Under growing pressure from his own party, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced he will step down and end his nine-year stretch as leader.

Trudeau said he would stay on in office until his Liberal Party can choose a new leader, and that parliament would be prorogued - or suspended - until 24 March.

"This country deserves a real choice in the next election and it has become clear to me that if I'm having to fight internal battles, I cannot be the best option in that election," he said during a press conference Monday.

Trudeau's personal unpopularity with Canadians had become an increasing drag on his party's fortunes in advance of federal elections later this year.

"Last night, over dinner, I told my kids about the decision that I'm sharing with you today," he told the news conference in Ottawa.

"I intend to resign as party leader, as prime minister, after the party selects its next leader through a robust nationwide competitive process," he said.

The president of the Liberal Party, Sachit Mehra, said a meeting of the party's board of directors would be held this week to begin the process of selecting a new leader.

Who might replace Trudeau as Liberal Party leader?

Why the Trudeau era has come to an end now

What happens next for Canada?

In a statement, he added: "Liberals across the country are immensely grateful to Justin Trudeau for more than a decade of leadership to our Party and the country."

"As Prime Minister, his vision delivered transformational progress for Canadians," he said, citing programmes his government has implemented like the Canada Child Benefit and the establishment of dental care and pharmacare coverage for some medication.

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre said "nothing has changed" following Trudeau's resignation.

"Every Liberal MP and Leadership contender supported EVERYTHING Trudeau did for 9 years, and now they want to trick voters by swapping in another Liberal face to keep ripping off Canadians for another 4 years, just like Justin," Poilievre wrote on X.

Trudeau, 53, had faced growing calls to quit from inside his Liberal Party, which ramped up in December when deputy prime minister and long-time ally Chrystia Freeland abruptly resigned.

In a public resignation letter, Freeland cited US President-elect Donald Trump's threats of tariffs on Canadian goods, and accused Trudeau of not doing enough to address the "grave challenge" posed by Trump's proposals.

Trump has promised to impose a tax of 25% on imported Canadian goods - which economists have warned would significantly hurt Canada's economy - unless the country takes steps to increase security on its shared border.

Trudeau said Monday that he had hoped Freeland would have continued as deputy prime minister, "but she chose otherwise".

Canada has since announced that it will implement sweeping new security measures along the country's US border in response to the threat.

In an online post, Trump claimed that pressure over tariffs led to Trudeau's resignation and repeated his jibe that Canada should become "the 51st State".

"If Canada merged with the U.S., there would be no Tariffs, taxes would go way down, and they would be TOTALLY SECURE from the threat of the Russian and Chinese Ships that are constantly surrounding them," he wrote.

Since 2019, the Liberal Party has governed as a minority party.

Following Freeland's resignation, Trudeau lost the backing of parties that had previously helped keep the Liberals in power - the left-leaning New Democrats, who had a support agreement with the Liberals, and the Quebec nationalist party, Bloc Quebecois.

The largest opposition party, the Conservatives, have maintained a significant two-digit lead over the Liberals in polls for months - suggesting that if a general election were held today, the Liberals could be in for a significant defeat.

Liberals will now choose a new leader to take the party into the next election, which must be held on or before 20 October.

A senior government official told the BBC that the race is an open contest, and that the Prime Minister's Office will fully stay out of the process, leaving it to Liberal Party members to decide their future.

Speaking to reporters, the Bloc Quebecois leader Yves-François Blanchet suggested that an early election be called once the Liberals choose their new leader.

End of the Trudeau era

Trudeau is the son of Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who dominated the country's politics in the 1970s and '80s.

The younger Trudeau became prime minister after the Liberal Party won a sweeping majority in 2015 amid a promise to usher in a new, progressive era of "Sunny Ways".

His record includes a commitment to gender equality in his cabinet, which continues to be 50% women; progress on reconciliation with Indigenous people in Canada; bringing in a national carbon tax; implementing a tax-free child benefit for families; and legalising recreational cannabis.

Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak praised Trudeau's track record on indigenous issues following his resignation, saying in a statement that he "has taken meaningful steps to address issues that matter to First Nations".

"While much work remains, these actions have laid a foundation for future governments to build upon."

Clouds began to hang over Trudeau's government in recent years, which weathered a series of often self-inflicted scandals, including a controversy over a deal with a Canadian firm facing corruption charges and photos that emerged of the prime minister wearing brownface makeup.

Vaccine mandates and other restrictions were also met with fierce backlash by some Canadians, leading to the Freedom Convoy truck protests in early 2022. Trudeau eventually used unprecedented emergency powers to remove the protesters.

As Canada began to emerge from the pandemic, housing and food prices skyrocketed, and his government pulled back on ambitious immigration targets as public services began to show strain.

By late 2024, Trudeau's approval rating was at its lowest - just 22% of Canadians saying they thought he was doing a good job, according to one polling tracker.

In Ottawa, a small group of protestors danced outside Parliament Hill in celebration of his resignation.

One passer-by, however, said he thinks things were fine under Trudeau's watch.

"I'm a carpenter," Hames Gamarra, who is from British Columbia, told the BBC. "I mind my own business, I get my wages, I pay the bills. It's been OK."

Another Canadian, Marise Cassivi, said it feels like the end of an era. Asked if she feels any hints of sadness, she replied: "No."

"It's the right thing."

At least five people have died in a winter storm that has seized a swathe of the US in its icy grip, leading to mass school closures, travel chaos and power cuts.

Seven US states declared emergencies: Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky and Arkansas.

More than 2,000 flights have been cancelled, with about 6,500 delays also reported owing to the extreme weather caused by the polar vortex of icy cold air that usually circles the North Pole.

More than a quarter of a million people were without power on Monday afternoon, with snowfall forecast to continue into the night on the East Coast.

According to meteorologists, cold Arctic air is expected to keep conditions icy across a chunk of the country for several more weeks.

In Washington DC - where lawmakers met on Monday to certify Donald Trump's win in November's election - about 5-9in (13-23cm) of snow fell, with up to a foot recorded in parts of nearby Maryland and Virginia.

• Live Updates: Major winter storm brings heavy snow and travel disruption

In front of the Washington Monument, hundreds of local residents gathered at a local park for a snowball fight, a now 15-year-old tradition.

"Just having fun," one local man told the BBC. "Never done a snowball fight before."

Former US Olympic skier Clare Egan was found cross-country skiing on the National Mall, the central thoroughfare of the US capital city.

She told the Associated Press she had thought "my skiing days were maybe behind me".

Washington DC's weather emergency is declared until the early hours of Tuesday as a result of the system, which was named Winter Storm Blair by the Weather Channel.

Children who had been due to go back to classes on Monday after the Christmas and Hanukkah break were instead enjoying a snow day as school districts closed from Maryland to Kansas.

In other parts of the US, the winter storm brought with it dangerous road conditions.

In Missouri, the state's highway patrol said at least 365 people had crashed on Sunday, leaving dozens injured and at least one dead.

In nearby Kansas, one of the worst-hit states, local news reported that two people were killed in a car crash during the storm.

In Houston, Texas, a person was found dead from cold weather in front of a bus stop on Monday morning, authorities said.

In Virginia, where 300 car crashes were reported between midnight and Monday morning, authorities warned local residents to avoid driving in large parts of the state.

At least one motorist was killed, according to local media reports.

Matthew Cappucci, a senior meteorologist at the weather app MyRadar, told the BBC that Kansas City had seen the heaviest snow in 32 years.

Some areas near the Ohio River in Kansas and Missouri turned to "skating rinks" in the frigid temperatures, he added.

"The ploughs are getting stuck, the police are getting stuck, everybody's getting stuck - stay home," he said.

Data from Poweroutage.us, a tracking website, shows that over 260,000 people were without power on Monday afternoon, across the storm's path through Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia.

A senior Hamas official has shared with the BBC a list of 34 hostages that the Palestinian group says it is willing to release in the first stage of a potential ceasefire agreement with Israel.

It is unclear how many hostages remain alive.

Among those named are 10 women and 11 older male hostages aged between 50 and 85, as well as young children that Hamas previously said had been killed in an Israeli air strike.

A number of hostages that Hamas says are sick are also included on the list.

Reports from Hamas-run Gaza say Israeli air strikes killed more than 100 people there at the weekend.

The Israeli prime minister's office denied reports that Hamas had provided Israel with a list of hostages.

Ceasefire negotiations resumed in Doha, Qatar, over the weekend, but the talks do not appear to have made significant progress yet.

A Hamas official told Reuters news agency any agreement to return Israeli hostages would depend on a deal for Israel to withdraw from Gaza and a permanent ceasefire or end to the war.

"However, until now, the occupation continues to be obstinate over an agreement over the issues of the ceasefire and withdrawal, and has made no step forward," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Earlier, Hamas posted a video of 19-year-old Israeli captive Liri Albag urging her government to make a deal.

She was captured along with six other female conscript soldiers at the Nahal Oz army base on the Gaza border during Hamas's attack on 7 October 2023.

On that day Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 others hostage.

Israel's military campaign to destroy Hamas had killed at least 45,805 people in Gaza as of Saturday, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

The same source says Israeli air strikes killed 88 people in Gaza on Saturday itself while on Sunday, Reuters news agency quoted health sources as saying a further 17 had died in four separate Israeli attacks on the territory.

The Israeli military said on Sunday that its air force had attacked more than 100 "terrorist" sites across the Gaza Strip over the weekend, killing dozens of Hamas militants.

US President Joe Biden has announced a ban on offshore oil and gas drilling along most of America's coastline, weeks before Donald Trump takes office.

Trump had pledged to massively increase US fossil fuel production.

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President-elect Donald Trump has asked a New York judge to halt the sentencing in his felony hush money case, which is scheduled for 10 January.

His lawyers announced on Monday that Trump would appeal the decision by Justice Juan Merchan ordering that the sentencing would proceed.

In court filings, Trump's attorneys wrote they would seek "a dismissal of this politically motivated prosecution that was flawed from the very beginning".

Trump was found guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in May 2024, making him the first former president convicted of a crime.

The charges stemmed from Trump's attempt to disguise reimbursements for a hush money payment to an adult film star as legal expenses.

Trump pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing. His lawyers said that filing an appeal should halt the criminal proceedings in his New York case.

The sentencing had been delayed repeatedly by the 2024 presidential election and Trump's attempt to have the case thrown out based on a claim of presidential immunity. Justice Merchan ultimately rejected the immunity argument in December.

On 3 January, Justice Merchan issued an order saying he would move ahead with the sentencing before Trump took office, but wrote that he would not consider any sentence of incarceration.

He ordered Trump to appear virtually or in-person for the hearing.

"The American People elected President Trump with an overwhelming mandate that demands an immediate end to the political weaponisation of our justice system and all of the remaining Witch Hunts," said Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump's presidential transition.

Trump's team has not publicly commented on whether the president-elect will be in court, but in its response Monday afternoon to the request for a stay, the Manhattan district attorney's office referred to "defendant's decision to appear for sentencing virtually instead of in person". The reference to a virtual hearing was repeated again several pages later.

In the response, the district attorney asked the judge to deny Trump's request for an immediate stay of his sentencing, and argued he would not be prejudiced by such a decision.

The weeks after the election featured a flurry of legal filings from both Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought the case, and Trump's legal team.

Bragg's office had previously indicated that they would not oppose delaying Trump's sentencing until after he finishes his term in office, four years from now.

But after Justice Merchan decided to move ahead with the sentencing, Bragg has asked the judge to proceed with the sentencing on Friday.

In his order last week, Justice Merchan wrote that "it is this court's firm belief that only by bringing finality to this matter" will the legal quandaries at play be resolved.

However, the judge left the door open to the possibility that Trump would seek to appeal the sentencing, writing that he "must be permitted to avail himself of every available appeal".

Apple has said it will update, rather than pause, a new artificial intelligence (AI) feature that has generated inaccurate news alerts on its latest iPhones.

The company, in its first acknowledgement of the concerns, on Monday said it was working on a software change to "further clarify" when the notifications are summaries that have been generated by the Apple Intelligence system.

The tech giant is facing calls to pull the technology after its flawed performance.

The BBC complained last month after an AI-generated summary of its headline falsely told some readers that Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, had shot himself.

On Friday, Apple's AI inaccurately summarised BBC app notifications to claim that Luke Littler had won the PDC World Darts Championship hours before it began - and that the Spanish tennis star Rafael Nadal had come out as gay.

This marks the first time Apple has formally responded to the concerns voiced by the BBC about the errors, which appear as if they are coming from within the organisation's app.

"These summarisations by Apple are spreading misinformation which does not reflect – and in some cases completely contradicts – the original BBC content," the BBC said on Monday.

"They are harming trust not only in the BBC, but in news and information more widely. It is imperative that Apple addresses these issues urgently."

• What is AI and how does it work?
• A simple guide to help you understand AI

Apple said its update would arrive "in the coming weeks".

It has previously said its notification summaries - which group together and rewrite previews of multiple recent app notifications into a single alert on user's lock screens - aim to allow users to "scan for key details".

"Apple Intelligence features are in beta and we are continuously making improvements with the help of user feedback," the company said in a statement on Monday, adding that receiving the summaries is optional.

"A software update in the coming weeks will further clarify when the text being displayed is summarization provided by Apple Intelligence. We encourage users to report a concern if they view an unexpected notification summary."

The feature, along with others released as part of its broader suite of AI tools was rolled out in the UK in December. It is only available on its iPhone 16 models, iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max handsets running iOS 18.1 and above, as well as on some iPads and Macs.

Several instances of the technology appearing to interpret messages in a highly blunt, literal way have gone viral on social media.

In November, a ProPublica journalist highlighted erroneous Apple AI summaries of alerts from the New York Times app suggesting it had reported that Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been arrested.

The BBC has not been able to independently verify the screenshots, and the New York Times declined to comment.

Reporters Without Borders, an organisation representing the rights and interests of journalists, called on Apple to disable the feature in December.

It said the attribution of a false headline about Mr Mangione to the BBC showed "generative AI services are still too immature to produce reliable information for the public".

Apple is not alone in having rolled out generative AI tools that can create text, images and more content when prompted by users - but with varying results.

Google's AI overviews feature, which provides a written summary of information from results at the top of its search engine in response to user queries, faced criticism last year for producing some erratic responses.

At the time a Google spokesperson said that these were 'isolated examples' and that the feature was generally working well.

US Vice-President Kamala Harris will on Monday preside over the official certification in Congress of the result of November's presidential election - a contest that she lost to Donald Trump.

The date also marks the fourth anniversary of a riot at the US Capitol, when Trump's supporters tried to thwart the certification of Democratic President Joe Biden's election victory in 2020. Normally the occasion is a mere formality.

Heavy security is in place in Washington DC, and Biden has vowed there will be no repeat of the violence on 6 January 2021 - which led to several deaths.

As lawmakers meet in Washington DC, heavy snow forecast for the American capital could prove disruptive.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has vowed to go ahead with the certification at 13:00 EST (18:00 GMT) in spite of the weather, telling Fox News: "Whether we're in a blizzard or not, we're going to be in that chamber making sure this is done."

As the current vice-president, Harris is required by the US Constitution to officially preside over the certification of the result, after Trump beat her in the nationwide poll on 5 November.

Trump won all seven of the country's swing states, helping him to victory in the electoral college, the mechanism that decides who takes the presidency. It will be Harris's job on Monday to read out the number of electoral college votes won by each candidate.

Trump's second term will begin after he is inaugurated on 20 January. For the first time since 2017, the president's party will also enjoy majorities in both chambers of Congress, albeit slender ones.

• Just how big was Trump's victory?
• What next for Harris, after her bruising election defeat?
• Who has joined Trump's top team?
• What happens to Trump's legal cases?

Trump's win marked a stunning political comeback from his electoral defeat in 2020, and a criminal conviction in 2024 - a first for a current or former US president.

Amid the dramatic recent presidential campaign, Trump also survived a bullet grazing his ear when a gunman opened fire at one of his rallies in Pennsylvania.

While away from the White House, he has faced a slew of legal cases against him - including over his attempts to overturn the 2020 result, which he continues to dispute.

Following his defeat that year, Trump and his allies made baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud - claiming the election had been stolen from them.

In a speech in Washington DC on certification day, 6 January 2021, Trump told a crowd to "fight like hell" but also asked them to "peacefully" make their voices heard.

He also attempted to pressurise his own vice-president, Mike Pence, to reject the election result - a call that Pence rejected.

• What Trump said in speech before riot

Rioters went on to smash through barricades and ransack the Capitol building before Trump ultimately intervened by telling them to go home. Several deaths were blamed on the violence.

Trump's pledges after returning to office include pardoning people convicted of offences over the attack. He says many of them are "wrongfully imprisoned", though has acknowledged that "a couple of them, probably they got out of control".

Conversely, Biden has called on Americans never to forget what happened.

"We must remember the wisdom of the adage that any nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it," Biden wrote in the Washington Post over the weekend.

For Trump's Republican Party, the new Senate Majority Leader John Thune has signalled a desire to move on, telling the BBC's US partner CBS News: "You can't be looking in the rearview mirror."

• How these new recruits will be vetted
• What Trump can and can't do on day one
• How undocumented migrants feel about deportations
• Can RFK Jr make America healthy again?
• What Trump's Ukraine envoy has said about war

Austria's president Alexander Van der Bellen has tasked the leader of the far-right Freedom Party, Herbert Kickl, with forming a coalition government.

If the talks are successful, Austria will, for the first time, have a government led by the Eurosceptic, Russia-friendly Freedom Party (FPO).

The FPO has been in power before, but only as a junior coalition partner.

The party came first in September's elections, with roughly 29% of the vote, but was then sidelined.

President Van der Bellen infuriated the FPO by not tasking it with forming a government soon after the election.

At the time, the leaders of all of the other parties ruled out making an alliance with Kickl.

In October, Van der Bellen gave the conservative People's Party (OVP), which came second in the election with 26%, the task of forming a coalition.

The former leader of the OVP, Chancellor Karl Nehammer, had called Kickl a conspiracy theorist and a threat to security.

But Nehammer's attempts to form a three-party and then a two-party centrist coalition collapsed this weekend.

He then resigned and the new leader of the conservatives, Christian Stocker, said his party would be willing to hold talks with Kickl.

President Van der Bellen has now tasked Kickl with forming a government.

The step is a dramatic reversal for the president, a former leader of the Green Party, who has long been critical of the FPO and has expressed reservations about Kickl as Chancellor.

On Monday, Van der Bellen said he had not taken "this step lightly". He said he would "continue to ensure that the principles and rules of our constitution are correctly observed and adhered to".

In recent months, Van der Bellen has repeatedly said he will remain vigilant to ensure "cornerstones of democracy" including human rights, independent media and Austria's membership of the European Union are respected.

The Freedom Party and the OVP overlap on a number of issues and both take a tough line on migration.

However they have clashed on the EU and the Freedom Party's opposition to aid for Ukraine in its war against Russia.

There is no timeframe for the coalition talks, which would usually take two or three months, but could be quicker.

If the talks fail, a snap election is likely. Polls suggest that support for the Freedom Party has grown since September.

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has gone on trial in Paris, accused of taking millions of euros of illicit funds from the late Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi to finance his 2007 election campaign.

In exchange, the prosecution alleges Sarkozy promised to help Gaddafi combat his reputation as a pariah with Western countries.

Sarkozy, 69, was the president of France from 2007 to 2012.

He has always denied the charges, saying they were brought against him by people with motivations to bring him down.

The investigation was opened in 2013, two years after Saif al-Islam, son of the then-Libyan leader, first accused Sarkozy of taking millions of his father's money for campaign funding.

The following year, Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine - who for a long time acted as a middleman between France and the Middle East - said he had written proof that Sarkozy's campaign bid was "abundantly" financed by Tripoli, and that the €50m (£43m) worth of payments continued after he became president.

Twelve other people - accused of devising the pact with Gaddafi - are standing trial along Sarkozy. They all deny the charges.

Sarkozy's wife, Italian-born former supermodel and singer Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, was charged last year with hiding evidence linked to the Gaddafi case and associating with wrongdoers to commit fraud, both of which she denies.

Since losing his re-election bid in 2012, Sarkozy has been targeted by several criminal investigations.

He also appealed against a February 2024 ruling which found him guilty of overspending on his 2012 re-election campaign, then hiring a PR firm to cover it up. He was handed a one-year sentence, of which six months were suspended.

In 2021, he was found guilty of trying to bribe a judge in 2014 and became the first former French president to get a custodial sentence. In December, the Paris appeals court ruled that he could serve his time at home wearing a tag instead of going to jail.

Sarkozy was not wearing the tag as he arrived in court in Paris on Monday morning.

However, that is only because the details of that sentence have yet to be worked out.

It is likely that in the course of this three-month trial over the so-called Libya connection, the former president will appear wearing the device.

The trial is set to continue until 10 April. If found guilty, Sarkozy faces up to 10 years in prison.

Donald Trump Jr is planning to visit Greenland, two weeks after his father repeated his desire for the US to take control of the island - an autonomous Danish territory.

The US president-elect's son plans to record video footage for a podcast during the one-day private visit, US media report.

Donald Trump reignited controversy in December when he said "ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity" for US national security.

He had previously expressed an interest in buying the Arctic territory during his first term as president. Trump was rebuffed by Greenland's leaders on both occasions.

"We are not for sale and we will not be for sale," the island's Prime Minister, Mute Egede, said in December. "Greenland belongs to the people of Greenland."

Greenland lies on the shortest route from North America to Europe, making it strategically important for the US. It is also home to a large US space facility.

The president-elect's eldest son played a key role during the 2024 US election campaign, frequently appearing at rallies and in the media.

But he will not be travelling to Greenland on behalf of his father's incoming administration, according to the Danish foreign ministry.

"We have noted the planned visit of Donald Trump Jr to Greenland. As it is not an official American visit, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark has no further comment to the visit," the ministry told BBC News.

• Greenland profile

Hours after President-elect Trump's latest intervention, the Danish government announced a huge boost in defence spending for Greenland. Danish Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen described the announcement's timing as an "irony of fate".

On Monday Denmark's King Frederik X changed the royal coat of arms to more prominently feature representations of Greenland and the Faroe Islands.

Some have seen this as a rebuke to Trump, but it could also prove controversial with Greenland's separatist movement.

King Frederik used his New Year's address to say the Kingdom of Denmark was united "all the way to Greenland", adding "we belong together".

But Greenland's prime minister used his own New Year's speech to push for independence from Denmark, saying the island must break free from "the shackles of colonialism".

Trump is not the first US president to suggest buying Greenland. The idea was first mooted by the country's 17th president, Andrew Johnson, during the 1860s.

Separately in recent weeks, Trump has threatened to reassert control over the Panama Canal, one of the world's most important waterways. He has accused Panama of charging excessive fees for access to it.

Panama's president responded by saying "every square metre" of the canal and surrounding area belonged to his country.

For months now, Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been asked variations of the same question: "Will you step down?"

But though he vowed to stay on as Liberal Party leader - despite deepening frustrations amongst voters and a political rival surging in the polls - even the self-described "fighter" could not withstand the growing chorus of members of his own party calling for him to resign.

"This country deserves a real choice in the next election, and it has become clear to me that if I'm having to fight internal battles, I cannot be the best option in that election," Trudeau conceded on Monday, announcing his resignation in front of Rideau Cottage, his official residence for most of the last decade.

He will stay on as prime minister until a new Liberal Party leader is chosen, at a date yet to be set by the party.

• Follow developments live
• Who might replace Trudeau as Liberal Party leader?

Trudeau swept to power nearly a decade ago, heralded as the fresh face of progressive politics.

In 2015, swayed by his youthful charisma and a hopeful political message, voters catapulted the Liberals from a third-place party to holding a majority of seats in parliament - unprecedented in Canadian political history.

Now, he remains the only leader left standing among peers when he came into office, from Barack Obama to Angela Merkel, Shinzo Abe and David Cameron, and is currently the longest-serving leader in the G7.

But in the years since his ascent to the global stage, and over two general elections, Trudeau and his brand have become a drag on the party's fortunes.

Paul Wells, a Canadian political journalist and the author of Justin Trudeau on the Ropes, recently told the BBC he believes Trudeau will be remembered "as a consequential" prime minister, notably for providing genuine leadership on issues like indigenous reconciliation and, to some extent, climate policy.

But he is also one "who felt increasingly out of touch with public opinion and was increasingly unable to adjust to changing times".

A series of ethics scandals began to take the sheen off the new government - he was found to have violated federal conflict of interest rules in the handling of a corruption inquiry – the SNC-Lavalin affair - and for luxury trips to the Bahamas.

In 2020, he faced scrutiny for picking a charity with ties to his family to manage a major government programme.

In a general election in 2019, his party was reduced to a minority status, meaning the Liberals had to rely on the support of other parties to stay in power.

A snap election in 2021 did not improve their fortunes.

More recently, Trudeau faced headwinds from cost of living increases and inflation that have contributed to election upsets around the world.

And after more than nine years in power, he is among Canada's longest serving prime ministers, and there is a general sense of fatigue and frustration with his government.

The writing was on the wall. Over the summer, voters rejected Liberal candidates in a handful of special elections in once-safe Liberal seats, leading to the beginning of internal party unrest.

Public opinion polls also reached new depths.

A survey conducted over the holidays by the Angus Reid Institute suggested the lowest level of support for the party in their tracking, dating back to 2014.

But the shock resignation of his key deputy, former Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, in mid-December proved to be the final straw, as members of his own party made it clear they no longer supported his leadership.

Exactly 10 years after the jihadist gun-attack that killed most of its editorial staff, France's Charlie Hebdo has put out a special issue to show its cause is still kicking.

Things changed for France on 7 January 2015, marking in bloodshed the end of all wilful naivety about the threat of militant Islamism.

Brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi burst into a meeting at the Paris office of the satirical weekly, murdering its star cartoonists Cabu, Wolinski, Charb and Tignous.

Overall, 12 people were killed by the brothers, including a Muslim policeman on duty outside. Two days later they were cornered and shot dead by police at a sign-making business near Charles-de-Gaulle airport.

That same day saw Amedy Coulibaly – a one-time prison associate of Cherif – kill four Jews in a synchronised hostage-taking at a supermarket in eastern Paris. Coulibaly – who was then shot dead by police – had killed a policewoman the day before.

A decade on, Charlie Hebdo continues to bring out a weekly edition and has a circulation (print and online combined) of around 50,000.

It does so from an office whose whereabouts are kept secret, and with staff who are protected by bodyguards.

But in an editorial in Tuesday's memorial edition, the paper's main shareholder said its spirit of ribald anti-religious irreverence was still very much alive.

"The desire to laugh will never disappear," said Laurent Saurisseau – also known as Riss – a cartoonist who survived the 7 January attack with a bullet in the shoulder.

"Satire has one virtue that has got us through these tragic years – optimism. If people want to laugh, it is because they want to live.

"Laughter, irony and caricature are all manifestations of optimism," he wrote.

• Charlie Hebdo attack: Three days of terror
• Charlie Hebdo and its place in French journalism
• French terror attacks: Victim obituaries
• Paris attacks: 'I am not Charlie'

Also in the 32-page special are the 40 winning entries in a cartoon competition on the theme of "Laughing at God".

One contains the image of a cartoonist asking himself: "Is it okay to draw a picture of a man drawing a picture of a man drawing a picture of Muhammed?"

The Charlie Hebdo and Hypercacher attacks appear now as the overture to a grim and deadly period in modern France, during which – for a time – fear of jihadist terrorism became part of daily life.

In November 2015, there followed gun attacks at the Bataclan theatre and nearby bars in Paris. In the following July, 86 people were killed on the promenade in Nice.

Some 300 French people have died in Islamist attacks in the last decade.

Today the frequency has fallen sharply, and the defeat of the Islamic State group means there is no longer a support base in the Middle East.

But the killer individual, self-radicalised over the Internet, remains a constant threat in France as elsewhere.

The original pretext for the Charlie Hebdo murders – caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad – are now strictly off-limits to publications everywhere.

In 2020, a French teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded outside his school by a jihadist after he showed one of the Charlie cartoons in a discussion over freedom of speech.

And this week the trial opens in Paris of a Pakistani man who – a short time before Paty's murder – seriously injured two people with a butcher's cleaver at the Paris offices he thought were still being used by Charlie-Hebdo (in fact they had long since moved).

So as with every anniversary since 2015, the question once again being asked in France is: what - if anything - has changed? And what - if anything - survives of the great outpouring of international support, whose clarion call in the days after the murders was Je suis Charlie?

That was when a march of two million people through the centre of Paris was joined by heads of state and government from countries all over the world at the invitation of then President François Hollande.

Today, pessimists say the battle is over and lost. The chances of a humorous newspaper ever taking up the cudgel against Islam – in the way that Charlie Hebdo used regularly and scabrously to do against Christianity and Judaism – are zero.

Worse, for these people, is that parts of the political left in France are also now clearly distancing themselves from Charlie Hebdo, accusing it of becoming overly anti-Islam and adopting positions from the far-right.

Jean-Luc Melenchon, who leads the France Unbowed party, has accused the weekly of being a "bag-carrier for (right-wing magazine) Valeurs Actuels", and the Greens' Sandrine Rousseau said Charlie Hebdo was "misogynistic and at times racist".

This has in turn led to accusations aimed at the far-left that it has betrayed the free-speech spirit of Je suis Charlie in order to curry electoral support among French Muslims.

But speaking in the run-up to the anniversary, Riss – who counted the dead among his greatest friends and says he does not go through a day without reliving the moment of the attack – refused to renounce hope.

"I think [the Charlie spirit] is anchored more deeply in society than one might think. When you talk to people, you can see it's very much alive. It's a mistake to think it's all disappeared.

"It is part of our collective memory."

More Vietnamese attempted small-boat Channel crossings in the first half of 2024 than any other nationality. Yet they are coming from one of the world's fastest-growing economies. Why, then, are so many risking their lives to reach Britain?

Phuong looked at the small inflatable boat and wondered whether she should step in. There were 70 people packed in, and it was sitting low in the water. She recalls the fear, exhaustion and desperation on their faces. There weren't enough lifejackets to go around.

But Phuong was desperate. She says she had been stuck in France for two months, after travelling there from Vietnam via Hungary, sleeping in tents in a scrubby forest.

Already she had refused to travel on one boat because it seemed dangerously overcrowded, and previously had been turned back in the middle of the Channel three times by bad weather or engine failure.

Her sister, Hien, lives in London, and recalls that Phuong used to phone her from France in tears. "She was torn between fear and a drive to keep going.

"But she had borrowed so much - around £25,000 - to fund this trip. Turning back wasn't an option." So, she climbed on board.

Today Phuong lives in London with her sister, without any legal status. She was too nervous to speak to us directly, and Phuong is not her real name. She left it to her sister, who is now a UK citizen, to describe her experiences.

In the six months to June, Vietnamese made up the largest number of recorded small boat arrivals with 2,248 landing in the UK, ahead of people from countries with well-documented human rights problems, including Afghanistan and Iran.

The extraordinary efforts made by Vietnamese migrants to get to Britain is well documented, and in 2024 the BBC reported on how Vietnamese syndicates are running successful people-smuggling operations.

It is not without significant risks. Some Vietnamese migrants end up being trafficked into sex work or illegal marijuana farms. They make up more than one-tenth of those in the UK filing official claims that they are victims of modern slavery.

And yet Vietnam is a fast-growing economy, acclaimed as a "mini-China" for its manufacturing prowess. Per capita income is eight times higher than it was 20 years ago. Add to that the tropical beaches, scenery and affordability, which have made it a magnet for tourists.

So what is it that makes so many people desperate to leave?

A tale of two Vietnams

Vietnam, a one-party Communist state, sits near the bottom of most human rights and freedom indexes. No political opposition is permitted. The few dissidents who raise their voices are harassed and jailed.

Yet most Vietnamese have learned to live with the ruling party, which leans for legitimacy on its record of delivering growth. Very few who go to Britain are fleeing repression.

Nor are the migrants generally fleeing poverty. The World Bank has singled Vietnam out for its almost unrivalled record of poverty reduction among its 100 million people.

Rather, they are trying to escape what some call "relative deprivation".

Despite its impressive economic record, Vietnam started far behind most of its Asian neighbours, with growth only taking off well after the end of the Cold War in 1989. As a result, average wages, at around £230 a month, are much lower than in nearby countries like Thailand, and three-quarters of the 55-million-strong workforce are in informal jobs, with no security or social protection.

"There is a huge disparity between big cities like Hanoi and rural areas," says Nguyen Khac Giang, a Vietnamese academic at the Institute of South East Asian Studies-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. "For a majority of workers with limited skills, there is a glass ceiling. Even if you work 14 hours a day you cannot save enough to build a house or start a family."

This was what Phuong felt, despite coming from Haiphong, Vietnam's third-largest city.

Her sister Hien had made it to Britain nine years earlier, smuggled inside a shipping container. It had cost her around £22,000 but she was able to pay that back in two years, working long hours in kitchens and nail salons. Hien married a Vietnamese man who already had British citizenship, and they had a daughter; all three are now UK citizens.

In Haiphong, jobs were scarce after the pandemic and at 38 years old, Phuong wanted what her sister had in London: the ability to save money and start a family.

"She could survive in Vietnam, but she wanted a home, a better life, with more security," explains Hien.

Lan An Hoang, a professor in development studies at Melbourne University, has spent years studying migration patterns. "Twenty to thirty years ago, the urge to migrate overseas was not as strong, because everyone was poor," she says. "People were happy with one buffalo, one motorbike and three meals a day.

"Suddenly a few people successfully migrated to countries like Germany or the UK, to work on cannabis farms or open nail salons. They started to send a lot of money home. Even though the economic conditions of those left behind have not changed, they feel poor relative to all these families with migrants working in Europe."

'Catch up, get rich'

This tradition of seeking better lives overseas goes back to the 1970s and 80s, when Vietnam was allied to the Soviet Union following the defeat of US forces in the south.

The state-led economy had hit rock bottom. Millions were destitute; some areas suffered food shortages. Tens of thousands left to work in eastern bloc countries like Poland, East Germany and Hungary.

This was also a time when 800,000 mainly ethnic Chinese boat people fled the communist party's repressive actions, making perilous sea journeys across the South China Sea, eventually resettling in the USA, Australia or Europe.

The economic hardships of that time threatened the legitimacy of the communist party, and in 1986 it made an abrupt turn, abandoning the attempt to build a socialist system and throwing the doors open to global markets. The new theme of Vietnam's national story was to catch up, and get rich, any way possible. For many Vietnamese, that meant going abroad.

"Money is God in Vietnam," says Lan An Hoang. "The meaning of 'the good life' is primarily anchored in your ability to accumulate wealth. There is also a strong obligation to help your family, especially in central Vietnam.

"That is why the whole extended family pools resources to finance the migration of one young person because they believe they can send back large sums of money, and facilitate the migration of other people."

New money: spoils of migration

Drive through the flat rice fields of Nghe An, one of Vietnam's poorer provinces lying south of Hanoi, and where there were once smaller concrete houses, you will now find large, new houses with gilded gates. More are under construction, thanks, in part, to money earned in the West.

The new houses are prominent symbols of success for returnees who have done well overseas.

Vietnam is now enjoying substantial inflows of foreign investment, as it is considered an alternative to China for companies wanting to diversify their supply chains. This investment is even beginning to reach places like Nghe An, too.

Foxconn, a corporate giant that manufactures iPhones, is one of several foreign businesses building factories in Nghe An, offering thousands of new jobs.

But monthly salaries for unskilled workers only reach around £300, even with overtime. That is not enough to rival the enticing stories of the money to be made in the UK, as told by the people smugglers.

From travel agents to labour brokers

The business of organising the travel for those wishing to leave the province is now a very profitable one. Publicly, companies present themselves as either travel agents or brokers for officially-approved overseas labour contracts, but in practice many also offer to smuggle people to the UK via other European countries. They usually paint a rosy picture of life in Britain, and say little about the risks and hardships they will face.

"Brokers" typically charge between £15,000 and £35,000 for the trip to the UK. Hungary is a popular route into the EU because it offers guest-worker visas to Vietnamese passport holders. The higher the price, the easier and faster the journey.

The communist authorities in Vietnam have been urged by the US, the UK and UN agencies to do more to control the smuggling business.

Remittances from abroad earn Vietnam around £13bn a year, and the government has a policy of promoting migration for work, although only through legal channels, mostly to richer Asian countries.

More than 130,000 Vietnamese workers left in 2024 under the official scheme. But the fees for these contracts can be high, and the wages are much lower than they can earn in Britain.

The huge risks of the illicit routes used to reach the UK were brought home in 2019, when 39 Vietnamese people were found dead in Essex, having suffocated while being transported inside a sealed container across the Channel.

Yet this has not noticeably reduced demand for the smugglers' services. The increased scrutiny of container traffic has, however, pushed them to find alternative Channel crossings, which helps explain the sharp rise in Vietnamese people using small boats.

'Success stories outweigh the risks'

"The tragedy of the 39 deaths in 2019 is almost forgotten," says the cousin of one of the victims, Le Van Ha. He left behind a wife, two young children and a large debt from the cost of the journey. His cousin, who does not want to be named, says attitudes in their community have not changed.

"People hardly care anymore. It's a sad reality, but it is the truth.

"I see the trend of leaving continuing to grow, not diminish. For people here, the success stories still outweigh the risks."

Three of the victims came from the agricultural province of Quang Binh. The headteacher of a secondary school in the region, who also asked not to be named, says that 80% of his students who graduate soon plan to go overseas.

"Most parents here come from low-income backgrounds," he explains. "The idea of [encouraging their child to] broaden their knowledge and develop their skills is not the priority.

"For them, sending a child abroad is largely about earning money quickly, and getting it sent back home to improve the family's living standards."

In March the UK Home Office started a social media campaign to deter Vietnamese people from illegal migration. Some efforts were also made by the Vietnamese government to alert people to the risks of using people-smugglers. But until there are more appealing economic opportunities in those provinces, it is likely the campaigns will have little impact.

"They cannot run these campaigns just once," argues Diep Vuong, co-founder of Pacific Links, an anti-trafficking organisation. "It's a constant investment in education that's needed."

She has first-hand experience, leaving Vietnam to the US in 1980 as part of the exodus of Vietnamese boat people.

"In Vietnam, people believe they have to work hard, to do everything for their families. That is like a shackle which they cannot easily escape. But with enough good information put out over the years, they might start to change this attitude."

But the campaigns are up against a powerful narrative. Those who go overseas and fail – and many do – are often ashamed, and keep quiet about what went wrong. Those who succeed come back to places like Nghe An and flaunt their new-found wealth. As for the tragedy of the 39 people who died in a shipping container, the prevailing view in Nghe An is still that they were just unlucky.

Top image credit: Getty Images

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For months now, Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been asked variations of the same question: "Will you step down?"

But though he vowed to stay on as Liberal Party leader - despite deepening frustrations amongst voters and a political rival surging in the polls - even the self-described "fighter" could not withstand the growing chorus of members of his own party calling for him to resign.

"This country deserves a real choice in the next election, and it has become clear to me that if I'm having to fight internal battles, I cannot be the best option in that election," Trudeau conceded on Monday, announcing his resignation in front of Rideau Cottage, his official residence for most of the last decade.

He will stay on as prime minister until a new Liberal Party leader is chosen, at a date yet to be set by the party.

• Follow developments live
• Who might replace Trudeau as Liberal Party leader?

Trudeau swept to power nearly a decade ago, heralded as the fresh face of progressive politics.

In 2015, swayed by his youthful charisma and a hopeful political message, voters catapulted the Liberals from a third-place party to holding a majority of seats in parliament - unprecedented in Canadian political history.

Now, he remains the only leader left standing among peers when he came into office, from Barack Obama to Angela Merkel, Shinzo Abe and David Cameron, and is currently the longest-serving leader in the G7.

But in the years since his ascent to the global stage, and over two general elections, Trudeau and his brand have become a drag on the party's fortunes.

Paul Wells, a Canadian political journalist and the author of Justin Trudeau on the Ropes, recently told the BBC he believes Trudeau will be remembered "as a consequential" prime minister, notably for providing genuine leadership on issues like indigenous reconciliation and, to some extent, climate policy.

But he is also one "who felt increasingly out of touch with public opinion and was increasingly unable to adjust to changing times".

A series of ethics scandals began to take the sheen off the new government - he was found to have violated federal conflict of interest rules in the handling of a corruption inquiry – the SNC-Lavalin affair - and for luxury trips to the Bahamas.

In 2020, he faced scrutiny for picking a charity with ties to his family to manage a major government programme.

In a general election in 2019, his party was reduced to a minority status, meaning the Liberals had to rely on the support of other parties to stay in power.

A snap election in 2021 did not improve their fortunes.

More recently, Trudeau faced headwinds from cost of living increases and inflation that have contributed to election upsets around the world.

And after more than nine years in power, he is among Canada's longest serving prime ministers, and there is a general sense of fatigue and frustration with his government.

The writing was on the wall. Over the summer, voters rejected Liberal candidates in a handful of special elections in once-safe Liberal seats, leading to the beginning of internal party unrest.

Public opinion polls also reached new depths.

A survey conducted over the holidays by the Angus Reid Institute suggested the lowest level of support for the party in their tracking, dating back to 2014.

But the shock resignation of his key deputy, former Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, in mid-December proved to be the final straw, as members of his own party made it clear they no longer supported his leadership.

Apple has said it will update, rather than pause, a new artificial intelligence (AI) feature that has generated inaccurate news alerts on its latest iPhones.

The company, in its first acknowledgement of the concerns, on Monday said it was working on a software change to "further clarify" when the notifications are summaries that have been generated by the Apple Intelligence system.

The tech giant is facing calls to pull the technology after its flawed performance.

The BBC complained last month after an AI-generated summary of its headline falsely told some readers that Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, had shot himself.

On Friday, Apple's AI inaccurately summarised BBC app notifications to claim that Luke Littler had won the PDC World Darts Championship hours before it began - and that the Spanish tennis star Rafael Nadal had come out as gay.

This marks the first time Apple has formally responded to the concerns voiced by the BBC about the errors, which appear as if they are coming from within the organisation's app.

"These summarisations by Apple are spreading misinformation which does not reflect – and in some cases completely contradicts – the original BBC content," the BBC said on Monday.

"They are harming trust not only in the BBC, but in news and information more widely. It is imperative that Apple addresses these issues urgently."

• What is AI and how does it work?
• A simple guide to help you understand AI

Apple said its update would arrive "in the coming weeks".

It has previously said its notification summaries - which group together and rewrite previews of multiple recent app notifications into a single alert on user's lock screens - aim to allow users to "scan for key details".

"Apple Intelligence features are in beta and we are continuously making improvements with the help of user feedback," the company said in a statement on Monday, adding that receiving the summaries is optional.

"A software update in the coming weeks will further clarify when the text being displayed is summarization provided by Apple Intelligence. We encourage users to report a concern if they view an unexpected notification summary."

The feature, along with others released as part of its broader suite of AI tools was rolled out in the UK in December. It is only available on its iPhone 16 models, iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max handsets running iOS 18.1 and above, as well as on some iPads and Macs.

Several instances of the technology appearing to interpret messages in a highly blunt, literal way have gone viral on social media.

In November, a ProPublica journalist highlighted erroneous Apple AI summaries of alerts from the New York Times app suggesting it had reported that Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been arrested.

The BBC has not been able to independently verify the screenshots, and the New York Times declined to comment.

Reporters Without Borders, an organisation representing the rights and interests of journalists, called on Apple to disable the feature in December.

It said the attribution of a false headline about Mr Mangione to the BBC showed "generative AI services are still too immature to produce reliable information for the public".

Apple is not alone in having rolled out generative AI tools that can create text, images and more content when prompted by users - but with varying results.

Google's AI overviews feature, which provides a written summary of information from results at the top of its search engine in response to user queries, faced criticism last year for producing some erratic responses.

At the time a Google spokesperson said that these were 'isolated examples' and that the feature was generally working well.

President-elect Donald Trump has asked a New York judge to halt the sentencing in his felony hush money case, which is scheduled for 10 January.

His lawyers announced on Monday that Trump would appeal the decision by Justice Juan Merchan ordering that the sentencing would proceed.

In court filings, Trump's attorneys wrote they would seek "a dismissal of this politically motivated prosecution that was flawed from the very beginning".

Trump was found guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in May 2024, making him the first former president convicted of a crime.

The charges stemmed from Trump's attempt to disguise reimbursements for a hush money payment to an adult film star as legal expenses.

Trump pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing. His lawyers said that filing an appeal should halt the criminal proceedings in his New York case.

The sentencing had been delayed repeatedly by the 2024 presidential election and Trump's attempt to have the case thrown out based on a claim of presidential immunity. Justice Merchan ultimately rejected the immunity argument in December.

On 3 January, Justice Merchan issued an order saying he would move ahead with the sentencing before Trump took office, but wrote that he would not consider any sentence of incarceration.

He ordered Trump to appear virtually or in-person for the hearing.

"The American People elected President Trump with an overwhelming mandate that demands an immediate end to the political weaponisation of our justice system and all of the remaining Witch Hunts," said Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump's presidential transition.

Trump's team has not publicly commented on whether the president-elect will be in court, but in its response Monday afternoon to the request for a stay, the Manhattan district attorney's office referred to "defendant's decision to appear for sentencing virtually instead of in person". The reference to a virtual hearing was repeated again several pages later.

In the response, the district attorney asked the judge to deny Trump's request for an immediate stay of his sentencing, and argued he would not be prejudiced by such a decision.

The weeks after the election featured a flurry of legal filings from both Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought the case, and Trump's legal team.

Bragg's office had previously indicated that they would not oppose delaying Trump's sentencing until after he finishes his term in office, four years from now.

But after Justice Merchan decided to move ahead with the sentencing, Bragg has asked the judge to proceed with the sentencing on Friday.

In his order last week, Justice Merchan wrote that "it is this court's firm belief that only by bringing finality to this matter" will the legal quandaries at play be resolved.

However, the judge left the door open to the possibility that Trump would seek to appeal the sentencing, writing that he "must be permitted to avail himself of every available appeal".

US Vice-President Kamala Harris will on Monday preside over the official certification in Congress of the result of November's presidential election - a contest that she lost to Donald Trump.

The date also marks the fourth anniversary of a riot at the US Capitol, when Trump's supporters tried to thwart the certification of Democratic President Joe Biden's election victory in 2020. Normally the occasion is a mere formality.

Heavy security is in place in Washington DC, and Biden has vowed there will be no repeat of the violence on 6 January 2021 - which led to several deaths.

As lawmakers meet in Washington DC, heavy snow forecast for the American capital could prove disruptive.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has vowed to go ahead with the certification at 13:00 EST (18:00 GMT) in spite of the weather, telling Fox News: "Whether we're in a blizzard or not, we're going to be in that chamber making sure this is done."

As the current vice-president, Harris is required by the US Constitution to officially preside over the certification of the result, after Trump beat her in the nationwide poll on 5 November.

Trump won all seven of the country's swing states, helping him to victory in the electoral college, the mechanism that decides who takes the presidency. It will be Harris's job on Monday to read out the number of electoral college votes won by each candidate.

Trump's second term will begin after he is inaugurated on 20 January. For the first time since 2017, the president's party will also enjoy majorities in both chambers of Congress, albeit slender ones.

• Just how big was Trump's victory?
• What next for Harris, after her bruising election defeat?
• Who has joined Trump's top team?
• What happens to Trump's legal cases?

Trump's win marked a stunning political comeback from his electoral defeat in 2020, and a criminal conviction in 2024 - a first for a current or former US president.

Amid the dramatic recent presidential campaign, Trump also survived a bullet grazing his ear when a gunman opened fire at one of his rallies in Pennsylvania.

While away from the White House, he has faced a slew of legal cases against him - including over his attempts to overturn the 2020 result, which he continues to dispute.

Following his defeat that year, Trump and his allies made baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud - claiming the election had been stolen from them.

In a speech in Washington DC on certification day, 6 January 2021, Trump told a crowd to "fight like hell" but also asked them to "peacefully" make their voices heard.

He also attempted to pressurise his own vice-president, Mike Pence, to reject the election result - a call that Pence rejected.

• What Trump said in speech before riot

Rioters went on to smash through barricades and ransack the Capitol building before Trump ultimately intervened by telling them to go home. Several deaths were blamed on the violence.

Trump's pledges after returning to office include pardoning people convicted of offences over the attack. He says many of them are "wrongfully imprisoned", though has acknowledged that "a couple of them, probably they got out of control".

Conversely, Biden has called on Americans never to forget what happened.

"We must remember the wisdom of the adage that any nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it," Biden wrote in the Washington Post over the weekend.

For Trump's Republican Party, the new Senate Majority Leader John Thune has signalled a desire to move on, telling the BBC's US partner CBS News: "You can't be looking in the rearview mirror."

• How these new recruits will be vetted
• What Trump can and can't do on day one
• How undocumented migrants feel about deportations
• Can RFK Jr make America healthy again?
• What Trump's Ukraine envoy has said about war

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has gone on trial in Paris, accused of taking millions of euros of illicit funds from the late Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi to finance his 2007 election campaign.

In exchange, the prosecution alleges Sarkozy promised to help Gaddafi combat his reputation as a pariah with Western countries.

Sarkozy, 69, was the president of France from 2007 to 2012.

He has always denied the charges, saying they were brought against him by people with motivations to bring him down.

The investigation was opened in 2013, two years after Saif al-Islam, son of the then-Libyan leader, first accused Sarkozy of taking millions of his father's money for campaign funding.

The following year, Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine - who for a long time acted as a middleman between France and the Middle East - said he had written proof that Sarkozy's campaign bid was "abundantly" financed by Tripoli, and that the €50m (£43m) worth of payments continued after he became president.

Twelve other people - accused of devising the pact with Gaddafi - are standing trial along Sarkozy. They all deny the charges.

Sarkozy's wife, Italian-born former supermodel and singer Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, was charged last year with hiding evidence linked to the Gaddafi case and associating with wrongdoers to commit fraud, both of which she denies.

Since losing his re-election bid in 2012, Sarkozy has been targeted by several criminal investigations.

He also appealed against a February 2024 ruling which found him guilty of overspending on his 2012 re-election campaign, then hiring a PR firm to cover it up. He was handed a one-year sentence, of which six months were suspended.

In 2021, he was found guilty of trying to bribe a judge in 2014 and became the first former French president to get a custodial sentence. In December, the Paris appeals court ruled that he could serve his time at home wearing a tag instead of going to jail.

Sarkozy was not wearing the tag as he arrived in court in Paris on Monday morning.

However, that is only because the details of that sentence have yet to be worked out.

It is likely that in the course of this three-month trial over the so-called Libya connection, the former president will appear wearing the device.

The trial is set to continue until 10 April. If found guilty, Sarkozy faces up to 10 years in prison.

Four young Kenyan men who went missing just before the Christmas holidays have been found alive, family members and rights groups say.

Kenya has been gripped by a wave of disappearances, with the state-funded rights group saying that over 80 people have been abducted in the last six months.

The abductions generally target government critics and are widely believed to be the work of security agents, although the government has not admitted responsibility.

They began in June last year during nationwide anti-tax protests, but they increased in December, when AI-generated photos of the president in a coffin were widely shared.

Those released on Monday include 24-year-old student Billy Mwangi in Embu, in the central Mount Kenya region.

Local MP Gitonga Mukunji told journalists that Mr Mwangi "was whipped and beaten while in a dark room. He is traumatised".

His father said he was not able to discuss what he had gone through and had been taken to hospital.

"He came home around eight in the morning. He walked by himself - his mother and I saw him. We thank everyone who has prayed and supported him," he told the Daily Nation news site.

Last week, Mr Mwangi's father broke down in court as he pleaded for his son to be released.

A relative of 22-year-old Peter Muteti, who was seized in the capital on 21 December, told the BBC that he had been reunited with the family but was disoriented and unable to speak about the ordeal.

Amnesty International Kenya welcomed the releases and urged "the State to free all abductees and hold those responsible accountable".

• Kenya protesters traumatised by abductions - lawyer

Two weeks ago the police denied responsibility for the abductions carried out by men in plain clothes across the country, some of which were captured on CCTV.

On Monday the police released an update acknowledging the freeing of the abducted men, saying they were in already contact with one who had presented himself at a police station.

The police said investigations into all cases of missing people were underway.

Rights groups and other Kenyans have linked the abductions to a shadowy intelligence and counter-terrorism unit of the security forces.

Amid the public uproar, President William Ruto said last month: "We are going to stop the abductions so that our youth can live peacefully and have discipline", while urging parents to take care of their children.

Until now, no-one had been freed since he spoke on 27 December, with activists planning protests on Monday to push the government to act.

Two other youths - Ronny Kiplangat and Bernard Kavuli – have also been released, their families told local media.

Mr Kavuli, a content creator, was seized on the outskirts of the city in December, while Mr Kiplangat is the brother of satirical cartoonist Kibet Bull, who is still missing.

Kibet Bull is known for his silhouette cartoon memes critical of the president. Two others were seized after posting AI-generated images of the president in a coffin.

Police said that Mr Kavuli had been assisting them with their investigations after he had presented himself to a police station at Moi's Bridge in western Kenya.

A statement said that they would reach out to the three others "and their families and give them all the necessary support as we seek further information to assist ongoing investigations".

The Law Society of Kenya has filed a legal case against the state, demanding the immediate and unconditional release of seven individuals abducted last month, including those who have now been released.

The situation continues to stoke fear across the country, with parents worried about the safety of their children and activists vowing to maintain pressure until all missing persons are accounted for.

You may also be interested in:

• How a Ugandan opposition leader disappeared in Kenya and ended up in military court
• How Kenya's evangelical president has fallen out with churches
• 'I can't sleep': What an athlete’s murder tells us about women’s safety in Kenya
• 'We live in fear' - forced expulsions taint Kenya's safe haven image

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

Exactly 10 years after the jihadist gun-attack that killed most of its editorial staff, France's Charlie Hebdo has put out a special issue to show its cause is still kicking.

Things changed for France on 7 January 2015, marking in bloodshed the end of all wilful naivety about the threat of militant Islamism.

Brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi burst into a meeting at the Paris office of the satirical weekly, murdering its star cartoonists Cabu, Wolinski, Charb and Tignous.

Overall, 12 people were killed by the brothers, including a Muslim policeman on duty outside. Two days later they were cornered and shot dead by police at a sign-making business near Charles-de-Gaulle airport.

That same day saw Amedy Coulibaly – a one-time prison associate of Cherif – kill four Jews in a synchronised hostage-taking at a supermarket in eastern Paris. Coulibaly – who was then shot dead by police – had killed a policewoman the day before.

A decade on, Charlie Hebdo continues to bring out a weekly edition and has a circulation (print and online combined) of around 50,000.

It does so from an office whose whereabouts are kept secret, and with staff who are protected by bodyguards.

But in an editorial in Tuesday's memorial edition, the paper's main shareholder said its spirit of ribald anti-religious irreverence was still very much alive.

"The desire to laugh will never disappear," said Laurent Saurisseau – also known as Riss – a cartoonist who survived the 7 January attack with a bullet in the shoulder.

"Satire has one virtue that has got us through these tragic years – optimism. If people want to laugh, it is because they want to live.

"Laughter, irony and caricature are all manifestations of optimism," he wrote.

• Charlie Hebdo attack: Three days of terror
• Charlie Hebdo and its place in French journalism
• French terror attacks: Victim obituaries
• Paris attacks: 'I am not Charlie'

Also in the 32-page special are the 40 winning entries in a cartoon competition on the theme of "Laughing at God".

One contains the image of a cartoonist asking himself: "Is it okay to draw a picture of a man drawing a picture of a man drawing a picture of Muhammed?"

The Charlie Hebdo and Hypercacher attacks appear now as the overture to a grim and deadly period in modern France, during which – for a time – fear of jihadist terrorism became part of daily life.

In November 2015, there followed gun attacks at the Bataclan theatre and nearby bars in Paris. In the following July, 86 people were killed on the promenade in Nice.

Some 300 French people have died in Islamist attacks in the last decade.

Today the frequency has fallen sharply, and the defeat of the Islamic State group means there is no longer a support base in the Middle East.

But the killer individual, self-radicalised over the Internet, remains a constant threat in France as elsewhere.

The original pretext for the Charlie Hebdo murders – caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad – are now strictly off-limits to publications everywhere.

In 2020, a French teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded outside his school by a jihadist after he showed one of the Charlie cartoons in a discussion over freedom of speech.

And this week the trial opens in Paris of a Pakistani man who – a short time before Paty's murder – seriously injured two people with a butcher's cleaver at the Paris offices he thought were still being used by Charlie-Hebdo (in fact they had long since moved).

So as with every anniversary since 2015, the question once again being asked in France is: what - if anything - has changed? And what - if anything - survives of the great outpouring of international support, whose clarion call in the days after the murders was Je suis Charlie?

That was when a march of two million people through the centre of Paris was joined by heads of state and government from countries all over the world at the invitation of then President François Hollande.

Today, pessimists say the battle is over and lost. The chances of a humorous newspaper ever taking up the cudgel against Islam – in the way that Charlie Hebdo used regularly and scabrously to do against Christianity and Judaism – are zero.

Worse, for these people, is that parts of the political left in France are also now clearly distancing themselves from Charlie Hebdo, accusing it of becoming overly anti-Islam and adopting positions from the far-right.

Jean-Luc Melenchon, who leads the France Unbowed party, has accused the weekly of being a "bag-carrier for (right-wing magazine) Valeurs Actuels", and the Greens' Sandrine Rousseau said Charlie Hebdo was "misogynistic and at times racist".

This has in turn led to accusations aimed at the far-left that it has betrayed the free-speech spirit of Je suis Charlie in order to curry electoral support among French Muslims.

But speaking in the run-up to the anniversary, Riss – who counted the dead among his greatest friends and says he does not go through a day without reliving the moment of the attack – refused to renounce hope.

"I think [the Charlie spirit] is anchored more deeply in society than one might think. When you talk to people, you can see it's very much alive. It's a mistake to think it's all disappeared.

"It is part of our collective memory."

Justin Trudeau's nine years as Canadian prime minister is coming to an end after he announced he will step down as leader of the governing Liberal Party.

It means his party must now find a new leader to compete in a general election in which polls suggest they are heading to defeat.

Here are some of the people expected to enter the Liberal leadership race.

• Follow reaction live

Former Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland

The Toronto member of parliament is seen as one of the top contenders to replace the outgoing leader and became one of the most well-known members of Trudeau's team.

While she had long been seen as a trusted senior official in his inner circle, a rift with the prime minister's office led to her recent abrupt resignation in December.

Her criticism of Trudeau in her public resignation letter piled the pressure on him and made his departure seem inevitable.

Born to a Ukrainian mother in the western province of Alberta, the 56-year-old was a journalist before entering politics.

She entered the House of Commons in 2013 and two years later joined Trudeau's cabinet with a trade brief after he swept the party to power.

• Trudeau has quit. What happens now?
• WATCH: Trudeau's resignation speech

As Minister of Foreign Affairs she helped Canada renegotiate a free trade deal with the US and Mexico.

She was later named deputy prime minister and minister of finance - the first woman to hold the job - and oversaw Canada's financial response to the Covid pandemic.

Quitting last month, she criticised Trudeau as insufficiently strong in his handling of Donald Trump's threat to levy US tariffs on Canadian goods.

A 2019 Globe and Mail profile said depending who you asked, Freeland is either a last, best hope for the liberal world order or an out-of-touch idealist.

Her steadfast support of Ukraine earned praise in some quarters but the Harvard-educated MP has had her share of critics, including Trump who recently called her "toxic".

Former central banker Mark Carney

Trudeau himself admitted that he had long been trying to recruit Mark Carney to his team, most recently as finance minister.

"He would be an outstanding addition at a time when Canadians need good people to step up in politics," he told reporters on the sidelines of a Nato conference in July 2024.

Carney, 59, who has been serving in recent months as a special adviser to Trudeau, has long been considered a contender for the top job.

The Harvard graduate has never held public office but has a strong economic background, serving at the top of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England.

He also brings with him expertise on environmental matters through his role as the United Nations special envoy on climate action, recently calling the goal of net zero "the greatest commercial opportunity of our time".

Carney is a champion of some Liberal policies that have been unpopular within the country's conservative circles like the federal carbon tax policy, the party's signature climate policy that critics argue is a financial burden for Canadians.

He has also already criticised Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, saying his vision for the future of the country is "without a plan" and "just slogans".

"I'm the one in the conversation who's actually been in business, who actually is in business, and makes decisions," he said.

Anita Anand, transport minister

Anand is often touted as one of the more ambitious members of the Liberal caucus.

The 57-year-old lawyer entered the political scene in 2019 when she was elected to represent the riding of Oakville, just outside of Toronto.

An Oxford-educated academic, she has a background in financial market regulation and corporate governance.

She was immediately awarded the ministerial brief of public services and procurement, putting her at the helm of a mission to secure vaccines and personal protective equipment during the Covid pandemic.

Anand was then appointed minister of defence in 2021, leading Canada's efforts to provide aid for Ukraine in its war against Russia and overseeing a personnel crisis at the Canadian Armed Forces mired by sexual misconduct scandals.

When Anand was shuffled out of that department to oversee the Treasury Board, many saw it as a demotion and critics of Trudeau went as far as to speculate that it was punishment for her ambitions to one day lead the party.

In December, she was moved again during a cabinet shuffle, into the role of transport minister and minister of internal trade.

François-Philippe Champagne, minister of innovation, science and industry

The former businessman and international trade specialist is another Liberal minister said to be eyeing the party's top job.

But his journey through the ranks to a major portfolio was slower than Anand's.

Champagne, 54, entered the Commons in 2015 but since then has gone through international trade, foreign affairs and most recently the department of innovation, science and industry.

But there are several things that work in his favour. Champagne is from Quebec, a province whose voice has often been consequential in federal Canadian elections.

He has also been dubbed "Canada's Energizer Bunny" by some pundits, who have watched his enthusiasm as he travelled around the world under his innovation portfolio with a mission to sell all that is Canada-made.

And because of his business acumen, political watchers see him as a viable option for luring centrist Liberals back into the fold.

Mélanie Joly, minister of foreign affairs

Like Trudeau, Joly represents a Montreal-area riding.

To foreign leaders, the 45-year-old is a familiar face, having represented Canada on the world stage since 2021.

As the current foreign minister, she has taken several trips to Ukraine in a show of Canada's support. She travelled to Jordan to aid in the evacuation of Canadian citizens in the region when the Israel-Hamas war erupted.

Joly has also been at the heart of some of the government's greatest foreign policy challenges, including the diplomatic crisis sparked by the alleged assassination of a Sikh separatist leader on Canadian soil by Indian agents.

The Oxford-educated lawyer is a well-connected francophone politician who previously ran for mayor of Montreal.

She was tapped by Trudeau personally to run for a federal job in politics.

"He would periodically call me to say, 'Mélanie you need to run, we want you to run,'" Joly has said.

Senior advisers have hailed her ability to work a room of either seven or 700, and she has long held ambitions to run for Liberal party leader, close friends told Canadian magazine Macleans.

Dominic LeBlanc, minister of finance and intergovernmental affairs

LeBlanc, 57, is one of Trudeau's closest and most trusted allies.

Their friendship runs deep, with LeBlanc even babysitting Trudeau and his siblings when they were young.

He has a record of stepping into portfolios at difficult moments, including becoming finance minister within hours of Freeland's bombshell resignation.

LeBlanc also took on the tricky assignment of accompanying Trudeau to Mar-a-Lago in November to meet Trump.

The former lawyer has been a parliamentarian for more than two decades, having been first elected in 2000 to represent a riding in the Atlantic province of New Brunswick.

Like Trudeau, LeBlanc was born into a political family. His father served as a minister in the cabinet of Trudeau's fabled father, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, and later as Canada's governor-general.

LeBlanc has shown previous ambitions to lead the party, running in 2008 but losing to Michael Ignatieff. He did not run again in the next leadership race, which was won by Trudeau.

He is in remission after cancer treatment and is known to be an affable and a strong political communicator.

Christy Clark, a former provincial premier

The former premier of British Columbia has expressed an interest in throwing her hat into the Liberal leadership ring.

In a statement in October, she said she was "would want to be part of the conversation on the future direction of the Liberal Party and of the country" if Trudeau stepped down.

Clark, 59, served as the leader of Canada's western-most province from 2011 to 2017, where she built a reputation of being able to balance environmental priorities while developing BC's energy industry.

She has repeatedly said in interviews in the past couple of years that Trudeau had become a drag on the federal Liberals.

She has also reportedly been taking French lessons, according to broadcaster Radio-Canada. A fluency in French is considered a prerequisite for federal politicians in Canada.

Austria's president Alexander Van der Bellen has tasked the leader of the far-right Freedom Party, Herbert Kickl, with forming a coalition government.

If the talks are successful, Austria will, for the first time, have a government led by the Eurosceptic, Russia-friendly Freedom Party (FPO).

The FPO has been in power before, but only as a junior coalition partner.

The party came first in September's elections, with roughly 29% of the vote, but was then sidelined.

President Van der Bellen infuriated the FPO by not tasking it with forming a government soon after the election.

At the time, the leaders of all of the other parties ruled out making an alliance with Kickl.

In October, Van der Bellen gave the conservative People's Party (OVP), which came second in the election with 26%, the task of forming a coalition.

The former leader of the OVP, Chancellor Karl Nehammer, had called Kickl a conspiracy theorist and a threat to security.

But Nehammer's attempts to form a three-party and then a two-party centrist coalition collapsed this weekend.

He then resigned and the new leader of the conservatives, Christian Stocker, said his party would be willing to hold talks with Kickl.

President Van der Bellen has now tasked Kickl with forming a government.

The step is a dramatic reversal for the president, a former leader of the Green Party, who has long been critical of the FPO and has expressed reservations about Kickl as Chancellor.

On Monday, Van der Bellen said he had not taken "this step lightly". He said he would "continue to ensure that the principles and rules of our constitution are correctly observed and adhered to".

In recent months, Van der Bellen has repeatedly said he will remain vigilant to ensure "cornerstones of democracy" including human rights, independent media and Austria's membership of the European Union are respected.

The Freedom Party and the OVP overlap on a number of issues and both take a tough line on migration.

However they have clashed on the EU and the Freedom Party's opposition to aid for Ukraine in its war against Russia.

There is no timeframe for the coalition talks, which would usually take two or three months, but could be quicker.

If the talks fail, a snap election is likely. Polls suggest that support for the Freedom Party has grown since September.

Four young Kenyan men who went missing just before the Christmas holidays have been found alive, family members and rights groups say.

Kenya has been gripped by a wave of disappearances, with the state-funded rights group saying that over 80 people have been abducted in the last six months.

The abductions generally target government critics and are widely believed to be the work of security agents, although the government has not admitted responsibility.

They began in June last year during nationwide anti-tax protests, but they increased in December, when AI-generated photos of the president in a coffin were widely shared.

Those released on Monday include 24-year-old student Billy Mwangi in Embu, in the central Mount Kenya region.

Local MP Gitonga Mukunji told journalists that Mr Mwangi "was whipped and beaten while in a dark room. He is traumatised".

His father said he was not able to discuss what he had gone through and had been taken to hospital.

"He came home around eight in the morning. He walked by himself - his mother and I saw him. We thank everyone who has prayed and supported him," he told the Daily Nation news site.

Last week, Mr Mwangi's father broke down in court as he pleaded for his son to be released.

A relative of 22-year-old Peter Muteti, who was seized in the capital on 21 December, told the BBC that he had been reunited with the family but was disoriented and unable to speak about the ordeal.

Amnesty International Kenya welcomed the releases and urged "the State to free all abductees and hold those responsible accountable".

• Kenya protesters traumatised by abductions - lawyer

Two weeks ago the police denied responsibility for the abductions carried out by men in plain clothes across the country, some of which were captured on CCTV.

On Monday the police released an update acknowledging the freeing of the abducted men, saying they were in already contact with one who had presented himself at a police station.

The police said investigations into all cases of missing people were underway.

Rights groups and other Kenyans have linked the abductions to a shadowy intelligence and counter-terrorism unit of the security forces.

Amid the public uproar, President William Ruto said last month: "We are going to stop the abductions so that our youth can live peacefully and have discipline", while urging parents to take care of their children.

Until now, no-one had been freed since he spoke on 27 December, with activists planning protests on Monday to push the government to act.

Two other youths - Ronny Kiplangat and Bernard Kavuli – have also been released, their families told local media.

Mr Kavuli, a content creator, was seized on the outskirts of the city in December, while Mr Kiplangat is the brother of satirical cartoonist Kibet Bull, who is still missing.

Kibet Bull is known for his silhouette cartoon memes critical of the president. Two others were seized after posting AI-generated images of the president in a coffin.

Police said that Mr Kavuli had been assisting them with their investigations after he had presented himself to a police station at Moi's Bridge in western Kenya.

A statement said that they would reach out to the three others "and their families and give them all the necessary support as we seek further information to assist ongoing investigations".

The Law Society of Kenya has filed a legal case against the state, demanding the immediate and unconditional release of seven individuals abducted last month, including those who have now been released.

The situation continues to stoke fear across the country, with parents worried about the safety of their children and activists vowing to maintain pressure until all missing persons are accounted for.

You may also be interested in:

• How a Ugandan opposition leader disappeared in Kenya and ended up in military court
• How Kenya's evangelical president has fallen out with churches
• 'I can't sleep': What an athlete’s murder tells us about women’s safety in Kenya
• 'We live in fear' - forced expulsions taint Kenya's safe haven image

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

Nippon Steel and US Steel are suing the US government over blocking a takeover, claiming that President Joe Biden "ignored the rule of law to gain favor" with trade unions.

The two companies also alleged that President Biden, who is entering the last weeks of his administration, stopped Nippon Steel buying US Steel to pursue his own political agenda.

In rejecting the proposed deal on Friday, President Biden said a strong domestically-owned steel industry was essential for national security and resilient supply chains, including for the car and defence industries.

If the $14.9bn (£11.8bn) deal goes ahead it would create one of the world's biggest steel companies outside of China.

The takeover has been in limbo since it was first announced in December 2023.

In one lawsuit, Nippon Steel and US Steel have asked asked the court to set aside the review process of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, which has the power to vet foreign takeovers of US firms, saying it "failed to conduct a good faith, national security-focused regulatory review process".

Additionally, the companies are also suing the president of the United Steelworkers trade union, David McCall, and the chief executive of rival steel firm Cleveland-Cliffs, Lourenco Goncalves, for "their illegal and coordinated actions aimed at preventing the transaction".

On Friday, the United Steelworkers trade union said it had "no doubt" that blocking the takeover was the "right move for our members and our national security".

The union accused Nippon of undermining the US steel industry for decades through measures including dumping its products on the US market.

Nippon Steel and US Steel said they have "engaged in good faith with all parties" to show how the deal "will enhance, not threaten, United States national security" and how it would strengthen America's domestic steel industry "against the threat from China".

They also reiterated that Nippon was prepared to invest $2.7bn in Pittsburgh-based US Steel.

Earlier on Monday, Japan's Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba expressed his concerns about the US decision to block the takeover and the impact it might have on trade relations between the two G7 countries.

"Unfortunately, it is true that we have heard concerns voiced by the Japanese industries over future investments between Japan and the US. We must view this issue as a grave matter," Mr Ishiba said.

He added that while it was inappropriate for his government to comment on individual companies: "We must insist on an explanation as to why there are security concerns, otherwise there will be no progress in future discussions."

South Korea's suspended president Yoon Suk Yeol remains defiant in his newly-fortified residence, with the arrest warrant over his short-lived martial law order set to expire on Monday.

Yoon's security team, which stopped investigators arresting him on Friday, installed barbed wire and barricaded the compound with buses over the weekend, to prevent another attempt.

Yoon had ignored multiple summonses to appear for questioning on insurrection and abuse of power charges, before investigators showed up at his residence - only to call off their operation after a six-hour standoff with the presidential security service.

Investigators may try to extend their warrant. They told the BBC they have asked the police to execute it, in the hope their efforts carry more weight.

Public anger has spiralled in recent weeks, as thousands of protesters braved heavy snow over the weekend, both in support of and against Yoon.

South Korea has been in crisis for the past month, ever since Yoon tried to impose martial law citing a threat from the North and "anti-state forces". The fallout continues as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visits Seoul, seeking to stabilise ties ahead of a Donald Trump presidency.

A looming deadline

Time has almost run out for the investigators leading the criminal case against Yoon.

Yoon's lawyers have claimed that his arrest warrant was "illegal" as the anti-corruption investigators did not have the authority to oversee a case as serious as insurrection.

The presidential security team has cited this as a reason for blocking Yoon's arrest - along with the fact that Yoon remains a sitting president until the constitutional court rules on his impeachment.

"For the PSS, whose primary mission is the absolute safety of the president, to comply with the execution of an arrest warrant amidst ongoing legal disputes would be tantamount to abandoning its duty," security service chief Park Jong-joon said on Sunday.

Mr Park denied accusations that his team was serving as a "private militia" for Yoon.

Yoon's lawyers, who on Monday filed complaints against investigators over the arrest attempt, said Yoon has been "practically detained in his residence".

They also filed an injunction against the warrant, which was rejected by the court, and then said they were considering appealing the decision.

Meanwhile, acting president Choi Sang-mok has resisted the opposition's calls to sack key security officials obstructing the arrest.

The BBC understands that opposition lawmakers had asked investigators to try arresting Yoon again, but "more firmly and with sufficient means".

Investigators could also apply for a new detention warrant, which has to be approved by a judge. That would allow Yoon to be detained for up to 20 days, while an arrest warrant only allows him to be held for 48 hours.

But without a change to either the situation or their approach, it seems unlikely investigators or police will be able to make the arrest.

As seen last Friday, they may again be blocked by the presidential security service which formed a "human wall" to protect Yoon. He himself has vowed to "fight to the end", dividing public opinion and spurring on his supporters, who have been demonstrating for days outside his home.

The tense standoff has also raised urgent questions about the robustness and effectiveness of South Korea's political and legal institutions.

Diplomatic headwinds

The situation also has consequences beyond domestic politics.

Up until last month, the Biden administration had sung Yoon's praises, delighted by his willingness to work with Washington to tackle the security threats posed by North Korea and China. The US put a lot of effort into helping South Korea repair its strained relations with Japan, so the three countries could address these issues together.

Mr Blinken's ongoing visit to Seoul, where he will meet South Korean foreign minister Cho Tae-yul on Monday, therefore comes at a difficult time for these two allies.

Yoon did not tell the US about his plans to impose martial law, meaning Washington did not have the chance to dissuade him and was unprepared for the chaos that ensued.

Blinken will not want to be drawn on the current political situation. He will instead want to focus on preserving the trilateral cooperation between Seoul, Washington and Tokyo beyond Biden's tenure.

Speaking during a joint presser on Monday, Blinken said the US had "full confidence" in South Korea's institutions, and reaffirmed the US government's "unwavering support for the Korean people as they work tirelessly to uphold those institutions".

"Over the past four decades Korea has written one of the most powerful, inspiring democratic stories in the world," Blinken said.

Korea's democracy has been tested in recent weeks - just as American democracy has faced challenges throughout our history. But you are responding by demonstrating your democratic resilience."

But it's hard to disentangle the domestic and geopolitical situations. South Korea could be months away from electing a new president, and that leader may well want to break with Yoon's foreign policies.

Trump, who enters the White House in a fortnight, will also pursue his own agenda.

Additional reporting by Hosu Lee and Leehyun Choi in Seoul

The new Syrian authorities promise justice for crimes under the Assad regime. But it's a tall order, with many having suffered losses of every kind in the civil war. Sebastian Usher met people in Damascus for whom justice is key to how they see Syria's future.

On the edge of Douma, one of the Damascus suburbs most devastated by the war, in a shrouded living room next to a stove, Umm Mazen recounts the 12 years she desperately sought news of two of her sons, who were arrested in the first years of the uprising and civil war, and swallowed up in the Assad-era security system.

For her oldest son, Mazen, she finally received a death certificate, but for Abu Hadi, no trace of him has ever been divulged.

Her third son, Ahmed, spent three years in the security system, including eight months in the red block for political prisoners in that byword for brutality, Saydnaya prison.

His front teeth stoved in by a torturer's hammer, he remembers one moment when he believes he heard his brother Mazen's voice answering a roll call in the same jail, but nothing more.

What justice does Umm Mazen seek for the destruction of her family?

"There should be divine justice, coming from God," she says.

"I saw some local men bringing a shabiha (an armed regime supporter) to be killed.

"I told them: 'Don't kill him. Rather, torture him exactly the same way he tortured our young men'."

"My two children died - or probably have died, but there are thousands of other young men who were subjected to torture.

"I pray to God that Bashar [al-Assad] stays in a dungeon underground and that Russia, which used to protect him, can't help him.

"I pray to God to put him somewhere underground and that he is left in oblivion - just as he left our young men in his jails."

Lawyer Hussein Issa sought justice for dozens of people accused of political crimes under the Assads.

He faced constant pressure from the authorities over his advocacy, but persisted and managed to save some of his clients from being crushed under the wheels of the security system.

But for those assigned to the special terrorism courts, there was usually nothing that could be done.

The terrorism law loomed ever more darkly over Syria as the civil war continued.

Now, with the mountain on the edge of Damascus glimpsed through the window of his scruffy, smoke-filled office, the 54-year-old lawyer says he believes that many of the judges who were complicit with the Assad regime should be kicked out and legal action taken against them.

But others from that era, he says, could still play a role in the new judiciary.

As for the huge challenge of trying to deliver retrospective justice for the horrors of the past 50 years, Mr Issa says that establishing a judicial system capable of this is the most important task for Syria's new authorities.

"If this system is not good, the future of the new state will be grim.

"We don't know how bad it could then get. We are already afraid that some parties could cause strife and conflict.

"If we have a strong system and state, then we won't be afraid of these things.

"If we don't have them, we will be fearful. However, since I'm optimistic by nature, I think the new regime will definitely be better."

The monumental building in the Syrian capital where the justice ministry is located has been in suspension for several weeks after the fall of Assad.

Now, clusters of lawyers have gathered in the lifts and corridors ahead of the reopening of the civil and criminal courts.

In her fifth-floor office, the Deputy to the Minister of Justice, Khitam Haddad, says that criminal and civil cases will once again be dealt with, but the task of dealing with the crimes committed under the previous regime will not be tackled for now.

With her big, heavy desk covered in official papers, she says she's been working as a judge since 2013.

She was appointed deputy justice minister in 2023. For now, she remains in place.

"I felt a personal responsibility about the matter," she says.

"It is necessary for the work to continue, for the judges to go back to their work and for the courts to return, because as a Syrian I want my job to continue and I want this victory to continue, so that people have nothing to be afraid of.

"I want to send real and realistic messages of reassurance, not just talk."

But some lawyers are already concerned over a move by the transitional authorities to establish a council to oversee the Bar Association without putting it to a vote.

In a petition, they said such an approach would replace one form of authoritarianism with another.

For now, the laws and judicial structure of the Assad era remain in place, including the terrorism law.

It could be a long time before the cases of any of those accused of crimes under the ousted regime are brought to trial.

The new authorities have told Syrians not to take matters into their own hands, as videos have circulated of brutal summary justice being meted out to some former officials.

There have been raids and arrests - and some of those who escaped across the border to Lebanon or Iraq have been returned.

But there remains a big question over whether the justice system - which was for so long an instrument of repression – is capable of being reconfigured to take on this immense moral and logistical challenge.

High up on the mountain above Damascus, Syrians, young and old, are for now still breathing free - intoxicated by the cold clear winter air - in a place they were banned from entering by the security forces for more than a decade.

At cafes and kiosks that have sprung up in the weeks since the overthrow of Assad, they stare down at the city spread out before them – with both its dark memories and the promise of a different future, in which justice and accountability might just be allowed to play a part.

The Arctic recently made headlines after Donald Trump repeated his desire to buy Greenland. Trump cited national security interests, but for many the territory's vast mineral wealth is the main attraction. Yet economic development elsewhere in the vast polar region has ground to a halt.

Working conditions in the Arctic Ocean are extremely challenging at this time of the year for Norwegian fisherman Sondre Alnes-Bonesmo.

The sun last rose at the end of October, and it is not due to appear in the sky again until the middle of February.

In addition to the endless dark, temperatures can plummet below minus 40C, and storms can bring vast waves.

Mr Alnes-Bonesmo, 30, works two six-hour shifts a day, during five-week tours on a ship called Granit. One of the largest factory trawlers fishing in Arctic waters north of Norway, and off the coast of Greenland, it doesn't stop for winter.

Unsurprisingly, he prefers the endless daylight of summer. "I do like it when the weather is nice, as we're not sent crashing into the walls and such, the way we are during storms, when the waves can be fairly big," he grins in understatement.

Mr Alnes-Bonesmo is a participant in the so-called Arctic "cold rush".

A play on words with gold rush, it began in earnest around 2008 when a series of reports identified vast mineral and hydrocarbon reserves across the Arctic region. Reserves that, together with large fishing stocks, could continue to become more accessible as climate change reduces ice levels.

This reduction in ice has also increasingly opened up Arctic sea routes, north of the Canadian mainland and Russia.

So much so that, in the decade from 2013 to 2023, the total recorded annual distances sailed by ships in the Arctic Sea more than doubled from 6.1 million to 12.9 million miles.

The hope in the longer term is that cargo ships can travel from Asia to Europe and the east coast of the US, through Arctic waters above Canada and Russia.

But the question Mr Alnes-Bonesmo now asks himself is this – did he arrive too late?

Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 much of the planned economic development of the Arctic region ground to a halt as relations between Russia and the West deteriorated.

"Russia had great plans in the Arctic," says Morten Mejlaender-Larsen, Arctic operation and technology director from Norwegian firm DNV. His company sets rules and standards for the maritime sector.

"They began constructing regional rescue centres complete with ships and helicopters to facilitate both destination shipping for gas, oil and coal projects in Siberia, as well as for shipping along the Northeast Passage [north of Russia].

"[But] since the invasion of Ukraine, international shipping in the Northeast passage has all but stopped, apart from a few Chinese ships," observes Mr Mejlaender-Larsen.

He adds that Norway has also halted oil and gas exploration in the region. "It's completely stopped," he says.

"We don't expect to see any further developments in the Barents Sea north of Bear Island." This small Norwegian island is some 400km (250 miles) north of Norway's mainland.

Norway's scaled back ambitions in the Arctic have pleased environmentalists who have consistently warned about the impact of drilling for hydrocarbons on both wildlife and the fragile environment of the polar region.

Last month Greenpeace welcomed the decision of the Norwegian government to stop the first round of licencing for deep sea mining in Arctic waters between Norway's Svalbard and Jan Mayen islands.

Commentators say that while poor relations with Russia is a key reason why Norway is wary of ploughing money into Arctic projects, its interest in the polar region had already cooled.

Helene Tofte, director of international cooperation and climate at the Norwegian Shipowners Association, says that in hindsight the outlook for shipping in the Arctic had been "exaggerated".

She points out that despite the impact of climate change, the Arctic remains a difficult place in which to operate. "Conditions in the Arctic can be extremely challenging, even when the absence of sea ice allows passage," she says.

"Large parts of the route are far from emergency response capacities, such as search and rescue, and environmental clean-up resources.

"Increased shipping in this area would require substantial investments in ships, emergency preparedness, infrastructure, and weather forecasting systems, for a route that is unpredictable and has a short operational season. At present, we have no indication that our members view this as commercially interesting."

Mr Mejlaender-Larsen points to a "belief that thanks to global warming there'll be summers up there. That'll never happen. If it's minus 40C and it gets 3C warmer, it's still not warm."

Moreover, Prof Arild Moe, from Norwegian research group Fridtjof Nansen Institute, says the entire cold rush of the Arctic was based on exaggerated assumptions. "The exuberance was excessive," says the expert on oil and gas exploration in the region.

"What the reports from 2008 referred to weren't actual reserves, but potential and highly uncertain resources, which would be risky, expensive, and difficult to locate and exploit."

Regarding Trump's renewed interest in Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, authorities in Greenland and Denmark were again quick to reply that it was not for sale.

Prof Moe says that Trump's "crude and undiplomatic statement" shows that the US under Trump eyes both security and economic interests in the island, including its "rich mineral resources".

The Danish government also responded by announcing a huge increase in defence spending for Greenland.

Elsewhere in the Arctic, Trump is expected to allow increased oil and gas exploration in Alaska, specifically in the resource rich Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

This 19 million acre expanse is the US's largest wildlife refuge, and back in 2020 Trump authorised drilling in one section of it.

Meanwhile, Canada is continuing to build a deep-water port at Grays Bay, on the north coast of Nunavut, its most northern territory. Grays Bay is approximately in the centre of the so-called Northwest Passage, the Arctic sea route north of the Canadian mainland.

Back on the Granit fishing ship, Mr Alnes-Bonesmo says that, while he has earned good money, fishing quotas continue to go down to try to preserve stocks in Norwegian Arctic waters.

Nevertheless, he is philosophical. "After a few years at sea I've grown more scared of the Arctic Ocean, but I've also come to respect and value it for all its power and beauty."