Whether it's opening presents or the long-awaited Christmas dinner, the festive season involves plenty of things that could go wrong.

It's the little things that count at this time of year - and your etiquette is no exception.

The BBC has chatted with experts about potentially awkward moments you might face over the next few days, so you can try to avoid them.

A common festive issue is getting a present you do not like. Is it best to tell the person who gave it to you, or lie that you love it?

It depends on how well you know the person who gave you the gift, according to Rupert Wesson from professional coaching company Debrett's.

To lie - or not to lie

"There are some people [to whom] you can say the gift isn't for you, and for some you have to smile and tell them a little white lie that you like it," he tells the BBC.

But whatever you do, "don't make a funny face" at the gift when you open it, warns etiquette coach Laura Windsor.

"Just pretend you do [like it], and make a little comment on how useful the gift will be," she says. "The etiquette is always to be kind."

Both etiquette coaches say it's fine to give an unwanted present to charity or re-gift it for someone else in the future.

Mr Wesson suggests you should "always" keep a gift receipt when buying a present just in case - and he has these words of reassurance: "We can't all be perfect at buying exactly the right thing."

Open up about the cost

While the cost of turkey and Brussels sprouts have gone down this year, the price of root vegetables have gone up and some families are feeling the pinch this winter.

Ms Windsor advises that you can make a "Christmas pot" that everyone contributes to ahead of the big day.

Alternatively, she says you could ask each guest - or family member - to buy an item of food or drink each.

"There's no shame in this day and age in saying: 'I'm getting people together for Christmas, would you be able to provide this?'," Mr Wesson adds.

Stay upbeat - and avoid certain subjects

Sometimes petty arguments can flare up when the whole family is together - perhaps having eaten or drank too much.

Ms Windsor says "don't take it personally, just try to smooth it over," adding that you should not give people the "power to keep them complaining".

She advises to try and change the topic of conversation, but to avoid difficult subjects.

"You've got to keep the conversation upbeat."

If there are any existing tensions among the guests ahead of 25 December, Mr Wesson suggests attempting to address them upfront when you're putting together your plans before Christmas Day.

"Almost make the invitation [to guests or extended family] conditional that someone isn't going to kick off," he says.

Is it possible to say 'thank you' too much?

Ms Windsor advises against saying "thank you" to the host too much as it "loses its value".

She suggests showing your appreciation to the host in other ways, including offering to help them with anything, bringing a gift for them - such as a bottle of wine or a plant - and mingling with other guests.

"Mix it up a bit by complimenting them on the quality of the food," Mr Wesson says.

"Appreciation of how good the food is goes a long way."

Both etiquette experts advise sending a thank you note to the host after Christmas Day which is something that Mr Wesson calls "the gold standard of thank yous".

Be upfront about dietary requirements

If you have dietary requirements, such as being vegetarian or vegan, let whoever is hosting your Christmas dinner know ahead of time and not on 25 December, Ms Windsor stresses.

"It's about prevention, preventing discord - everything has to be organised beforehand," she says.

Mr Wesson adds: "It does fall to the host to really identify what the requirements are and then the host can plan."

Ms Windsor says that if there is any tension between people about the dietary requirements, "be empathetic" but stop the conversation.

"If they make a non-cordial remark, don't take it to heart."

The Christmas dinner rules

If your stomach is growling for Christmas dinner and you're growing impatient at how long it's taking to cook, Mr Wesson suggests you could offer to help.

"Then you're going to find the lay of the land and maybe suggest we can share something [to eat ahead of Christmas dinner]," he says.

But when you're finally tucking into the dinner, what do you do if you don't like it?

Say "yes" when asked if you're enjoying the food, Ms Windsor says.

"If you don't want to eat it, leave it," she adds - and you could always just say you've "had enough" to eat.

Mr Wesson advises to "try and draw as little attention" as possible to the fact you are not eating the meal.

To prevent this situation happening, try to see if the host will let everyone plate up their own food and then "don't pile too much on" in case you dislike it.

What to do if cards and gifts arrive after Christmas

Work, childcare, school - lots of things in life can get in the way and cause you to miss the cut-off date for sending Christmas cards and presents in time for 25 December.

Ms Windsor says organisation is "very, very important" because it shows that "you've put a lot of thought and put in the time and effort to make sure they get it in time for Christmas".

However, she says that you have to "take into account people's daily situation".

Mr Wesson says that "better late than never is the way ahead" but advises people to send a message to whoever the card or present is addressed to, letting them know it is on the way and apologise for the lateness.

'The golden rule'

Christmas Day all comes down to preparation - both organising the day and planning around family relationships, Mr Wesson says.

"It's trying to expect the best but also accept the possibility things might go a little awry," he says.

"Often these things aren't really that serious and often doesn't ruin the whole day."

"The golden rule: treat others as you'd like to be treated," Ms Windsor adds. "You won't go wrong with that."

Giovanni Pernice, a former professional dancer on Strictly Come Dancing, has won an Italian dance show months after he left the UK following a BBC investigation into allegations about his behaviour.

Pernice said his Ballando Con Le Stelle win with partner Bianca Guaccero, who is also his girlfriend, was a dream, adding: "after a difficult year I'm back".

The show is Italy's version of Strictly Come Dancing and its US spin-off Dancing With The Stars.

It comes after the BBC upheld "some, but not all" of the complaints made against him by his 2023 Strictly partner Amanda Abbington.

Pernice and Guaccero, who is an actress and singer, won the 19th season of Ballando Con Le Stelle, after performing dances including the Argentinian Tango and the Charleston.

The pair had recently confirmed their status as a romantic couple.

Italian-born Pernice shared several posts on Instagram about his win and thanked UK fans for their support.

In September, the BBC apologised to Pernice's former partner Amanda Abbington and upheld findings of harassment and verbal bullying against him but he was cleared of allegations of physical aggression.

Abbington, who played Mary Morstan in Sherlock, has since said she felt vindicated and that she had "no regrets" after making the complaints.

Pernice said at the time he was "relieved that the allegations that I was threatening and abusive were found not to be true."

On Instagram on Sunday, Pernice said: "We did it!! WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS !! after a difficult year."

He added: "It felt amazing to be in the final again doing what I love - and then to win as well was a dream and definitely something I will never forget!"

The day before he addressed his "dear friends in the UK, saying that he and his partner could tell where the votes for the show were coming from as it is "all about likes on social media".

Pernice wrote: "We just want to say a massive thank you, because realistically, we couldn't do anything without you.

"We can totally see which part of the votes are coming from the UK and you are being unbelievably amazing."

Belfast City Airport's runway will be closed for the rest of Sunday after an Aer Lingus plane suffered an emergency incident while landing during strong winds.

The plane had flown from Edinburgh to Belfast at about 16:00 GMT with four crew members but no passengers on board.

Pictures appear to show the aircraft with a collapsed nose wheel sitting on the runway.

It is understood no-one was seriously hurt.

It was a "positioning flight" operated by Emerald Airlines on behalf of Aer Lingus.

Emerald Airlines said it "experienced a hard landing upon arriving into Belfast City Airport due to adverse weather conditions".

Two flights - from London City and Leeds Bradford - due to land at the airport have since arrived at Belfast International Airport after being diverted.

A woman has been charged with the murder of a five-year-old boy.

Lincoln Button died at an address in Windstar Drive in South Ockendon, Essex, on 15 December.

A woman was taken to hospital for treatment and she was arrested and questioned after her condition improved.

Claire Button, 35, of Windstar Drive, South Ockendon, has been charged with murder and is due to appear before magistrates in Southend on Monday.

Det Ch Insp Alan Blakesley, from Essex Police, said: "This continues to prove to be an immensely complex investigation into the death of a young child.

"My thoughts and the thoughts of all the investigative team remain with the family of Lincoln Button as we continue to support them through this awful time.

"It has taken a huge amount of work and dedication from the investigative team to reach this stage in our investigation and I would continue to call upon the public to refrain from speculating about the circumstances around this case."

In a statement released last week, Bonnygate Primary School said it was working closely with the authorities as Lincoln's death was investigated.

"His love for school, laughter and cuddles will be remembered and missed dearly," said a spokesperson.

"The school's priority is to support those within the community who need help to come to terms with this tragic loss."

Members of his family also said in a statement: "Link was a cherished, loved, sweet, beautiful young soul who was adored by all and will be sorely missed every day."

Follow Essex news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.

Teen magazine tips on "how to secretly have a poo without your boyfriend knowing" had a lasting impression on Jen Moore.

She said one tip even suggested taking an over-the-counter medication to prevent a woman needing a poo while staying overnight with a partner.

The 35-year-old only recently realised she had adopted some of these habits, but that embarrassment had masked a serious health condition.

When she and her husband first met, she would wait for him to leave the house before she "went for a poo", or if he was upstairs she "would run the taps".

"I have such a visceral memory of reading this article and I obviously internalised it and hadn't even realised until fairly recently."

Last year she was "forced to be open about something I had kept to myself for years" when she experienced rectal bleeding.

It was the first time she talked about the issue with her husband, Chris, despite being together nearly 15 years.

Four months after excision surgery for endometriosis, and a hysterectomy for adenomyosis, she was worried the bleeding was a sign of delayed complications.

But a later unrelated MRI confirmed it was deep endometriosis over her bowel.

The women's health campaigner - originally from Swansea, but now living in Cambridge - said: "I talk about my body parts and periods online all the time, I didn't think I had taboos about my body. But there it was."

She laughed recalling her medical notes detail that she "is known for constipation".

"I have been constipated for as long as I can remember, there were occasions where I would go once a week.

"In fact, I thought if people were in the bathroom really regularly there was something wrong with them - I was raised in the generation where girls are told they fart glitter and rainbows."

Embarrassment might have held Jen back from speaking up, but that was not the case for Emma Williams-Tully.

The 39-year-old from Wrexham also has endometriosis. She said she felt "fobbed off" when she told doctors about her constipation and rectal bleeding.

"When I had constipation no matter what medication I took I couldn't go to the toilet for 10 days at a time and would be in absolute agony.

"I went to different specialists over the border in England and every single colonoscopy came back normal."

When she was diagnosed with endometriosis at 21, she remembers her consultant admitting: "We thought you'd been making it up all this time."

She praised the team of doctors supporting her now, but described the years of endometriosis as "torturous".

She has had 11 surgeries in total, including a hysterectomy and the removal of her colon, leaving her with an ileostomy stoma.

"I don't want to scare people and think just because they have diarrhoea or constipation that this will happen to them. But it's about advocating for yourself."

Julie Cornish, a colorectal surgeon from Cardiff and Vale health board said by the time patients reached her they had "typically been suffering for some time".

"Things have escalated, because people are too embarrassed to speak up.

"Constipation is common, it affects about 20% of the population", she said, but added in the worst cases patients will have a poo as infrequently as once a month.

"It's extreme, but we are seeing patients in their early 20s who have had problems opening their bowels since they were small and it's never gone away. They've taken lots and lots of laxatives over time and have ended up having their colon removed."

She added there were simple steps that could help.

"The bowel is one of the vital organs of the body, if it doesn't work well - you know about it. But we don't talk about it, that's the issue.

"We need a public health campaign around the bladder and bowel."

Tips for a healthy poo habit

Don't put it off: "You can get people who decide they are only going to go to the toilet in their own house," said Julie Cornish.

"If they go on holiday for a week they take something to stop them going to the toilet because they don't want to do it anywhere else. Or they feel it's unpleasant or embarrassing to go at work, so they withhold."

Water: "Make sure you drink plenty of water. Caffeine is very good for the bowels in terms of making it work more, but if you're getting diarrhoea that's not very good."

Exercise: "Just a simple walk of 15 to 20 minutes - your core abdominal muscles work a bit like a washing machine and will help the bowels move."

Diet: "You can increase the amount of fruit and fibre in your diet. You can look for things like psyllium husk, flaxseed and chia seeds to encourage it to move."

What should a poo look like? How often should I go?

"A lot of people don't actually look at their poo, but you should," said Julie Cornish.

"Is there any blood in there? What's the consistency of the poo look like?

"Look at the Bristol Stool chart. If it's type one or type two which is sort of rabbit pellets or Maltesers stuck together, that suggests you need a bit more water or fibre in your diet.

"If you're struggling to empty, or have a lot of bloating, it may be that you're constipated or have some pelvic floor dysfunction - you probably need to see a physiotherapist.

"Generally opening your bowel every one to three days, with a smooth stool is considered normal.

"If you get a significant change in your bowel habit - an increase or decrease in frequency, or if you start to get significant pain, bloating, weight loss or blood in the stool, please go and see your GP."

Amanda Walker felt trapped in a flat she couldn't sell because of its flammable cladding.

When it turned out that no government scheme would cover the costs of removing the dangerous material from her newly built flat in south London, she started campaigning.

She spent four years trying to get justice for herself, and for millions caught up in the scandal exposed by the Grenfell Tower fire.

Then, at the age of 51, she was found dead in her one-bedroom apartment by her mother and sister. An inquest recently recorded a verdict of death by misadventure.

"She would often phone me late at night when she just couldn't deal with it any more," her mother Glenda recalls.

"I wish she could phone me now."

Half a year earlier, in July 2023, Amanda had addressed peers in the House of Lords investigating the impact of the cladding problem on flat owners.

"It's devastating. It's just a quagmire. It's just chaos," she told them. "It's so unjust. I had done nothing wrong and it's destroyed my life already."

The video of Amanda's address to the Lords is now treasured by her mother, who's speaking for the first time since the inquest's verdict.

Glenda thinks Amanda, an office manager at a hedge fund in the City of London, started drinking to deal with the anxiety of having to face unaffordable bills to fix the cladding, running into the tens of thousands.

"I'm not ashamed for her for that because it was her way of coping. She used the term 'seeking oblivion'."

Amanda wrote countless letters to MPs, local authorities and other responsible bodies - but "always got the statutory response", her mother continues.

"There are still over a million people in this situation and [MPs and civil servants] would write these platitudinous letters saying 'oh we're doing this, we're doing that'."

She doesn't just see those as unhelpful - but as evidence that nobody really understood the scale of the problem and how seriously it was affecting people.

The government did eventually launch a scheme - the Building Safety Fund - to pay to remove the type of dangerous cladding that is on the outside of Amanda's flat.

She was hoping that changes enshrined in a separate landmark law called the Building Safety Act - brought in after the Grenfell tragedy - would help her correct internal fire safety defects, like insufficient fire stopping between flats.

But they didn't. There were significant exceptions to who qualified.

Since some of the other flat owners in her development had bought a share of the building's freehold, she became what's known as a "non-qualifying" leaseholder - meaning she still faced huge uncapped bills to contribute towards the repair costs.

Several proposed amendments to the Building Safety Act that would've protected people in Amanda's position were voted down in the last parliament.

What always scared Amanda was the threat of having to pay unpayable sums. She described it as a "sword of Damocles over my head for three long years". For a brief moment there was hope. "And then they vote against us, on everything," she told peers.

Amanda's drinking increased and her family sought medical help. She agreed to be hospitalised. GPs and psychiatrists were clear in their reports: Amanda's drinking, stress and anxiety were down to the impact of the cladding crisis on her mental state. She was prescribed anti-depressants.

She continued campaigning with her mother, but things began to spiral downhill.

Glenda believes the anti-depressants she was given were not benefiting her. "I think she was over-medicated and her head was all over the place. She wasn't depressed, she kept saying: 'I am not depressed, I'm angry.'"

Amanda's partner split up with her as cladding campaigning consumed more and more of her life. Her mother and sister would make trips to see her to try to offer support.

• If you've been affected by the issues in this story, help and support is available via the BBC Action Line

Things came to a head one day this January.

Glenda was growing ever-more nervous about her daughter, and knew she needed urgent medical attention.

She says she'd written a "fairly assertive" letter to a hospital where her daughter had been previously treated, warning her condition was getting serious.

Travelling to London through the rain, she found herself "phoning and phoning and phoning" the hospital to try to get doctors to intervene again.

The following day Amanda was found dead.

Asked if she'd ever thought that her daughter might kill herself, Glenda says: "Manda had talked about it. She'd talked about it."

She says she can understand her daughter's state of mind that weekend.

"Yeah, I've seen it so often. I'm different from her and she felt despair… She wanted justice and she felt it was just awful. I think she lost faith in the government completely."

The government says that work is already underway through the Remediation Acceleration Plan "to make sure those responsible for the cladding crisis pay their fair share".

It says it is "continuing to look at all options to ensure residents no longer have to deal with the nightmare of living in unsafe buildings".

Amanda's flat has now passed to her parents to deal with.

Its exterior cladding has now been replaced and they are trying to sell - but they still haven't been able to, due to structural fire issues inside the property.

Unless the Building Safety Act is amended by fresh legislation, Amanda's parents or any future purchaser will be liable for paying to fix those problems.

Amanda's mother hopes that speaking about her daughter's death has not been in vain, and that her story can be a catalyst.

"You go through grief… and perhaps the anger's getting in there a little bit now.

"For her sake, we'd love to think that she had caused some small change."

A local fire brigade has paid tribute to a nine-year-old killed in an attack on a German Christmas market.

André Gleißner died after a car drove into a crowd of shoppers at the market in Magdeburg on Friday evening, according to the Schöppenstedt fire department.

In a statement they said he was a member of the children's fire brigade in Warle, which is about an hour's drive from Magdeburg.

Four women, aged 45, 52, 67 and 75, also died in the attack. Authorities are holding a suspect in pre-trial detention on counts of murder, attempted murder and dangerous bodily harm.

The Saudi authorities, I am told, are currently working flat out to collate everything they have on the Magdeburg market suspect, Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, and to share it with Germany's ongoing investigation "in every way possible".

Inside the imposing sand coloured and fortress-like walls of the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Riyadh there is a perhaps justifiable sense of pique.

The ministry previously warned the German government about al-Abdulmohsen's extremist views.

It sent four so-called "Notes Verbal", three of them to Germany's intelligence agencies and one to the foreign ministry in Berlin. There was, the Saudis say, no response.

Part of the explanation for this may lie in the fact that Taleb al-Abdulmohsen was granted asylum by Germany in 2016, one year after the former Chancellor Angela Merkel threw open her country's borders to let in more than a million migrants from the Middle East, and 10 years after al-Abdulmohsen had taken up residence in Germany.

Coming from a country where Islam is the only religion permitted to be practiced in public, al-Abdulmohsen was a very unusual citizen.

He had turned his back on Islam, making himself a heretic in the eyes of many.

Born in the Saudi date palm oasis town of Hofuf in 1974, little is known about his early life before he decided to leave Saudi Arabia and move to Europe aged 32.

Active on social media, on his Twitter (later X) account he labels himself as both a psychiatrist and founder of Saudi rights movement, together with the tag @SaudiExMuslims.

He founded a website aimed at helping Saudi women flee their country to Europe.

The Saudis say he was a people trafficker and the Ministry of Interior's investigators, the Mabaatheth, are said to have an extensive file on him.

There have been reports in recent years of dissident Saudis coming under hostile surveillance from Saudi government agents, in Canada, the US and in Germany.

There is no question that the German authorities, both federal and state, have made some serious errors of omission in the case of al-Abdulmohsen.

Whatever their reasons for not responding, as the Saudis claim, to the repeated warnings about his extremism, he was clearly a danger to his adopted host country.

There is also, separately, the failure to close off, or at least guard, the emergency access route to Magdeburg Alter Markt that allowed him to allegedly drive his BMW into the crowds.

German authorities have defended the market's layout and said an investigation into the suspect's past is ongoing.

But a complicating factor here is that Saudi Arabia, although considered a friend and ally of the West, has a poor human rights record.

Until June 2018 Saudi women were forbidden to drive and even those women who publicly called for that ban to be lifted before then have been persecuted and imprisoned.

Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, still only in his 30s, just, is immensely popular in his own country.

While Western leaders largely distanced themselves from him after his alleged involvement in the grisly murder of the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, which the crown prince denies, at home his star is still in the ascendant.

Under his de-facto rule, Saudi public life has transformed for the better, with men and women allowed to associate freely, and cinemas reopening, along with big, spectacular sports and entertainment events, even gigs performed by Western artists like David Guetta and the Black Eyed Peas.

But there is a paradox here.

While Saudi public life has flourished there has been a simultaneous crackdown on anything that even hints at more political or religious freedom.

Harsh prison sentences of 10 years or more have been handed down for simple tweets.

No-one is permitted to even question the way the country is run.

It is against this backdrop that Germany appears to have dropped the ball with Taleb al-Abdulmohsen.

Amanda Walker felt trapped in a flat she couldn't sell because of its flammable cladding.

When it turned out that no government scheme would cover the costs of removing the dangerous material from her newly built flat in south London, she started campaigning.

She spent four years trying to get justice for herself, and for millions caught up in the scandal exposed by the Grenfell Tower fire.

Then, at the age of 51, she was found dead in her one-bedroom apartment by her mother and sister. An inquest recently recorded a verdict of death by misadventure.

"She would often phone me late at night when she just couldn't deal with it any more," her mother Glenda recalls.

"I wish she could phone me now."

Half a year earlier, in July 2023, Amanda had addressed peers in the House of Lords investigating the impact of the cladding problem on flat owners.

"It's devastating. It's just a quagmire. It's just chaos," she told them. "It's so unjust. I had done nothing wrong and it's destroyed my life already."

The video of Amanda's address to the Lords is now treasured by her mother, who's speaking for the first time since the inquest's verdict.

Glenda thinks Amanda, an office manager at a hedge fund in the City of London, started drinking to deal with the anxiety of having to face unaffordable bills to fix the cladding, running into the tens of thousands.

"I'm not ashamed for her for that because it was her way of coping. She used the term 'seeking oblivion'."

Amanda wrote countless letters to MPs, local authorities and other responsible bodies - but "always got the statutory response", her mother continues.

"There are still over a million people in this situation and [MPs and civil servants] would write these platitudinous letters saying 'oh we're doing this, we're doing that'."

She doesn't just see those as unhelpful - but as evidence that nobody really understood the scale of the problem and how seriously it was affecting people.

The government did eventually launch a scheme - the Building Safety Fund - to pay to remove the type of dangerous cladding that is on the outside of Amanda's flat.

She was hoping that changes enshrined in a separate landmark law called the Building Safety Act - brought in after the Grenfell tragedy - would help her correct internal fire safety defects, like insufficient fire stopping between flats.

But they didn't. There were significant exceptions to who qualified.

Since some of the other flat owners in her development had bought a share of the building's freehold, she became what's known as a "non-qualifying" leaseholder - meaning she still faced huge uncapped bills to contribute towards the repair costs.

Several proposed amendments to the Building Safety Act that would've protected people in Amanda's position were voted down in the last parliament.

What always scared Amanda was the threat of having to pay unpayable sums. She described it as a "sword of Damocles over my head for three long years". For a brief moment there was hope. "And then they vote against us, on everything," she told peers.

Amanda's drinking increased and her family sought medical help. She agreed to be hospitalised. GPs and psychiatrists were clear in their reports: Amanda's drinking, stress and anxiety were down to the impact of the cladding crisis on her mental state. She was prescribed anti-depressants.

She continued campaigning with her mother, but things began to spiral downhill.

Glenda believes the anti-depressants she was given were not benefiting her. "I think she was over-medicated and her head was all over the place. She wasn't depressed, she kept saying: 'I am not depressed, I'm angry.'"

Amanda's partner split up with her as cladding campaigning consumed more and more of her life. Her mother and sister would make trips to see her to try to offer support.

• If you've been affected by the issues in this story, help and support is available via the BBC Action Line

Things came to a head one day this January.

Glenda was growing ever-more nervous about her daughter, and knew she needed urgent medical attention.

She says she'd written a "fairly assertive" letter to a hospital where her daughter had been previously treated, warning her condition was getting serious.

Travelling to London through the rain, she found herself "phoning and phoning and phoning" the hospital to try to get doctors to intervene again.

The following day Amanda was found dead.

Asked if she'd ever thought that her daughter might kill herself, Glenda says: "Manda had talked about it. She'd talked about it."

She says she can understand her daughter's state of mind that weekend.

"Yeah, I've seen it so often. I'm different from her and she felt despair… She wanted justice and she felt it was just awful. I think she lost faith in the government completely."

The government says that work is already underway through the Remediation Acceleration Plan "to make sure those responsible for the cladding crisis pay their fair share".

It says it is "continuing to look at all options to ensure residents no longer have to deal with the nightmare of living in unsafe buildings".

Amanda's flat has now passed to her parents to deal with.

Its exterior cladding has now been replaced and they are trying to sell - but they still haven't been able to, due to structural fire issues inside the property.

Unless the Building Safety Act is amended by fresh legislation, Amanda's parents or any future purchaser will be liable for paying to fix those problems.

Amanda's mother hopes that speaking about her daughter's death has not been in vain, and that her story can be a catalyst.

"You go through grief… and perhaps the anger's getting in there a little bit now.

"For her sake, we'd love to think that she had caused some small change."

Cyclone Chido has killed 94 people in Mozambique since it made landfall in the east African country last week, local authorities have said.

The country's National Institute of Risk and Disaster Management (INGD) said 768 people were injured and more than 622,000 people affected by the natural disaster in some capacity.

Chido hit Mozambique on 15 December with winds of 260 km/h (160mph) and 250mm of rainfall in the first 24 hours.

The same cyclone had first wreaked havoc in the French Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte, before moving on to Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe.

In Mozambique, the storm struck northern provinces that are regularly battered by cyclones. It first reached Cabo Delgado, then travelled further inland to Niassa and Nampula.

The country's INGD said the cyclone impacted the education and health sector. More than 109,793 students were affected, with school infrastructure severely damaged.

Some 52 sanitary units were damaged, the INGD said, which further risks access to essential health services. This is exacerbated further in areas where access to healthcare facilities were already limited before the cyclone.

Daniel Chapo, leader of Mozambique's ruling party, told local media the government is mobilising support on "all levels" in response to the cyclone.

Speaking during a visit to Cabo Delgado on Sunday, one of the most badly affected areas, Chapo said the government is working alongside the INGD to ensure those affected in the provinces of Mecúfi, Nampula, Memba and Niassa can rebuild.

In Mayotte, Chido was the worst storm to hit the archipelago in 90 years, leaving tens of thousands of people reeling from the catastrophe.

The interior ministry in its latest update confirmed 35 people had died.

Mayotte's prefect previously told local media the death toll could rise significantly once the damage was fully assessed, warning it would "definitely be several hundred" and could reach thousands.

More than 1,300 officers were deployed to support the local population.

One week on, many residents still lack basic necessities, while running water is making a gradual return to the territory's capital. The ministry has advised people to boil water for three minutes before consuming it.

Around 100 tonnes of equipment are being delivered each day, the ministry said, as an air bridge was built between Mayotte, Reunion and mainland France.

In a statement on Friday, interior minister Bruno Retailleau said 80 tonnes of food and 50 tonnes of water had been distributed across Mayotte that day.

Tropical cyclones are characterised by very high wind speeds, heavy rainfall, and storm surges, which are short-term rises to sea-levels. This often causes widespread damage and flooding.

The cyclone, the INGD said, "highlights once again, the vulnerability of social infrastructures to climate change and the need for resilient planning to mitigate future impacts".

Assessing the exact influence of climate change on individual tropical cyclones can be challenging due to the complexity of these storm systems. But rising temperatures do affect these storms in measurable ways.

The UN's climate body, the IPCC, previously said there is "high confidence" that humans have contributed to increases in precipitation associated with tropical cyclones, and "medium confidence" that humans have contributed to the higher probability of a tropical cyclone being more intense.

Magdeburg's Christmas market is a sad sight. This should have been the busiest weekend of the season, but the whole area has been cordoned off and all the stands are shut.

Police are the only people walking around the boarded-up mulled wine and gingerbread stalls.

On the pavement, red candles flicker, tributes laid for the victims.

Lukas, a truck driver, told me he felt compelled to come to pay his respects. "I wasn't there when it happened," he told me.

"But I work here in Magdeburg. I'm here every day. I've driven by here a thousand times."

"It's a tragedy for everyone here in Magdeburg. The perpetrator should be punished."

"We can only hope that the victims and their families find the strength to deal with it."

There is sorrow here – but there is anger too.

Many people here see this attack as a terrible lapse in security. That is a claim the authorities reject, although they have admitted the attacker entered the market using a route planned for emergency responders.

Michael, who also came to pay tributes to the victims, said "there should've been better security".

"We should have been prepared better but that was not done properly."

• Investigation: Police probe market security and warnings about suspect
• Explained: What we know so far about Magdeburg Christmas market attack
• From the scene: Eyewitness heard rumbling and shattering glass

Standing at the security cordon, I heard a group of locals complaining loudly about Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz and regional politicians.

"They are wasting our tax money, they are just looking out for themselves. They are not interested in us. We just hear empty promises," one man said.

"They are turning what happened here around and want to put the blame on the opposition and use it for their election campaign," he said.

On Saturday evening, around the same time as the square in front of Magdeburg's Gothic cathedral was filled with mourners watching a memorial service, a demonstration took place nearby.

Protesters held a banner that read "Remigration now!" – a concept popular among the far-right – and shouted "those who do not love Germany should leave Germany".

It is not clear yet what impact this attack may have on Germany's upcoming election.

Germany has been hit by a number of deadly Islamist attacks in the past, but investigators said the evidence they have gathered so far suggests a different picture in this case.

Germany's Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said the suspect appears to have been "Islamophobic".

The suspect, Taleb Al-Abdulmohsen, is from Saudi Arabia, and his social media posts suggest he had been critical of Islam.

He also expressed sympathy on social media for Germany's far-right political party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), re-tweeting posts from the party's leader and a far-right activist.

A Church of England priest at the centre of a sexual abuse case was twice reappointed to a senior role during the Archbishop of York's time as Bishop of Chelmsford, the BBC can reveal.

A BBC investigation previously revealed how David Tudor remained in post nine years after Stephen Cottrell was first told of concerns about him.

New information shows Tudor's contract as area dean in Essex was renewed in 2013 and 2018, at which times Mr Cottrell knew he had paid compensation to a woman who says she was abused by him as a child.

The Archbishop of York said he regrets his handling of the case, with a spokesperson saying "he acknowledges this could have been handled differently".

They added that "all the risks around David Tudor were regularly reviewed" and that was the "main focus".

Rachel Ford, who told the investigation she was groomed by Tudor as a child, said the renewal of his contract as area dean was "an insult to all of his victims".

Ms Ford added that if responsibility for that lay with Mr Cottrell, it strengthened her feeling that he should resign.

The pressure on Mr Cottrell comes at a time of turmoil in the Church of England following a damning report into how it covered up prolific abuse by the barrister John Smyth.

The report led to the resignation of the Church's most senior figure, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby. Mr Cottrell will take over his role temporarily for a few months in the New Year.

The BBC investigation showed Mr Cottrell was briefed in his first week as Bishop of Chelmsford about serious safeguarding issues surrounding Tudor.

These included that Tudor was convicted of indecently assaulting three underage girls and was jailed for six months in 1988, although the conviction was quashed on technical grounds. Mr Cottrell would also have known Tudor served a five-year ban from ministry.

By 2012, Mr Cottrell also knew Tudor had paid a £10,000 settlement to a woman who says she was sexually abused by him from the age of 11. In 2018, the Church of England issued an apology and a six-figure pay-out to another alleged victim.

Yet the priest was suspended only in 2019 when a police investigation was launched after another woman came forward alleging Tudor had abused her in the 1980s.

When first responding to the BBC's investigation, the Archbishop of York said he was "deeply sorry that we were not able to take action earlier", insisting he had acted at the first opportunity that was legally available to him.

Mr Cottrell also said he had been faced with a "horrible and intolerable" situation and that it was "awful to live with and to manage".

When Mr Cottrell became bishop in 2010, Tudor was into the second year of a five-year term as an area dean, a role overseeing 12 parishes in Essex.

His appointment to that post, under a different bishop, happened despite him working under a safeguarding agreement that barred him from being alone with children and entering schools.

The title was renewed twice under Mr Cottrell - in 2013 and 2018 - and he lost the title only when the term of office expired in 2020. It was not taken from him.

A spokesperson for the Archbishop said he "accepts responsibility for David Tudor remaining as Area Dean".

"No-one advised him that David Tudor should not continue as an Area Dean," said the Archbishop's office.

Another of Tudor's victims, who does not want to be identified, said she was "shocked and disappointed" to hear his tenure as area dean was twice renewed during Mr Cottrell's time as Bishop of Chelmsford.

"These are not the actions of a bishop dealing with a situation that was intolerable to him, in fact, quite the opposite. I call on him to do the honourable thing for the sake of the Church and resign," she says.

In 2015, under Mr Cottrell, Tudor was also made honorary canon of Chelmsford Cathedral.

The Archbishop's office insisted it happened because of a change in Church policy during Mr Cottrell's time as Bishop of Chelmsford, meaning area deans were automatically made honorary canons.

It was "not a promotion and not a personal reward".

However, a social media post from Tudor's Canvey Island parish in July 2015 suggests it was seen there as a reward.

Tudor's "hard work, determination and commitment to this place have been recognised by the diocese and this new position in the Church is very well-deserved," it said.

The BBC has also seen evidence - in leaked minutes from internal Church meetings in 2018 and 2019 - that Tudor's titles of area dean and honorary canon were discussed and there had been a suggestion Mr Cottrell could immediately have taken them away.

In October 2018, a meeting at Church House - the London headquarters of the Church of England - heard that Chelmsford diocese took the view that if Tudor "can be a parish priest, he can undertake the other roles".

A bishop from another diocese said "the Bishop of Chelmsford could remove DT's [David Tudor's] Canon and Area Dean titles straight away".

But in a follow-up discussion in November 2018, Chelmsford diocese advised it would not be appropriate because of "the difficulty of removing those titles without explaining why."

We asked Mr Cottrell's office why he had not followed the suggestion to remove Tudor's titles. We were told "it would not be appropriate to comment on any notes or decisions from a core group process which are confidential".

The investigation also highlighted the significant role played by former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey in the case.

We revealed Lord Carey had agreed to Tudor's return to priesthood after being suspended in 1989, and had also agreed to have Tudor's name removed from the list of clergy that had faced disciplinary action. He had also advocated for the priest.

After the BBC put this information to the former Archbishop of Canterbury, he wrote to give up his "permission to officiate", ending more than 65 years of ministry in the Church of England. Lord Carey made the announcement on Tuesday.

In October 2024, Tudor admitted sexual misconduct and was sacked by the Church. At no point has he responded to the BBC's attempts to speak with him.

Usyk v Fury 2 - who won each round of heavyweight fight?

Magdeburg's Christmas market is a sad sight. This should have been the busiest weekend of the season, but the whole area has been cordoned off and all the stands are shut.

Police are the only people walking around the boarded-up mulled wine and gingerbread stalls.

On the pavement, red candles flicker, tributes laid for the victims.

Lukas, a truck driver, told me he felt compelled to come to pay his respects. "I wasn't there when it happened," he told me.

"But I work here in Magdeburg. I'm here every day. I've driven by here a thousand times."

"It's a tragedy for everyone here in Magdeburg. The perpetrator should be punished."

"We can only hope that the victims and their families find the strength to deal with it."

There is sorrow here – but there is anger too.

Many people here see this attack as a terrible lapse in security. That is a claim the authorities reject, although they have admitted the attacker entered the market using a route planned for emergency responders.

Michael, who also came to pay tributes to the victims, said "there should've been better security".

"We should have been prepared better but that was not done properly."

• Investigation: Police probe market security and warnings about suspect
• Explained: What we know so far about Magdeburg Christmas market attack
• From the scene: Eyewitness heard rumbling and shattering glass

Standing at the security cordon, I heard a group of locals complaining loudly about Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz and regional politicians.

"They are wasting our tax money, they are just looking out for themselves. They are not interested in us. We just hear empty promises," one man said.

"They are turning what happened here around and want to put the blame on the opposition and use it for their election campaign," he said.

On Saturday evening, around the same time as the square in front of Magdeburg's Gothic cathedral was filled with mourners watching a memorial service, a demonstration took place nearby.

Protesters held a banner that read "Remigration now!" – a concept popular among the far-right – and shouted "those who do not love Germany should leave Germany".

It is not clear yet what impact this attack may have on Germany's upcoming election.

Germany has been hit by a number of deadly Islamist attacks in the past, but investigators said the evidence they have gathered so far suggests a different picture in this case.

Germany's Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said the suspect appears to have been "Islamophobic".

The suspect, Taleb Al-Abdulmohsen, is from Saudi Arabia, and his social media posts suggest he had been critical of Islam.

He also expressed sympathy on social media for Germany's far-right political party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), re-tweeting posts from the party's leader and a far-right activist.

Ukrainian sniper Oleksandr Matsievsky was captured by Russians in the first year of the full-scale invasion. Later, a video emerged showing him smoking his last cigarette in a forest, apparently next to a grave he had been forced to dig.

"Glory to Ukraine!" he says to his captors. Moments later, shots ring out and he falls dead.

His execution is one of many.

In October this year, nine captured Ukrainian soldiers were reportedly shot dead by Russian forces in Kursk region. Ukrainian prosecutors are investigating the case including a photo showing half-naked bodies lying on the ground. This photo was enough for one of the victims, drone operator Ruslan Holubenko, to be identified by his parents.

"I recognised him by his underwear," his distraught mother told local broadcaster Suspilne Chernihiv. "I bought it for him before a trip to the sea. I also knew that his shoulder had been shot through. You could see that in the picture."

The list of executions goes on. Ukrainian prosecutors are investigating reports of beheadings and a sword being used to kill a Ukrainian soldier with his hands tied behind his back.

In another instance, a video showed 16 Ukrainian soldiers apparently being lined up and then mowed down with automatic gunfire after emerging from a woods to surrender.

Some of the executions were filmed by Russian forces themselves, while others were observed by Ukrainian drones hovering above.

The killings captured on such videos usually take place in woods or fields lacking distinctive features, which makes confirming their exact location difficult. BBC Verify, however, has been able to confirm in several cases - such as one beheading - that the victims wear Ukrainian uniforms and that the videos are recent.

Rising numbers

The Ukrainian prosecution service says that at least 147 Ukrainian prisoners of war have been executed by Russian forces since the start of the full-scale invasion, 127 of them this year.

"The upward trend is very clear, very obvious," says Yuri Belousov, the head of the War Department at the Ukrainian Prosecutor-General's Office.

"Executions became systemic from November last year and have continued throughout all of this year. Sadly, their number has been particularly on the rise this summer and autumn. This tells us that they are not isolated cases. They are happening across vast areas and they have clear signs of being part of a policy - there is evidence that instructions to this effect are being issued."

International humanitarian law - particularly the Third Geneva Convention - offers protection to prisoners of war, and executing them is a war crime.

Despite this, Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman leader of Russia's Chechnya, briefly ordered his commanders involved in the Ukraine war "to take no prisoners".

Impunity

Rachel Denber, Deputy Director of the Europe and Central Asia Division at Human Rights Watch, says there is no shortage of evidence supporting allegations of Ukrainian prisoners of war being executed by Russian troops. According to her, impunity plays a key part, and the Russian army has some serious questions to answer.

"What instructions do these units have, either formally or informally from their commanders? Are their commanders being quite clear about what the Geneva Conventions say about the treatment of prisoners of war? What are Russian military commanders telling their units about their conduct? What steps is the chain of command taking to investigate these instances? And if higher ups are not investigating, or not taking steps to prevent that conduct, are they aware that they too are criminally liable and can be held accountable?" she asks.

So far, there has been nothing to suggest that Russia is formally investigating claims that its forces have been executing Ukrainian prisoners of war. Even mentioning similar allegations is punishable by lengthy prison sentences in Russia.

According to Vladimir Putin, Russian forces have "always" treated Ukrainian prisoners of war "strictly in line with international legal documents and international conventions".

Ukrainian forces have also been accused of executing Russian prisoners of war, but the number of such claims has been much smaller.

Yuri Belousov says that the Ukrainian prosecution service treats such accusations "very seriously" and is investigating them - but so far no one has been charged.

According to Human Rights Watch, since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022 the Russian forces have committed "a litany of violations, including those which should be investigated as war crimes or crimes against humanity".

The Russian army's record of abuses is such that some Ukrainian soldiers prefer death to capture.

"He told me: Mum, I'll never surrender, never. Forgive me, I know you'll cry, but I don't want to be tortured," Ruslan Holubenko's mother says. Her son is still officially classed as missing in action, and she hopes against hope.

"I'll do everything that's possible and impossible to get my child back. I keep looking at this photo. Maybe he is just unconscious? I want to believe, I don't want to think that he's gone."

A Church of England priest at the centre of a sexual abuse case was twice reappointed to a senior role during the Archbishop of York's time as Bishop of Chelmsford, the BBC can reveal.

A BBC investigation previously revealed how David Tudor remained in post nine years after Stephen Cottrell was first told of concerns about him.

New information shows Tudor's contract as area dean in Essex was renewed in 2013 and 2018, at which times Mr Cottrell knew he had paid compensation to a woman who says she was abused by him as a child.

The Archbishop of York said he regrets his handling of the case, with a spokesperson saying "he acknowledges this could have been handled differently".

They added that "all the risks around David Tudor were regularly reviewed" and that was the "main focus".

Rachel Ford, who told the investigation she was groomed by Tudor as a child, said the renewal of his contract as area dean was "an insult to all of his victims".

Ms Ford added that if responsibility for that lay with Mr Cottrell, it strengthened her feeling that he should resign.

The pressure on Mr Cottrell comes at a time of turmoil in the Church of England following a damning report into how it covered up prolific abuse by the barrister John Smyth.

The report led to the resignation of the Church's most senior figure, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby. Mr Cottrell will take over his role temporarily for a few months in the New Year.

The BBC investigation showed Mr Cottrell was briefed in his first week as Bishop of Chelmsford about serious safeguarding issues surrounding Tudor.

These included that Tudor was convicted of indecently assaulting three underage girls and was jailed for six months in 1988, although the conviction was quashed on technical grounds. Mr Cottrell would also have known Tudor served a five-year ban from ministry.

By 2012, Mr Cottrell also knew Tudor had paid a £10,000 settlement to a woman who says she was sexually abused by him from the age of 11. In 2018, the Church of England issued an apology and a six-figure pay-out to another alleged victim.

Yet the priest was suspended only in 2019 when a police investigation was launched after another woman came forward alleging Tudor had abused her in the 1980s.

When first responding to the BBC's investigation, the Archbishop of York said he was "deeply sorry that we were not able to take action earlier", insisting he had acted at the first opportunity that was legally available to him.

Mr Cottrell also said he had been faced with a "horrible and intolerable" situation and that it was "awful to live with and to manage".

When Mr Cottrell became bishop in 2010, Tudor was into the second year of a five-year term as an area dean, a role overseeing 12 parishes in Essex.

His appointment to that post, under a different bishop, happened despite him working under a safeguarding agreement that barred him from being alone with children and entering schools.

The title was renewed twice under Mr Cottrell - in 2013 and 2018 - and he lost the title only when the term of office expired in 2020. It was not taken from him.

A spokesperson for the Archbishop said he "accepts responsibility for David Tudor remaining as Area Dean".

"No-one advised him that David Tudor should not continue as an Area Dean," said the Archbishop's office.

Another of Tudor's victims, who does not want to be identified, said she was "shocked and disappointed" to hear his tenure as area dean was twice renewed during Mr Cottrell's time as Bishop of Chelmsford.

"These are not the actions of a bishop dealing with a situation that was intolerable to him, in fact, quite the opposite. I call on him to do the honourable thing for the sake of the Church and resign," she says.

In 2015, under Mr Cottrell, Tudor was also made honorary canon of Chelmsford Cathedral.

The Archbishop's office insisted it happened because of a change in Church policy during Mr Cottrell's time as Bishop of Chelmsford, meaning area deans were automatically made honorary canons.

It was "not a promotion and not a personal reward".

However, a social media post from Tudor's Canvey Island parish in July 2015 suggests it was seen there as a reward.

Tudor's "hard work, determination and commitment to this place have been recognised by the diocese and this new position in the Church is very well-deserved," it said.

The BBC has also seen evidence - in leaked minutes from internal Church meetings in 2018 and 2019 - that Tudor's titles of area dean and honorary canon were discussed and there had been a suggestion Mr Cottrell could immediately have taken them away.

In October 2018, a meeting at Church House - the London headquarters of the Church of England - heard that Chelmsford diocese took the view that if Tudor "can be a parish priest, he can undertake the other roles".

A bishop from another diocese said "the Bishop of Chelmsford could remove DT's [David Tudor's] Canon and Area Dean titles straight away".

But in a follow-up discussion in November 2018, Chelmsford diocese advised it would not be appropriate because of "the difficulty of removing those titles without explaining why."

We asked Mr Cottrell's office why he had not followed the suggestion to remove Tudor's titles. We were told "it would not be appropriate to comment on any notes or decisions from a core group process which are confidential".

The investigation also highlighted the significant role played by former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey in the case.

We revealed Lord Carey had agreed to Tudor's return to priesthood after being suspended in 1989, and had also agreed to have Tudor's name removed from the list of clergy that had faced disciplinary action. He had also advocated for the priest.

After the BBC put this information to the former Archbishop of Canterbury, he wrote to give up his "permission to officiate", ending more than 65 years of ministry in the Church of England. Lord Carey made the announcement on Tuesday.

In October 2024, Tudor admitted sexual misconduct and was sacked by the Church. At no point has he responded to the BBC's attempts to speak with him.

On Friday evening, a man ploughed a car into a crowd of shoppers at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg.

The attack has left five people dead and more than 200 injured, with many in a critical condition.

One man has been arrested over the attack, and police believe he was solely responsible.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz travelled to Magdeburg on Saturday, and a city councillor declared Christmas over for the city.

How did the attack unfold?

Unverified footage on social media showed a black BMW travelling at high speeds through the pedestrian walkway between Christmas stalls.

Eyewitnesses described jumping out of the car's path, fleeing or hiding. One told the Reuters news agency that police were already at the venue and chased after the car before arresting the suspect.

Footage from verified sources showed armed police confronting and arresting a man who can be seen lying on the ground next to a stationary vehicle - a black BMW with significant damage to its front bumper.

BBC correspondent Damien McGuinness in Magdeburg reported that the market is "surrounded by concrete blocks". However, "there is a gap which is wide enough for pedestrians to go through, but tragically wide enough for a car to go into the Christmas market", he said.

City officials said around 100 police, medics and firefighters, as well as 50 rescue service personnel rushed to the scene in the aftermath of the attack.

Images from the scene on Friday night showed an area outside the market awash with blue lights as dozens of first responders attended to the injured.

Who are the victims?

Five people have died in the attack, one of whom is a child.

More than 200 people have been injured and at least 41 are in a critical condition.

The toll had earlier been reported as two dead and 68 injured, but was revised to the much higher totals on Saturday morning.

None of the victims have been identified yet.

Who is the suspect?

German media has identified the suspect as Taleb A, a psychiatrist who lives in Bernburg, around 40km (25 miles) south of Magdeburg.

The motive behind the attack remains unclear, but authorities have reported that they believe he carried out the attack alone.

Originally from Saudi Arabia, he arrived in Germany in 2006 and in 2016 was recognised as a refugee.

He ran a website that aimed to help other former Muslims flee persecution in their Gulf homelands.

Evidenced by social media posts, the suspect is an outspoken critic of Islam, and has promoted conspiracy theories regarding a plot to seek Islamic supremacy in Europe.

A report from Der Spiegel said a complaint was filed against Taleb A with the authorities a year ago over statements he made. Officials did not see any concrete threat, the report says.

What have officials said about the attack?

"The reports from Magdeburg raise the worst fears," the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said on social media platform X.

Magdeburg's city councillor for public order, Ronni Krug, said the Christmas market will stay closed and that "Christmas in Magdeburg is over", according to German public broadcaster MDR.

That sentiment was echoed on the market's website, which in the wake of the attack featured only a black screen with words of mourning, announcing that the market was over.

The Saudi government expressed "solidarity with the German people and the families of the victims", in a statement on X, and "affirmed its rejection of violence".

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said he was "horrified by the atrocious attack in Magdeburg", adding that his thoughts were with "the victims, their families and all those affected" in a post on X on Friday night.

Grief and anger are boiling over in Magdeburg after an attacker used an access lane for emergency vehicles to drive into a Christmas market, killing five people and injuring hundreds.

On a visit on Saturday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, ministers and regional political leaders were heckled by members of the public, some seemingly outraged by what was criticised as a lapse in security.

German authorities have defended the layout and security at the market.

Authorities are also facing questions after reports that they were warned last year about the suspect, with police saying they had conducted an evaluation as to whether the perpetrator might be a potential threat a year ago.

The suspect has been ordered into pre-trial detention and faces charges of murder, attempted murder and dangerous bodily harm.

• Full report: Five dead, more than 200 injured in attack
• Explained: What we know so far about Magdeburg Christmas market attack
• From the scene: Eyewitness heard rumbling and shattering glass

Usually at this time of the year, German city centres are full of shoppers and revellers drinking mulled wine, but this year the mood is very different.

The main Christmas market is cordoned off by tape and surrounded by police vans as armed officers patrol the shops and malls nearby.

There is sadness in the air in Magdeburg, as well as bafflement and anger, as people ask how could this have happened.

As Scholz and his colleagues walked out of the cordoned-off market during their visit on Saturday, they were met with booing and heckling and shouts of "hau ab", an extremely aggressive form of "get lost".

Some people seemed enraged by a perceived lapse in security. Others appeared simply annoyed and irritated in general at Germany's political leaders.

Security has ramped up at Christmas markets across Germany since a similar attack in Berlin in 2016 when a man drove a lorry into a market crowd, killing 12 people.

Open-plan Christmas markets now have some sort of barrier around them — typically large concrete blocks, which is the case in Magdeburg.

However, the gap in the barriers was large enough to allow emergency vehicles to pass through.

City official Ronni Krug told reporters at a press conference on Saturday that emergency responders needed an evacuation route in case of a "conventional" emergency, and all the relevant agencies approved the plan.

"A safety and security concept must, on the one hand, protect those visiting an event as much as possible, but also needs to ensure, at the same time, if something does happen, they are able to leave the site safely and rapidly", he said.

"Perhaps it is something that could not have been prevented", he added.

German media reported that before the attack, there had been warnings into a potential threat from the suspect.

The suspect, a doctor from Saudi Arabia named Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, arrived in Germany in 2006 and in 2016 was recognised as a refugee.

An atheist, he ran a website that aimed to help other former Muslims flee persecution in their Gulf homelands. His social media was full of anti-Islamic sentiment and conspiracy theories.

At Saturday's press conference, Magdeburg police chief Tom-Oliver Langhans said police had conducted an evaluation as to whether the perpetrator might be a potential threat, "but that discussion was one year ago".

He added that investigations into the suspect's past were ongoing and declined to comment further.

One of those tip-offs is believed to have come from Saudi Arabia, the suspect's home country.

A source close to the Saudi government told the BBC it sent four official notifications known as "Notes Verbal" to German authorities, warning them about what they said were "the very extreme views" held by al-Abdulmohsen.

However, a counter-terrorism expert told the BBC the Saudis may have been mounting a disinformation campaign to discredit someone who tried to help young Saudi women seek asylum in Germany.

On Saturday, Langhans said he did not have information when asked about Saudi Arabia issuing warnings.

Later, the head of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), Holger Münch, told public broadcaster ZDF that his office had received a notice from Saudi Arabia in November 2023. He said local police took appropriate investigative measures, but the matter was unspecific.

He added that the suspect "had various contacts with authorities, insulted them and even made threats, but he was not known for violent acts".

Past investigations would need to be revisited, Münch said.

Weather warnings for strong winds are set to come into force in parts of the UK on Saturday morning as millions of people take to the roads ahead of Christmas.

The Met Office says gusts could reach 50-60mph and disruption is expected on what motoring experts are predicting will the busiest weekend of motoring this year.

The yellow warning is in place from 07:00 GMT on Saturday to 21:00 GMT on Sunday for Scotland, North West and North East England, and parts of Wales and Northern Ireland.

The area covered by the warning widens on Sunday to take in South West England, Derbyshire, Hampshire, parts of the West Midlands and Yorkshire, and all of Wales and Northern Ireland.

Westerly winds are forecast to pick up over Saturday.

Forecasters say there was a small chance of gusts reaching 80mph in the far north of Scotland and Orkney and Shetland on Saturday afternoon and evening.

"Dangerous coastal conditions can be expected too, with large waves an additional hazard," the Met Office added.

Transport Scotland, said road, rail, air and ferry services are "all likely to be affected by the conditions" with cancellations and restrictions on bridges possible.

RAC spokesman Rod Dennis said: "With the weekend bringing a mix of strong winds along with heavy, and in some places wintry, showers, it's going to make many of the estimated seven million getaway trips by car a pretty exhausting experience."

When non-leisure traffic is taken into account, nearly 14 million drivers are expected to take to road during the weekend - a new record, according to the RAC.

The winds are expected to ease by Monday, but a white Christmas is looking unlikely with cloud and rain expected to move in.

"Crisp blue skies and snow on the ground" are "decidedly unlikely" over Christmas, the Met Office said.

Christmas Day itself "will be a fairly cloudy, nondescript day", Met Office deputy chief meteorologist Rebekah Hicks added.

When Syrian rebel leader Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in Damascus and gave a victory speech on the heels of a lightning military campaign that swept through the country and toppled Bashar al-Assad's regime, one remark went widely unnoticed. That was his reference to an illegal narcotic that has flooded the Middle East over the past ten years.

"Syria has become the biggest producer of Captagon on earth," he said. "And today, Syria is going to be purified by the grace of God."

Mostly unknown outside of the Middle East, Captagon is an addictive, amphetamine-like pill, sometimes called "poor man's cocaine".

Its production has proliferated in Syria amid an economy broken by war, sanctions and the mass displacement of Syrians abroad. Authorities in neighbouring countries have struggled to cope with the smuggling of huge quantities of pills across their borders.

All the evidence pointed to Syria being the main source of Captogan's illicit trade with an annual value placed at $5.6bn (£4.5bn) by the World Bank.

At the scale that the pills were being produced and dispatched, the suspicion was that this was not simply the work of criminal gangs - but of an industry orchestrated by the regime itself.

Weeks on from the speech by al-Sharaa (previously known by his nom de guerre of Abu Mohammed al-Jolani), spectacular images have emerged that suggest the suspicion was correct.

Videos filmed by Syrians raiding properties allegedly owned by relatives of Assad show rooms full of pills being made and packaged, hidden in fake industrial products.

Other footage shows piles of pills found in what appears to be a Syrian military airbase, set on fire by the rebels.

I spent a year investigating Captagon for a BBC World Service documentary and saw how the drug became as popular among the wealthy youth of Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia as it was among the working class in countries like Jordan.

"I was 19 years old, I started taking Captagon and my life started to fall apart," Yasser, a young male addict in a rehab clinic told us in Jordan's capital, Amman. "I started hanging out with people who take this thing. You work, you live without food, so the body is a wreck."

So how will al-Sharaa and his group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), deal with the large number of people in Syria and around the Middle East addicted to Captagon who may suddenly find themselves without a supply?

Caroline Rose, an expert on Syrian drug trafficking at the New Lines Institute, has concerns around this. "My fear is that they will really crack down on supply and not necessarily try to do any sort of demand reduction."

But there is a broader question at play too: that is, what effect will the loss of such a lucrative trade have on Syria's economy? And as those behind it move aside, how will al-Sharaa keep at bay any other criminals waiting in the wings to replace them?

The narco-war in the Middle East

The proliferation of Captagon pushed the Middle East into a genuine narco-war.

While filming with the Jordanian army on their desert border with Syria, we saw how the soldiers had reinforced their fences and learned about their comrades who had been killed in shoot-outs with Captagon smugglers. They accused the Syrian soldiers across the border of aiding the smugglers.

Other countries in the region have been just as disturbed by the trade.

For a while, Saudi Arabia suspended imports of fruit and vegetables from Lebanon because authorities were frequently finding shipping containers full of produce like pomegranates which had been hollowed out and filled with bags of Captagon pills.

We filmed in five countries, including in regime-held and rebel-held Syria, consulted well-placed sources, and gained access to confidential records from court cases in Germany and Lebanon.

We were able to name two major parties as having their hands in the trade - Assad's extended family and the Syrian armed forces, in particular its Fourth Division, led by Assad's brother, Maher.

Questions surrounding Assad's brother

Maher al-Assad was perhaps the most powerful man in Syria aside from his brother.

He was sanctioned by many Western powers for the violence he wrought against protesters during the pro-democracy uprising in 2011 that precipitated the bloody civil war. The French judiciary has also issued an international arrest warrant for him and his brother for their alleged responsibility in chemical weapons attacks in Syria in 2013.

Gaining access to the WhatsApp chats of a Captagon trader imprisoned in Lebanon, we were able to implicate Maher al-Assad's Fourth Division and his second-in-command, General Ghassan Bilal.

The revelation was a huge milestone in confirming the role of Syria's armed forces and Bashar al-Assad's inner circle in the trade.

Seeing the recent images of demoralised Syrian army troops fleeing without a fight as the rebels advanced, I was reminded of an interview we conducted with a regime soldier last year.

He told us his monthly army pay of $30 (£24) barely covered three days of food for his family, so his unit became involved in criminality and Captagon.

"It's what brings most of the money now," he said.

In May 2023, the Arab League agreed to re-admit Syria 12 years after it was expelled for violently suppressing the popular uprising. It was seen as a diplomatic coup for Assad, using promises to tackle the Captagon trade as leverage to be rehabilitated.

Can the rebel leaders crack down?

Now, as Syria's rebel leaders consolidate their power over the organs of state, it seems they are fully aware of positive signals they are sending to wary neighbouring states when they promise to crack down on the Captagon trade.

But it might be a steeper task for them to wrest the country away from a lucrative criminal enterprise after so many years when it was encouraged by the state itself.

Issam Al Reis was a major engineer in the Syrian army until he defected at the beginning of the uprising against the Assad regime, and has spent time investigating the Captagon trade. He believes that HTS will not need to do much to stop the trade initially "because the main players have left" and there's already been a dramatic drop in Captagon exports - but he warns that "new guys" might be waiting in the wings to take over.

This will be particularly problematic if the demand side isn't tackled too. There is little evidence of investment in rehabilitation from the time HTS controlled Idlib province in north-west Syria, according to Ms Rose. "[There was a] very poor picture for trying to address Captagon consumption," she says.

She also says there has already been an uptick in another drug being trafficked through Syria.

"I think many users will seek out crystal meth as an alternative, especially users who have already established a tolerance to Captagon and need something that's a bit more strong."

The other problem, as Mr Al Reis points out, is a financial one. As he puts it: "Syrians need the money."

His hope is that the international community will help prevent people entering the drug trade through humanitarian aid and easing sanctions.

But Ms Rose argues the new leaders will need to identify a "new and alternative economic pathways to encourage Syrians to participate in the licit formal economy."

While the kingpins have fled, many of those involved in manufacturing and smuggling the drug remain inside the country, she said.

"And old habits die hard."

Additional reporting by George Wright

Top picture credit: Getty Images

BBC InDepth is the new home on the website and app for the best analysis and expertise from our top journalists. Under a distinctive new brand, we’ll bring you fresh perspectives that challenge assumptions, and deep reporting on the biggest issues to help you make sense of a complex world. And we’ll be showcasing thought-provoking content from across BBC Sounds and iPlayer too. We’re starting small but thinking big, and we want to know what you think - you can send us your feedback by clicking on the button below.

Fury & Usyk create a masterpiece

Trilogy? Dubois? Usyk just wants to rest

Is it finally time for Joshua v Fury?

Driving into Mezzeh 86, a working-class neighbourhood in the west of Damascus, we are waved through a checkpoint manned by fighters from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

Buildings are rundown and in need of repairs.

This area is dominated by people from Bashar al-Assad's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shia Islam whose members make up one of Syria's biggest religious minorities.

Alawites controlled power in the predominantly Sunni Muslim country for the 50 years of the Assad family's rule, holding top positions in the government, military and intelligence services.

Now, many from the community fear reprisals following the overthrow of the Assad regime by rebels led by HTS, a Sunni Islamist group that was once al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria.

Dozens of Alawites who we had contacted by phone had refused to speak to us, with many saying they were scared.

In Mezzeh 86, the presence of HTS fighters at a checkpoint did not appear to be a source of anxiety.

Many Alawites did come up and speak with us - keen to distance themselves from Assad's regime.

"During the Assad regime, the stereotype about the Alawites is that they got all the work opportunities and that they are wealthy. But, in fact, most Alawites are poor and you'll only find one among a thousand who is rich," said Mohammad Shaheen, a 26-year-old pharmacy student.

"Even when HTS went to Alawite villages near the coast, they found all villages were poor. Only the Assad family amassed wealth," he added, referring to the Alawite heartland in the country's west.

Hasan Dawood, a shopkeeper, chimed in: "We were slaves for him - drivers, cooks and cleaners."

There's also a sense of betrayal.

"Bashar was a traitor. And the way he fled was cowardly. He should have at least addressed people and told us what was happening. He left without a word, which made the situation chaotic," said Mohammad.

But people from the Alawite community, and indeed from this neighbourhood, did serve in Assad's brutal security forces. Do they fear reprisals against them, we asked.

"Those who were in the military and did bad things have fled. No-one knows where they are. They are afraid of revenge," said Thaier Shaheen, a construction worker.

"But people who don't have blood on their hands, they are not scared, and have stayed back."

There have been reports of a few reprisal killings in parts of the country, but so far there is no evidence to suggest they were carried out by HTS.

"Until now, we are OK. We are talking to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and they are respectful. But there are people who aren't from HTS but pretend to be them who are making threats. They want our society to fail and they are the ones we are scared of," said Mohammad.

After taking control of Damascus, HTS and its allies said those from the deposed regime who had been involved in torture and killings would be held to account, although it is unclear so far what form that justice will take.

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

The group has a jihadist past which it has distanced itself from. But it has an Islamist present, and many are asking what that will mean for Syria's plural society.

"I'm so happy because the Assad regime fell. This is like a dream come true. No-one wants to live under dictatorship. But there is concern. I have to be realistic," said Youssef Sabbagh, a Christian lawyer.

"HTS are here now, and they are an Islamic militia. That's what they are. I wish, I pray they will be a modern Islamic militia."

"I speak not just as a Christian, a lot of Syrians, Muslims and everyone, we don't want Syria to become another Afghanistan, we don't want to become a new Libya. We have already suffered a lot."

Syria's Christian community is one of the oldest in the world, with the country home to some renowned holy sites.

When the uprising against Assad began in 2011, Christians were initially cautious about taking sides, but eventually members from the community fought on both sides of the conflict.

In the past week, the Archbishop of Homs, Jacques Murad, told the BBC there had already been three meetings with HTS, and they had been able to express their views and concerns honestly.

So far, the signs are re-assuring for many Christians.

Bars and restaurants serving alcohol are open in the Christian quarter of Old Damascus and in other parts of the city. Christmas decorations are also up in many places.

At a restaurant in the Old City, we met lawyer Ouday al-Khayat, who is a Shia Muslim.

"There's no doubt that there's anticipation and anxiety. The signs that come from HTS are good, but we must wait and watch," he said.

"It's not possible to know the opinions of all Shia but there is a concern about a scenario similar to Libya or Iraq. I believe, though, that Syria is different. Syrian society has been diverse for a very long time."

We drove around 110km (70 miles) south-east of Damascus, through black volcanic hills, to the city of Suweida, which is home to most of Syria's Druze population.

The Druze faith is another offshoot of Shia Islam, but has its own unique identity and beliefs.

Many Druze were loyal to the Assad regime, who they believed would protect minorities.

But opposition grew steadily during the war, and there were frequent protests in recent years.

The latest started in Suweida's central square in August 2023 and continued until the day the regime fell.

Activist Wajiha al-Hajjar believes that the protests were not brutally cracked down on like others in Syria, because Assad wanted to show the world and his foreign allies that he was protecting minorities.

"They did try to suppress our protest but in a different way - not through weapons or shelling, but by depriving us of passports and civil rights, and access to official documents. It became difficult to leave Suweida and a kind of siege was imposed," she said.

Hundreds still gather at the square every day. When we visited, there was an air of celebration. Songs were blaring on a loudspeaker, and young girls and boys were doing a gymnastics performance, their families clapping and cheering for them.

"We are celebrating the fall of the regime, but this gathering is also a show of strength. In the event that there is an extreme regime with extreme laws, we are prepared to stay in this square and demand our rights and demand equality," Wajiha said.

Suweida had a quasi-autonomous status under Assad, and the Druze want that to continue.

It is just one example of the diversity and complexity of Syrian society, and the challenges facing the country's new government.

Additional reporting by Aamir Peerzada, Leen Al-Saadi and Sanjay Ganguly

A Church of England priest at the centre of a sexual abuse case was twice reappointed to a senior role during the Archbishop of York's time as Bishop of Chelmsford, the BBC can reveal.

A BBC investigation previously revealed how David Tudor remained in post nine years after Stephen Cottrell was first told of concerns about him.

New information shows Tudor's contract as area dean in Essex was renewed in 2013 and 2018, at which times Mr Cottrell knew he had paid compensation to a woman who says she was abused by him as a child.

The Archbishop of York said he regrets his handling of the case, with a spokesperson saying "he acknowledges this could have been handled differently".

They added that "all the risks around David Tudor were regularly reviewed" and that was the "main focus".

Rachel Ford, who told the investigation she was groomed by Tudor as a child, said the renewal of his contract as area dean was "an insult to all of his victims".

Ms Ford added that if responsibility for that lay with Mr Cottrell, it strengthened her feeling that he should resign.

The pressure on Mr Cottrell comes at a time of turmoil in the Church of England following a damning report into how it covered up prolific abuse by the barrister John Smyth.

The report led to the resignation of the Church's most senior figure, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby. Mr Cottrell will take over his role temporarily for a few months in the New Year.

The BBC investigation showed Mr Cottrell was briefed in his first week as Bishop of Chelmsford about serious safeguarding issues surrounding Tudor.

These included that Tudor was convicted of indecently assaulting three underage girls and was jailed for six months in 1988, although the conviction was quashed on technical grounds. Mr Cottrell would also have known Tudor served a five-year ban from ministry.

By 2012, Mr Cottrell also knew Tudor had paid a £10,000 settlement to a woman who says she was sexually abused by him from the age of 11. In 2018, the Church of England issued an apology and a six-figure pay-out to another alleged victim.

Yet the priest was suspended only in 2019 when a police investigation was launched after another woman came forward alleging Tudor had abused her in the 1980s.

When first responding to the BBC's investigation, the Archbishop of York said he was "deeply sorry that we were not able to take action earlier", insisting he had acted at the first opportunity that was legally available to him.

Mr Cottrell also said he had been faced with a "horrible and intolerable" situation and that it was "awful to live with and to manage".

When Mr Cottrell became bishop in 2010, Tudor was into the second year of a five-year term as an area dean, a role overseeing 12 parishes in Essex.

His appointment to that post, under a different bishop, happened despite him working under a safeguarding agreement that barred him from being alone with children and entering schools.

The title was renewed twice under Mr Cottrell - in 2013 and 2018 - and he lost the title only when the term of office expired in 2020. It was not taken from him.

A spokesperson for the Archbishop said he "accepts responsibility for David Tudor remaining as Area Dean".

"No-one advised him that David Tudor should not continue as an Area Dean," said the Archbishop's office.

Another of Tudor's victims, who does not want to be identified, said she was "shocked and disappointed" to hear his tenure as area dean was twice renewed during Mr Cottrell's time as Bishop of Chelmsford.

"These are not the actions of a bishop dealing with a situation that was intolerable to him, in fact, quite the opposite. I call on him to do the honourable thing for the sake of the Church and resign," she says.

In 2015, under Mr Cottrell, Tudor was also made honorary canon of Chelmsford Cathedral.

The Archbishop's office insisted it happened because of a change in Church policy during Mr Cottrell's time as Bishop of Chelmsford, meaning area deans were automatically made honorary canons.

It was "not a promotion and not a personal reward".

However, a social media post from Tudor's Canvey Island parish in July 2015 suggests it was seen there as a reward.

Tudor's "hard work, determination and commitment to this place have been recognised by the diocese and this new position in the Church is very well-deserved," it said.

The BBC has also seen evidence - in leaked minutes from internal Church meetings in 2018 and 2019 - that Tudor's titles of area dean and honorary canon were discussed and there had been a suggestion Mr Cottrell could immediately have taken them away.

In October 2018, a meeting at Church House - the London headquarters of the Church of England - heard that Chelmsford diocese took the view that if Tudor "can be a parish priest, he can undertake the other roles".

A bishop from another diocese said "the Bishop of Chelmsford could remove DT's [David Tudor's] Canon and Area Dean titles straight away".

But in a follow-up discussion in November 2018, Chelmsford diocese advised it would not be appropriate because of "the difficulty of removing those titles without explaining why."

We asked Mr Cottrell's office why he had not followed the suggestion to remove Tudor's titles. We were told "it would not be appropriate to comment on any notes or decisions from a core group process which are confidential".

The investigation also highlighted the significant role played by former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey in the case.

We revealed Lord Carey had agreed to Tudor's return to priesthood after being suspended in 1989, and had also agreed to have Tudor's name removed from the list of clergy that had faced disciplinary action. He had also advocated for the priest.

After the BBC put this information to the former Archbishop of Canterbury, he wrote to give up his "permission to officiate", ending more than 65 years of ministry in the Church of England. Lord Carey made the announcement on Tuesday.

In October 2024, Tudor admitted sexual misconduct and was sacked by the Church. At no point has he responded to the BBC's attempts to speak with him.

The US military says it has carried out a series of air strikes on the Yemeni capital Sanaa targeting a missile storage site and command facilities operated by Iran-backed Houthi militants.

US Central Command added it also hit multiple Houthi drones and an anti-ship cruise missile over the Red Sea.

It comes hours after the Houthis fired a ballistic missile at Israel which injured more than a dozen people in a Tel Aviv park.

The Houthis, an Iran-backed rebel group that controls north-western Yemen, began attacking Israel and international shipping shortly after the start of the Gaza war in October 2023, saying they were acting in solidarity with Palestinians.

In a statement, the US military's Central Command said the strikes aimed to "disrupt and degrade Houthi operations, such as attacks against US Navy warships and merchant vessels in the Southern Red Sea, Bab al-Mandeb, and Gulf of Aden".

The US military also said it struck "multiple Houthi one-way attack uncrewed aerial vehicles, or drones, and an anti-ship cruise missile over the Red Sea".

American F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets were used in the operation, the US Central Command added.

• Who are the Houthis and why are they attacking Red Sea ships?

Since November 2023, Houthi missile attacks have sunk two vessels in the Red Sea and damaged others. They have claimed, often falsely, that they are targeting ships only linked to Israel, the US or the UK.

Last December, the US, UK and 12 other nations launched Operation Prosperity Guardian to protect Red Sea shipping lanes against the attacks.

On Saturday, Israel's military said its attempts to shoot down a projectile launched from Yemen were unsuccessful and the missile struck a park in Tel Aviv.

Magen David Adom (MDA), Israel's emergency medical service, said it treated 16 people who were "mildly injured" by glass shards from shattered windows in nearby buildings.

Another 14 people suffered minor injuries on their way to protected areas were also treated, it said.

A Houthi spokesman said the group hit a military target using a hypersonic ballistic missile.

Earlier this week, Israel conducted a series of strikes against what it said were Houthi military targets, hitting ports as well as energy infrastructure in the Yemeni capital Sanaa.

Houthi-run Al Masirah TV reported that nine people were killed in the port of Salif and the Ras Issa oil terminal.

The Houthis have vowed to continue their attacks until the war in Gaza ends. The US says its latest strike is part of a commitment to protect itself and its allies.

Amanda Walker felt trapped in a flat she couldn't sell because of its flammable cladding.

When it turned out that no government scheme would cover the costs of removing the dangerous material from her newly built flat in south London, she started campaigning.

She spent four years trying to get justice for herself, and for millions caught up in the scandal exposed by the Grenfell Tower fire.

Then, at the age of 51, she was found dead in her one-bedroom apartment by her mother and sister. An inquest recently recorded a verdict of death by misadventure.

"She would often phone me late at night when she just couldn't deal with it any more," her mother Glenda recalls.

"I wish she could phone me now."

Half a year earlier, in July 2023, Amanda had addressed peers in the House of Lords investigating the impact of the cladding problem on flat owners.

"It's devastating. It's just a quagmire. It's just chaos," she told them. "It's so unjust. I had done nothing wrong and it's destroyed my life already."

The video of Amanda's address to the Lords is now treasured by her mother, who's speaking for the first time since the inquest's verdict.

Glenda thinks Amanda, an office manager at a hedge fund in the City of London, started drinking to deal with the anxiety of having to face unaffordable bills to fix the cladding, running into the tens of thousands.

"I'm not ashamed for her for that because it was her way of coping. She used the term 'seeking oblivion'."

Amanda wrote countless letters to MPs, local authorities and other responsible bodies - but "always got the statutory response", her mother continues.

"There are still over a million people in this situation and [MPs and civil servants] would write these platitudinous letters saying 'oh we're doing this, we're doing that'."

She doesn't just see those as unhelpful - but as evidence that nobody really understood the scale of the problem and how seriously it was affecting people.

The government did eventually launch a scheme - the Building Safety Fund - to pay to remove the type of dangerous cladding that is on the outside of Amanda's flat.

She was hoping that changes enshrined in a separate landmark law called the Building Safety Act - brought in after the Grenfell tragedy - would help her correct internal fire safety defects, like insufficient fire stopping between flats.

But they didn't. There were significant exceptions to who qualified.

Since some of the other flat owners in her development had bought a share of the building's freehold, she became what's known as a "non-qualifying" leaseholder - meaning she still faced huge uncapped bills to contribute towards the repair costs.

Several proposed amendments to the Building Safety Act that would've protected people in Amanda's position were voted down in the last parliament.

What always scared Amanda was the threat of having to pay unpayable sums. She described it as a "sword of Damocles over my head for three long years". For a brief moment there was hope. "And then they vote against us, on everything," she told peers.

Amanda's drinking increased and her family sought medical help. She agreed to be hospitalised. GPs and psychiatrists were clear in their reports: Amanda's drinking, stress and anxiety were down to the impact of the cladding crisis on her mental state. She was prescribed anti-depressants.

She continued campaigning with her mother, but things began to spiral downhill.

Glenda believes the anti-depressants she was given were not benefiting her. "I think she was over-medicated and her head was all over the place. She wasn't depressed, she kept saying: 'I am not depressed, I'm angry.'"

Amanda's partner split up with her as cladding campaigning consumed more and more of her life. Her mother and sister would make trips to see her to try to offer support.

• If you've been affected by the issues in this story, help and support is available via the BBC Action Line

Things came to a head one day this January.

Glenda was growing ever-more nervous about her daughter, and knew she needed urgent medical attention.

She says she'd written a "fairly assertive" letter to a hospital where her daughter had been previously treated, warning her condition was getting serious.

Travelling to London through the rain, she found herself "phoning and phoning and phoning" the hospital to try to get doctors to intervene again.

The following day Amanda was found dead.

Asked if she'd ever thought that her daughter might kill herself, Glenda says: "Manda had talked about it. She'd talked about it."

She says she can understand her daughter's state of mind that weekend.

"Yeah, I've seen it so often. I'm different from her and she felt despair… She wanted justice and she felt it was just awful. I think she lost faith in the government completely."

The government says that work is already underway through the Remediation Acceleration Plan "to make sure those responsible for the cladding crisis pay their fair share".

It says it is "continuing to look at all options to ensure residents no longer have to deal with the nightmare of living in unsafe buildings".

Amanda's flat has now passed to her parents to deal with.

Its exterior cladding has now been replaced and they are trying to sell - but they still haven't been able to, due to structural fire issues inside the property.

Unless the Building Safety Act is amended by fresh legislation, Amanda's parents or any future purchaser will be liable for paying to fix those problems.

Amanda's mother hopes that speaking about her daughter's death has not been in vain, and that her story can be a catalyst.

"You go through grief… and perhaps the anger's getting in there a little bit now.

"For her sake, we'd love to think that she had caused some small change."

A man accused of murdering four women and a nine-year-old boy by driving a car into them at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg has been remanded in custody.

The 50-year-old was brought before Magdeburg district court on Saturday evening following the incident on Friday when a black BMW car ploughed through the crowded market injuring more than 200 people.

Magdeburg Police said investigations are continuing and officers are appealing for witnesses to send in photos or video of the incident.

The suspect has been named in local media as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old Saudi citizen who arrived in Germany in 2006 and had worked as a doctor.

On Sunday morning, Magdeburg police confirmed four women - aged 45, 52, 67 and 75 - were also killed in the incident.

"The judge ordered pre-trial detention for five counts of murder, multiple attempted murder and multiple counts of dangerous bodily harm," its statement said.

City officials said around 100 police, medics and firefighters, as well as 50 rescue service personnel, went to the scene shortly after 19:00 local time (18:00 GMT) on Friday.

Witnesses described how they had to jump out of the car's path during the attack.

In an interview with German paper Bild, one woman called Nadine described being at the Christmas market with her boyfriend Marco when the car came speeding towards them.

"He was hit and pulled away from my side," the 32-year-old told the paper. "It was terrible."

Lars Frohmüller, a reporter for German public broadcaster MDR, told BBC Radio 4's World Tonight programme he saw "blood on the floor" as well as "many doctors trying to keep people warm and help them with their injuries".

• What we know so far about Magdeburg market attack
• Eyewitness saw car hit boyfriend in attack
• Reporter describes 'chaotic situation'

A memorial service for victims of the attack was held at Magdeburg Cathedral on Saturday evening

The service was attended by families of the victims, emergency workers and federal government officials, including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

During a visit to the market earlier on Saturday, Scholz described the attack as a "dreadful tragedy" as "so many people were injured and killed with such brutality" in a place that is supposed to be "joyful".

He told reporters that there were serious concerns for those who had been critically injured and that "all resources" will be allocated to investigating the suspect behind the attack.

Previously, Reiner Haseloff, the premier of Saxony-Anhalt state, said a preliminary investigation suggested the alleged attacker was acting alone.

On Friday evening, a man ploughed a car into a crowd of shoppers at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg.

The attack has left five people dead and more than 200 injured, with many in a critical condition.

One man has been arrested over the attack, and police believe he was solely responsible.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz travelled to Magdeburg on Saturday, and a city councillor declared Christmas over for the city.

How did the attack unfold?

Unverified footage on social media showed a black BMW travelling at high speeds through the pedestrian walkway between Christmas stalls.

Eyewitnesses described jumping out of the car's path, fleeing or hiding. One told the Reuters news agency that police were already at the venue and chased after the car before arresting the suspect.

Footage from verified sources showed armed police confronting and arresting a man who can be seen lying on the ground next to a stationary vehicle - a black BMW with significant damage to its front bumper.

BBC correspondent Damien McGuinness in Magdeburg reported that the market is "surrounded by concrete blocks". However, "there is a gap which is wide enough for pedestrians to go through, but tragically wide enough for a car to go into the Christmas market", he said.

City officials said around 100 police, medics and firefighters, as well as 50 rescue service personnel rushed to the scene in the aftermath of the attack.

Images from the scene on Friday night showed an area outside the market awash with blue lights as dozens of first responders attended to the injured.

Who are the victims?

Five people have died in the attack, one of whom is a child.

More than 200 people have been injured and at least 41 are in a critical condition.

The toll had earlier been reported as two dead and 68 injured, but was revised to the much higher totals on Saturday morning.

None of the victims have been identified yet.

Who is the suspect?

German media has identified the suspect as Taleb A, a psychiatrist who lives in Bernburg, around 40km (25 miles) south of Magdeburg.

The motive behind the attack remains unclear, but authorities have reported that they believe he carried out the attack alone.

Originally from Saudi Arabia, he arrived in Germany in 2006 and in 2016 was recognised as a refugee.

He ran a website that aimed to help other former Muslims flee persecution in their Gulf homelands.

Evidenced by social media posts, the suspect is an outspoken critic of Islam, and has promoted conspiracy theories regarding a plot to seek Islamic supremacy in Europe.

A report from Der Spiegel said a complaint was filed against Taleb A with the authorities a year ago over statements he made. Officials did not see any concrete threat, the report says.

What have officials said about the attack?

"The reports from Magdeburg raise the worst fears," the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said on social media platform X.

Magdeburg's city councillor for public order, Ronni Krug, said the Christmas market will stay closed and that "Christmas in Magdeburg is over", according to German public broadcaster MDR.

That sentiment was echoed on the market's website, which in the wake of the attack featured only a black screen with words of mourning, announcing that the market was over.

The Saudi government expressed "solidarity with the German people and the families of the victims", in a statement on X, and "affirmed its rejection of violence".

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said he was "horrified by the atrocious attack in Magdeburg", adding that his thoughts were with "the victims, their families and all those affected" in a post on X on Friday night.

Superstar Usyk edges a showcase of elite level boxing

Best of era Usyk running out of opponents

When Syrian rebel leader Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in Damascus and gave a victory speech on the heels of a lightning military campaign that swept through the country and toppled Bashar al-Assad's regime, one remark went widely unnoticed. That was his reference to an illegal narcotic that has flooded the Middle East over the past ten years.

"Syria has become the biggest producer of Captagon on earth," he said. "And today, Syria is going to be purified by the grace of God."

Mostly unknown outside of the Middle East, Captagon is an addictive, amphetamine-like pill, sometimes called "poor man's cocaine".

Its production has proliferated in Syria amid an economy broken by war, sanctions and the mass displacement of Syrians abroad. Authorities in neighbouring countries have struggled to cope with the smuggling of huge quantities of pills across their borders.

All the evidence pointed to Syria being the main source of Captogan's illicit trade with an annual value placed at $5.6bn (£4.5bn) by the World Bank.

At the scale that the pills were being produced and dispatched, the suspicion was that this was not simply the work of criminal gangs - but of an industry orchestrated by the regime itself.

Weeks on from the speech by al-Sharaa (previously known by his nom de guerre of Abu Mohammed al-Jolani), spectacular images have emerged that suggest the suspicion was correct.

Videos filmed by Syrians raiding properties allegedly owned by relatives of Assad show rooms full of pills being made and packaged, hidden in fake industrial products.

Other footage shows piles of pills found in what appears to be a Syrian military airbase, set on fire by the rebels.

I spent a year investigating Captagon for a BBC World Service documentary and saw how the drug became as popular among the wealthy youth of Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia as it was among the working class in countries like Jordan.

"I was 19 years old, I started taking Captagon and my life started to fall apart," Yasser, a young male addict in a rehab clinic told us in Jordan's capital, Amman. "I started hanging out with people who take this thing. You work, you live without food, so the body is a wreck."

So how will al-Sharaa and his group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), deal with the large number of people in Syria and around the Middle East addicted to Captagon who may suddenly find themselves without a supply?

Caroline Rose, an expert on Syrian drug trafficking at the New Lines Institute, has concerns around this. "My fear is that they will really crack down on supply and not necessarily try to do any sort of demand reduction."

But there is a broader question at play too: that is, what effect will the loss of such a lucrative trade have on Syria's economy? And as those behind it move aside, how will al-Sharaa keep at bay any other criminals waiting in the wings to replace them?

The narco-war in the Middle East

The proliferation of Captagon pushed the Middle East into a genuine narco-war.

While filming with the Jordanian army on their desert border with Syria, we saw how the soldiers had reinforced their fences and learned about their comrades who had been killed in shoot-outs with Captagon smugglers. They accused the Syrian soldiers across the border of aiding the smugglers.

Other countries in the region have been just as disturbed by the trade.

For a while, Saudi Arabia suspended imports of fruit and vegetables from Lebanon because authorities were frequently finding shipping containers full of produce like pomegranates which had been hollowed out and filled with bags of Captagon pills.

We filmed in five countries, including in regime-held and rebel-held Syria, consulted well-placed sources, and gained access to confidential records from court cases in Germany and Lebanon.

We were able to name two major parties as having their hands in the trade - Assad's extended family and the Syrian armed forces, in particular its Fourth Division, led by Assad's brother, Maher.

Questions surrounding Assad's brother

Maher al-Assad was perhaps the most powerful man in Syria aside from his brother.

He was sanctioned by many Western powers for the violence he wrought against protesters during the pro-democracy uprising in 2011 that precipitated the bloody civil war. The French judiciary has also issued an international arrest warrant for him and his brother for their alleged responsibility in chemical weapons attacks in Syria in 2013.

Gaining access to the WhatsApp chats of a Captagon trader imprisoned in Lebanon, we were able to implicate Maher al-Assad's Fourth Division and his second-in-command, General Ghassan Bilal.

The revelation was a huge milestone in confirming the role of Syria's armed forces and Bashar al-Assad's inner circle in the trade.

Seeing the recent images of demoralised Syrian army troops fleeing without a fight as the rebels advanced, I was reminded of an interview we conducted with a regime soldier last year.

He told us his monthly army pay of $30 (£24) barely covered three days of food for his family, so his unit became involved in criminality and Captagon.

"It's what brings most of the money now," he said.

In May 2023, the Arab League agreed to re-admit Syria 12 years after it was expelled for violently suppressing the popular uprising. It was seen as a diplomatic coup for Assad, using promises to tackle the Captagon trade as leverage to be rehabilitated.

Can the rebel leaders crack down?

Now, as Syria's rebel leaders consolidate their power over the organs of state, it seems they are fully aware of positive signals they are sending to wary neighbouring states when they promise to crack down on the Captagon trade.

But it might be a steeper task for them to wrest the country away from a lucrative criminal enterprise after so many years when it was encouraged by the state itself.

Issam Al Reis was a major engineer in the Syrian army until he defected at the beginning of the uprising against the Assad regime, and has spent time investigating the Captagon trade. He believes that HTS will not need to do much to stop the trade initially "because the main players have left" and there's already been a dramatic drop in Captagon exports - but he warns that "new guys" might be waiting in the wings to take over.

This will be particularly problematic if the demand side isn't tackled too. There is little evidence of investment in rehabilitation from the time HTS controlled Idlib province in north-west Syria, according to Ms Rose. "[There was a] very poor picture for trying to address Captagon consumption," she says.

She also says there has already been an uptick in another drug being trafficked through Syria.

"I think many users will seek out crystal meth as an alternative, especially users who have already established a tolerance to Captagon and need something that's a bit more strong."

The other problem, as Mr Al Reis points out, is a financial one. As he puts it: "Syrians need the money."

His hope is that the international community will help prevent people entering the drug trade through humanitarian aid and easing sanctions.

But Ms Rose argues the new leaders will need to identify a "new and alternative economic pathways to encourage Syrians to participate in the licit formal economy."

While the kingpins have fled, many of those involved in manufacturing and smuggling the drug remain inside the country, she said.

"And old habits die hard."

Additional reporting by George Wright

Top picture credit: Getty Images

BBC InDepth is the new home on the website and app for the best analysis and expertise from our top journalists. Under a distinctive new brand, we’ll bring you fresh perspectives that challenge assumptions, and deep reporting on the biggest issues to help you make sense of a complex world. And we’ll be showcasing thought-provoking content from across BBC Sounds and iPlayer too. We’re starting small but thinking big, and we want to know what you think - you can send us your feedback by clicking on the button below.