Julia Ramadan was terrified - the war between Israel and Hezbollah was escalating and she'd had a nightmare that her family home was being bombed. When she sent her brother a panicked voice note from her apartment in Beirut, he encouraged her to join him in Ain El Delb, a sleepy village in southern Lebanon.

"It's safe here," he reassured her. "Come stay with us until things calm down."

Earlier that month, Israel intensified air campaigns against Hezbollah in Lebanon, in response to escalating rocket attacks by the Iran-backed armed group which had killed civilians, and displaced tens of thousands more from homes in northern Israel.

Ashraf was confident their family's apartment block would be a haven, so Julia joined him. But the next day, on 29 September, it was subject to this conflict's deadliest single Israeli attack. Struck by Israeli missiles, the entire six-storey building collapsed, killing 73 people.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says the building was targeted because it was a Hezbollah "terrorist command centre" and it "eliminated" a Hezbollah commander. It added that "the overwhelming majority" of those killed in the strike were "confirmed to be terror operatives".

But a BBC Eye investigation verified the identity of 68 of the 73 people killed in the attack and uncovered evidence suggesting just six were linked to Hezbollah's military wing. None of those we identified appeared to hold a senior rank. The BBC's World Service also found that the other 62 were civilians - 23 of them children.

Among the dead were babies only a few months old, like Nouh Kobeissi in apartment -2B. In apartment -1C, school teacher Abeer Hallak was killed alongside her husband and three sons. Three floors above, Amal Hakawati died along with three generations of her family - her husband, children and two granddaughters.

Ashraf and Julia had always been close, sharing everything with each other. "She was like a black box, holding all my secrets," he says.

On the afternoon of 29 September, the siblings had just returned home from handing out food to families who had fled the fighting. Hundreds of thousands of people in Lebanon had been displaced by the war.

Ashraf was in the shower, and Julia was sitting in the living room with their father, helping him upload a video to social media. Their mother, Janan, was in the kitchen, clearing up.

Then, without warning, they heard a deafening bang. The entire building shook, and a massive cloud of dust and smoke poured into their apartment.

"I shouted, 'Julia! Julia!,'" says Ashraf.

"She replied, 'I'm here.'

"I looked at my dad, who was struggling to get up from the sofa because of an existing injury to his leg, and saw my mother running toward the front door."

Julia's nightmare was playing out in real life.

"Julia was hyperventilating, crying so hard on the sofa. I was trying to calm her down and told her we needed to get out. Then, there was another attack."

Video footage of the strike, shared online and verified by the BBC, reveals four Israeli missiles flying through the air towards the building. Seconds later, the block collapses.

Ashraf, along with many others, was trapped under the rubble. He began calling out, but the only voice he could hear was that of his father, who told him he could still hear Julia and that she was alive. Neither of them could hear Ashraf's mother.

Ashraf sent a voice note to friends in the neighbourhood to alert them. The next few hours were agonising. He could hear rescuers sifting through the debris - and residents wailing as they discovered loved ones dead. "I just kept thinking, please, God, not Julia. I can't live this life without Julia."

Ashraf was finally pulled from the rubble hours later, with only minor injuries.

He discovered his mother had been rescued but died in hospital. Julia had suffocated under the rubble. His father later told him Julia's last words were calls for her brother.

In November, a ceasefire deal was agreed between Israel and Hezbollah with the aim of ending the conflict. The deal gives a 60-day deadline for Israeli forces to withdraw from southern Lebanon and for Hezbollah to withdraw its forces and weapons north of the Litani River. As this 26 January deadline approaches, we sought to find out more about the deadliest single Israeli attack on Lebanon in years.

In the apartment below Julia and Ashraf's, Hawraa and Ali Fares had been hosting family members displaced by the war. Among them was Hawraa's sister Batoul, who, like Julia, had arrived the previous day - with her husband and two young children. They had fled intense bombardment near the Lebanon-Israel border, in areas where Hezbollah has a strong presence.

"We hesitated about where to go," says Batoul. "And then I told my husband, 'Let's go to Ain El Delb. My sister said their building was safe and that they couldn't hear any bombing nearby.'"

Batoul's husband Mohammed Fares was killed in the Ain El Delb attack. A pillar fell on Batoul and her children. She says no-one responded to her calls for help. She finally managed to lift it alone, but her four-year-old daughter Hawraa had been fatally crushed. Miraculously, her baby Malak survived.

Three floors below Batoul lived Denise and Moheyaldeen Al-Baba. That Sunday, Denise had invited her brother Hisham over for lunch.

The impact of the strike was brutal, says Hisham.

"The second missile slammed me to the floor… the entire wall fell on top of me."

He spent seven hours under the rubble.

"I heard a voice far away. People talking. Screams and… 'Cover her. Remove her. Lift the stone. He's still alive. It's a child. Lift this child.' I mean… Oh my God. I thought to myself, I'm the last one deep underground. No-one will know about me. I will die here."

When Hisham was finally rescued, he found his niece's fiance waiting to hear if she was alive. He lied to him and told him she was fine. They found her body three days later.

Hisham lost four members of his family - his sister, brother-in-law and their two children. He told us he had lost his faith and no longer believes in God.

To find out more about who died, we have analysed Lebanese Health Ministry data, videos, social media posts, as well as speaking to survivors of the attack.

We particularly wanted to interrogate the IDF's response to media - immediately following the attack - that the apartment block had been a Hezbollah command centre. We asked the IDF multiple times what constituted a command centre, but it did not give clarification.

So we began sifting through social media tributes, gravesites, public health records and videos of funerals to determine whether those killed in the attack had any military affiliation with Hezbollah.

We could only find evidence that six of the 68 dead we identified were connected to Hezbollah's military wing.

Hezbollah memorial photos for the six men use the label "Mujahid", meaning "fighter". Senior figures, by contrast, are referred to as "Qaid", meaning "commander" - and we found no such labels used by the group to describe those killed.

We asked the IDF whether the six Hezbollah fighters we identified were the intended targets of the strike. It did not respond to this question.

One of the Hezbollah fighters we identified was Batoul's husband, Mohammed Fares. Batoul told us that her husband, like many other men in southern Lebanon, was a reservist for the group, though she added that he had never been paid by Hezbollah, held a formal rank, or participated in combat.

Israel sees Hezbollah as one of its main threats and the group is designated a terrorist organisation by Israel, many Western governments and Gulf Arab states.

But alongside its large, well-armed military wing, Hezbollah is also an influential political party, holding seats in Lebanese parliament. In many parts of the country it is woven into the social fabric, providing a network of social services.

In response to our investigation, the IDF stated: "The IDF's strikes on military targets are subject to relevant provisions of international law, including taking feasible precautions, and are carried out after an assessment that the expected collateral damage and civilian casualties are not excessive in relation to the military advantage expected from the strike."

It had earlier also told the BBC it had executed "evacuation procedures" for the strike on Ain El Delb, but everyone we spoke to said they had received no warning.

Watch on YouTube if outside the UK

UN experts have raised concerns about the proportionality and necessity of Israeli air strikes on residential buildings in densely populated areas in Lebanon.

This pattern of targeting entire buildings - resulting in significant civilian casualties - has been a recurring feature of Israel's latest conflict with Hezbollah, which began when the group escalated rocket attacks in response to Israel's war in Gaza.

Between October 2023 and November 2024, Lebanese authorities say more than 3,960 people were killed in Lebanon by Israeli forces, many of them civilians. Over the same time period, Israeli authorities say at least 47 civilians were killed by Hezbollah rockets fired from southern Lebanon. At least 80 Israeli soldiers were also killed fighting in southern Lebanon or as a result of rocket attacks on northern Israel.

The missile strike in Ain El Delb is the deadliest Israeli attack on a building in Lebanon for at least 18 years.

The village remains haunted by its impact. When we visited, more than a month after the strike, a father continued to visit the site every day, hoping for news of his 11-year-old son, whose body had yet to be found.

Ashraf Ramadan, too, returns to sift through the rubble, searching for what remains of the memories his family built over the two decades they lived there.

He shows me the door of his wardrobe, still adorned with pictures of footballers and pop stars he once admired. Then, he pulls a teddy bear from the debris and tells me it was always on his bed.

"Nothing I find here will make up for the people we lost," he says.

Additional reporting by Scarlett Barter and Jake Tacchi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"They're not just breaking their promise to us - they're breaking us," he says.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Trump administration emailed thousands of federal employees on Wednesday, ordering them to report any efforts to "disguise" diversity initiatives in their agencies or face "adverse consequences".

The request came after President Donald Trump banned diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) offices and programmes throughout the government.

Emails seen by the BBC directed workers to "report all facts and circumstances" to a new government email address within 10 days.

Some employees interpreted it as a demand to sell out their colleagues to the White House.

"We're really freaked out and overwhelmed," said one employee at the Department Health and Human Services (HHS).

The Office of Personnel Management, which manages the federal workforce, issued guidance requiring agency heads to send a notice to their staff by 17:00 eastern time on Wednesday. It included an email template that many federal staffers ultimately received that night.

Some employees, like those at the Treasury Department, got slightly different versions of the email.

The Treasury Department email excluded the warning about "adverse consequences" for not reporting DEI initiatives, according to a copy shared with the BBC.

In one of his first actions as president, Trump signed two executive orders ending "diversity, equity, and inclusion" or "DEI" programmes within the federal government and announced any employees working in those roles would immediately be placed on paid administrative leave.

Such programmes are designed to increase minority participation in the workforce and educate employees about discrimination.

But critics of DEI, like Trump, argue that the practice itself is discriminatory because it takes race, gender, sexual identity or other characteristics into consideration.

Trump and his allies attacked the practice frequently during the campaign.

In a speech Thursday at the World Economic Conference in Davos, Switzerland, Trump declared he was making America a "merit-based country".

Critics of DEI have praised Trump's decision.

"President Trump's executive orders rescinding affirmative action and banning DEI programs are a major milestone in American civil rights progress and a critical step towards building a colour-blind society," Yukong Mike Zhao, president of the Asian American Coalition for Education, said in a statement.

The group had supported a successful effort at the US Supreme Court to overturn affirmative action programmes at US universities.

But current federal employees, who spoke to the BBC on condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation, said that the email they received felt more like an attempt to intimidate staff than to make the government more fair.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

President Trump has signed a torrent of executive orders since he took office, including a hiring freeze in the federal government, an order for workers to return to the office and an attempt to reclassify thousands of government employees in order to make them easier to fire.

The HHS employee who spoke to the BBC criticised the government's DEI practices, believing that while it was important to build a diverse staff and create opportunities in health and medical fields, "identity politics have played into how we function normally and that's not beneficial to the workforce".

"But that doesn't mean I want my colleagues to get fired," the employee added.

He described the the impact the email and the DEI orders had on his agency as "very calculated chaos".

The employee's division had been thrown into confusion, he said, with questions about hiring practices going forward, as well as what programmes and directives were allowed to continue, given Trump's broad definition of DEI.

A second HHS employee said that hiring and research grants had been frozen and the entire department staff was waiting to see what they could do next.

The HHS, and one of its subsidiary agencies, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), issue millions of dollars in federal grants to universities and researchers across the globe to advance scientific research.

Agency employees feared that the DEI order could have an impact outside the government as well. One questioned if grants that allowed laboratories to create more opportunities for hiring minority scientists and medical professionals would now get the axe.

An employee who worked at the Food and Drug Administration told the BBC that she had not received the email, but all DEI-related activities had been paused.

"We have been told by seniors to keep doing our jobs," she said. "But there is a sense of fear about how it's going to have an impact on our work in general."

Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family who control it have agreed to pay up to $7.4bn (£6bn) to settle claims regarding its powerful prescription painkiller OxyContin.

The deal represents an increase of more than $1bn on a previous settlement that was rejected in 2024 by the US Supreme Court, according to news agencies AP and Reuters.

Under the terms of the settlement, the Sacklers agreed to pay up to $6.5bn and Purdue to pay $900m.

Oxycontin, often an entryway into harder drugs like heroin, has been blamed for supercharging the deadly opioid crisis in America, and generated billions of dollars for the Sackler family.

"We are extremely pleased that a new agreement has been reached that will deliver billions of dollars to compensate victims, abate the opioid crisis, and deliver treatment and overdose rescue medicines that will save lives," Purdue said in a statement.

The deal still needs court approval, and some of the details are yet to be ironed out, but AP says it is among the largest settlements reached in a series of lawsuits by local, state, Native American tribal governments and others seeking to hold companies responsible for the deadly epidemic.

Under President Donald Trump, the federal government is not expected to oppose the new deal, according to AP.

Connecticut attorney General William Tong told Reuters that the settlement would help provide closure to victims of the opioid crisis.

"It's not just about the money," Tong said. "There is not enough money in the world to make it right."

Since 1999, a few years after the drug became available, deaths from opioid overdoses surged to tens of thousands annually.

Court filings allege the Sackler family was long aware of the legal risks, and withdrew some $11bn from the company in the decade before its bankruptcy. They stashed much of the money overseas, while using some of it to pay company taxes, making recovery difficult.

A new fast-moving wildfire has erupted in Los Angeles County, triggering evacuations in a region already reeling from the most destructive fires in its history.

The Hughes fire ignited north of the city on Wednesday afternoon, near Castaic Lake in a mountainous area that borders several residential areas and schools.

The out-of-control blaze has grown to more than 5,000 acres in just two hours fuelled by strong winds. No homes or businesses have been damaged.

The new fire is burning north of the two mammoth blazes - which are still burning - that destroyed multiple neighbourhoods in Los Angeles County earlier this month.

Two other fires have ignited further south near San Diego and Oceanside, officials said.

They are both smaller - 85 acres for the Lilac fire near Oceanside and 3.9 acres for the Bernardo fire - but were burning in populated areas. Fire crews appeared to have a handle on both of the blazes and evacuation orders had been mostly lifted and forward progress stopped.

In Los Angeles County, local news showed those near the Hughes fire hosing down their homes and yards with water and others rushing to evacuate neighbourhoods.

Orange flames lined the mountains as aircraft dropped water and flame retardant.

The region is once again under a red flag warning, which cautions of a high fire risk due to strong winds and dry, low-humid conditions.

Winds in the area are blowing around 20 to 30 mph but are forecast to strengthen throughout the day, which could allow the blaze to grow and make it harder for air crews to continue their battle from above.

One woman who evacuated her home told NBC 4 that she was stuck on Interstate 5, a major highway that cuts through the area and runs north and south through California.

"It looked like a cloud, but as you got close, it looked like we were driving into hell," she said of the dark smoke and red flames she saw. "It was pretty terrifying to be honest with you."

She acknowledged being on edge after watching the Palisades and Eaton fires burn nearby, killing at least 28 people and decimating more than 10,000 homes and businesses.

"I don't know why they keep popping up," she said. "It's definitely a scary time in this area."

Everything gets mixed up together. The child's multi-coloured backpack. A running shoe. A steel pot perforated by shrapnel. Bits of beds, chairs, cookers, lampshades; the glass of broken windows, mirrors, drinking glasses. Scraps of clothing.

These last shredded, dust covered items can be markers. Often they belong to the dead lying near the surface of the rubble.

"Since the Israeli occupation forces withdrew from Rafah, we have had about 150 calls from civilians about the presence of their relatives' bodies under houses," says Haitham al-Homs, director of Emergency and Ambulance Services for the Civil Defence agency in Rafah, at the southernmost end of the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian health authorities estimate that 10,000 people are missing. Where there is no obvious marker like clothing at the surface, the search teams rely on information from relatives and neighbours, or they follow the smell of death that radiates from the ruins.

WARNING: This story contains distressing content

The Israeli government has banned the BBC and other international news organisations from entering Gaza and reporting independently. We depend on trusted local journalists to record the experiences of people like those who are searching for the missing.

At the end of every day, Mr Homs updates the list of those found. His team excavates the rubble with care, aware that they are searching for fragments of broken humanity. Often what is recovered is no more than a pile of bones. Israel's high explosive bombs blasted and mangled into pieces many of the dead. The bones and scraps of clothing are placed in white body bags upon which Mr Homs writes the Arabic word "majhoul". It means "unidentified".

A resident of Rafah, Osama Saleh, went back to his home after the ceasefire and found a skeleton inside. The skull was fractured. Mr Saleh reckons the body lay there for four to five months. "We are humans with feeling…I can't convey to you how miserable the tragedy is," he says. To be surrounded every day by the smell of decomposing bodies is a deeply unsettling experience, as those who have witnessed the aftermath of mass death will often testify.

"The bodies are terrifying. We are seeing terror," Osama Saleh says. "I swear it is a painful feeling, I have cried."

Families have also been arriving at hospitals to search for remains. In the courtyard of the European Hospital in southern Gaza, collections of bones and clothing are spread out on body bags.

Abdul Salam al-Mughayer, 19, from Rafah, went missing in the Shaboura area; according to his uncle, Zaki, it was a place you didn't come back from if you went there during the war. "So, we didn't go to look for him there for that reason. We wouldn't have returned."

Zaki believes a set of bones and clothes in front of him belong to the missing Abdul Salam. He is standing with a hospital worker, Jihad Abu Khreis, waiting for Abdul Salam's brother to arrive.

"It's 99% certain the body is his," Mr Abu Khreis says, "but now we need the final confirmation from his brother, the closest people to him, to make sure that the trousers and shoes are his."

Soon after the brother arrived from the tented refugee camp of al-Mawasi, also in southern Gaza. He had a photograph of Abdul Salam on his phone. There was a photo of his running shoes.

He knelt before the body bag and pulled back the cover. He touched the skull, the clothes. He saw the shoes. There were tears in his eyes. The identification was complete.

Another family moved along the row of body bags. There was a grandmother, her son, an adult sister, and a toddler. The child was kept at the back of the group while the elderly woman and her son looked under the cover of the body bag. They stared for a few seconds and then embraced each other in grief.

After this, the family, helped by hospital workers, carried away the remains. They were weeping, but nobody cried aloud.

Aya al-Dabeh was 13 years old and was living with her family and hundreds of other refugees at a school in Tal al-Hawa, in Gaza City in the north. She was one of nine children. One day at the start of the war Aya went to go to the bathroom upstairs at the school and - her family says - she was shot in the chest by an Israeli sniper. The Israel Defense Forces say they do not target civilians and blame Hamas for attacking from civilian areas. During the war the UN Human Rights Office said that that there has been "intense shooting by Israeli forces in densely populated areas resulting in apparently unlawful killings, including of unarmed bystanders."

The family buried Aya beside the school, and her mother Lina al- Dabah, 43, wrapped her in a blanket "to protect her from the rain and the sun" in case the grave was disturbed and exposed to the elements.

When the Israeli military took over the school Lina fled south. She went with four other children - two daughters and two sons - to reunite with her husband who'd gone earlier with the couple's other children. Lina had no option but to leave her daughter where she lay, hoping to come back and recover the remains for a proper burial once peace came.

"Aya was a very kind girl, and everyone loved her. She used to love everyone, her teachers and her studies, and she was very good at school. She wished well for everyone," Lina says. When the ceasefire came Lina asked relatives still living in the north to check up on Aya's grave. The news was devastating.

"They informed us that her head was in one place, her legs were in another, while her ribs were somewhere else. The one who went to visit her was shocked and sent us the pictures," she says.

"When I saw her, I couldn't understand how my daughter was taken out of her grave, and how did the dogs eat her? I can't control my nerves."

The relatives have collected the bones and soon Lina and her family will travel north to carry Aya's remains to a proper grave. For Lina, there is grief with no end, and a question that has no answer - the same question that sits with so many parents who lost children in Gaza. What could they have done differently, the circumstances of the war being what they were? "I couldn't take her from where she was buried," says Lina. Then she asks: "Where could I have taken her?"

With additional reporting by Malak Hassouneh, Alice Doyard, Adam Campbell.

A French woman who stopped having sex with her husband has won a ruling from Europe's highest human rights court, which has stated she should not have been blamed for their divorce.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) sided with the 69-year-old on Thursday, saying courts should not consider a refusal to engage in sexual relations as grounds for fault in divorce.

The unanimous decision found that France had violated her right to respect for private and family life under European human rights law - ending a legal dispute which has dragged on for almost a decade.

The French woman, identified as Ms H.W, celebrated the decision as a step forward in ending "rape culture" and promoting consent within marriage.

The case has sparked a debate about attitudes toward marital consent and women's rights in France. Lilia Mhissen, H.W.'s lawyer, said the decision dismantled the outdated concept of "marital duty" and called for French courts to align with modern views on consent and equality.

Women's rights groups supporting H.W. said French judges continue to impose an "archaic vision of marriage," which perpetuates harmful stereotypes.

H.W., who lives in Le Chesnay near Paris, married her husband, JC, in 1984. They had four children, including a daughter with a disability who required constant care, a responsibility H.W. took on.

Their marital relations deteriorated after the birth of their first child and by 1992, H.W. began experiencing health problems. In 2002, her husband started physically and verbally abusing her. Two years later, she stopped having sex with him and petitioned for divorce in 2012.

The woman did not dispute the divorce, which she had also requested, but objected to the grounds on which it was granted.

In 2019, an appeals court in Versailles rejected her complaints and ruled in favour of her husband. The Court of Cassation, France's highest court, later dismissed her appeal without explanation. She then brought her case to the ECHR in 2021.

The ECHR ruled that governments should only intervene in matters like sexuality for very serious reasons. It stated that the idea of "marital duties" in French law ignored the importance of consent in sexual relations.

The court emphasised that agreeing to marry does not mean agreeing to have sex in the future. Suggesting otherwise, the ruling said, would effectively deny that marital rape is a serious crime.

The ruling comes amid growing attention to consent in France, following the high-profile trial of Dominique Pélicot, who drugged his wife and invited men to rape her. Pélicot and the 50 men involved were convicted last month, and the case raised concerns about how French law addresses consent.

Feminist groups argue that the ECHR decision reinforces the need to update French laws and cultural attitudes.

A recent report by French MPs has recommended including the concept of non-consent in the legal definition of rape, stating that consent must be freely given and can be withdrawn at any time.

Two Russian ships linked to its military have docked at the Kremlin's naval base on the Syrian coast at Tartous, with experts suggesting that an anticipated evacuation of the facility has finally begun.

The Sparta and the Sparta II docked in Tartous on Tuesday. Both ships are sanctioned by the US and have been linked to the transportation of Russian arms by Ukraine.

Analysts anticipated that Russia would reduce its military footprint from Syria following the fall of the Assad regime in December - which it supported throughout the civil war.

Large quantities of military hardware have been moved to the port in recent weeks and have been visible in satellite photos analysed by BBC Verify.

The imagery appears to show dozens of vehicles and other equipment sitting at the port. The hardware first appeared in mid-December following footage of large columns of Russian vehicles moving north towards the base - indicating they had been redirected from other outposts across the country.

The ships arrival coincides with reports in Syrian media that Russia's lease for the port has been cancelled. The new transitional government in Damascus refused to confirm the reports to the BBC, while Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov also declined to comment when asked during a news conference in Moscow.

Tartous has been a key base for Russia in recent years, allowing it to refuel, resupply and repair vessels in the Mediterranean.

The Kremlin has appeared keen to retain control over the base, and said in December that Russian officials were speaking to the new authorities about a continued presence.

Analysts have suggested that the Sparta and the Sparta II - which are ultimately owned by Oboronlogistika LLC - a shipping company which operates as part of the Russian ministry of defence, were denied permission to dock at Tartous while discussions continued. The ships have spent several weeks off the coast of Syria in the Mediterranean Sea.

Marine tracking sites show the ships finally docked on Tuesday evening, after which they switched off their transponders.

The weather in recent days has made it difficult to obtain clear satellite pictures. But images from the EU's Sentinel radar satellites - which are low resolution but capable of penetrating cloud cover - revealed that the ships were in the military section of the port.

Until now, no Russian military vessels had been spotted at Tartous since the fall of Assad regime in early December. In earlier high-resolution satellite imagery dozens of military vehicles could be seen parked near where the vessels are now docked. Also nearby were cranes which may be used to load equipment.

It is possible that two other Russian naval vessels are also present in the port, naval analyst Frederik Van Lokeren told BBC Verify. He said the vessels, Ivan Gren and the Alexander Otrakovsky, could also be involved in an evacuation - a sentiment echoed by Ukrainian military intelligence to BBC Verify.

"With the 49 year lease being cancelled it has become very clear for Russia that it can no longer hope to maintain a military presence in Tartous and as such, there appears to be no point in staying there and delaying the maritime evacuation any longer," Mr Van Lokeren added.

The evacuation of all of Russia's equipment may take some though, according to Anton Mardasov from the Middle East Institute's Syria programme.

"Over the years much more has been brought in there than these ships and vessels can take," Mr Mardasov told BBC Verify.

Meanwhile, there has also been continued activity at the main Russian airbase in Syria, Hmeimim. Satellite images have shown large Russian aircraft being loaded with military equipment on various dates since the fall of the Assad regime.

Ukrainian military intelligence said Russia flights had transferred military personnel and equipment from Hmeimim to airbases in Libya at least 10 times since mid-December. The Kremlin is already supporting the Tobruk-based warlord Khalifa Haftar in the east of Libya.

Moscow has long maintained a presence at two of the bases mentioned by Ukrainian intelligence - Al-Khadim and Al-Jufra. A former member of the UN's working group on mercenaries, Dr Sorcha MacLeod, told BBC Verify that the facilities were previously run by the Wagner Group.

She said that Russia's defence ministry has taken over responsibility for the bases through its new Africa Corps. The force is run directly by Moscow and has taken over much of the Wagner Group's former role.

Dr Macleod added that the relocation of Russian forces to the country "makes sense given that Libya has become such a big hub for Africa Corps operations and access into West Africa".

Additional reporting by Ned Davies and Joshua Cheetham. Graphics by Mesut Ersoz.

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The conservative opposition leader tipped to lead Germany following next month's elections has promised far-reaching changes to border and asylum rules after a group of children were targeted in a deadly knife attack in Bavaria.

Friedrich Merz promised in effect to close Germany's borders to all irregular migrants, including those with a right to protection.

A two-year-old boy of Moroccan origin and a man aged 41 were killed in Wednesday's attack in Aschaffenburg, and several others were hurt.

An Afghan man aged 28 was due to appear in court on Thursday accused of murder and grievous harm.

Wednesday's stabbing in Aschaffenburg is the latest in a string of violent and fatal attacks that have involved suspects who have sought asylum in Germany.

In a matter of hours, the stabbings prompted a hardened tone from Chancellor Olaf Scholz as well as Merz, the centre-right opposition leader.

Scholz promised quick action and called it an "act of terror" – although officials have not, so far, said that they believe there was a terrorist motive.

Merz, whose Christian Democrats lead the opinion polls ahead of 23 February federal elections, refused to accept that attacks in Mannheim last May, Solingen in August and Magdeburg last month, would be "the new normal".

The Afghan suspect in yesterday's attack arrived in Germany in 2022 and was linked to three previous acts of violence, according to Bavarian officials. He had agreed to leave Germany last month but was still receiving psychiatric treatment and living in asylum accommodation.

An investigating judge will decide whether he should be remanded in custody or placed temporarily in a psychiatric hospital.

Merz said that on his first day as chancellor he would instruct the interior ministry to take permanent control of Germany's borders.

"We see before us the ruins of 10 years of misguided asylum and immigration policy in Germany," he said. "We reached the limit."

Under his party colleague, Angela Merkel, Germany welcomed more than a million refugees during Europe's 2015-16 migrant crisis.

Criticising EU asylum rules as as "recognisably dysfunctional", he said Germany should now "exercise its right to the primacy of national law".

Germany has already reinstated checks on its borders to combat illegal immigration, which is allowed temporarily under the EU's border-free Schengen rules as a "last-resort" measure, but not on permanent basis.

Merz also said it was time to significantly increase the number of places available for detention ahead of deportation.

Merz's promise to close the borders to illegal entries on day one at the chancellery in Berlin has a Trumpian ring to it.

The US president has pushed through a flurry of executive orders and actions to tackle illegal immigration since he re-entered the White House this week.

In Germany, both the centre-left chancellor and Merz are conscious that the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has been consistently polling second, has made immigration a signature issue.

AfD leader Alice Weidel has called for a vote in the German parliament next week on closing Germany's borders and turning back irregular migrants. "The knife terror of Aschaffenburg must have consequences now," she said on social media.

Some critics will argue that Scholz and Merz's move to take a tougher stance now comes too late. Others will argue that a rightwards shift by mainstream parties could simply bolster the AfD's arguments.

In any case German politics does not lend itself to a presidential-style set of day-one decrees, given the necessity of forming coalitions with other parties.

The leader of the liberal Free Democratic Party, Christian Lindner, said Merz would not be able to introduce such changes if he went into coalition with the Social Democrats or Green party.

Nancy Faeser, who is both interior minister and a party colleague of Olaf Scholz, suggested that "some people are now making largely fact-free arguments in election campaign mode".

"I can only warn very clearly against abusing such a terrible act for populism, that only benefits the right-wing populists with their contempt for humanity," she said.

The 41-year-old man who was killed in Wednesday's knife attack has been praised, apparently for coming to the aid of the kindergarten group and saving the lives of other children.

Another two-year-old of Syrian origin suffered knife wounds to her neck.

A man of 72 suffered serious stab wounds and a kindergarten teacher suffered a broken arm.

The top prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) says he will seek arrest warrants against senior leaders of the Taliban government in Afghanistan over the persecution of women and girls.

Karim Khan said there were reasonable grounds to suspect Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and chief justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani bore criminal responsibility for crimes against humanity on gender grounds.

ICC judges will now decide whether to issue an arrest warrant.

The ICC investigates and brings to justice those responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, intervening when national authorities cannot or will not prosecute.

In a statement, Mr Khan said the two men were "criminally responsible for persecuting Afghan girls and women, as well as persons whom the Taliban perceived as not conforming with their ideological expectations of gender identity or expression, and persons whom the Taliban perceived as allies of girls and women".

Opposition to the Taliban government is "brutally repressed through the commission of crimes including murder, imprisonment, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, enforced disappearance, and other inhumane acts", he added.

The persecution was committed from at least 15 August 2021 until the present day, across Afghanistan, the statement said.

Akhundzada became the supreme commander of the Taliban in 2016, and is now leader of the so-called Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. In the 1980s, he participated in Islamist groups fighting against the Soviet military campaign in Afghanistan.

Haqqani was a close associate of Taliban founder Mullah Omar and served as a negotiator on behalf of the Taliban during discussions with US representatives in 2020.

The Taliban government is yet to comment on the ICC statement.

The Taliban regained power in Afghanistan in 2021, 20 years after a US-led invasion toppled their regime in the fallout of the 9/11 attacks in New York, but its government has not been formally recognised by any other foreign power.

"Morality laws" have since meant women have lost dozens of rights on the country.

Afghanistan is now the only country in the world where women and girls are prevented from accessing secondary and higher education - some one-and-a-half million have been deliberately deprived of schooling.

The Taliban has repeatedly promised they would be re-admitted to school once a number of issues were resolved - including ensuring the curriculum was "Islamic". This has yet to happen.

Beauty salons have been shut down and women are prevented from entering public parks, gyms and baths.

A dress code means they must be fully covered and strict rules have banned them from travelling without a male chaperone or looking a man in the eye unless they're related by blood or marriage.

In December, women were also banned from training as midwives and nurses, effectively closing off their last route to further education in the country.

Officials are investigating the "mysterious deaths" of over a dozen people - most of them children - in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir.

At least 17 people, including 12 children, have died in Badhal village in Jammu's Rajouri district since 7 December.

The victims initially displayed symptoms similar to food poisoning but suddenly lost consciousness, health officials said.

The village has been declared a containment zone, but officials have stated that the disease does not appear to be infectious, and there is no fear of an epidemic.

Dr AS Bhatia, the chief of a local hospital, said that the first five patients - including four children - who were admitted had symptoms similar to food poisoning, including vomiting and diarrhoea. Others complained of sore throats and breathing problems.

But then, all of them would abruptly lose consciousness, he added.

The federal government has ordered an investigation. A special investigation team set up by the local administration, comprising police officers, pathologists and other specialists, has questioned dozens of people so far.

According to initial investigations, consumption of contaminated food and water may have been the cause. Residents of the village have been asked not to drink water from a local spring after a test sample showed it contained traces of tests found pesticides.

The deaths occurred between 7 December and 19 January and the victims were members of three related families. Six of the children who died were siblings, with ages ranging from seven to 15 years. Their houses have been sealed.

Though doctors have ruled out the possibility of an infection, an administrative order says that people identified as close contacts of the three families are being shifted to a government hospital in Rajouri, where their condition will be monitored. The order also asks all other residents of Badhal to only consume food and water provided by the administration.

"All edible materials in the infected households shall be seized by the authorities," the order said.

At least 10 people have been admitted to hospitals in Rajouri, Jammu and Chandigarh city and are being treated.

Dr Shuja Quadri, an epidemiologist at the Government Medical College in Rajouri, said that the disease is localised and that they have ruled out the possibility of viral, bacterial, protozoal and zoonotic infections.

Among the second cluster of patients who were admitted on 12 December, five people, including a one-year-old child, have recovered.

"This was a ray of hope for us," Dr Bhatia said.

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As Thailand's long-awaited equal marriage law comes into effect on Thursday, police officer Pisit "Kew" Sirihirunchai hopes to be the first in line to marry his long-term partner Chanatip "Jane" Sirihirunchai.

Some 180 same-sex couples are registering their unions at one of Bangkok's grandest shopping malls, in an event city officials helped organise to celebrate this legal milestone.

"We have been ready for such a long time," Pisit says. "We have just been waiting for the law to catch up and support us."

The two men have been together for seven years. Eager to formalise their relationship, they have already gone to a Buddhist monk to give them an auspicious new last name they can share – Sirihirunchai. They have also asked local officials to issue a letter of intent, which they both signed, pledging to get married.

But they say having their union recognised under Thai law is what they really dreamed of. It means LGBTQ+ couples now have the same rights as any other couple to get engaged and married, to manage their assets, to inherit and to adopt children.

They can make decisions about medical treatment if their partner becomes ill and incapacitated, or extend financial benefits – such as Pisit's government pension – to their spouse.

"We want to build a future together – build a house, start a small business together, maybe a café," he adds, making a list of all that the law has enabled. "We want to build our future together and to take care of each other."

Prisit says he has the full support of his colleagues in the police station, and hopes he can encourage others working in government service to be open about their sexuality: "They should feel emboldened because they can see us coming out with no repercussions, only positive responses."

As a younger couple Prisit and Chanatip - both in their mid-30s - have experienced fewer obstacles than those who came out much earlier.

But for their community, it has been a long journey. Despite Thailand's famed tolerance towards LGBTQ+ people, activists say it took a sustained campaign to win legal recognition.

"We've been waiting for this day for 18 years - the day everyone can recognise us openly, when we no longer need to be evasive or hide," says 59-year-old Rungtiwa Thangkanopast, who will marry her partner of 18 years in May.

She had been in a marriage, arranged by her family, to a gay man, who later died. She had a daughter, through IVF, but after her husband's death began spending time, and later helping run, one of the first lesbian pubs in Bangkok. Then she met Phanlavee, who's now 45 and goes by her first name only.

On Valentine's Day 2013 the two women went to the Bang Rak district office in central Bangkok to ask to be officially married - a popular place for marriage registration because the name in Thai means "Love Town".

This was the time when LGBTQ+ couples began challenging the official view of marriage as an exclusively heterosexual partnership by attempting to get marriage certificates at district offices.

There were around 400 heterosexual couples waiting with them on that day. Rungtiwa and Phanlavee were refused, and the Thai media mocked their effort, using derogatory slang for lesbians.

Still, activists managed to persuade the government to consider changing the marriage laws. A proposed civil partnership bill was put before parliament, offering some official recognition to same-sex couples, but not the same legal rights as heterosexual couples.

A military coup in 2014 which deposed the elected government interrupted the movement. It would be another decade before full marriage equality was approved by parliament, in part because of the rise of young, progressive political parties that championed the cause.

Their message resonated with Thais – and attitudes too had changed. By this time, same-sex marriage was legalised in many Western countries and same-sex love had become normalised in Thai culture too.

Such was the shift in favour of the law that it was passed last year by a thumping majority of 400 votes to just 10 against. Even in the notoriously conservative senate only four opposed the law.

And couples like Rungtiwa and Phanleeva now have their chance to have their love for each other recognised, without the risk of public derision.

"With this law comes the legitimacy of our family," Rungtiwa says, "We're no longer viewed as weirdos just because our daughter isn't being raised by heterosexual parents."

The new law takes out gender-specific terms like man, woman, husband and wife from 70 sections of the Thai Civil Code covering marriage, and replaces them with neutral terms like individual and spouse.

However, there are still dozens of laws in the Thai legal code which have not yet been made gender-neutral, and there are still obstacles in the way of same-sex couples using surrogacy to have a family..

Parents are still defined under Thai law as a mother and a father. The law also does not yet allow people to use their preferred gender on official documents; they are still stuck with their birth gender. These are areas where activists say they will still need to keep pushing for change.

Yet it is a historic moment for Thailand, which is an outlier in Asia in recognising marriage equality. And it is especially significant for older couples, who have had to ride out the shifts in attitude.

"I really hope people will put away the old, stereotypical ideas that gay men cannot have true love,"says Chakkrit "Ink" Vadhanavira.

He and his partner Prinn, both in their 40s, have been together for 24 years.

"The two of us have proved that we genuinely love each other through thick and thin for more than 20 years," Chakkrit says."We have been ready to take care of each other since our first day together. We are no different from heterosexual couples."

While Chakkrit's parents quickly accepted their partnership, it took Prinn's parents seven years before they could do so.

The couple also wanted to share the production business they ran together, and other assets, as a couple, so they asked Prinn's parents to adopt Chakkrit officially, giving him the same family name. Prinn says the new law has brought welcome legal clarity to them.

"For example, right now when a same sex couple buy something together – a large item - they cannot share ownership of it," said Prinn. "And one of us passes away, what both have us have earned together cannot be passed on to the other. That's why marriage equality is very significant."

Today, says Prinn, both sets of parents treat them as they would just like any other married children.

And when they had relationship problems like any other couple, their parents helped them.

"My dad even started reading gay magazines to understand me better. It was quite cute to see that."

Additional reporting by Thanyarat Doksone and Ryn Jirenuwat in Bangkok

The world's largest iceberg is on a collision course with a remote British island, potentially putting penguins and seals in danger.

The iceberg is spinning northwards from Antarctica towards South Georgia, a rugged British territory and wildlife haven, where it could ground and smash into pieces. It is currently 173 miles (280km) away.

Countless birds and seals died on South Georgia's icy coves and beaches when past giant icebergs stopped them feeding.

"Icebergs are inherently dangerous. I would be extraordinarily happy if it just completely missed us," sea captain Simon Wallace tells BBC News, speaking from the South Georgia government vessel Pharos.

Around the world a group of scientists, sailors and fishermen are anxiously checking satellite pictures to monitor the daily movements of this queen of icebergs.

It is known as A23a and is one of the world's oldest.

It calved, or broke off, from the Filchner Ice Shelf in Antarctica in 1986 but got stuck on the seafloor and then trapped in an ocean vortex.

Finally, in December, it broke free and is now on its final journey, speeding into oblivion.

The warmer waters north of Antarctica are melting and weakening its vast cliffs that tower up to 1,312ft (400m), taller than the Shard in London.

It once measured 3,900 sq km, but the latest satellite pictures show it is slowly decaying. It is now around 3,500 sq km, roughly the size of the English county of Cornwall.

And large slabs of ice are breaking off, plunging into the waters around its edges.

A23a could break into vast segments any day, which may then hang around for years, like floating cities of ice cruising uncontrollably around South Georgia.

This isn't the first huge iceberg to threaten South Georgia and Sandwich Islands.

In 2004 one called A38 grounded on its continental shelf, leaving dead penguin chicks and seal pups on beaches as massive ice chunks blocked their access to feeding grounds.

The territory is home to precious colonies of King Emperor penguins and millions of elephant and fur seals.

"South Georgia sits in iceberg alley so impacts are to be expected for both fisheries and wildlife, and both have a great capacity to adapt," says Mark Belchier, a marine ecologist who advises the South Georgia government.

Sailors and fisherman say icebergs are an increasing problem. In 2023 one called A76 gave them a scare when it came close to grounding.

"Chunks of it were tipping up, so they looked like great ice towers, an ice city on the horizon," says Mr Belchier, who saw the iceberg while at sea.

Those slabs are still lingering around the islands today.

"It is in bits from the size of several Wembley stadiums down to pieces the size of your desk," says Andrew Newman from Argos Froyanes, a fishing company that works in South Georgia.

"Those pieces basically cover the island - we have to work our way through it," says Captain Wallace.

The sailors on his ship must be constantly vigilant. "We have searchlights on all night to try to see ice - it can come from nowhere," he explains.

A76 was a "gamechanger", according to Mr Newman, with "huge impact on our operations and on keeping our vessel and crew safe".

All three men describe a rapidly changing environment, with glacial retreat visible year-to-year, and volatile levels of sea ice.

Climate change is unlikely to have been behind the birth of A23a because it calved so long ago, before much of the impacts of rising temperatures that we are now seeing.

But giant icebergs are part of our future. As Antarctica becomes more unstable with warmer ocean and air temperatures, more vast pieces of the ice sheets will break away.

Before its time comes to an end though, A23a has left a parting gift for scientists.

A team with the British Antarctic Survey on the Sir David Attenborough research vessel found themselves close to A23a in 2023.

The scientists scrambled to exploit the rare opportunity to investigate what mega icebergs do to the environment.

The ship sailed into a crack in the iceberg's gigantic walls, and PhD researcher Laura Taylor collected precious water samples 400m away from its cliffs.

"I saw a massive wall of ice way higher than me, as far as I could see. It has different colours in different places. Chunks were falling off - it was quite magnificent," she explains from her lab in Cambridge where she is now analysing the samples.

Her work looks at what the impact the melt water is having on the carbon cycle in the southern ocean.

"This isn't just water like we drink. It's full of nutrients and chemicals, as well as tiny animals like phytoplankton frozen inside," Ms Taylor says.

As it melts, the iceberg releases those elements into the water, changing the physics and chemistry of the ocean.

That could store more carbon deep in the ocean, as the particles sink from the surface. That would naturally lock away some of the planet's carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to climate change.

Icebergs are notoriously unpredictable and no-one knows what exactly it will do next.

But soon the behemoth should appear, looming on the islands' horizons, as big as the territory itself.

When Zhang Junjie was 17 he decided to protest outside his university about rules made by China's government. Within days he had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital and treated for schizophrenia.

Junjie is one of dozens of people identified by the BBC who were hospitalised after protesting or complaining to the authorities.

Many people we spoke to were given anti-psychotic drugs, and in some cases electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), without their consent.

There have been reports for decades that hospitalisation was being used in China as a way of detaining dissenting citizens without involving the courts. However, the BBC has found that an issue which legislation sought to resolve, has recently made a comeback.

Junjie says he was restrained and beaten by hospital staff before being forced to take medication.

His ordeal began in 2022, after he protested against China's harsh lockdown policies. He says his professors spotted him after just five minutes and contacted his father, who took him back to the family home. He says his father called the police, and the next day - on his 18th birthday - two men drove him to what they claimed was a Covid test centre, but was actually a hospital.

"The doctors told me I had a very serious mental disease… Then they tied me to a bed. The nurses and doctors repeatedly told me, because of my views on the party and the government, then I must be mentally ill. It was terrifying," he told the BBC World Service. He was there for 12 days.

Junjie believes his father felt forced to hand him over to the authorities because he worked for the local government.

Just over a month after being discharged, Junjie was once again arrested. Defying a fireworks ban at Chinese New Year (a measure brought in to fight air pollution) he had made a video of himself setting them off. Someone uploaded it online and police managed to link it to Junjie.

He was accused of "picking quarrels and troublemaking" - a charge frequently used to silence criticism of the Chinese government. Junjie says he was forcibly hospitalised again for more than two months.

After being discharged, Junjie was prescribed anti-psychotic drugs. We have seen the prescription - it was for Aripiprazole, used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

"Taking the medicine made me feel like my brain was quite a mess," he says, adding that police would come to his house to check he had taken it.

Fearing a third hospitalisation, Junjie decided to leave China. He told his parents he was returning to university to pack up his room - but, in fact, he fled to New Zealand.

He didn't say goodbye to family or friends.

Junjie is one of 59 people who the BBC has confirmed - either by speaking to them or their relatives, or by going through court documents - have been hospitalised on mental health grounds after protesting or challenging the authorities.

The issue has been acknowledged by China's government - the country's 2013 Mental Health Law aimed to stop this abuse, making it illegal to treat someone who is not mentally unwell. It also explicitly states psychiatric admission must be voluntary unless the patient is a danger to themselves or others.

In fact, the number of people detained in mental health hospitals against their will has recently surged, a leading Chinese lawyer told the BBC World Service. Huang Xuetao, who was involved in drafting the law, blames a weakening of civil society and a lack of checks and balances.

"I have come across lots of cases like this. The police want power while avoiding responsibility," he says. "Anyone who knows the shortcomings of this system can abuse it."

An activist called Jie Lijian told us he had been treated for mental illness without his consent in 2018.

Lijian says he was arrested for attending a protest demanding better pay at a factory. He says police interrogated him for three days before taking him to a psychiatric hospital.

Like Junjie, Lijian says he was prescribed anti-psychotic drugs that impaired his critical thinking.

After a week in the hospital, he says he refused any more medication. After fighting with staff, and being told he was causing trouble, Lijian was sent for ECT - a therapy which involves passing electric currents through a patient's brain.

"The pain was from head to toe. My whole body felt like it wasn't my own. It was really painful. Electric shock on. Then off. Electric shock on. Then off. I fainted several times. I felt like I was dying," he says.

He says he was discharged after 52 days. He now has a part-time job in Los Angeles and is seeking asylum in the US.

Or watch on YouTube outside the UK.

In 2019, the year after Lijian says he was hospitalised, the Chinese Medical Doctor Association updated its ECT guidelines, stating it should only ever be administered with consent, and under general anaesthetic.

We wanted to find out more about the doctors' involvement in such cases.

Speaking to foreign media such as the BBC without permission could get them into trouble, so our only option was to go undercover.

We booked phone consultations with doctors working at four hospitals which, according to our evidence, are involved with forced hospitalisations.

We used an invented story about a relative who had been hospitalised for posting anti-government comments online, and asked five doctors if they had ever come across cases of patients being sent in by police.

Four confirmed they had.

"The psychiatric department has a type of admission called 'troublemakers'," one doctor told us.

Another doctor, from the hospital where Junjie was held, appears to confirm his story that police continued surveillance of patients once discharged.

"The police will check up on you at home to make sure you take your medicine. If you don't take it you might break the law again," they said.

We approached the hospital in question for comment but it did not respond.

We have been given access to the medical records of democracy activist Song Zaimin, hospitalised for a fifth time last year, which makes it clear how closely political views appear to be tied to a psychiatric diagnosis.

"Today, he was… talking a lot, speaking incoherently, and criticising the Communist Party. Therefore, he was sent to our hospital for inpatient treatment by the police, doctors, and his local residents' committee. This was an involuntary hospitalisation," it says.

We asked Professor Thomas G Schulze, president-elect of the World Psychiatric Association, to review these notes. He replied:

"For what is described here, no-one should be involuntarily admitted and treated against his will. It reeks of political abuse."

Between 2013 and 2017, more than 200 people reported they had been wrongfully hospitalised by the authorities, according to a group of citizen journalists in China who documented abuses of the Mental Health Law.

Their reporting ended in 2017, because the group's founder was arrested and subsequently jailed.

For victims seeking justice, the legal system appears stacked against them.

A man we are calling Mr Li, who was hospitalised in 2023 after protesting against the local police, tried to take legal action against the authorities for his incarceration.

Unlike Junjie, doctors told Mr Li he wasn't ill but then the police arranged an external psychiatrist to assess him, who diagnosed him with bipolar disorder, and he was held for 45 days.

Once released, he decided to challenge the diagnosis.

"If I don't sue the police it's like I accept being mentally ill. This will have a big impact on my future and my freedom because police can use it as a reason to lock me up any time," he says.

In China, the records of anyone ever diagnosed with a serious mental health disorder could be shared with the police, and even local residents' committees.

But Mr Li was not successful - the courts rejected his appeal.

"We hear our leaders talking about the rule of law," he told us. "We never dreamed one day we could be locked up in a mental hospital."

The BBC has found 112 people listed on the official website for Chinese court decisions who, between 2013 and 2024, attempted to take legal action against police, local governments or hospitals for such treatment.

Some 40% of these plaintiffs had been involved in complaints about the authorities. Only two won their cases.

And the site appears to be censored - five other cases we have investigated are missing from the database.

The issue is that the police enjoy "considerable discretion" in dealing with "troublemakers," according to Nicola MacBean from The Rights Practice, a human rights organisation in London.

"Sending someone to a psychiatric hospital, bypassing procedures, is too easy and too useful a tool for the local authorities."

Eyes are now on the fate of vlogger Li Yixue, who accused a police officer of sexual assault. Yixue is said to have recently been hospitalised for a second time after her social media posts talking about the experience went viral. It is reported she is now under surveillance at a hotel.

We put the findings of our investigation to the UK's Chinese embassy. It said last year the Chinese Communist Party "reaffirmed" that it must "improve the mechanisms" around the law, which it says "explicitly prohibits unlawful detention and other methods of illegally depriving or restricting citizens' personal freedom".

Additional reporting by Georgina Lam and Betty Knight

On 14 October 2023, an unusual event was held in Ukraine's most prestigious venue, Palace Ukraine in Kyiv.

Anton Tymoshenko became the first Ukrainian stand-up comedian to give a solo performance there.

"I grew up in a village with fewer people than Palace Ukraine can hold," he said after the concert. "So many people had told me: It's not going to happen... stand-up comedy has not reached that level."

It has now, to a large extent because of the full-scale invasion launched by Russia.

The invasion turned many Ukrainians away from the previously popular and lavishly promoted Russian acts and triggered a renewed interest in Ukrainian culture.

Key Ukrainian comedians say they are now making jokes to help the public deal with the grim reality of war and also help the army by raising funds.

"Stand-up comedy is a budget version of psychotherapy," Anton Tymoshenko tells the BBC.

"I like to relieve social tension with my jokes. When that happens, that's the best thing."

Another popular performer, Nastya Zukhvala, says Russia's full-scale invasion in February gave stand-up comedy in Ukraine "a boost," albeit for darker reasons.

"The demand for comedy looks totally natural to me now because comedy supports and unites.

"It can also make reality look less catastrophic. It is a tool which can help us process this stream of depressing information," she tells me.

"To stay optimistic or even sane, we've got no other choice."

So what are the jokes that are making Ukrainians laugh?

This kind of humour is grim, says comedian Hanna Kochehura, but making fun of the danger makes it easier to cope with.

"It looks even darker from abroad, and it's clear why. Anyone who's in Ukraine knows that there are no safe places here," she says.

"You never know if this air raid is going to be your last. You don't know if a Shahed drone is going to target your house or your family's house.

"Naturally, all our themes are related to the war. Because it's our life now. Stand-up comedy is a frank genre where comedians speak about their own experiences or thoughts," Ms Kochehura says.

Here's an example - a joke from Anton Tymoshenko's performance at Palace Ukraine:

"I never worried about a nuclear attack because I know it would mean death for rich residents of Kyiv. I live on the outskirts - but the nukes will hit central parts. Before fallout reaches me, it will have to make two changes on the metro.

"More realistically, I'll get killed by Iranian Shahed drones. The sad thing is - did you hear the noise they make? They sound very demotivating, like the cheapest kind of death."

"People can laugh at the news," Anton tells me.

"If we're not allowed to use [Western] missiles against targets in Russia — yes, that is funny because it is absurd. I build upon this absurd fact, and it becomes funny.

"Of course, Ukrainians find it funny."

Western allies were initially reluctant to allow Ukraine to use their missiles against targets in Russia for fear of escalation. But the permission was granted after months of pleading by Kyiv: first shorter-range weapons in May 2024, then long-range missiles in November.

Joking about the war is fraught with pitfalls.

Anton Tymoshenko says he is trying not to "trigger" his audiences or add to the trauma from which they may already be suffering.

"Stand-up comedy in wartime is the most difficult type. Making jokes without offending anyone is possible to do, but that would be like joking in a vacuum," he says.

But, it is usually possible to see where the line lies according to Nastya Zukhvala:

"I feel what other Ukrainians feel. If I find something sad or tragic, I don't see any need to turn it into stand-up comedy."

There's also a very practical side to stand-up comedy in Ukraine - helping its army.

"Almost all of the comedians I know have been helping the armed forces. All of us are involved in raising funds [for the Ukrainian army]. We hold charity shows and many perform in front of the military," says Hanna Kochehura.

Some, like Nastya Zukhvala's husband Serhiy Lipko, a comedian himself, are in the army.

"Culture, humour or psychology - that's all fine and well, but everything must be of practical use to the military. When so many missiles are on the way to hit you, you're not as interested in talking about art alone," says Mr Tymoshenko.

"My main task is holding concerts so I can raise funds for them."

He says he has donated more than 30m hryvnyas (£580,000; $710,000) since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.

For more than 50 years, one family has dedicated itself to caring for the biggest graveyard in Nigeria's northern city of Kaduna - much to the gratitude of other residents who do not fancy the job of dealing with the dead.

Until a few weeks ago, they did it for no formal pay - digging graves, washing corpses and tending to the vast cemetery, receiving only small donations from mourners for their labour.

The vast Tudun Wada Cemetery was set aside for the Muslim residents of the city by the authorities a century ago.

The Abdullahi family became involved in the 1970s when two brothers - Ibrahim and Adamu - began working there.

The two siblings now lie beneath the soil in the graveyard, and their sons have become the cemetery's main custodians.

"Their teachings to us, their children, was that God loves the service and would reward us for it even if we don't get any worldly gains," Ibrahim Abdullahi's oldest son Magaji told the BBC when asked why they had chosen to continue as unpaid undertakers.

The 58-year-old is now in charge at Tudun Wada - shepherding operations and the 18 members of staff or until recently - volunteers.

He and his two younger cousins - Abdullahi, 50, and Aliyu, 40, (Adamu Abdullahi's sons) - are the three full-time workers, all reporting in by 07:00 for a 12-hour shift, seven days a week.

They always need to be on call because, according to Muslim rites, a burial must be organised within a few hours of someone's death.

Magaji tends to get the call on his mobile, either directly from a relative or an imam - all religious clerics in the city have his number.

"A lot of people have our numbers and as soon as someone dies, we get a call and immediately we get to work," he says.

One of the trio goes to tend to the corpse, which may include washing it and wrapping it in a shroud.

The body is measured and those details are texted back to the others so that a grave can be dug.

This can take around an hour - with two people taking it in turns to dig down 6ft (1.8m) into the earth - sometimes longer when it is in a stony area of the graveyard.

They can dig around a dozen graves in a day - hard work in the Kaduna heat.

"Today alone we have dug eight graves and it's not even noon, some days are like that," says Abdullahi, who began work at the cemetery when he was aged 20.

The cousins have experienced very stressful times - especially during religious violence when tensions flare between the city's Christian and Muslim residents. The two communities tend to live on opposite sides of the Kaduna River.

"We have had a couple of religious clashes in Kaduna but the one that sticks the most for me was one in the early 1990s. A lot of people were killed," says Magaji.

"We went round gathering the corpses and taking them off the streets."

Muslims were taken to Tudun Wada in the north of the city and Christians to graveyards in the southern suburbs.

"It was such a troubling time personally and I wasn't long in the job then but that helped enhance my resolve to continue," he says.

Usually, while the team digs a grave, at the local mosque the imam announces during one of the five daily prayers that a funeral will be taking place.

Many of the worshippers then go to where the body has been prepared for prayers - it is then transported to the graveyard for burial, often thronged by the mourners.

Once by the graveside, the shrouded body is lowered - it is covered with a layer of sticks and broken clay pots as a mark of respect. The grave is then filled to form a slightly raised bed.

After the rituals are complete and before the mourners leave, the graveyard keepers appeal for donations.

This is usually done by 72-year-old Inuwa Mohammed, the oldest worker at the cemetery, who explains the importance of Abdullahi family to the community.

He used to work with the cousins' fathers: "They were amazing people who loved what they did and have imbibed their children with this altruistic behaviour."

The little money collected will sometimes buy lunch for the crew - but is never enough for anything else. In order to survive, the family also has a small farm where they grow food.

The graves are recycled after 40 years, meaning land is not a big issue - but maintenance is.

"There is a lot that is lacking at the moment - we don't have enough equipment to work with, or good security," says Aliyu, the youngest of the cousins and who has worked there for 10 years.

He explains how part of the wall has collapsed, allowing those on the look-out for scrap metal to steal the grave markers.

Some of the graves have metal plates inscribed with a name and date of birth and death – though many do not as Islamic clerics do not encourage ostentation. Most are just outlined by stones and bricks or with a stick.

Either way, the cousins remember the location of everyone buried at the cemetery and can direct people if they have forgotten the location of a relative's grave.

Following the BBC's recent visit to the graveyard, they have seen a dramatic change in fortune.

The new local council chairman, whose office oversees the site, has decided to put them on the payroll.

"They deserve it, given the massive work they do every day," Rayyan Hussain tells the BBC.

"Graves are the final homes for us all and people who do this kind of hard work deserve to be paid, so my office would pay them as long as I am chairman."

Magaji confirms that the staff have started receiving a monthly salary for the first time:

• the five oldest, including himself, are getting 43,000 naira ($28; £22.50)
• the others, including Abdullahi and Aliyu, are receiving 20,000 naira ($13; £10.50).

This is well below the national minimum wage of $45 a month, but Mr Hussain says he hopes to increase their allowance "with time".

He says it is regrettable that the graveyard was abandoned for years by previous local council heads.

He has plans to repair parts of the fencing, install solar lights and add security, the chairman adds.

"I am also building a room in the graveyard where corpses could be washed and prepared for burials, before now all of this had to be done from homes."

For the Abdullahi family, it is all welcome investment - and Magaji hopes it will ensure that one of his 23 children will one day become a custodian of the cemetery.

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Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.

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The fire that killed at least 76 people at the Grand Kartal Hotel in the early hours of Monday is one of the deadliest disasters of its kind in Turkish history.

Some survivors have said they did not hear an alarm and experts have told the BBC they would not have expected such a high death toll in a hotel where fire protection systems were working properly.

What went wrong?

The 12-storey hotel at Turkey's popular Kartalkaya ski resort hosts tens of thousands of visitors every year, so Turks understandably want to know how such a terrible tragedy could have happened at the start of a two-week school holiday.

The interior minister said the fire started at 03:27 (00:27 GMT) in the restaurant area on the fourth floor and firefighters arrived within 45 minutes.

Some survivors have described smelling smoke as much as an hour earlier.

Culture and Tourism Mehmet Nuri Ersoy said the hotel had a fire competence certificate "issued by the fire department".

But that has been challenged by local mayor Tanju Ozcan, who said the fire department had not issued a positive report since 2007.

Some survivors say they heard no alarm, while there have been claims of inadequacies in the hotel's fire extinguishing systems.

"My wife smelled the fire," said Atakan Yelkovan, who said he was staying on the third floor of the hotel.

"We went down earlier than others. The alarm did not go off... It took about an hour to an hour-ad-a-half for the fire brigade to come. In the meantime, the fourth and fifth floors were burning. People on the upper floors were screaming."

Some guests on higher floors tried to escape with their bedding and some jumped to their deaths.

Eylem Senturk said the fire alarm did not go off until she was out of the building. Her husband had to jump off the hotel porch because of the smoke: "We are very lucky to have survived."

The BBC has tried to contact the hotel's managers regarding these allegations but has so far received no response.

Nine people, including the hotel owner, have been detained as part of the Turkish investigation.

Hotel managers have issued a statement saying they mourn the losses and are co-operating fully with the authorities.

What should have happened?

In such a big building where fire systems are fully operational, experts say fire detectors are expected to respond to a fire within seconds and send an alert to a fire control dashboard.

"In a good business, there should be someone in charge of this panel 24 hours a day, seven days a week," Kazim Beceren, president of the Turkish Fire Protection and Education Foundation, told the BBC.

The death toll is also extremely high, which raises further questions.

"There will always be fires, but we would not expect so many people to die in this type of building," said Prof Sevket Ozgur Atayilmaz, head of the Mechanical Engineering Department at Yildiz Technical University, who has worked on fire safety planning.

"If the structure is designed correctly for fire, if there are escape routes, and if the smoke is evacuated correctly, it is possible to overcome the fire without loss of life."

The interior minister said there were two fire escapes, but there are indications they were not of a good standard.

Were fire safety measures in place?

An official from the Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects (TMMOB) in Bolu, Erol Percin, said the way the fire had spread suggested that fire warning, detection and extinguishing systems might not have been present.

He said the building's exterior wooden facade should have been 100% fire-resistant, but that did not appear to be the case.

The head of the Turkish Fire Protection and Education Foundation told the BBC that the size of the fire suggested that "the fire system either does not exist or was not designed in accordance with the standards".

There were 238 people staying in the Grand Kartal Hotel at the time.

Kazim Beceren said fire safety systems were designed with the aim of taking three minutes to evacuate each floor - and a facility with more than 200 people could be evacuated in 15 to 30 minutes under ideal conditions.

When an alarm goes off, the person in charge of the fire control dashboard is expected to check the location, according to the head of the Turkish Fire Protection and Education Foundation.

If there is no indication of a false alarm or if a second detector sends a warning, fire alarms are then normally activated throughout the building.

In a properly installed system, people are then directed by announcement to the nearest fire exits, with flashing lights for people who are hearing-impaired or audible warnings for those sleeping.

As fires can spread very quickly, sprinkler systems are seen as highly important for intervention at an early stage.

So too is a back-up power source. According to fire protection regulations, signs pointing to emergency exits and lights showing the paths to these exits have to work for one to three hours, even if there is a power outage.

The engineers' and architects' union in Bolu said in a statement that "an automatic sprinkler system is mandatory" in buildings of this size.

"The photos on the hotel's website show that the automatic sprinkler system, which was supposed to be installed in 2008, was not installed. Because of this failure, the fire spread rapidly and there were casualties."

BBC Turkish has not been able to independently confirm the allegations about either the wooden cladding on the building or the hotel's fire extinguishing system.

Who checked the hotel's fire safety?

One of the big questions is whether the hotel's fire systems were properly inspected.

Bolu Mayor Tanju Ozcan said the ministry of tourism was responsible as the hotel was beyond the boundary of his town. Erol Percin agreed.

The mayor said that the last time Bolu's municipality had given a report stating the hotel was fireproof was in 2007, and there had been no such checks since then.

However, Culture and Tourism Mehmet Nuri Ersoy said the hotel did have a fire competence certificate "issued by the fire department" and inspections were down to them.

There have also been calls for relatively old structures to come under scrutiny because of changing legislation.

"Places should stop operating if they do not comply with current standards, in crowded places such as hotels, residences, nursing homes or kindergartens," says Prof Atayilmaz of Yildiz Technical University.

Officials are investigating the "mysterious deaths" of over a dozen people - most of them children - in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir.

At least 17 people, including 12 children, have died in Badhal village in Jammu's Rajouri district since 7 December.

The victims initially displayed symptoms similar to food poisoning but suddenly lost consciousness, health officials said.

The village has been declared a containment zone, but officials have stated that the disease does not appear to be infectious, and there is no fear of an epidemic.

Dr AS Bhatia, the chief of a local hospital, said that the first five patients - including four children - who were admitted had symptoms similar to food poisoning, including vomiting and diarrhoea. Others complained of sore throats and breathing problems.

But then, all of them would abruptly lose consciousness, he added.

The federal government has ordered an investigation. A special investigation team set up by the local administration, comprising police officers, pathologists and other specialists, has questioned dozens of people so far.

According to initial investigations, consumption of contaminated food and water may have been the cause. Residents of the village have been asked not to drink water from a local spring after a test sample showed it contained traces of tests found pesticides.

The deaths occurred between 7 December and 19 January and the victims were members of three related families. Six of the children who died were siblings, with ages ranging from seven to 15 years. Their houses have been sealed.

Though doctors have ruled out the possibility of an infection, an administrative order says that people identified as close contacts of the three families are being shifted to a government hospital in Rajouri, where their condition will be monitored. The order also asks all other residents of Badhal to only consume food and water provided by the administration.

"All edible materials in the infected households shall be seized by the authorities," the order said.

At least 10 people have been admitted to hospitals in Rajouri, Jammu and Chandigarh city and are being treated.

Dr Shuja Quadri, an epidemiologist at the Government Medical College in Rajouri, said that the disease is localised and that they have ruled out the possibility of viral, bacterial, protozoal and zoonotic infections.

Among the second cluster of patients who were admitted on 12 December, five people, including a one-year-old child, have recovered.

"This was a ray of hope for us," Dr Bhatia said.

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Lynn Ban, a celebrity jewellery designer from Singapore who starred in the Netflix reality show Bling Empire, has died a month after undergoing brain surgery following a ski accident.

Her son Sebastian confirmed her death on an Instagram post on Wednesday, where he paid tribute to his 51-year-old mum as a "best friend and the best mother".

The accident happened in Aspen in the US on Christmas Eve.

Ban's family did not reveal her immediate cause of death.

In a social media post on New Year's Eve, Ban had revealed that while skiing at the top of a mountain she had fallen and "face planted".

As she was wearing a helmet, "it didn't seem that bad at the time and I was able to ski to the bottom," she had said, adding that a ski patrol officer later checked for a concussion and cleared her.

But she still had "a bit of a headache" and decided to go to a hospital, on the advice of a paramedic. She then discovered she had a brain bleed, and went for an emergency craniotomy.

"In a blink of an eye... life can change," she had written in the post, which was accompanied by a picture of her in bed with her head partially shaved. "There's a long road of recovery ahead but I'm a survivor."

Born in Singapore, Ban had worked in New York, London and Paris.

Her designs have been worn by pop stars Madonna, Beyonce, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Cardi B and Billie Eilish, according to her website.

On Bling Empire New York in 2023, she was part of a cast of Asian American socialites who "flaunt their fortunes — and fashions — while bringing the drama and living it up in New York City", according to Netflix.

In his tribute, Sebastian Ban said he wanted the world to know who his mum was as a person.

"She always had a smile on her face even when times are tough during her recovery process," he said.

"She is a fighter until the end and is the strongest woman I know," he said.

The world's largest iceberg is on a collision course with a remote British island, potentially putting penguins and seals in danger.

The iceberg is spinning northwards from Antarctica towards South Georgia, a rugged British territory and wildlife haven, where it could ground and smash into pieces. It is currently 173 miles (280km) away.

Countless birds and seals died on South Georgia's icy coves and beaches when past giant icebergs stopped them feeding.

"Icebergs are inherently dangerous. I would be extraordinarily happy if it just completely missed us," sea captain Simon Wallace tells BBC News, speaking from the South Georgia government vessel Pharos.

Around the world a group of scientists, sailors and fishermen are anxiously checking satellite pictures to monitor the daily movements of this queen of icebergs.

It is known as A23a and is one of the world's oldest.

It calved, or broke off, from the Filchner Ice Shelf in Antarctica in 1986 but got stuck on the seafloor and then trapped in an ocean vortex.

Finally, in December, it broke free and is now on its final journey, speeding into oblivion.

The warmer waters north of Antarctica are melting and weakening its vast cliffs that tower up to 1,312ft (400m), taller than the Shard in London.

It once measured 3,900 sq km, but the latest satellite pictures show it is slowly decaying. It is now around 3,500 sq km, roughly the size of the English county of Cornwall.

And large slabs of ice are breaking off, plunging into the waters around its edges.

A23a could break into vast segments any day, which may then hang around for years, like floating cities of ice cruising uncontrollably around South Georgia.

This isn't the first huge iceberg to threaten South Georgia and Sandwich Islands.

In 2004 one called A38 grounded on its continental shelf, leaving dead penguin chicks and seal pups on beaches as massive ice chunks blocked their access to feeding grounds.

The territory is home to precious colonies of King Emperor penguins and millions of elephant and fur seals.

"South Georgia sits in iceberg alley so impacts are to be expected for both fisheries and wildlife, and both have a great capacity to adapt," says Mark Belchier, a marine ecologist who advises the South Georgia government.

Sailors and fisherman say icebergs are an increasing problem. In 2023 one called A76 gave them a scare when it came close to grounding.

"Chunks of it were tipping up, so they looked like great ice towers, an ice city on the horizon," says Mr Belchier, who saw the iceberg while at sea.

Those slabs are still lingering around the islands today.

"It is in bits from the size of several Wembley stadiums down to pieces the size of your desk," says Andrew Newman from Argos Froyanes, a fishing company that works in South Georgia.

"Those pieces basically cover the island - we have to work our way through it," says Captain Wallace.

The sailors on his ship must be constantly vigilant. "We have searchlights on all night to try to see ice - it can come from nowhere," he explains.

A76 was a "gamechanger", according to Mr Newman, with "huge impact on our operations and on keeping our vessel and crew safe".

All three men describe a rapidly changing environment, with glacial retreat visible year-to-year, and volatile levels of sea ice.

Climate change is unlikely to have been behind the birth of A23a because it calved so long ago, before much of the impacts of rising temperatures that we are now seeing.

But giant icebergs are part of our future. As Antarctica becomes more unstable with warmer ocean and air temperatures, more vast pieces of the ice sheets will break away.

Before its time comes to an end though, A23a has left a parting gift for scientists.

A team with the British Antarctic Survey on the Sir David Attenborough research vessel found themselves close to A23a in 2023.

The scientists scrambled to exploit the rare opportunity to investigate what mega icebergs do to the environment.

The ship sailed into a crack in the iceberg's gigantic walls, and PhD researcher Laura Taylor collected precious water samples 400m away from its cliffs.

"I saw a massive wall of ice way higher than me, as far as I could see. It has different colours in different places. Chunks were falling off - it was quite magnificent," she explains from her lab in Cambridge where she is now analysing the samples.

Her work looks at what the impact the melt water is having on the carbon cycle in the southern ocean.

"This isn't just water like we drink. It's full of nutrients and chemicals, as well as tiny animals like phytoplankton frozen inside," Ms Taylor says.

As it melts, the iceberg releases those elements into the water, changing the physics and chemistry of the ocean.

That could store more carbon deep in the ocean, as the particles sink from the surface. That would naturally lock away some of the planet's carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to climate change.

Icebergs are notoriously unpredictable and no-one knows what exactly it will do next.

But soon the behemoth should appear, looming on the islands' horizons, as big as the territory itself.

As Thailand's long-awaited equal marriage law comes into effect on Thursday, police officer Pisit "Kew" Sirihirunchai hopes to be the first in line to marry his long-term partner Chanatip "Jane" Sirihirunchai.

Some 180 same-sex couples are registering their unions at one of Bangkok's grandest shopping malls, in an event city officials helped organise to celebrate this legal milestone.

"We have been ready for such a long time," Pisit says. "We have just been waiting for the law to catch up and support us."

The two men have been together for seven years. Eager to formalise their relationship, they have already gone to a Buddhist monk to give them an auspicious new last name they can share – Sirihirunchai. They have also asked local officials to issue a letter of intent, which they both signed, pledging to get married.

But they say having their union recognised under Thai law is what they really dreamed of. It means LGBTQ+ couples now have the same rights as any other couple to get engaged and married, to manage their assets, to inherit and to adopt children.

They can make decisions about medical treatment if their partner becomes ill and incapacitated, or extend financial benefits – such as Pisit's government pension – to their spouse.

"We want to build a future together – build a house, start a small business together, maybe a café," he adds, making a list of all that the law has enabled. "We want to build our future together and to take care of each other."

Prisit says he has the full support of his colleagues in the police station, and hopes he can encourage others working in government service to be open about their sexuality: "They should feel emboldened because they can see us coming out with no repercussions, only positive responses."

As a younger couple Prisit and Chanatip - both in their mid-30s - have experienced fewer obstacles than those who came out much earlier.

But for their community, it has been a long journey. Despite Thailand's famed tolerance towards LGBTQ+ people, activists say it took a sustained campaign to win legal recognition.

"We've been waiting for this day for 18 years - the day everyone can recognise us openly, when we no longer need to be evasive or hide," says 59-year-old Rungtiwa Thangkanopast, who will marry her partner of 18 years in May.

She had been in a marriage, arranged by her family, to a gay man, who later died. She had a daughter, through IVF, but after her husband's death began spending time, and later helping run, one of the first lesbian pubs in Bangkok. Then she met Phanlavee, who's now 45 and goes by her first name only.

On Valentine's Day 2013 the two women went to the Bang Rak district office in central Bangkok to ask to be officially married - a popular place for marriage registration because the name in Thai means "Love Town".

This was the time when LGBTQ+ couples began challenging the official view of marriage as an exclusively heterosexual partnership by attempting to get marriage certificates at district offices.

There were around 400 heterosexual couples waiting with them on that day. Rungtiwa and Phanlavee were refused, and the Thai media mocked their effort, using derogatory slang for lesbians.

Still, activists managed to persuade the government to consider changing the marriage laws. A proposed civil partnership bill was put before parliament, offering some official recognition to same-sex couples, but not the same legal rights as heterosexual couples.

A military coup in 2014 which deposed the elected government interrupted the movement. It would be another decade before full marriage equality was approved by parliament, in part because of the rise of young, progressive political parties that championed the cause.

Their message resonated with Thais – and attitudes too had changed. By this time, same-sex marriage was legalised in many Western countries and same-sex love had become normalised in Thai culture too.

Such was the shift in favour of the law that it was passed last year by a thumping majority of 400 votes to just 10 against. Even in the notoriously conservative senate only four opposed the law.

And couples like Rungtiwa and Phanleeva now have their chance to have their love for each other recognised, without the risk of public derision.

"With this law comes the legitimacy of our family," Rungtiwa says, "We're no longer viewed as weirdos just because our daughter isn't being raised by heterosexual parents."

The new law takes out gender-specific terms like man, woman, husband and wife from 70 sections of the Thai Civil Code covering marriage, and replaces them with neutral terms like individual and spouse.

However, there are still dozens of laws in the Thai legal code which have not yet been made gender-neutral, and there are still obstacles in the way of same-sex couples using surrogacy to have a family..

Parents are still defined under Thai law as a mother and a father. The law also does not yet allow people to use their preferred gender on official documents; they are still stuck with their birth gender. These are areas where activists say they will still need to keep pushing for change.

Yet it is a historic moment for Thailand, which is an outlier in Asia in recognising marriage equality. And it is especially significant for older couples, who have had to ride out the shifts in attitude.

"I really hope people will put away the old, stereotypical ideas that gay men cannot have true love,"says Chakkrit "Ink" Vadhanavira.

He and his partner Prinn, both in their 40s, have been together for 24 years.

"The two of us have proved that we genuinely love each other through thick and thin for more than 20 years," Chakkrit says."We have been ready to take care of each other since our first day together. We are no different from heterosexual couples."

While Chakkrit's parents quickly accepted their partnership, it took Prinn's parents seven years before they could do so.

The couple also wanted to share the production business they ran together, and other assets, as a couple, so they asked Prinn's parents to adopt Chakkrit officially, giving him the same family name. Prinn says the new law has brought welcome legal clarity to them.

"For example, right now when a same sex couple buy something together – a large item - they cannot share ownership of it," said Prinn. "And one of us passes away, what both have us have earned together cannot be passed on to the other. That's why marriage equality is very significant."

Today, says Prinn, both sets of parents treat them as they would just like any other married children.

And when they had relationship problems like any other couple, their parents helped them.

"My dad even started reading gay magazines to understand me better. It was quite cute to see that."

Additional reporting by Thanyarat Doksone and Ryn Jirenuwat in Bangkok

Meta, the company which owns social media networks Facebook and Instagram, has denied forcing users to follow official accounts belonging to senior figures in the new Trump administration.

Some users of the platforms had complained following Donald Trump's inauguration on Monday that they had "automatically" been made to follow the new president, as well as those of Vice-President JD Vance and First Lady Melania Trump.

Meta spokesman Andy Stone explained that the accounts were managed by the White House, which had updated them to reflect the new position holders.

"This is the same procedure we followed during the last presidential transition," he wrote in a statement.

The accounts carry the handles Potus - which stands for "president of the United States" - as well as VicePresident and Flotus, an acronym for the first lady.

Archived versions of the pages show the Potus and Flotus accounts previously carried the name and official portrait of Joe Biden and Jill Biden, respectively.

Mr Stone added that it "may take some time for follow and unfollow requests to go through as these accounts change hands".

Trump became US president for the second time on Monday and quickly set about issuing a range of executive orders and directives asserting his political agenda - ranging from withdrawing from the World Health Organisation to declaring a national emergency at the border with Mexico.

His inauguration was attended by some of the most influential tech billionaires, including Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg and X chief Elon Musk, who also has an advisory role in the new administration.

Trump has previously been heavily critical of Meta, which banned him in 2021 for what it described as his "praise for people engaged in violence" during the 6 January riots at the US Capitol.

The president and his allies also accused the firm of co-operating with the Biden administration to supress reports concerning allegations about Biden's son, Hunter, and some content surrounding the Covid pandemic. Mr Zuckerberg said he regretted the decision.

In August, Trump wrote in a book that Mr Zuckerberg would "spend the rest of his life in prison" if he attempted to interfere in the 2024 presidential election.

Since Trump's election win in early November, though, Mr Zuckerberg appears to have curried favour with him, dining with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago residence at the end of the month and donating $1m (£786,000) towards his inauguration a few weeks later.

Meta also said earlier this month that it would end third-party fact-checking in favour of an approach similar to X's community notes, in an apparent attempt to address some of Trump's prior criticisms.

The company said this marked a return to its "fundamental commitment to free expression".

Ayghad never thought that his dream of returning to his farmland could turn into a nightmare.

He fights his tears as he shows us a picture of his late father, smiling and surrounded by abundant olive trees in their land in Idlib province, northwestern Syria.

The picture was taken five years ago, a few months before forces linked to the former government took over their village, near the city of Saraqeb.

The city was a strategic stronghold for Syrian opposition factions for years, before forces allied with the fallen regime of Bashar al-Assad launched an offensive against rebels in Idlib province at the end of 2019.

Hundreds of thousands of residents fled their homes, as Assad forces took over several other rebel strongholds in the northwest by early 2020.

Ayghad and his father were among those displaced.

"We had to leave because of the fighting and air strikes," Ayghad says, as the tears fill his eyes. "My father was refusing to leave. He wanted to die in his land."

The father and son longed to return ever since. And when opposition forces regained control of their village in November 2024, their dream was about to come true. But disaster soon struck.

"We went to our land to harvest some olives," Ayghad explains. "We went in two separate cars. My father took a different route back to our home in the city of Idlib. I warned him against it, but he insisted. His car hit a landmine and exploded."

Ayghad's father died instantly at the scene. Not only did he lose his dad that day, but he also lost his family's main source of income. Their farmland, spread across 100,000 square metres, was filled with 50-year-old olive trees. It's now been designated a dangerous minefield.

At least 144 people, including 27 children, have been killed by landmines and unexploded remnants of war since Bashar al-Assad's regime fell in early December, according to the Halo Trust, an international organisation specialising in clearing landmines and other explosive devices.

The Syria Civil Defence - known as the White Helmets - told the BBC that many of those killed were farmers and landowners who were trying to go back to their land after the Assad regime collapsed.

Unexploded remnants of war pose a grave threat to life in Syria. They're mainly split into two categories. The first are unexploded ordnances (UXOs) like cluster bombs, mortars and grenades.

Hassan Talfah, who heads the White Helmets team clearing UXOs in north-western Syria, explains that these devices are less challenging to clear because they are usually visible above ground.

The White Helmets say that, between 27 November and 3 January, they cleared some 822 UXOs in north-western Syria.

The bigger challenge, Mr Talfah says, lies in the second category of munition – landmines. He explains that former government forces planted hundreds of thousands of them across various areas in Syria - mainly on farmland.

Most of the deaths recorded since the Assad regime fell happened on former battle front lines, according to the White Helmets. Most of those killed were men.

Mr Talfah took us to two huge fields riddled with landmines. Our car followed his on a long, narrow and winding dirt road. It's the only safe route to reach the fields.

Along the sides of the road, children run around the area. Hassan tells us they are from families who have recently returned. But the dangers of mines surround them.

As we get out of the car, he points to a barrier in the distance.

"This was the last point separating areas under the control of government forces from those held by opposition groups" in Idlib province, he tells us.

He adds that Assad forces planted thousands of mines in the fields beyond the barrier, to stop rebel forces from advancing.

The fields around where we stand were once vital farmlands. Today, they are all barren, with no greenery visible except for the green tops of land mines that we can see using binoculars.

With no expertise in clearing land mines, all the White Helmets can do for now is cordon these fields off, and hammer down signs along their borders warning people off.

They also spray-paint warning messages on dirt barriers and houses around the edges of the fields. "Danger – landmines ahead," they read.

They lead campaigns to raise awareness among locals about the dangers of entering contaminated lands.

On our way back, we come across one farmer in his 30s who has recently returned. He tells us that some of the land belongs to his family.

"We couldn't recognise any of it," Mohammed says. "We used to plant wheat, barley, cumin and cotton. Now we cannot do anything. And as long as we cannot cultivate these lands, we will always be in poor economic condition," he adds, clearly frustrated.

The White Helmets say they have identified and cordoned off around 117 minefields in just over a month.

They are not the only ones working to clear mines and UXOs, but it seems that there is little co-ordination between the efforts of various organisations.

There are no accurate statistics for the areas contaminated with UXOs or landmines. But international organisations, such as the Halo Trust, have drawn up approximate maps.

Halo Syria programme manager Damian O'Brien says that a comprehensive survey needs to be done for the country to understand the scale of contamination. He estimates that around a million devices would need to be destroyed to protect civilian lives in Syria.

"Any Syrian army position is quite likely to have some landmines laid around it as a defensive technique," Mr O'Brien says.

"In places like Homs and Hama, there are entire neighbourhoods which have been almost completely destroyed. Anybody going into those structures to assess them, for either demolition or to rebuild them, needs to be aware that there may well be unexploded items in there, whether it's bullets, cluster munitions, grenades, shells."

The White Helmets came across a treasure trove that could aid efforts in clearing mines. In their office in the city of Idlib, Mr Talfah shows us a stack of maps and documents, left behind by government forces.

They show locations, numbers and types of mines planted in different fields across northwestern Syria.

"We will hand over these documents to the bodies that will deal with landmines directly," Mr Talfah says.

But the local expertise currently available in Syria does not seem to be enough to combat the serious dangers that unexploded munitions pose to civilian life.

Mr O'Brien stresses that the international community needs to work alongside the new government in Syria to improve expertise in the country.

"What we need from donors is the funding, to be able to expand our capacity, which means employing more people, buying more machines and operating over a wider area," he says.

As for Mr Talfah, clearing UXOs and raising awareness about their dangers has become a personal mission. Ten years ago, he lost his own leg while clearing a cluster bomb.

He says that his injury, and all the heart-breaking incidents he's witnessed of children and civilians impacted by UXOs, have only fuelled his persistence to keep working.

"I never want any civilian or team member to go through what I have," he says.

"I cannot describe the feeling I get when I clear a danger threatening the life of civilians."

But until international and local efforts are coordinated to neutralise the danger of landmines, the lives of many civilians, especially children, remain at risk.

The price to climb Mount Everest will soon increase for the first time in nearly a decade, as Nepal announces a sharp mark-up in permit fees.

From September, those seeking to summit the world's tallest mountain during peak season will have to pay $15,000 (£12,180), a 36% rise on the longstanding fee of $11,000, officials said on Wednesday.

Fees for those wanting to climb outside the peak April to May period will also increase by the same percentage - meaning it will cost $7,500 during September to November, and $3,750 during December to February.

Income from permit fees is a key source of revenue for Nepal, with mountain climbing and trekking contributing more than 4% to the country's economy.

Mountaineering experts often criticise Nepal's government for allowing too many climbers on Everest, however, with about 300 permits to the mountain issued per year.

It is unclear if the price increase, which was under discussion since last year, will slow demand.

"The royalty (permit fees) had not been reviewed for a long time," Narayan Prasad Regmi, director general of the Department of Tourism, told Reuters. "We have updated them now."

Regmi did not specify how the extra revenue would be used.

In April 2024, Nepal's Supreme Court ordered the government to limit the number of mountaineering permits issued for Everest and other peaks, saying that the mountains' capacity "must be respected".

The preliminary order did not set a maximum number, though.

Amid concerns about overcrowding on Everest and climbers queuing in dangerous conditions to reach the summit, the Nepalese army in 2019 began conducting an annual clean-up of the mountain, which is often described as the world's highest garbage dump.

In that time at least five clean-ups have collected 119 tonnes of rubbish, 14 human corpses and some skeletons, according to the army - but it is estimated that a further 200 bodies remain on the mountain.

Nepal is home to eight of the world's 14 highest mountains, including Everest.

A US lawsuit filed on behalf of LinkedIn Premium users accuses the social media platform of sharing their private messages with other companies to train artificial intelligence (AI) models.

It alleges that in August last year, the world's largest professional social networking website "quietly" introduced a privacy setting, automatically opting users in to programme that allowed third parties to use their personal data to train AI.

It also accuses the Microsoft-owned company of concealing its actions a month later by changing its privacy policy to say user information could be disclosed for AI training purposes.

A LinkedIn spokesperson told BBC News that "these are false claims with no merit.

The lawsuit was filed in a California federal court on behalf of a LinkedIn Premium user and "all others" in a similar situation.

The filing also said LinkedIn changed its 'frequently asked questions' section to say that users could choose not to share data for AI purposes but that doing so would not affect training that had already taken place.

"LinkedIn's actions... indicate a pattern of attempting to cover its tracks," the lawsuit said.

"This behaviour suggests that LinkedIn was fully aware that it had violated its contractual promises and privacy standards and aimed to minimise public scrutiny".

According to an email LinkedIn sent to its users last year, it has not enabled user data sharing for AI purposes in the UK, the European Economic Area and Switzerland.

Additional reporting by Lily Jamali

At least 11 people have been killed and five injured after they fled rumours of a fire on board their train in India, only to be hit by another train.

Railway officials said the passengers got down from the Mumbai-bound train in western Maharashtra state after someone pulled the emergency cord, causing it to stop.

They were hit by a train on an adjacent track. It was not immediately clear whether there had actually been a fire.

India has launched a $30m (£24bn) programme to modernise its railways in recent years but this has been marred by a series of accidents, including a major three-train crash in 2023 in the state of Odisha which left nearly 300 people dead.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said in a post on X that he was "deeply saddened by the tragic loss of lives" during the incident near Pachora in Jalgaon district, about 400km from Mumbai, India's financial capital.

He said eight ambulances had been dispatched and hospitals were on standby.

The crash will be seen as a setback for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has called for modernisation of the railways to boost the economy and connectivity.

There are plans to boost spending on the programme in next month's budget, Reuters news agency reports.

When Zhang Junjie was 17 he decided to protest outside his university about rules made by China's government. Within days he had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital and treated for schizophrenia.

Junjie is one of dozens of people identified by the BBC who were hospitalised after protesting or complaining to the authorities.

Many people we spoke to were given anti-psychotic drugs, and in some cases electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), without their consent.

There have been reports for decades that hospitalisation was being used in China as a way of detaining dissenting citizens without involving the courts. However, the BBC has found that an issue which legislation sought to resolve, has recently made a comeback.

Junjie says he was restrained and beaten by hospital staff before being forced to take medication.

His ordeal began in 2022, after he protested against China's harsh lockdown policies. He says his professors spotted him after just five minutes and contacted his father, who took him back to the family home. He says his father called the police, and the next day - on his 18th birthday - two men drove him to what they claimed was a Covid test centre, but was actually a hospital.

"The doctors told me I had a very serious mental disease… Then they tied me to a bed. The nurses and doctors repeatedly told me, because of my views on the party and the government, then I must be mentally ill. It was terrifying," he told the BBC World Service. He was there for 12 days.

Junjie believes his father felt forced to hand him over to the authorities because he worked for the local government.

Just over a month after being discharged, Junjie was once again arrested. Defying a fireworks ban at Chinese New Year (a measure brought in to fight air pollution) he had made a video of himself setting them off. Someone uploaded it online and police managed to link it to Junjie.

He was accused of "picking quarrels and troublemaking" - a charge frequently used to silence criticism of the Chinese government. Junjie says he was forcibly hospitalised again for more than two months.

After being discharged, Junjie was prescribed anti-psychotic drugs. We have seen the prescription - it was for Aripiprazole, used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

"Taking the medicine made me feel like my brain was quite a mess," he says, adding that police would come to his house to check he had taken it.

Fearing a third hospitalisation, Junjie decided to leave China. He told his parents he was returning to university to pack up his room - but, in fact, he fled to New Zealand.

He didn't say goodbye to family or friends.

Junjie is one of 59 people who the BBC has confirmed - either by speaking to them or their relatives, or by going through court documents - have been hospitalised on mental health grounds after protesting or challenging the authorities.

The issue has been acknowledged by China's government - the country's 2013 Mental Health Law aimed to stop this abuse, making it illegal to treat someone who is not mentally unwell. It also explicitly states psychiatric admission must be voluntary unless the patient is a danger to themselves or others.

In fact, the number of people detained in mental health hospitals against their will has recently surged, a leading Chinese lawyer told the BBC World Service. Huang Xuetao, who was involved in drafting the law, blames a weakening of civil society and a lack of checks and balances.

"I have come across lots of cases like this. The police want power while avoiding responsibility," he says. "Anyone who knows the shortcomings of this system can abuse it."

An activist called Jie Lijian told us he had been treated for mental illness without his consent in 2018.

Lijian says he was arrested for attending a protest demanding better pay at a factory. He says police interrogated him for three days before taking him to a psychiatric hospital.

Like Junjie, Lijian says he was prescribed anti-psychotic drugs that impaired his critical thinking.

After a week in the hospital, he says he refused any more medication. After fighting with staff, and being told he was causing trouble, Lijian was sent for ECT - a therapy which involves passing electric currents through a patient's brain.

"The pain was from head to toe. My whole body felt like it wasn't my own. It was really painful. Electric shock on. Then off. Electric shock on. Then off. I fainted several times. I felt like I was dying," he says.

He says he was discharged after 52 days. He now has a part-time job in Los Angeles and is seeking asylum in the US.

Or watch on YouTube outside the UK.

In 2019, the year after Lijian says he was hospitalised, the Chinese Medical Doctor Association updated its ECT guidelines, stating it should only ever be administered with consent, and under general anaesthetic.

We wanted to find out more about the doctors' involvement in such cases.

Speaking to foreign media such as the BBC without permission could get them into trouble, so our only option was to go undercover.

We booked phone consultations with doctors working at four hospitals which, according to our evidence, are involved with forced hospitalisations.

We used an invented story about a relative who had been hospitalised for posting anti-government comments online, and asked five doctors if they had ever come across cases of patients being sent in by police.

Four confirmed they had.

"The psychiatric department has a type of admission called 'troublemakers'," one doctor told us.

Another doctor, from the hospital where Junjie was held, appears to confirm his story that police continued surveillance of patients once discharged.

"The police will check up on you at home to make sure you take your medicine. If you don't take it you might break the law again," they said.

We approached the hospital in question for comment but it did not respond.

We have been given access to the medical records of democracy activist Song Zaimin, hospitalised for a fifth time last year, which makes it clear how closely political views appear to be tied to a psychiatric diagnosis.

"Today, he was… talking a lot, speaking incoherently, and criticising the Communist Party. Therefore, he was sent to our hospital for inpatient treatment by the police, doctors, and his local residents' committee. This was an involuntary hospitalisation," it says.

We asked Professor Thomas G Schulze, president-elect of the World Psychiatric Association, to review these notes. He replied:

"For what is described here, no-one should be involuntarily admitted and treated against his will. It reeks of political abuse."

Between 2013 and 2017, more than 200 people reported they had been wrongfully hospitalised by the authorities, according to a group of citizen journalists in China who documented abuses of the Mental Health Law.

Their reporting ended in 2017, because the group's founder was arrested and subsequently jailed.

For victims seeking justice, the legal system appears stacked against them.

A man we are calling Mr Li, who was hospitalised in 2023 after protesting against the local police, tried to take legal action against the authorities for his incarceration.

Unlike Junjie, doctors told Mr Li he wasn't ill but then the police arranged an external psychiatrist to assess him, who diagnosed him with bipolar disorder, and he was held for 45 days.

Once released, he decided to challenge the diagnosis.

"If I don't sue the police it's like I accept being mentally ill. This will have a big impact on my future and my freedom because police can use it as a reason to lock me up any time," he says.

In China, the records of anyone ever diagnosed with a serious mental health disorder could be shared with the police, and even local residents' committees.

But Mr Li was not successful - the courts rejected his appeal.

"We hear our leaders talking about the rule of law," he told us. "We never dreamed one day we could be locked up in a mental hospital."

The BBC has found 112 people listed on the official website for Chinese court decisions who, between 2013 and 2024, attempted to take legal action against police, local governments or hospitals for such treatment.

Some 40% of these plaintiffs had been involved in complaints about the authorities. Only two won their cases.

And the site appears to be censored - five other cases we have investigated are missing from the database.

The issue is that the police enjoy "considerable discretion" in dealing with "troublemakers," according to Nicola MacBean from The Rights Practice, a human rights organisation in London.

"Sending someone to a psychiatric hospital, bypassing procedures, is too easy and too useful a tool for the local authorities."

Eyes are now on the fate of vlogger Li Yixue, who accused a police officer of sexual assault. Yixue is said to have recently been hospitalised for a second time after her social media posts talking about the experience went viral. It is reported she is now under surveillance at a hotel.

We put the findings of our investigation to the UK's Chinese embassy. It said last year the Chinese Communist Party "reaffirmed" that it must "improve the mechanisms" around the law, which it says "explicitly prohibits unlawful detention and other methods of illegally depriving or restricting citizens' personal freedom".

Additional reporting by Georgina Lam and Betty Knight

The world's largest iceberg is on a collision course with a remote British island, potentially putting penguins and seals in danger.

The iceberg is spinning northwards from Antarctica towards South Georgia, a rugged British territory and wildlife haven, where it could ground and smash into pieces. It is currently 173 miles (280km) away.

Countless birds and seals died on South Georgia's icy coves and beaches when past giant icebergs stopped them feeding.

"Icebergs are inherently dangerous. I would be extraordinarily happy if it just completely missed us," sea captain Simon Wallace tells BBC News, speaking from the South Georgia government vessel Pharos.

Around the world a group of scientists, sailors and fishermen are anxiously checking satellite pictures to monitor the daily movements of this queen of icebergs.

It is known as A23a and is one of the world's oldest.

It calved, or broke off, from the Filchner Ice Shelf in Antarctica in 1986 but got stuck on the seafloor and then trapped in an ocean vortex.

Finally, in December, it broke free and is now on its final journey, speeding into oblivion.

The warmer waters north of Antarctica are melting and weakening its vast cliffs that tower up to 1,312ft (400m), taller than the Shard in London.

It once measured 3,900 sq km, but the latest satellite pictures show it is slowly decaying. It is now around 3,500 sq km, roughly the size of the English county of Cornwall.

And large slabs of ice are breaking off, plunging into the waters around its edges.

A23a could break into vast segments any day, which may then hang around for years, like floating cities of ice cruising uncontrollably around South Georgia.

This isn't the first huge iceberg to threaten South Georgia and Sandwich Islands.

In 2004 one called A38 grounded on its continental shelf, leaving dead penguin chicks and seal pups on beaches as massive ice chunks blocked their access to feeding grounds.

The territory is home to precious colonies of King Emperor penguins and millions of elephant and fur seals.

"South Georgia sits in iceberg alley so impacts are to be expected for both fisheries and wildlife, and both have a great capacity to adapt," says Mark Belchier, a marine ecologist who advises the South Georgia government.

Sailors and fisherman say icebergs are an increasing problem. In 2023 one called A76 gave them a scare when it came close to grounding.

"Chunks of it were tipping up, so they looked like great ice towers, an ice city on the horizon," says Mr Belchier, who saw the iceberg while at sea.

Those slabs are still lingering around the islands today.

"It is in bits from the size of several Wembley stadiums down to pieces the size of your desk," says Andrew Newman from Argos Froyanes, a fishing company that works in South Georgia.

"Those pieces basically cover the island - we have to work our way through it," says Captain Wallace.

The sailors on his ship must be constantly vigilant. "We have searchlights on all night to try to see ice - it can come from nowhere," he explains.

A76 was a "gamechanger", according to Mr Newman, with "huge impact on our operations and on keeping our vessel and crew safe".

All three men describe a rapidly changing environment, with glacial retreat visible year-to-year, and volatile levels of sea ice.

Climate change is unlikely to have been behind the birth of A23a because it calved so long ago, before much of the impacts of rising temperatures that we are now seeing.

But giant icebergs are part of our future. As Antarctica becomes more unstable with warmer ocean and air temperatures, more vast pieces of the ice sheets will break away.

Before its time comes to an end though, A23a has left a parting gift for scientists.

A team with the British Antarctic Survey on the Sir David Attenborough research vessel found themselves close to A23a in 2023.

The scientists scrambled to exploit the rare opportunity to investigate what mega icebergs do to the environment.

The ship sailed into a crack in the iceberg's gigantic walls, and PhD researcher Laura Taylor collected precious water samples 400m away from its cliffs.

"I saw a massive wall of ice way higher than me, as far as I could see. It has different colours in different places. Chunks were falling off - it was quite magnificent," she explains from her lab in Cambridge where she is now analysing the samples.

Her work looks at what the impact the melt water is having on the carbon cycle in the southern ocean.

"This isn't just water like we drink. It's full of nutrients and chemicals, as well as tiny animals like phytoplankton frozen inside," Ms Taylor says.

As it melts, the iceberg releases those elements into the water, changing the physics and chemistry of the ocean.

That could store more carbon deep in the ocean, as the particles sink from the surface. That would naturally lock away some of the planet's carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to climate change.

Icebergs are notoriously unpredictable and no-one knows what exactly it will do next.

But soon the behemoth should appear, looming on the islands' horizons, as big as the territory itself.

As Thailand's long-awaited equal marriage law comes into effect on Thursday, police officer Pisit "Kew" Sirihirunchai hopes to be the first in line to marry his long-term partner Chanatip "Jane" Sirihirunchai.

Some 180 same-sex couples are registering their unions at one of Bangkok's grandest shopping malls, in an event city officials helped organise to celebrate this legal milestone.

"We have been ready for such a long time," Pisit says. "We have just been waiting for the law to catch up and support us."

The two men have been together for seven years. Eager to formalise their relationship, they have already gone to a Buddhist monk to give them an auspicious new last name they can share – Sirihirunchai. They have also asked local officials to issue a letter of intent, which they both signed, pledging to get married.

But they say having their union recognised under Thai law is what they really dreamed of. It means LGBTQ+ couples now have the same rights as any other couple to get engaged and married, to manage their assets, to inherit and to adopt children.

They can make decisions about medical treatment if their partner becomes ill and incapacitated, or extend financial benefits – such as Pisit's government pension – to their spouse.

"We want to build a future together – build a house, start a small business together, maybe a café," he adds, making a list of all that the law has enabled. "We want to build our future together and to take care of each other."

Prisit says he has the full support of his colleagues in the police station, and hopes he can encourage others working in government service to be open about their sexuality: "They should feel emboldened because they can see us coming out with no repercussions, only positive responses."

As a younger couple Prisit and Chanatip - both in their mid-30s - have experienced fewer obstacles than those who came out much earlier.

But for their community, it has been a long journey. Despite Thailand's famed tolerance towards LGBTQ+ people, activists say it took a sustained campaign to win legal recognition.

"We've been waiting for this day for 18 years - the day everyone can recognise us openly, when we no longer need to be evasive or hide," says 59-year-old Rungtiwa Thangkanopast, who will marry her partner of 18 years in May.

She had been in a marriage, arranged by her family, to a gay man, who later died. She had a daughter, through IVF, but after her husband's death began spending time, and later helping run, one of the first lesbian pubs in Bangkok. Then she met Phanlavee, who's now 45 and goes by her first name only.

On Valentine's Day 2013 the two women went to the Bang Rak district office in central Bangkok to ask to be officially married - a popular place for marriage registration because the name in Thai means "Love Town".

This was the time when LGBTQ+ couples began challenging the official view of marriage as an exclusively heterosexual partnership by attempting to get marriage certificates at district offices.

There were around 400 heterosexual couples waiting with them on that day. Rungtiwa and Phanlavee were refused, and the Thai media mocked their effort, using derogatory slang for lesbians.

Still, activists managed to persuade the government to consider changing the marriage laws. A proposed civil partnership bill was put before parliament, offering some official recognition to same-sex couples, but not the same legal rights as heterosexual couples.

A military coup in 2014 which deposed the elected government interrupted the movement. It would be another decade before full marriage equality was approved by parliament, in part because of the rise of young, progressive political parties that championed the cause.

Their message resonated with Thais – and attitudes too had changed. By this time, same-sex marriage was legalised in many Western countries and same-sex love had become normalised in Thai culture too.

Such was the shift in favour of the law that it was passed last year by a thumping majority of 400 votes to just 10 against. Even in the notoriously conservative senate only four opposed the law.

And couples like Rungtiwa and Phanleeva now have their chance to have their love for each other recognised, without the risk of public derision.

"With this law comes the legitimacy of our family," Rungtiwa says, "We're no longer viewed as weirdos just because our daughter isn't being raised by heterosexual parents."

The new law takes out gender-specific terms like man, woman, husband and wife from 70 sections of the Thai Civil Code covering marriage, and replaces them with neutral terms like individual and spouse.

However, there are still dozens of laws in the Thai legal code which have not yet been made gender-neutral, and there are still obstacles in the way of same-sex couples using surrogacy to have a family..

Parents are still defined under Thai law as a mother and a father. The law also does not yet allow people to use their preferred gender on official documents; they are still stuck with their birth gender. These are areas where activists say they will still need to keep pushing for change.

Yet it is a historic moment for Thailand, which is an outlier in Asia in recognising marriage equality. And it is especially significant for older couples, who have had to ride out the shifts in attitude.

"I really hope people will put away the old, stereotypical ideas that gay men cannot have true love,"says Chakkrit "Ink" Vadhanavira.

He and his partner Prinn, both in their 40s, have been together for 24 years.

"The two of us have proved that we genuinely love each other through thick and thin for more than 20 years," Chakkrit says."We have been ready to take care of each other since our first day together. We are no different from heterosexual couples."

While Chakkrit's parents quickly accepted their partnership, it took Prinn's parents seven years before they could do so.

The couple also wanted to share the production business they ran together, and other assets, as a couple, so they asked Prinn's parents to adopt Chakkrit officially, giving him the same family name. Prinn says the new law has brought welcome legal clarity to them.

"For example, right now when a same sex couple buy something together – a large item - they cannot share ownership of it," said Prinn. "And one of us passes away, what both have us have earned together cannot be passed on to the other. That's why marriage equality is very significant."

Today, says Prinn, both sets of parents treat them as they would just like any other married children.

And when they had relationship problems like any other couple, their parents helped them.

"My dad even started reading gay magazines to understand me better. It was quite cute to see that."

Additional reporting by Thanyarat Doksone and Ryn Jirenuwat in Bangkok