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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ukrposhta has sold about eight million such stamps.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The name of one of her supporters stands out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Common tactic'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Our eyes are open'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The organisation announced Monday evening that it rescinded the award after the legal complaint filed by Lively alleged "abhorrent conduct" by the actor, his studio and a crisis public relations team that it said was "contrary to the values" held by the non-profit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lively also accused Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios of leading a "multi-tiered plan" to wreck her reputation in the media and online, including hiring a crisis manager who led a "sophisticated, coordinated, and well-financed retaliation plan" against her and used a "digital army" to post social media content that seemed authentic.

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

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

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

The Danish government has announced a huge boost in defence spending for Greenland, hours after US President-elect Donald Trump repeated his desire to purchase the Arctic territory.

Danish Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said the package was a "double digit billion amount" in krone, or at least $1.5bn (£1.2bn).

He described the timing of the announcement as an "irony of fate". On Monday Trump said ownership and control of the huge island was an "absolute necessity" for the US.

Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, is home to a large US space facility and is strategically important for the US, lying on its shortest route to Europe. It has major mineral and oil reserves.

Poulsen said the package would allow for the purchase of two new inspection ships, two new long-range drones and two extra dog sled teams.

It would also include funding for increased staffing at Arctic Command in the capital Nuuk and an upgrade for one of Greenland's three main civilian airports to handle F-35 supersonic fighter aircraft.

"We have not invested enough in the Arctic for many years, now we are planning a stronger presence," he said.

The defence minister did not give an exact figure for the package, but Danish media estimated it would be around 12-15bn krone.

The announcement came a day after Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social: "For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity."

Greenland's Prime Minister Mute Egede responded to Trump's comments, saying "we are not for sale".

But he added that Greenlanders should continue to be open for cooperation and trade, especially with their neighbours.

Analysts say that the plan has been under discussion for a long time and should not be seen as a direct response to Trump's comments.

Until now Denmark has been very slow to expand its military capacity in Greenland, they say, but if the country is not able to protect waters around the territory against encroachments by China and Russia then US demands for greater control are likely to grow.

Army Maj Steen Kjaergaard of the Danish Defence Academy suggests it may have been Trump's intention to pressure Denmark into such a move.

"It is likely to be sparked by the renewed Trump focus on the need for air and maritime control around Greenland and the internal developments in Greenland where some are voicing a will to look towards the US – a new international airport in Nuuk was just inaugurated," he told the BBC.

"I think Trump is smart… he gets Denmark to prioritise its Arctic military capabilities by raising this voice, without having to take over a very un-American welfare system," he said, referring to Greenland's heavy dependence on subsidies from Copenhagen.

Trump's original suggestion in 2019 that the US acquire Greenland, which is the world's largest island, led to a similarly sharp rebuke from leaders there.

At the time Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederickson described the idea as "absurd", leading Trump to cancel a state trip to the country.

He is not the first US president to suggest buying Greenland. The idea was first mooted during the 1860s under the presidency of Andrew Johnson.

American Airlines has resumed flights after suspending its services for around an hour on Tuesday due to a technical issue that impacted the systems needed to release its planes.

The nationwide halt was cancelled just before 13:00 GMT, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The disruption came during one of the busiest travel days of the year as passengers made journeys on Christmas Eve.

In a statement, the airline said a "vendor technology issue" had caused the issue and it was "all hands on deck" to minimise further disruption.

"We sincerely apologise to our customers for the inconvenience this morning," the airline said.

"It's all hands on deck as our team is working diligently to get customers where they need to go as quickly as possible."

Flights are still showing delays as the airline recovers from the nationwide issue, but real-time tracking website Flightradar24 shows planes taking off again at a number of major US travel hubs.

Passengers reported on social media being stuck on the tarmac or at gates as flights were impacted by the outage for around an hour.

In a video posted on X by a CBS reporter in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a gate agent announced a flight to Philadelphia was going to start boarding.

"The system is slowly coming back," the agent announced from a gate.

In July, American Airlines, among other major operators, grounded flights across the US due to communication issues caused by a global IT crash.

That failure - which also affected banks and emergency services - was caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike.

The former CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F) has dementia and late onset Alzheimer's disease, his legal team has said in a court document filed in New York.

Lawyers for Mike Jeffries have requested a hearing to determine whether he is mentally fit to stand trial on federal sex trafficking charges.

The 80-year-old was arrested alongside his partner in October and charged with running an international sex trafficking and prostitution business. Both men have pleaded not guilty.

A so-called competency hearing has been scheduled for June next year.

Mr Jeffries, who ran US clothing brand A&F for two decades, is accused of running a sex trafficking and prostitution business from at least 2008-15.

US prosecutors allege that he used his wealth, power and status "to traffic men for his own sexual pleasure", and for the pleasure of his British partner Matthew Smith, 61.

They said the couple, alongside a middleman James Jacobson, 71, used force, fraud and coercion to make vulnerable, aspiring models engage in violent and exploitative sex acts.

All three men have pleaded not guilty to the charges and been released on bond.

The FBI began investigating last year after the BBC revealed claims Mr Jeffries and Mr Smith had sexually exploited men at events they hosted around the world.

The BBC investigation, published in October 2023, found the pair were at the centre of a sophisticated operation involving a middleman scouting young men for sex.

In the same month, Brian Bieber, Mr Jeffries' lawyer, said his client was examined several times by a neuropsychologist who later concluded diagnostic impressions that he was suffering from two types of dementia and probable late onset Alzheimer's disease.

In the court filing, Mr Bieber added that during an initial meeting last year the former fashion boss "did not even come close to resembling a master's degree-educated individual, who was just nine years earlier the chief executive officer of a publicly traded company".

As a result, Mr Bieber questioned the ability of Mr Jeffries to "rationally assist" with the possible factual and legal defences to the allegations he was facing, according to the document.

The filing comes after Mr Jeffries' legal team sought a competency hearing, which will now be held over two days on 16 and 17 June 2025.

Federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York declined to comment.

Mr Jeffries stepped down as CEO and chairman of A&F in 2014, and left with a $25m (£19.9m) retirement package.

Alongside the criminal case, A&F, Mr Jeffries and his partner have been defending a civil lawsuit accusing the retailer of having funded a sex trafficking operation.

Earlier this month, Mr Jeffries sued A&F after it refused to pay his criminal defence costs, arguing the brand had agreed to indemnify him for all claims arising out of his position.

Four rioters have been given short jail terms for violence against football fans visiting Amsterdam for a Europa League match between Ajax and Israeli club Maccabi Tel Aviv.

Sefa Ö, 32, was handed the longest sentence of six months in jail by Amsterdam district court, while another man was given 10 weeks and two others a month's detention each. A fifth defendant was given a community service order under the Netherlands' juvenile law.

The judge said a prison sentence for the four was appropriate given the seriousness of the actions and the context in which they took place.

The riots broke out in several areas of the Dutch capital in early November and led to international condemnation.

The five defendants sentenced on Tuesday were the first to be tried for hit-and-run attacks that erupted in the early hours of 8 November, after incidents that took place over two days.

The court said that there was a lot of video evidence showing Maccabi fans facing extreme violence, and also pointed to footage of supporters pulling down Palestinian flags as well as chanting slogans against Arabs. Taxis were also vandalised by the fans.

The court chairman added that there had already been unrest in the Netherlands because of the war in Gaza.

While the court took "the context" of the events into account, it said there had been "no justification for calling for and using physical violence against Israeli supporters".

• Amsterdam violence exposes tensions in society and spills over to politics
• New arrests made in Amsterdam over violence after football match

Sefa Ö was found to have given a karate-type kick to one victim, causing him to fall against a moving tram, as well as taking part in several other attacks.

The trial saw video footage appeared to show him kicking and hitting victims on Dam Square, Damrak and Zoutsteeg, and prosecutors said he had played a leading role in violence that had nothing to do with football.

Rachid O, 26, who was given 10 weeks in jail, was found to have taken part in a WhatsApp chat group called Buurthuis2, on which he referred to intended victims as "cowardly" Jews who he would never again get the chance to attack.

More than 900 people were in the group and thee court said the chat had been used to pass on information to "commit violence against people of Jewish descent and/or supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv".

Umutcan A, 24, was also found to have kicked one of the victims several times while taking part in an attack with other men and then kicked another fan on the ground. CCTV footage had shown him attacking several Maccabi fans, as well as grabbing one fan by the throat and seizing his football scarf.

He had written in messaging groups about a "Jew hunt" but told the trial he did not harbour hatred towards Jews.

Karanveer S, 26, had already been convicted of assault in 2022 and the court noted that did not deter him from taking part in last month's attacks.

The youngest of the five, Lucas D, 19, was found to have used violence against a police officer and taken part in a separate Snapchat group calling for violence against Maccabi Tel Aviv fans.

The five all have two weeks in which to appeal.

The court said he had an illegal, high-explosive "cobra" firework in his possession at the time of his arrest. Prosecutors had called for Lucas D to be given a jail term.

Chief prosecutor René de Beukelaer had earlier rejected suggestions that the attacks had amounted to terrorism, because he said it was not the aim of the group to instill fear in the people they were targeting.

However, he did say there were instances of antisemitism exchanged on a messaging group.

"I can well understand that the Jewish community in Amsterdam was left afraid because of this violence, but that's different from saying that was the goal of the suspects," he told Amsterdam's AT5 TV channel earlier this month.

Mozambique's main opposition leader, Venâncio Mondlane, has declared that he will install himself as president on 15 January after rejecting his defeat in presidential elections.

His announcement came as his supporters staged violent protests across the country to demand an end to the 49-year-rule of the Frelimo party.

The capital Maputo was like a ghost town on Christmas Eve, with almost all businesses shut and people staying at home to avoid being caught up in the worst unrest in the city since Frelimo rose to power at independence in 1975.

Frelimo's offices, police stations, banks and factories have been looted, vandalised and set ablaze around the country.

The latest unrest began on Monday after Mozambique's highest court upheld the victory of Frelimo's presidential candidate, Daniel Chapo, in elections held in October.

Mondlane had challenged the result, alleging that the poll was rigged.

In a Facebook live broadcast to his supporters on Tuesday, Mondlane said he rejected the ruling of the constitutional court, adding that he would assume the office of president on 15 January - the day that Chapo is due to be sworn in.

President Filipe Nyusi is due to step down at the end of his two terms.

It is unclear how Mondlane intends to take office, as he is currently in self-imposed exile in an unknown country.

He has frequently rallied his supporters via speeches on Facebook live, but has urged them to remain peaceful.

"We are with the people. We do not advocate any form of violence," Mondlane said in his latest address.

Chapo has not yet commented on his declaration.

October's election was the first time both of them had run for the presidency, with the electoral commission declaring Chapo the winner with 71% of the vote to Mondlane's 20%.

The constitutional court revised the result, giving the Frelimo candidate 65% and Mondlane 24%.

Rights groups say that more than 100 people have been killed in unrest since the elections.

They accuse the security forces of being responsible for many of the killings, but police commander Bernadino Rafael had previously told the BBC that his officers had been defending themselves after coming under attack.

Mondlane fled Mozambique after accusing police of threatening behaviour, and two of his aides were shot dead in October.

The 50-year-old evangelical pastor contested the election as an independent after breaking away from the main opposition Renamo party.

His support is strongest among young people, many of whom are unemployed and demanding change.

Frelimo fielded the 47-year-old Chapo as its youngest ever presidential candidate.

He has previously rejected suggestions that he and Frelimo rigged the poll, saying: "We are an organised party that prepares its victories."

You may also be interested in:

• Children shot dead after joining pot-banging protests in Mozambique
• Why governing parties are having a tough time in elections
• From freedom fighter to Namibia's first female president

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

Follow us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica

Protests have broken out in Syria over the burning of a Christmas tree near the city of Hama.

A video posted on social media showed masked gunmen setting fire to the tree on display in the main square of the Suqaylabiyah, a Christian-majority town in central Syria.

The main Islamist faction which led the uprising that toppled President Bashar al-Assad said the men responsible for the arson were foreign fighters and had been detained and that the tree would be swiftly repaired.

Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets across the country, demanding the new Islamist rulers protect religious minorities.

In the Bab Touma neighbourhood of Damascus, protesters carried a cross and Syrian flags, chanting "we will sacrifice our souls for our cross".

"If we're not allowed to live our Christian faith in our country, as we used to, then we don't belong here anymore," a demonstrator named Georges told AFP news agency.

Syria is home to many ethnic and religious groups, including Kurds, Armenians, Assyrians, Christians, Druze, Alawite Shia and Arab Sunnis, the last of whom make up a majority of the Muslim population.

Just over two weeks ago, Bashar al-Assad's presidency fell to rebel forces, ending the Assad family's more than 50-year-rule.

How the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group will govern Syria remains to be seen. The group has a jihadist past, which it has distanced itself from, and an Islamist present.

As fighters marched to Damascus earlier this month, its leaders spoke about building a Syria for all Syrians.

Representatives have also said that the rights and freedoms of religious and ethnic minorities would be protected.

HTS remains designated as a terrorist organisation by the UN, US, EU and UK, though there are signs that a diplomatic shift may be underway.

On Friday, the US has scrapped a $10m (£7.9m) bounty on the head of HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, following meetings between senior diplomats and representatives from the group.

The US is continuing its military presence in Syria - it said it conducted airstrike in the northern city of Deir Ezzor that killed two ISIS operatives.

The presence of foreign fighters, Islamic extremists like ISIS or even regime supporters who have interest in causing insecurity and attacking minorities to shake the country's stability are the big challenge that the new Islamic leadership will face.

Four rioters have been given short jail terms for violence against football fans visiting Amsterdam for a Europa League match between Ajax and Israeli club Maccabi Tel Aviv.

Sefa Ö, 32, was handed the longest sentence of six months in jail by Amsterdam district court, while another man was given 10 weeks and two others a month's detention each. A fifth defendant was given a community service order under the Netherlands' juvenile law.

The judge said a prison sentence for the four was appropriate given the seriousness of the actions and the context in which they took place.

The riots broke out in several areas of the Dutch capital in early November and led to international condemnation.

The five defendants sentenced on Tuesday were the first to be tried for hit-and-run attacks that erupted in the early hours of 8 November, after incidents that took place over two days.

The court said that there was a lot of video evidence showing Maccabi fans facing extreme violence, and also pointed to footage of supporters pulling down Palestinian flags as well as chanting slogans against Arabs. Taxis were also vandalised by the fans.

The court chairman added that there had already been unrest in the Netherlands because of the war in Gaza.

While the court took "the context" of the events into account, it said there had been "no justification for calling for and using physical violence against Israeli supporters".

• Amsterdam violence exposes tensions in society and spills over to politics
• New arrests made in Amsterdam over violence after football match

Sefa Ö was found to have given a karate-type kick to one victim, causing him to fall against a moving tram, as well as taking part in several other attacks.

The trial saw video footage appeared to show him kicking and hitting victims on Dam Square, Damrak and Zoutsteeg, and prosecutors said he had played a leading role in violence that had nothing to do with football.

Rachid O, 26, who was given 10 weeks in jail, was found to have taken part in a WhatsApp chat group called Buurthuis2, on which he referred to intended victims as "cowardly" Jews who he would never again get the chance to attack.

More than 900 people were in the group and thee court said the chat had been used to pass on information to "commit violence against people of Jewish descent and/or supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv".

Umutcan A, 24, was also found to have kicked one of the victims several times while taking part in an attack with other men and then kicked another fan on the ground. CCTV footage had shown him attacking several Maccabi fans, as well as grabbing one fan by the throat and seizing his football scarf.

He had written in messaging groups about a "Jew hunt" but told the trial he did not harbour hatred towards Jews.

Karanveer S, 26, had already been convicted of assault in 2022 and the court noted that did not deter him from taking part in last month's attacks.

The youngest of the five, Lucas D, 19, was found to have used violence against a police officer and taken part in a separate Snapchat group calling for violence against Maccabi Tel Aviv fans.

The five all have two weeks in which to appeal.

The court said he had an illegal, high-explosive "cobra" firework in his possession at the time of his arrest. Prosecutors had called for Lucas D to be given a jail term.

Chief prosecutor René de Beukelaer had earlier rejected suggestions that the attacks had amounted to terrorism, because he said it was not the aim of the group to instill fear in the people they were targeting.

However, he did say there were instances of antisemitism exchanged on a messaging group.

"I can well understand that the Jewish community in Amsterdam was left afraid because of this violence, but that's different from saying that was the goal of the suspects," he told Amsterdam's AT5 TV channel earlier this month.

Hong Kong police have offered rewards of HK$1m (£103,000; $129,000) for information leading to the arrests of six pro-democracy activists living in the UK and Canada.

Among them is Tony Chung, the former leader of a pro-independence group who fled to the UK last year.

The group - which includes a former district councillor, an actor, and a YouTuber - have been lobbying for more democracy in the territory. All have been accused of violating the city's national security law.

Human Rights Watch said the warrants were "a cowardly act of intimidation that aims to silence Hong Kong people" and called on the UK and Canadian governments to push back.

Also on the wanted list is former district councillor Carmen Lau and activist Chloe Cheung. Both are based in the UK and lobby on behalf of two NGOs calling for more democracy in Hong Kong.

The Hong Kong police have issued arrest warrants for political commentator and pollster Chung Kim-wah, who left Hong Kong for the UK in 2022, as well as two people based in Canada: former actor Joseph Tay, who co-founded the NGO HongKonger Station, and Youtuber Victor Ho.

Mr Ho has been charged with subversion while the other six have been accused inciting secession and collusion with a foreign country or external forces.

According to Hong Kong's public broadcaster RTHK, the arrest warrants were announced by the city's top police chiefs on Tuesday, who accused some of the wanted activists of repeatedly requesting foreign countries to impose sanctions and other measures against China and Hong Kong.

Mr Chung was first convicted in 2021 for calling for Hong Kong's secession and was released in June last year.

He posted on Instagram on Tuesday that it was "an honour to become the first Hongkonger to be charged twice under the National Security Law".

Mr Chung said the news came as no surprise to him as he breached a supervision order after his release from prison by fleeing to the UK last year.

"I knew this day would come. From the moment I decided to leave Hong Kong, I was fully aware that I would not be able to return for a long time," he wrote.

Ms Lau posted on X that the warrant would not stop her advocacy work. She called on the UK, US and EU governments to impose sanctions on "Hong Kong human rights perpetrators".

She also asked the British Labour government to "seriously reconsider its strategies for tackling transnational repression targeting Hong Kongers" and to look at blocking the expansion of China's embassy in Tower Hill.

Earlier this month, Tower Hamlets councillors voted unanimously to reject plans for the new Chinese embassy. However, the verdict is only advisory and not binding and it will be up to deputy prime minister and communities secretary Angela Rayner to decide whether to grant permission or not.

This is the third round of arrest warrants and bounties issued since the Beijing-imposed National Security Law was imposed.

The first two rounds were issued in July and December last year, and targeted former lawmaker Nathan Law - who told the BBC last year that his life has become more dangerous since the bounty was announced - and Simon Cheng, a former UK consulate employee detained in 2019 in a high-profile case. Both men are now based in the UK.

China's foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning backed the move on Tuesday in that the Chinese government supported Hong Kong "performing its duties in accordance with the law",

She added that Hong Kong is "a society governed by the rule of law and no one has extrajudicial privileges".

Hong Kong's controversial National Security Law was imposed in 2020 in response to the 2019 anti-government protests that rocked the city for months.

Beijing and Hong Kong authorities argue the law is necessary to maintain stability and deny it has weakened autonomy, but critics argue it has reduced the city's autonomy and made a wider range of dissenting acts illegal.

French Prime Minister François Bayrou believes dozens of people died when Cyclone Chido hit the French Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte on 14 December, rather than thousands as some have feared.

Bayrou told BFMTV he thought the "alarmist and sometimes terrifying numbers put forward won't be borne out in reality".

The confirmed death toll on Mayotte so far is 35 but, in the immediate aftermath of the cyclone, local prefect François-Xavier Bieuville feared that it would "definitely be several hundred" and could reach thousands.

The prefect told France Info radio on Tuesday that investigations in the field were progressing well that "allow us to think that we will corroborate this figure of 35".

Defending his initial remarks, Bieuville insisted "I have never been alarmist, I was simply unable to give the number of victims".

Officials said it had been difficult to determine the scale of fatalities in the wake of the disaster 10 days ago, due to many areas of Mayotte being inaccessible and the fact that victims were buried within 24 hours in accordance with Islamic customs.

There is also uncertainty about the true population of Mayotte, a French Indian Ocean territory.

Officially it has 320,000 residents, but authorities estimate about 100,000 to 200,000 undocumented migrants may also be living there.

"I think [the number of dead] will be in the dozens and not in the thousands," the prime minister told BFMTV on Monday night.

The archipelago is one of the poorest parts of France, with many of its residents living in shanty towns.

Cyclone Chido was the worst storm to hit the territory in 90 years, bringing winds of up to 260 km/h (160mph) and flattening areas where people lived in shacks with metal roofs.

France held a day of national mourning in the wake of the cyclone on Monday. President Emmanuel Macron visited the territory last week, and was heckled by angry locals demanding more aid in devastated areas.

Some survivors went for a week without water, communication or electricity.

Authorities restored water in the main points of the territory on Tuesday, Bieuville said. "Even if this water is still sometimes a little difficult to deliver, our fellow citizens have water."

He also said there was no fuel shortage any more and cars could now be filled up.

The prime minister had earlier said that a field hospital would also be operational by Tuesday morning.

Cyclone Chido moved on to continental Africa after hitting Mayotte, killing 120 people in Mozambique and 13 in Malawi.

Protests have broken out in Syria over the burning of a Christmas tree near the city of Hama.

A video posted on social media showed masked gunmen setting fire to the tree on display in the main square of the Suqaylabiyah, a Christian-majority town in central Syria.

The main Islamist faction which led the uprising that toppled President Bashar al-Assad said the men responsible for the arson were foreign fighters and had been detained and that the tree would be swiftly repaired.

Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets across the country, demanding the new Islamist rulers protect religious minorities.

In the Bab Touma neighbourhood of Damascus, protesters carried a cross and Syrian flags, chanting "we will sacrifice our souls for our cross".

"If we're not allowed to live our Christian faith in our country, as we used to, then we don't belong here anymore," a demonstrator named Georges told AFP news agency.

Syria is home to many ethnic and religious groups, including Kurds, Armenians, Assyrians, Christians, Druze, Alawite Shia and Arab Sunnis, the last of whom make up a majority of the Muslim population.

Just over two weeks ago, Bashar al-Assad's presidency fell to rebel forces, ending the Assad family's more than 50-year-rule.

How the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group will govern Syria remains to be seen. The group has a jihadist past, which it has distanced itself from, and an Islamist present.

As fighters marched to Damascus earlier this month, its leaders spoke about building a Syria for all Syrians.

Representatives have also said that the rights and freedoms of religious and ethnic minorities would be protected.

HTS remains designated as a terrorist organisation by the UN, US, EU and UK, though there are signs that a diplomatic shift may be underway.

On Friday, the US has scrapped a $10m (£7.9m) bounty on the head of HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, following meetings between senior diplomats and representatives from the group.

The US is continuing its military presence in Syria - it said it conducted airstrike in the northern city of Deir Ezzor that killed two ISIS operatives.

The presence of foreign fighters, Islamic extremists like ISIS or even regime supporters who have interest in causing insecurity and attacking minorities to shake the country's stability are the big challenge that the new Islamic leadership will face.

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

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

The organisation announced Monday evening that it rescinded the award after the legal complaint filed by Lively alleged "abhorrent conduct" by the actor, his studio and a crisis public relations team that it said was "contrary to the values" held by the non-profit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lively also accused Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios of leading a "multi-tiered plan" to wreck her reputation in the media and online, including hiring a crisis manager who led a "sophisticated, coordinated, and well-financed retaliation plan" against her and used a "digital army" to post social media content that seemed authentic.

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

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

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

A Russian cargo ship, Ursa Major, has sunk in the Mediterranean between Spain and Algeria after an explosion in the engine room, Russia's foreign ministry has confirmed.

It said 14 members of the crew were rescued and taken to the Spanish port of Cartagena but two others were missing.

Ursa Major left port in St Petersburg 12 days ago, according to Russian news agency Interfax.

The ship's owner said it was on its way to Vladivostok in Russia's Far East carrying two cranes for the port weighing 380 tonnes apiece, although the destination could not be confirmed independently.

Ursa Major was in the same area of the Med as another sanctioned Russian ship, Sparta, when it ran into trouble and the two ships had been spotted heading through the English Channel last week, reportedly under escort.

Earlier this month, Ukrainian military intelligence (HUR) reported that the Sparta was heading to Russia's naval base on the Syrian coast at Tartous to move military equipment out of Syria after the downfall of Bashar al-Assad.

A Kremlin official said on Monday that Russia was in contact with Syria's new rulers on the future of its two military facilities. at both diplomatic and military level.

Ursa Major's owner Oboronlogistika has been heavily involved in transporting cargo to Tartous, although Sparta's reported destination on Tuesday was Port Said in Egypt.

On Monday, the HUR reported that the Sparta had broken down off Portugal, but the problem had been fixed. Ursa Major was also known as Sparta III, so it was not clear which ship it was referring to.

It is not known what caused the explosion on Ursa Major as it passed between Oran in Algeria and the Spanish town of Aguilas. However, unverified video showed the ship listing badly on Monday.

It was built in 2009 and placed under sanction after Russia's full-scale invasion in Ukraine in 2022 because of the ship owner's role in delivering cargo to the Russian military.

Oboronlogistika said the cargo ship, which it described as the flagship of its fleet, was carrying 45-tonne hatch covers for icebreakers, as well as the large cranes for the port in Vladivostok.

An explosion at an ammunition and explosives factory in north-west Turkey has killed at least 12 people and injured four others.

The blast happened at 8:25 local time (5:25 GMT) in the capsule production section, the governor of the city of Balikesir, Ismail Ustaoglu, said.

Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said the cause was not yet clear, but that authorities had ruled out sabotage.

Videos from the scene showed a fireball erupt from the factory, destroying part of the building, followed by plumes of dark smoke.

Further footage from the aftermath shows mangled parts of steel littering the surrounding area.

The explosion caused tremors throughout the Köteyli township, witnesses told CNN Turk.

Many fire crews were sent to deal with the blaze and health and security units were dispatched to the area, officials said.

"I wish God's mercy upon our deceased citizens and a speedy recovery to our injured," Mr Ustaoglu said in a post on social media

An investigation has been launched into the circumstances that led to the blast, Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said.

The wife of detained Ugandan opposition politician Kizza Besigye has denounced as "cruel and inhumane" a ban on prisoners receiving visitors on Christmas Day.

Besigye, 68, has been charged in a military court with possession of pistols and attempting to purchase weapons abroad, which he denies. His trial has been delayed until next month.

Prison authorities say that as part of measures to prevent "potential security lapses", inmates would not be allowed visitors for seven days, starting on Christmas Eve.

Besigye's wife Winnie Byanyima, the head of the UN's organisation to tackle HIV and Aids, said she planned to camp outside the Luzira Prison so that she could see her husband and give him food on Christmas Day.

She told the BBC her husband remains "strong and persevering" in a "tiny little room" behind six prison gates, but she was worried that he could be "harmed".

"I'm not leaving Besigye's food at the gate [as directed]. I will go there and see my husband because I don't trust them with him even for a single day," Ms Byanyima said.

"Maybe I will take a tent and sleep there… if that's what they want," she added.

Besigye has contested and lost four presidential elections against President Yoweri Museveni, who has been in power since 1986.

But the veteran opposition politician has been less active in politics in recent years, and did not contest the 2021 election.

Besigye, however, returned to the headlines last month after he was dramatically abducted while visiting Kenya and forcibly taken to Uganda.

He was then charged along with an aide, Obeid Lutale. He, too, has denied the charges.

• How a Ugandan opposition leader disappeared in Kenya
• Who is Kizza Besigye?

The military court extended Besigye's detention until 7 January, dashing the hopes of his family that he will be home for Christmas.

Uganda Prisons Services spokesperson Frank Baine Mayanja told local media that the seven-day ban on visitors was intended to tighten security during the festive season, and to prevent escapes.

"Christmas causes excitement and majority of prisoners do not want to have Christmas inside. They must be planning on how to do a prison break and go outside," Mr Mayanja told NTV Uganda.

The Prison Services had initially announced a ban of almost a month on prison visits, but then reduced the ban to seven days.

Ms Byanyima told the BBC she was also concerned about the recent change of leadership at Luzira prison, questioning why a "young and inexperienced" official had been put in charge of it.

"It is very suspicious and makes me doubt their intentions," she said.

"I do not trust his [Besigye's] life with those who abducted him. I will seek to see him as often as I can," Ms Byanyima added.

Mr Mayanja said the changes in leadership were an "administrative issue" and had nothing to do with Besigye.

He added that Ms Byanyima should trust the authorities to take care of her husband because "we have the means and mechanism of keeping him alive".

"I think she should let us do our job," Mr Mayanja said.

This is the second time Besigye, who has had run-ins with Museveni's government for the last two decades, is spending the Christmas holidays in prison.

In 2005, he was arrested while returning from a political rally ahead of the 2006 presidential polls and charged with treason. The charges were thrown out by the courts.

He was also charged with rape in a separate case. The charges were later dropped. He said all the allegations were part of a campaign of political persecution

In the latest case, Besigye has objected to being tried by a military court, saying he should be tried in a civilian court if there was any case against him.

Museveni has defended the use of military courts to try civilians.

He said any crime involving a gun was dealt with in a military court to ensure the country's stability as civilian courts took too long to deal with cases.

Hundreds of civilians have been tried in Uganda's military courts, even though the Constitutional Court has ruled against the practice.

Opposition parties have frequently complained about restrictions on political activities, alleging that Museveni fears political competition.

Museveni's supporters deny the allegation, and say he has maintained stability during his rule of almost 40 years.

You may also be interested in:

• TikToker jailed for 32 months for insulting Uganda's president
• Uganda's Stella Nyanzi bares breasts in protest at jail sentence
• Top designer vows to regrow dreadlocks cut after Uganda arrest
• How an ex-rebel has stayed in power for more than 30 years

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

Follow us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica

One of the founders of the Medellin drug cartel has returned to Colombia after serving more than 20 years in jail in the US for drug trafficking.

Fabio Ochoa Vasquez, now 67 years old, was deported by the US government and landed in Bogota on Monday a free man.

Ochoa was one of the founding members of the notorious cartel and had been a senior lieutenant to infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar.

The Medellin cartel dominated the cocaine trade and waged a violent campaign against the Colombian state before Escobar was killed in 1993.

On his arrival in Bogota, immigration officials ran Ochoa's fingerprints through their database, the country's immigration agency said.

Confirming that he is not wanted by Colombian authorities, it said that Ochoa was freed "to be reunited with his family".

Amid a sea of reporters in the airport terminal, Ochoa was greeted by his relatives and hugged his daughter.

In 2001, Ochoa was flown to the US after being arrested in Colombia in 1999 along with about 30 other alleged traffickers.

He had already served a jail sentence in Colombia in the early 90s for his role as one of bosses of the Medellin cartel. Along with his brothers, he was the first major trafficker to surrender under a programme that protected cartel members from extradition to the US if they pleaded guilty to minor offences in Colombia.

Ochoa and his brothers were released from prison in 1996, but Ochoa was arrested once again during the so-called Millennium operation over his involvement in the cocaine smuggling business in the US in the late 1990s.

In 2003, Ochoa was sentenced to more than 30 years in a US court for his involvement in the cartel that brought an average of 30 tonnes of cocaine into the US each month between 1997 and 1999.

During the 1980s, he was one of the top operators in Escobar's Medellin ring, a supplier in its prime of 80% of the US cocaine market.

The defunct Medellin cartel, along with the Cali cartel, was one of the most powerful and feared drug networks of the 1980s.

Its violent campaigns of bombings and assassinations led to extraditions of drugs suspects between Colombia and the US to be suspended, before being resumed in 1997.

A Nasa spacecraft is attempting to make history with the closest ever approach to the Sun.

The Parker Solar Probe is plunging into our star's outer atmosphere, enduring brutal temperatures and extreme radiation.

It's out of communication for several days during this burning hot fly-by and scientists will be waiting for a signal, expected on 27 December, to see if it has survived.

The hope is the probe could help us to better understand how the Sun works.

Dr Nicola Fox, head of science at Nasa, told BBC News: "For centuries, people have studied the Sun, but you don't experience the atmosphere of a place until you actually go visit it.

"And so we can't really experience the atmosphere of our star unless we fly through it."

Parker Solar Probe launched in 2018, heading to the centre of our Solar System.

It has already swept past the Sun 21 times, getting ever nearer, but the Christmas Eve visit is record-breaking.

At its closest approach, the probe is 3.8 million miles (6.2 million km) from our star's surface.

This might not sound that close, but Nasa's Nicola Fox puts it into perspective: "We are 93 million miles away from the Sun, so if I put the Sun and the Earth one metre apart, Parker Solar Probe is four centimetres from the Sun - so that's close."

The probe will have to endure temperatures of 1,400C and radiation that could frazzle the onboard electronics.

It's protected by a 11.5cm (4.5 inches) thick carbon-composite shield but the spacecraft's tactic is to get in and out fast.

In fact, it will be moving faster than any human made object, hurtling at 430,000mph - the equivalent of flying from London to New York in less than 30 seconds.

So why go to all this effort to "touch" the Sun?

Scientists hope that as the spacecraft passes through our star's outer atmosphere - its corona - it will solve a long standing mystery.

"The corona is really, really hot, and we have no idea why," explains Dr Jenifer MIllard, an astronomer at Fifth Star Labs.

"The surface of the Sun is about 6,000C or so, but the corona, this tenuous outer atmosphere that you can see during solar eclipses, reaches millions of degrees - and that is further away from the Sun. So how is that atmosphere getting hotter?"

The mission should also help scientists to better understand solar wind - the constant stream of charged particles bursting out from the corona.

When these particles interact with the Earth's magnetic field the sky lights up with dazzling auroras.

But this so called space weather can cause problems too, knocking out power-grids, electronics and communication systems.

"Understanding the Sun, its activity, space weather, the solar wind, is so important to our everyday lives on Earth," says Dr Millard.

Nasa scientists face an anxious wait over Christmas while the spacecraft is out of touch with Earth.

Nicola Fox says that as soon as a signal is beamed back home, the team will text her a green heart to let her know the probe is OK.

She admits she's nervous about the audacious attempt, but she has faith in the probe.

"I will worry about the spacecraft. But we really have designed it to withstand all of these brutal, brutal conditions. It's a tough, tough little spacecraft."

The House Ethics Committee report on Donald Trump ally Matt Gaetz released on Monday revealed fresh details about the former congressman's alleged behaviour, at least one new accusation and insights into the panel's investigation.

From at least 2017 to 2020, the committee concluded that the former Florida congressman regularly paid women for "engaging in sexual activity", had sex with a 17-year-old girl, used or possessed illegal drugs, accepted gifts beyond House limits and helped a woman obtain a passport, according to the report.

Gaetz, who resigned from the US House of Representatives in November - days before the report was scheduled to be made public and after Trump announced him as his pick for US attorney general - denied the committee's findings and has accused it of conducting an unfair investigation.

Here are four parts of the much-anticipated report that stand out.

A winding money trail

House investigators said Gaetz paid more than $90,000 (£71,843) to women for sex and drugs, but created a complicated web of transactions that were hard to trace, according to the report.

"The committee was unable to determine the full extent to which Representative Gaetz's payments to women were compensation for engaging in sexual activity with him," the report found.

He allegedly used his friend Joel Greenberg, currently serving 11 years in prison for crimes he said he committed with Gaetz, as a frequent go-between and logged onto Greenberg's account on SeekingArrangement.com, which bills itself as a "luxury dating site", to interact with young women.

Gaetz also paid women directly, sometimes through platforms such as Venmo, according to the report. But the committee said he often used another person's PayPal account or an account linked to an email address with a fake name.

He also obscured payments, the panel wrote. In one example, he gave a college student a cheque made out to "cash" with "tuition reimbursement" in the memo line. The woman said she received it after a group encounter, which "could potentially be a form of coercion because I really needed the money".

Gaetz has posted on social media that he gave money to women he was involved with as gifts, not payments. The committee found that two women, aged 27 and 25, did not consider their relationships transactional.

Another woman who was considered his girlfriend invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when asked if she was given money for sex or drugs, or to pay others.

The committee attempted to prove Gaetz frequently paid for sex through a text message that described his inability to pay at one point.

His then-girlfriend said in the message that he and Greenberg were "a little limited in their cash flow" and asked a group of women "if it can be more of a customer appreciation week".

A few months later, according to the committee, she wrote: "Btw Matt also mentioned he is going to be a bit generous cause of the 'customer appreciation' thing last time."

Sex, drugs, and a passport application

The committee also said Gaetz bought illegal drugs or reimbursed people for them.

It gives examples of his alleged cocaine and ecstasy/MDMA use, but focused on what appeared to be a heavy marijuana habit. He allegedly asked women to bring marijuana cartridges to meetings and events, and created the fake-name email account to buy marijuana.

A trip he took to the Bahamas "was paid for by an associate of Representative Gaetz with connections to the medical marijuana industry, who allegedly also paid for female escorts to accompany them", according to the report.

One woman felt the use of drugs and alcohol at parties had impaired her ability "to really know what was going on or fully consent".

"Indeed, nearly every woman that the committee spoke with could not remember the details of at least one or more of the events they attended with Representative Gaetz and attributed that to drug or alcohol consumption," the report said.

His then-girlfriend, who was 21 when they met and "was paid tens of thousands of dollars" during their two-year relationship", often participated in encounters with women and acted as an intermediary, according to the report.

A woman told the committee she was 17 at the time she had sex with Gaetz twice at a party in 2017 - at least once in front of other people - while under the influence of ecstasy. The woman, who had just completed her junior year in high school, then received $400 from him.

She also told the panel she did not tell Gaetz she was a minor and the committee did not find any evidence that the former congressman knew she was underage.

In 2021, Greenberg pleaded guilty to sex trafficking the girl.

Gaetz also allegedly directed his chief of staff to expedite a passport application for a woman he was sleeping with, whom he said was a voter in his district. He also allegedly gave her $1,000.

Gaetz violated House rules that bar using his position for special favours, according to the committee, which wrote: "The woman was not his constituent, and the case was not handled in the same manner as similar passport assistance cases".

Accusations of obstruction

The committee dedicated a great deal of the report to detailing how Gaetz allegedly obstructed its investigation, including failing to produce evidence he said would "exonerate" him.

The report concluded he "continuously sought to deflect, deter, or mislead the Committee in order to prevent his actions from being exposed".

Gaetz, who has accused the committee of being "weaponised" against him and leaking information to the press, alleged the panel was working on behalf of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, according to the report. Last year he helped lead an effort to oust then-Speaker McCarthy from his role.

While Gaetz claimed he had "voluntarily produced tens of thousands of records," he gave the committee "only a couple hundred records, more than 90% of which was either irrelevant or publicly available," the report found.

One sore point was a trip to the Bahamas, where the committee said he withheld information. Ultimately it concluded he violated rules on gifts because the trip was too high in value.

The committee also cited the Justice Department's probe into the allegations against Gaetz as a reason for delays.

Some witnesses asked the committee to use statements they had given to the department, but it refused to share them because they had not issued charges and because it said it could deter future witnesses in other cases from coming forward.

Committee chairman dissents

The report ends with a single-page statement from Ethics Committee Chairman Michael Guest "on behalf of dissenting committee members" who are not named.

Those members do not challenge the committee's findings, but disagree with releasing the report after Gaetz resigned from the House, which has not happened since 2006, they write.

It "breaks from the Committee's long-standing practice, opens the Committee to undue criticism, and will be viewed by some as an attempt to weaponise the Committee's process".

With just weeks left in office, US President Joe Biden has commuted the sentences of 37 of 40 federal death row inmates - potentially thwarting President-elect Donald Trump's plans to expand federal executions during his upcoming administration.

Biden's move was swiftly condemned by Republicans, with some accusing the president of siding with criminals over law-abiding Americans.

Federal executions were relatively rare before Trump's first term in office, which finished with a flurry of executions that ended a 130-year-old precedent of pausing executions amid a presidential transition.

He has vowed to resume the practice when he returns to the White House in January, setting the stage for possible legal battles early in the administration.

Here's what we know.

Biden's decision met with criticism

On Monday, Biden commuted the sentences of 37 out of 40 death row inmates, switching their penalty to life without parole.

Only three inmates were left to face the death penalty, including convicted Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Robert Bowers, who was sentenced to death for killing 11 worshippers and wounding seven during a shooting at a the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018.

The third, Dylann Roof, was sentenced to death in 2017 for a mass shooting that left nine black parishioners dead at the Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.

While the move was widely praised by human rights groups such as Amnesty International, it was quickly condemned by some Republicans, as well as Trump's transition team and political allies.

In a statement, Trump communications director Steven Cheung said that "these are among the worst killers in the world and this abhorrent decision by Joe Biden is a slap in the face to the victims, their families, and their loved ones.

"President Trump stands for the rule of law, which will return when he is back in the White House," he added.

Texas Republican Chip Roy, for example, tweeted that the decision was "unconscionable" and an abuse of power "to carry out a miscarriage of justice".

Another Republican, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, said that "when given the choice between law-abiding Americans or criminals, Joe Biden and the Democrats choose criminals every time."

Some family members also expressed anger.

On Facebook, Heather Turner - whose mother was killed in a 2017 bank robbery - called the commutations a "gross abuse of power".

"At no point did the president consider the victims," she wrote. "He, and his supporters, have blood on their hands."

The commutations do not apply to the approximately 2,200 death row inmates convicted by state courts, over which the president holds no authority.

What has Trump said about the death penalty?

Over the course of his election campaign, Trump vowed to resume federal executions and make more people eligible to receive the death penalty, including those convicted of raping children or drug and human-trafficking cases, as well as migrants who kill US citizens or police officers.

"These are terrible, terrible, horrible people who are responsible for death, carnage and crime all over the country," Trump said when he announced his presidential candidacy in 2022.

"We're going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts," he added.

There are more than 40 federal laws that can, in theory, result in the death penalty, ranging from murders committed during a drug-related shooting to genocide.

Almost all - with the exception of espionage and treason - explicitly involve the death of a victim.

Trump, however, has provided few details on how he plans to accomplish his campaign pledge.

Despite the lack of clarity, Trump's vows to expand the federal death penalty have elicited strong warnings from human rights advocates.

In an 11 December statement, for example, the American Civil Liberties Union said Trump's "chilling" plans amount to an expansion of the "killing spree he initiated in the final six months of his first presidency".

"He's already shown us that he will act on these promises," the statement said.

The inmates executed during the waning days of Trump's first administration included Lisa Montgomery, the first woman executed by the federal government since 1953, and Lezmond Mitchell, the only Native American on federal death row.

What can Trump actually do?

Trump's efforts to expand the death penalty to crimes that do not involve murder are likely to face legal challenges.

In 2008, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that those convicted of raping children cannot be executed, adding that it's unclear if the death penalty could be applied to crimes in which a victim is not killed.

According to the National Registry of Exonerations, cases with child victims are particularly prone to wrongful convictions, can be "extremely emotional" and pit family members against one another.

Any further expansion of crimes that are eligible for the federal death penalty would require Congress to act and change the law.

In 2024, two bills - both sponsored by Florida Republican and Trump ally Anna Paulina Luna - sought to expand the use of capital offences to include possession of child pornography, as well as the trafficking, exploitation and abuse of children.

Both failed to pass in the House of Representatives.

Trump is also unlikely to be able to quickly re-populate the pool of federal death row inmates, as most death penalty cases take years and are subject to lengthy appeals processes.

While he does not have any direct authority over state executions, some experts have warned that Trump's pro-death penalty stance may trigger more executions at a state level.

"His rhetoric can and has spurred draconian measures and attitudes by leaders in states on several issues, including in the context of the criminal legal system," Yasmin Cader, a deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union and director of the Trone Center for Justice and Equality told CNN.

In addition to the federal government and US military, 27 US states still have the death penalty on the books.

A Gallup poll conducted in October found that a slim majority of Americans - 53% - support the death penalty for convicted murderers, up from 50% a year before.

Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine is the birthplace of one of the world's favourite carols.

But there are few signs of Christmas in the city this year. Just a dusting of snow on deserted streets and skeletal buildings - and the constant sound of heavy shelling.

Pokrovsk is Russia's next target. Its troops are now less than two miles (three kilometres) from the city centre.

And it's not just buildings and homes that are being destroyed. Ukraine accuses Russia of trying to erase its cultural identity too – including its associations with that well-known carol.

Most of Pokrovsk's population has already fled. The gas supply's been turned off and many homes are without electricity and water. Those who remain, like 59-year-old Ihor, only break cover to find the bare essentials. He says it's like living on a powder keg – you never know when or where the next shell will land.

Oksana, 43, says she's too frightened to leave her home, but goes out during a lull in the shelling to find wood and coal to keep warm.

She tells me she hopes Ukraine's armed forces can hold on to the city, but she thinks that's unlikely. Pokrovsk, she says, will probably fall.

The city has already prepared for the worst. The statue of its famous composer, Mykola Leontovych, has already been removed. The music school that bore his name now lies boarded up and empty.

Leontovych may not be well known in the West. But the tune he composed is familiar around the world - with its chime-like vocals. It's thought that Leontovych wrote the early scores of the composition, based on a Ukrainian folk chant, while he was living and working in Pokrovsk between 1904 and 1908.

In Ukraine it's known as Shchedryk. To most of the world it became known as the Carol of the Bells, after American composer Peter Wilhousky wrote English lyrics for the song. The tune's use in the Hollywood film Home Alone helped boost its popularity.

Viktoria Ametova calls it "a masterpiece - the signature song of Pokrovsk". She too was until recently teaching music in the city, in the school that bore Leontovych's name.

She's now moved to the relative safety of Dnipro. It's where many of Pokrovsk's former residents are still trying to keep the memories of their former home alive.

Beneath a salvaged portrait of Leontovych, Viktoria watches as 13-year-old Anna Hasych strikes the familiar chords of the carol on a piano.

The Hasych family fled Pokrovsk this summer. But they're determined not to forget the place they still call home. Anna's mother, Yulia, says she's glad to see her daughters practising Shchedryk. "We won't forget the history of our town," she says.

For Anna, the tune brings back memories. "When I played it at home it seemed happy. It reminded me of winter and Christmas," she says. "Now it's more of a sad song to me because it reminds me of home, and I really want to go back."

But for one Ukrainian military band, Shchedryk has become a song to inspire resistance. They're even playing it in the trenches – using weapons as improvised instruments.

They may be musicians, but their commander reminds me that they're soldiers first. All have spent time on the front line. Colonel Bohdan Zadorozhnyy, the head of the band and its conductor, says the song helps lifts soldiers spirits. "Those beats and rhythms cheer up the guys on the front line and inspire them to fight," he says.

22-year-old Roman uses a rocket launcher casing, filled with rice, to shake vigorously in time with the music. Shchedryk, he says, is the "pride of our country, it's freedom, it's in our souls, I get goosebumps from this song".

Colonel Zadorozhnyy says Shchedryk shows that Ukraine is a civilised nation, now at war, fighting for its identity.

Pokrovsk may well fall into Russian hands. But its people are doing all they can to preserve their culture and identity.

The director of Pokrovsk's History Museum, Angelina Rozhkova, has already salvaged and transferred most of its prized possessions to safety – including artefacts from Leontovych's life in Pokrovsk.

Russia, she says, doesn't just want to take Ukraine's territory – "It wants to destroy our culture and everything precious to us".

Angelina says the people of Pokrovsk understand they may never go back, "but our heart and souls do not accept that". Hence they're doing everything they can to preserve the past. The new motto is "keeping and saving, equals winning".

It's hard to say you're winning when your city's being destroyed. But its people, like Leontovych's music, are displaying extraordinary resilience.

Leontovych's life came to an abrupt end in 1921 when he was shot by a Soviet agent. His composition had become a symbol for the fight for Ukraine's independence. It still is.

Additional reporting by Hanna Chornous and Anastasiia Levchenko

Residents in an Australian region engulfed by bushfires were given two hours to return home to collect their belongings before Christmas on Tuesday, as emergency crews try to contain the blaze.

Communities around the Grampians, in Victoria, have been evacuated amid warnings from authorities that conditions there in the days ahead could be the worst since Australia's most severe fire season on record, the so-called "Black Summer" of 2019-20.

The bushfires have already burnt over 41,000 hectares (101,000 acres) of land in the past week, however there have been no deaths or loss of property.

Intense heat forecast for Boxing Day has also prompted a string of fire warnings across the country.

Throughout Victoria, temperatures are expected to reach 40C (104F) and be accompanied by strong dry winds, while parts of South Australia and New South Wales could also face bushfire conditions on Thursday into Friday.

"We're expecting to see extreme fire danger across almost the entire state," Luke Hegarty, a spokesman for Victoria's State Control Centre, said.

"This is the most significant fire danger that the state has seen – across the whole sections of state that we're talking about – since Black Summer. It's important that people understand that Thursday is a day with serious potential," he added.

Four interstate firefighting forces and two incident management teams - made up of over 100 personnel - will land in Victoria in the coming days to provide reprieve for emergency crews that have been working around the clock to fight the current fires.

The decision to give families around the Grampians temporary access to their homes "to get Christmas items … presents and the like" on Tuesday morning was made by the state's Country Fire Authority (CFA) chief officer, Jason Heffernan.

"[This is] to ensure if the residents of Halls Gap will be relocated for Christmas, at least they will have what they need," he told Seven's Sunrise programme.

Mary Ann Brown, who lives on the southern edge of the Grampians National Park, told the ABC that her community are on edge heading into the holidays.

"We are not out of the woods until we get a really good drop of rain and that may not come until March or April, so it's going to be a long summer."

Parts of Australia have been on high alert for bushfire danger this summer, following several quieter seasons compared with the 2019-20 fires which were linked to hundreds of deaths and swept across 24 million hectares of land.

The country has reeled from disaster to disaster in recent years, experiencing both record breaking floods and extreme heat, as it feels the effects of climate change.

The factory was scheduled to be operational by March 2025, and was set to be BYD's first EV plant outside of Asia.

The workers, hired by Jinjiang Construction Brazil, lived in four facilities in Camaçari city.

At one such facility, workers were made to sleep on beds without mattresses, according to prosecutors.

Each bathroom was also shared among 31 workers, forcing them to get up extremely early in order to be ready for work.

"The conditions found in the lodgings revealed an alarming picture of precariousness and degradation," the MPT said.

"Slavery-like conditions", as defined by Brazilian law, include debt bondage and work that violates human dignity.

The MPT added that the situation also constitutes "forced labour", as many workers had their wages withheld and faced excessive costs for terminating their contracts.

BYD said affected workers had been moved to hotels.

It added that it had conducted a "detailed review" of the working and living conditions for subcontracted employees, and asked on "several occasions" for the construction firm to make improvements.

BYD, short for Build Your Dreams, is one of the world's largest EV makers.

It sold more electric vehicles than Elon Musk's Tesla in the last three months of 2023, as the two battled for top spot in the sector.

The company has also been expanding its foothold in Brazil, which is its largest overseas market by a wide margin.

It first opened a factory in São Paulo in 2015, producing chassis for electric buses.

Last year, it announced that it would invest 3 billion reais ($484.2m) in Brazil to build an EV manufacturing plant.

EV sales in China have been boosted by government subsidies. which encourage consumers to trade their petrol-powered cars for EVs or hybrids.

But there is a growing backlash abroad against what some see as the Chinese government's unfair support for domestic car makers.

Major markets like the US and EU have placed tariffs on EVs from China, with more tariffs expected during the incoming administration of US president-elect Donald Trump.

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

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

The organisation announced Monday evening that it rescinded the award after the legal complaint filed by Lively alleged "abhorrent conduct" by the actor, his studio and a crisis public relations team that it said was "contrary to the values" held by the non-profit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lively also accused Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios of leading a "multi-tiered plan" to wreck her reputation in the media and online, including hiring a crisis manager who led a "sophisticated, coordinated, and well-financed retaliation plan" against her and used a "digital army" to post social media content that seemed authentic.

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

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

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

Two-year-old Shaina is hooked up to an intravenous drip at one of the few functioning hospitals in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince. Her mother, Venda, desperately hopes it will alleviate the acute malnutrition the emaciated young girl is suffering from.

Shaina is one of 760,000 children who are on the brink of famine in Haiti.

Terrified of the gang warfare raging in her neighbourhood, for weeks Venda was too frightened to leave her home to seek treatment for her daughter.

Now that she has made it to the paediatric ward, she hopes it is not too late for Shaina.

"I want to get proper care for my child, I don't want to lose her," she says tearfully.

Haiti has been engulfed in a wave of gang violence since the assassination in 2021 of the then-president, Jovenel Moïse, and now an estimated 85% of the capital is under gang control.

Even inside the hospital, Haitians are not safe from the fighting, which the UN says has killed 5,000 people this year alone and left the country on the verge of collapse.

The hospital's medical director explains that the previous day, police clashed with gang members in the emergency ward among terrified patients.

The victims of the violence are everywhere. One ward is full of young men with gunshot wounds.

Pierre is one of them.

He says he was walking home from work when he was caught in the crossfire of one street battle, with a bullet ripping through his collar bone.

"I think if the government were more stable and had put in place better youth programmes, they would not get involved in the gangs," he says of the young men who make up a large proportion of the groups terrorising the capital.

To combat the growing violence, the UN Security Council authorised the establishment of a Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS) in October 2023.

Funded primarily by the US, the Kenyan-led force deployed to Haiti six months ago tasked with restoring law and order.

On a patrol in downtown Port-au-Prince, the ferocity of the gang violence is clear.

Kenyan officers drive along the streets in heavily armoured personnel carriers (APC) through once bustling areas of the capital that now lie deserted. Shops and houses are boarded up.

Burnt out cars and debris are piled high along the side streets - barricades built by the gangs to block access.

The convoy weaves its way through the rubble when suddenly it comes under fire.

Bullets slam into the APC's armour as the Kenyan police shoot back with their assault rifles through gun ports in the vehicle's walls.

After nearly an hour of back-and-forth gunfire, the convoy moves on.

But it is not long before there are signs of more horrific gang violence. A human body burns in the middle of the street.

One of the Kenyan police in our APC says he suspects it was a gang member cornered and killed by a rival group, his body set alight to send a gruesome warning.

The Kenyan officers on our patrol are by now well accustomed to seeing this sort of brutality on the streets of Port-au-Prince, but they also tell us they are exhausted.

Four hundred officers arrived in June - but they are hugely outnumbered. In July, Haiti's government estimated there were 12,000 armed gang members in the country.

The Kenyans were promised additional personnel. When the UN authorised the mission, a force of 2,500 was envisioned, but that support, which was supposed to arrive in November, has yet to materialise.

Despite the situation, the force's leadership remains optimistic. Commander Godfrey Otunge is under pressure from the Kenyan government to make a success of this mission.

The mission commander says there is "overwhelming support" for the MSS in Haiti.

"The population are demanding that our team extend and go to other places and pacify," he says.

The uphill struggle they face is clear at a former Haitian police station, which had been occupied by a gang but has now been re-taken by the Kenyan forces.

It is still entirely surrounded by gangs and, as officers head up to the roof, they come under sniper fire.

The Kenyan officers shoot back while urging everyone to remain low.

The Kenyan officers say some of their much-delayed additional forces will arrive by the end of this year, bringing their total to 1,000.

And the support is urgently needed. There are areas in Port-au-Prince which are under such tight gang control they are virtually impenetrable for the police.

In one such area, Wharf Jérémie, almost 200 civilians were killed by a single gang over the space of one weekend earlier in December.

In total, as many as 100 gangs are estimated to be operating in the Port-au-Prince area, with boys as young as nine joining their ranks.

And the problem only appears to be growing. According to the UN children's agency, Unicef, the number of children recruited to the gangs has soared by 70% in a year.

One of the gang leaders to whom they flock is Ti Lapli, whose real name is Renel Destina.

As head of the Gran Ravine gang, he commands more than 1,000 men from his fortified headquarters high above Port-au-Prince.

Gangs like his have exacerbated an already dire situation in Haiti, and are known to slaughter, rape and terrorise civilians.

Gran Ravine is infamous for carrying out kidnappings for ransom, a practice which has earned Ti Lapli a place on the FBI's wanted list.

Ti Lapli tells us that he and his gang members "love our country a lot" - but when pressed on the rapes and murders gangs like his inflict on civilians, he claimed his men "do things they weren't supposed to do [to members of rival gangs] because the same is done to us".

The reason children join Gran Ravine is simple, he says: "The government doesn't create any jobs, it's a country with no economic activity whatsoever. We are living on trash, it's basically a failed state."

He failed to acknowledge the strangulating impact gangs like his have on Haiti's economy. Often afraid to leave their homes for work, civilians are regularly extorted for money, too.

With 700,000 residents forced to flee their homes due to the violence inflicted by groups such as Gran Ravine, the capital's schools have become camps for internally displaced people.

Negociant is one of those who has had to seek shelter.

She sits with her five children, squeezed onto the small section of a school balcony they now call home.

"Just weeks ago I was living in my own house," she says. "But gangs took over my neighbourhood."

She explains that she left for an area of the city called Solino, until that too was overrun by gangs and she fled along with hundreds of other people.

"Today, again, I'm on the run to save my life and my children," she says.

A Nasa spacecraft is attempting to make history with the closest ever approach to the Sun.

The Parker Solar Probe is plunging into our star's outer atmosphere, enduring brutal temperatures and extreme radiation.

It's out of communication for several days during this burning hot fly-by and scientists will be waiting for a signal, expected on 27 December, to see if it has survived.

The hope is the probe could help us to better understand how the Sun works.

Dr Nicola Fox, head of science at Nasa, told BBC News: "For centuries, people have studied the Sun, but you don't experience the atmosphere of a place until you actually go visit it.

"And so we can't really experience the atmosphere of our star unless we fly through it."

Parker Solar Probe launched in 2018, heading to the centre of our Solar System.

It has already swept past the Sun 21 times, getting ever nearer, but the Christmas Eve visit is record-breaking.

At its closest approach, the probe is 3.8 million miles (6.2 million km) from our star's surface.

This might not sound that close, but Nasa's Nicola Fox puts it into perspective: "We are 93 million miles away from the Sun, so if I put the Sun and the Earth one metre apart, Parker Solar Probe is four centimetres from the Sun - so that's close."

The probe will have to endure temperatures of 1,400C and radiation that could frazzle the onboard electronics.

It's protected by a 11.5cm (4.5 inches) thick carbon-composite shield but the spacecraft's tactic is to get in and out fast.

In fact, it will be moving faster than any human made object, hurtling at 430,000mph - the equivalent of flying from London to New York in less than 30 seconds.

So why go to all this effort to "touch" the Sun?

Scientists hope that as the spacecraft passes through our star's outer atmosphere - its corona - it will solve a long standing mystery.

"The corona is really, really hot, and we have no idea why," explains Dr Jenifer MIllard, an astronomer at Fifth Star Labs.

"The surface of the Sun is about 6,000C or so, but the corona, this tenuous outer atmosphere that you can see during solar eclipses, reaches millions of degrees - and that is further away from the Sun. So how is that atmosphere getting hotter?"

The mission should also help scientists to better understand solar wind - the constant stream of charged particles bursting out from the corona.

When these particles interact with the Earth's magnetic field the sky lights up with dazzling auroras.

But this so called space weather can cause problems too, knocking out power-grids, electronics and communication systems.

"Understanding the Sun, its activity, space weather, the solar wind, is so important to our everyday lives on Earth," says Dr Millard.

Nasa scientists face an anxious wait over Christmas while the spacecraft is out of touch with Earth.

Nicola Fox says that as soon as a signal is beamed back home, the team will text her a green heart to let her know the probe is OK.

She admits she's nervous about the audacious attempt, but she has faith in the probe.

"I will worry about the spacecraft. But we really have designed it to withstand all of these brutal, brutal conditions. It's a tough, tough little spacecraft."