disturbing behaviour" by Baldoni and a producer on the movie.

According to the filing to the California Civil Rights Department, a list of 30 demands relating to the pair's alleged misconduct was made at the meeting to ensure they could continue to produce the film. The list included requests such as no more mention of Baldoni's "pornography addiction", no descriptions of genitalia and no addition of intimate scenes that weren't approved by her when she read the script.

Lively also accused Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios of leading a "multi-tiered plan" to wreck her reputation in the media 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.

Responding to the legal complaint, Baldoni's lawyer, Bryan Freedman, said in a statement on Saturday that the accusations were "categorically false".

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

He alleged that Lively's claims were "intentionally salacious with an intent to publicly hurt and rehash a narrative in the media".

Actress Blake Lively was arguably the internet's public enemy number one for a couple of weeks in the summer. She's now filed an explosive legal case that she claims lifts the lid on "sinister" tactics used to harm reputations in Hollywood - and which is making people question who and what to believe.

Blake Lively had always been a pretty inoffensive kind of actress.

She had been in successful TV shows and films, like Gossip Girl and The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants. She married fellow superstar Ryan Reynolds. She's friends with Taylor Swift.

Then in August, while promoting her latest movie It Ends With Us, she suddenly became controversial, to the verge of being cancelled.

She was criticised for comments appearing to downplay domestic violence, the film's theme; while awkward old interviews were resurfaced and repurposed as evidence of bullying behaviour.

Public opinion - at least among those who knew and cared - seemed to have turned against her.

Then the film came out, the furore died down, and social media moved on.

But Lively has now filed a legal case that claims she suffered sexual harassment by It Ends With Us co-star and director Justin Baldoni - and that when she complained, he and his studio Wayfarer retaliated by waging a campaign to "destroy" her reputation.

She was the subject of "a sophisticated, co-ordinated, and well-financed retaliation plan" designed "to silence her", involving a "weaponised a digital army" and fake stories being fed to "unwitting reporters", her lawyers have alleged - and that's why she became the focus of negative publicity.

Her lawyers have published text messages sent between Baldoni's publicist Jennifer Abel and Melissa Nathan, a crisis communications specialist hired by his studio to help manage the harassment complaint. They appear to give a rare glimpse into conversations that are normally kept well out of the spotlight.

Nathan pitched a strategy to "start threads of theories" on social media, to "create, seed, and promote content that appeared to be authentic", and engage in "social manipulation", according to the legal papers.

"You know we can bury anyone," Nathan wrote to Abel in one damning discussion.

Now, the people hired to do crisis PR for Baldoni are doing crisis PR for themselves.

Abel has said Lively's lawyers "cherry picked" messages to include in their case without crucial context, and that there was "no 'smear' implemented".

"No negative press was ever facilitated, no social combat plan, although we were prepared for it as it's our job to be ready for any scenario.

"But we didn't have to implement anything because the internet was doing the work for us."

The backlash against Lively occurred naturally and didn't need their help, Abel said.

Lawyer Bryan Freedman, representing Baldoni and his studio as well as Abel and Nathan, echoed that.

He said Baldoni hired a crisis manager due to "multiple demands and threats" allegedly made by Lively, including "threatening to not [show] up to set, threatening to not promote the film, ultimately leading to its demise during release, if her demands were not met".

He said the plan drawn up by Nathan's firm "proved unnecessary as audiences found Lively's own actions, interviews and marketing during the promotional tour distasteful, and responded organically to that, which the media themselves picked up on".

Overall, Freedman called Lively's complaint "shameful" and full of "categorically false accusations".

In recent days, Lively has received support from a string of former co-stars and others in Hollywood.

The name of one of her supporters stands out.

Amber Heard, former wife of Johnny Depp, told NBC: "Social media is the absolute personification of the classic saying, 'A lie travels halfway around the world before truth can get its boots on.'

"I saw this firsthand and up close. It's as horrifying as it is destructive."

Heard was on the receiving end of social media hostility during two high-profile libel trials involving Depp in the UK and US in 2020 and 2022. Nathan also reportedly worked for Depp.

Freedman responded to Heard by saying the only connection between her and Lively was that "for decades every move they have made has been out there for everyone to see" so the public could "make up their own minds - which they did, organically".

Tortoise Media head of investigations Alexi Mostrous, who hosted a podcast called Who Trolled Amber? earlier this year examining the abuse she received, said there were parallels.

"In both the Blake Lively case and the Amber Heard case, you see PR companies working with digital media specialists and other 'contractors' to promote online stories beneficial to their wealthy clients in ways that are opaque and not well understood," he told BBC News.

"It's an unregulated world where all sorts of tactics can take place behind closed doors."

'Common tactic'

Variety said Lively's case "lays bare a show business process that's meant to operate in the shadows – the hiring of expensive crisis communications experts to sway opinion and uplift clients".

Her allegations suggest a "sinister shadow campaign" that went "beyond what most publicity firms in Hollywood see as acceptable", The Wrap's Sharon Waxman wrote.

According to Rory Lynch, partner and head of reputation management law at Gateley Legal, it is "quite a common tactic" in Hollywood and business disputes to "have PRs on both sides planting negative stories, sometimes false stories, about the opposition".

"Even back in the golden era of Hollywood, there were rumours that Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were using PR professionals to negatively brief against each other."

However, the PR people who worked for Baldoni and his studio "dropped the ball a little bit" by discussing tactics in texts, he told BBC News.

"It doesn't surprise me, especially in the US and Hollywood, that you've got quite aggressive crisis PR people.

"But the fact that they put that in writing, I think, was possibly not the wisest thing. Normally they might do something like that over the phone."

Lively herself is "a sophisticated operator" who will "have her own PR people working away in the background as well", Lynch added.

'Our eyes are open'

The New York Times, which broke the story of Lively's complaint at the weekend, said she "denied that she or any of her representatives planted or spread negative information about Mr Baldoni or Wayfarer".

The paper also pointed out that "it is impossible to know how much of the negative publicity" towards Lively was originally seeded by those working on behalf of Baldoni, "and how much they noticed and amplified".

Many fans who turned against Lively now see the situation in a different light.

"We are so able to be manipulated into hating a woman that all it takes is a co-ordinated PR effort for us to switch sides against a domestic abuse victim, or a long-beloved American sweetheart," wrote Maddy Mussen in the Standard.

"Now our eyes are open, will we be harder to fool? Or will we still want any excuse to turn on a famous woman who is suddenly, in our eyes and the eyes of the ones manipulating us, no longer worthy?"

The Guardian's Laura Snapes wrote that she and her friends had now "looked back, horrified, on what we had said about her in recent months".

She added: "Lively's complaint has left my head spinning. What can you really trust?"

People across much of the UK should be safe to leave their winter layers and umbrellas at home on Christmas Day, as a run of unseasonably mild weather continues.

Highs of between 11C and 13C are forecast, lower than the warmest Christmas on record back in 1920 when it was 15.6C in Devon.

A blanket of cloud will greet early risers on Christmas morning, with the threat of rain isolated to the western and northern isles of the UK, and around the Highlands' Great Glen.

Christmas Eve will be the warmest day of this year's festive week with temperatures expected to peak at 15C in north east Wales.

On 25 December, Scotland and Northern Ireland can expect spells of rain but the rest of the UK is predicted to stay dry.

BBC Weather's Louise Lear said Boxing Day will "almost be a case of spot the difference".

The first signs of a change will arrive late on Friday, Lear said, as north-westerly winds introduce colder air across Scotland.

Christmas Day weather records

• The warmest Christmas Day was in Killerton, Devon in 1920, which got to a balmy 15.6C
• The wettest was in 2015 when 165.4mm of rain fell in Capel Curig, Gwynedd
• The strongest Christmas wind was recorded in Sella Ness in Shetland in 2011 with gusts up to 101mph (162km/h)
• And the coldest Christmas was recorded in Gainford, Durham, which shivered through -18.2C temperatures in 1878

Millions of Americans across the US are bracing for difficult weather conditions during the Christmas holiday, with storms threatening to further disrupt one of the busiest travel periods of the year.

Up and down the east coast, the first storm of the winter blanketed cities from Boston to Baltimore with ice and snow.

Meanwhile, California residents are cleaning up the aftermath of a storm that brought hurricane-forced winds, flooding and high surf on Monday, killing one man.

The weather events further complicate travel plans for Americas who are already facing air travel delays following a ground stop of American Airlines flights due to a technology issue.

On the east coast, winter precipitation is expected to impact travel for many as heavy snow falls in areas such as Boston and New York, while Baltimore and Washington DC braced for precipitation and ice.

On the west coast, Monday's storm caused a pier to collapse and threw three people into the Pacific Ocean.

Waves from that storm reached 60ft (18m) and forced some evacuations. Flooding and high surf warnings remain in effect on Tuesday.

Weather is not the only thing impacting holiday travel on Tuesday, with technological issues adding further stress as millions of Americans hurry to their destinations.

Early Tuesday, American Airlines flights were halted after the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced a "nationwide groundstop" due to a "vendor technology issue".

The groundstop was lifted about an hour after it began and flights resumed, but not without creating a ripple of delays.

Delays were expected to continue into the day on Tuesday with some departures taking off two hours after they were scheduled.

American Airlines apologized for the inconvenience and said: "It's all hands on deck as our team is working diligently to get customers where they need to go as quickly as possible".

While many morning flights were delayed Tuesday, most afternoon flights are scheduled to depart on time.