It was the most momentous event in UK history since World War Two. As a new virus took hold, millions of us were told to stay at home and billions of pounds were spent propping up the country's economy.

The Covid inquiry will publish its second set of findings later today, looking in detail at the huge political choices made at the time - including how lockdowns were introduced, the closure of businesses and schools, and bringing in previously unthinkable social restrictions.

"Did the government serve the people well, or did it fail them?" asked the lead counsel at the start of this part of the inquiry in 2023. Since then more than 7,000 documents have been made public from the time, including WhatsApp chats and emails, private diaries and confidential files.

Here, BBC News has picked out some of the urgent messages and scribbled notes that shine a light on how critical decisions were taken in 2020.

On 2 January 2020 an update appears on ProMed, a service used by health workers to warn of emerging diseases.

"World Health Organization in touch with Beijing after mystery viral pneumonia outbreak," it says.

"Twenty-seven people - most of them stallholders at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market - treated in hospital."

The next day England's deputy chief medical officer, Jonathan Van Tam, sends the bulletin on to Peter Horby, a professor at Oxford University and chair of Nervtag, a group that advises the government on new viral threats.

By the end of January, it's clear the health authorities in Wuhan have a major problem on their hands.

The deputy ambassador to China, Christina Scott, sends a cable back to London marked DIPTEL BEJING (Sensitive) comparing the situation to the outbreak of another virus - SARS - in 2003.

"Hubei province on lockdown; multiple cities have transport restrictions. Memory of SARS cover-up ensures residual distrust of government response," it says.

"They will do everything they can to quickly control this outbreak. But the challenge of doing so is substantial."

The virus spreads to Hong Kong and South Korea and then to Iran and northern Italy.

At lunchtime on Saturday 7 March the UK's then prime minister, Boris Johnson, is chatting on WhatsApp to his health secretary Matt Hancock ahead of the England vs Wales game at Twickenham.

Days later, the Cheltenham horse racing festival goes ahead and Atletico Madrid fans are allowed to fly from Spain to Liverpool to watch their team play in the Champions League.

The government's strategy, backed by its scientific advisers, is to try to contain early outbreaks by isolating those with the virus and tracing any contacts.

The plan is then to move to a "delay phase" as full community transmission is established – using policies like home isolation advice for those with symptoms to "flatten the curve" of the pandemic so that hospitals do not become overwhelmed.

But the virus is spreading much faster than expected and it‘s quickly becoming clear to many scientists that far stronger action will be needed.

On Friday 13 March, two senior No 10 officials are sitting in a key meeting of scientific advisers in Whitehall.

"WE ARE NOT READY," one writes in capital letters in his notepad. The other leans over and crosses out "NOT READY", replacing it with an expletive.

That weekend, the prime minister's chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, is locked in a series of meetings with the PM and a handful of select staff as a new strategy takes shape.

Grainy smartphone images show whiteboards in No 10 full of hand-drawn charts and scrawled bullet points.

One graph suggests that, if the virus was allowed to run its course without any restrictions in place, then more than 100,000 people would die "in [hospital] corridors" in the coming wave.

On Sunday 15 March, Cummings sends a WhatsApp to Johnson:

"FYI – [Patrick] Vallance [the chief scientific adviser] is on board with what will NEVER be discussed as Plan B."

"[In a] nutshell: we move through the gears to [do] whatever we need to stop NHS collapse and buy time to increase capacity."

Over the following week, Covid rules across the UK are tightened.

People are advised, but not legally required, to avoid all non-essential contact and work from home where possible. Then schools are closed, followed by pubs, restaurants, gyms and cinemas.

But still there are concerns that even those measures are not strong enough. On Sunday 22 March, London's mayor, Sadiq Khan, writes a private letter to Johnson.

The next evening, in a televised address watched by 27 million people, the prime minister tells the public they must stay at home as he announces the first national lockdown.

It will now be up to the inquiry to decide if making that call earlier could have saved lives and ultimately reduced the total time that people had to stay locked indoors.

Controlling Covid and protecting the economy

Over the next month some hospitals do come under severe pressure with intensive care units spilling into corridors and side rooms. Pre-planned or elective care is put on hold but at no point does the NHS have to turn away emergency patients.

Covid infections, hospitalisations and deaths start to fall.

But the cost of lockdown restrictions is huge: education is disrupted, loneliness and mental health problems get worse, and jobs and businesses are impacted.

On 22 May, Johnson sends a handwritten note to his officials asking for a plan to "start operation BOUNCEBACK".

That month some restrictions begin to be lifted – soon groups of six are able to meet outdoors and schools start a phased re-opening.

In the summer, then-chancellor Rishi Sunak tries to boost the economy with his Eat Out to Help Out scheme - 50% off food and drinks for three days a week in August.

The idea is well received by the hospitality industry but there are concerns about the health impact.

On WhatsApp (with spelling mistakes), Hancock warns Simon Case, then the most senior civil servant in Downing Street, that it's causing problems in intervention areas - that’s those local authorities with the highest infection rates.

In his evidence to the inquiry, Sunak plays down a link between his scheme and the spread of the virus saying a second wave "happened in every other country in Europe".

But that tension – between controlling Covid and protecting the economy – becomes even more intense through the autumn.

Many scientists advising the government want to see tighter rules. They campaign for a short "circuit breaker" lockdown to try to drive down infections.

At times the documents suggest the prime minister supports tougher restrictions, at others he appears determined to avoid another strict national lockdown at all costs.

On WhatsApp Johnson's closest aides complain about his decision-making – using an emoji of a broken trolly as he appears to swerve from one policy position to another.

"This government doesn't have the credibility needed to be imposing stuff within only days of deciding not to," writes Case, who is now the new cabinet secretary, to Cummings and Lee Cain, No 10 director of communications, on 14 October.

"We look like a terrible, tragic joke. If we were going hard, that decision was needed weeks ago. I cannot cope with this."

In his testimony to the inquiry, Case later says he regrets expressing his "at-the-moment frustrations" with Johnson, whom he "barely knew" at the time.

In his evidence, Johnson defends his own leadership style, saying his views changed with the scientific evidence, and he often adopted certain positions because he wanted to hear the counter arguments.

Second national lockdown

As the nights draw in that autumn, it becomes clear that existing restrictions in England - including a 10pm curfew and the so-called tiered system of local controls - are not going to be enough to control the virus.

By the end of October, the prime minister's frustration is obvious in the long note he scrawls at the end of a Covid briefing document marked OFFICIAL/SENSITIVE.

In tightly-spaced handwriting, Johnson pens 22 detailed points over two A4 pages of the document.

He approves of strengthening some local restrictions but bemoans the "terrible cost" and wonders "for HOW LONG?"

"Is NHS T&T [test and trace] actually achieving ANYTHING?" he asks at one point.

A week later, on 5 November 2020, England does enter its second national lockdown, this time lasting four weeks, although most schools remain open.

By this point many decisions are being taken independently by the four nations of the UK. Both Wales and Northern Ireland put in place versions of a circuit breaker lockdown, while in Scotland stricter rules are imposed in the central belt.

The plan is still to allow families and friends to meet up at Christmas.

But by mid-December a new, more infectious variant of the virus is spreading and millions living in the south-east of England are told at short notice that Christmas mixing will be cancelled.

In January 2021, a third and final full national lockdown follows across the UK, as the winter wave peaks and the NHS starts rolling out millions of doses of the first Covid vaccines.

Lessons learnt

Five years on from those dramatic 12 months, the inquiry's findings are long-awaited, particularly by the 235,000 families who lost loved ones in the pandemic.

The messages and documents highlighted here are just a snapshot - the report due later will run to around 800 pages.

It will examine some of the key questions in much more detail: the timing of lockdowns, the impact of restrictions on the most vulnerable, and public confidence in the rules amid reports of partying in Downing Street and other alleged rule breaches.

Groups representing thousands of bereaved families want individuals working in government at the time to be held to account for any pandemic failings.

But - above all - they want the state to learn lessons from any mistakes and be better prepared if and when the next unknown virus arrives on our shores.

Some documents in this article have been recreated. All contain the original texts including spelling mistakes and typographical errors.

Additional reporting: Pilar Tomas and Ely Justiniani, BBC Visual Journalism Unit.

Top image credit: Getty/BBC

In July this year a 17-year-old travelled 500 miles from his home in eastern Ukraine to collect a bomb and a phone hidden in a park in the western city of Rivne.

He says he was promised $2,000 (£1,520) to plant the bomb in a van used by Ukraine's military conscription service.

"When I was connecting the wires, I thought it could explode then. I thought I might die," he told the BBC.

Vlad is one of hundreds of children and older teenagers who the Ukrainian government alleges have been recruited online by Russia, and offered payment to carry out sabotage and other attacks against their own country. His name has been changed to protect his anonymity.

He says he was told to set up the phone to live-stream the scene to his handler so they could remotely detonate the device when somebody entered the vehicle.

However, Ukraine's SBU security service had been watching and foiled the attack. Vlad - now 18 - is awaiting trial on terrorism charges that potentially carry a 12-year prison sentence.

Sitting in Rivne's heavily guarded detention centre with his lawyer beside him, he acknowledges that he could have helped kill somebody.

"I did think about it. But nobody likes conscription officers," he says. "I thought: Well, I'll be like everyone else."

The SBU says that over the last two years more than 800 Ukrainians have been identified as having been recruited by Russia - 240 of them minors, some as young as 11.

However, cyber security expert Anastasiia Apetyk, who teaches courses about internet safety in Ukraine, is aware of even younger cases. "They tried to recruit children aged nine or 10," she says.

Andriy Nebytov, Deputy Head of Ukraine's National Police, says there is a deliberate strategy to seek out the vulnerable who can be manipulated.

"Children do not always fully realise the consequences of their actions," he says.

"The enemy is not ashamed of using minors for making explosives out of household chemicals, planting them in various locations such as army recruitment offices or police stations."

The SBU says recruitment primarily takes place on the Telegram app, but also on TikTok, and even on video game platforms. Officials says those who are recruited are almost always motivated by money rather than pro-Russian sympathies.

Vlad says he does not support Russia and had no previous involvement with crime.

He had joined two Telegram channels and posted that he was looking for remote work. Within half an hour, a man calling himself Roman replied. When they later talked on the phone, Vlad says Roman spoke Russian with a street accent.

Vlad says he was initially reluctant but was persuaded to take on a series of increasingly dangerous tasks. First, he was told to collect a grenade but when he reached the designated location it wasn't there. He was paid $30 anyway.

A few days later came another job - to set fire to a van belonging to a conscription centre, film it and run.

For that attack, Vlad says he received about $100 in cryptocurrency - much less than the $1,500 he'd been promised. Roman told him he would get the rest if he planted the bomb in Rivne.

Cash for chaos

The Telegram channels the BBC has seen where recruitment takes place are not explicitly pro-Russian, but they amplify anger felt by some Ukrainians towards the conscription service, which has been dogged by allegations of brutality and corruption.

Using a burner phone and an alias we joined several we were tipped off about.

The channels contained clips of fires and explosions which they claimed were carried out on their orders. But the BBC has not been able to verify the circumstances surrounding those videos.

One account we contacted immediately offered payment, either in cryptocurrency or via bank transfer, to carry out arson. We were told to contact a second account for more details and then received a message with a price list detailing how much they offered to pay for different targets.

The payments ranged from $1,500 for setting fire to a post office to $3,000 for a bank. Banks were worth more, they explained, because security glass made them harder to attack.

"You either need to pour petrol inside or throw a few Molotov cocktails inside," the account advised.

But even ordinary Ukrainians looking for employment can find themselves offered money to carry out sabotage.

We found adverts offering high pay for unspecified part time work posted in a variety of unrelated Ukrainian Telegram groups, including some geared at refugees and even beauty tips. When we followed one up, a recruiter again offered thousands of dollars for arson attacks and asked us to send videos as proof.

"I need all the arson I can get," they messaged. "Finding a reliable person is far more difficult than parting with money. That's why I pay exactly what I say and I do it very quickly, usually within a couple of hours after receiving the video."

The BBC reported a number of these channels, accounts, chats and bots to Telegram, which removed a few but not most of them. One of the channels that is still active has grown by over 750 subscribers since we started monitoring it, meanwhile an account that we told Telegram had directly offered us payment for an arson attack is still live.

In a statement, Telegram said: "Calls to violence or destruction of property are explicitly forbidden on Telegram and are immediately removed whenever discovered."

Ukrainian officials have publicly named members of Russia's intelligence agencies they suspect of acting as handlers to saboteurs.

The BBC has not been able to independently verify that the Russian state itself is responsible.

However, several European governments have said that they have evidence of Russian agents recruiting young men to carry out acts of vandalism, arson, or even surveillance in their countries. In the UK, six men were jailed for their part in a Russian-ordered arson attack on a London warehouse providing aid to Ukraine.

In Ukraine, hundreds of alleged saboteurs are awaiting trial, but for some the consequences can be deadly. Several suspects have been killed by explosives they were carrying.

The SBU claims Russian handlers have deliberately detonated devices remotely, knowing their agents would be killed.

In March, a 17-year-old died and a 15-year-old was badly injured when a bomb they were believed to be taking to a rail station in Ivano-Frankivsk exploded.

The BBC put the SBU's allegations to the Russian Embassy in London. In a statement it accused Ukraine of a similar sabotage campaign using Russian citizens.

"The practices that you mention have become a trademark of the Ukrainian special services. In particular: recruitment of civilians, including children, to carry out arson, sabotage or bombings against people, buildings or vehicles."

There have been reports attributing acts of sabotage inside Russia to Ukrainian recruitment on Telegram. But again, it is notoriously difficult to verify who exactly is behind these attacks.

Meanwhile Vlad has a message for others tempted by the recruiters.

"It's not worth it. They will either cheat you, and then you will end up in prison just like me, or you can take a bomb in your hands and it will simply blow you up."

The vote count at the Caerphilly by-election looked like many others. Tables were arranged in the middle of a sports hall, black ballot boxes started to arrive and the counting began.

But camped out at the hall in this ex-coal mining town, known for its cheese, was a throng of journalists and photographers from London – a rare sight for an election to the Welsh Parliament.

Something bigger was afoot: that by-election last month was as much about who was going to lose as it was about who was going to win.

The losers were Labour. They trailed in third place behind Plaid Cymru and Reform UK, winning just 11% of the vote. It marked Labour's first major electoral defeat in Caerphilly for 100 years.

If a similar result is replicated across the whole of Wales at the Senedd election next May - which will switch to a new proportional representation voting system - then the party could face an existential threat.

Labour insiders have already warned that the key elections in May 2026 (which will take place in Scotland and some English councils too) could be a "tipping point" for the prime minister.

It creates yet another headache for the prime minister Sir Keir Starmer who has been dealing not only with speculation about challenges to his leadership, but also questions about the chancellor's tax plans ahead of next week's Budget.

When it comes to the question of Wales specifically, the political commentator Richard Wyn Jones has described the potential for Labour losing power next May as "seismic".

It has been the biggest party in Wales at every UK parliamentary election since 1922, and the largest in the Senedd at every election since 1999. This would be the sort of change that the vast majority of people will not have seen – or possibly expected – in their lifetimes.

And the ramifications for the party and the prime minister are clear. Not only has he had to deal with a crisis-made-in-Downing Street about his own leadership, but there are also potential threats to his future next May.

As one source told me: "Keir Starmer would be the first Labour leader to lose Wales.

"It will not matter after that who blames who for what - history will remember we lost Wales."

'Internecine warfare' within Welsh Labour

In Cardiff Bay, Labour has been in power since the Senedd was established 26 years ago.

As next May's election looms, there are serious questions about its record, not least on the NHS, which accounts for 55% of the Welsh government's £27bn budget.

Cutting waiting times is First Minister Eluned Morgan's number one priority and, over the last year, the trend for overall waiting lists is just about downwards. But lists are still high, despite £50m of additional funding last autumn and £120m in June.

The Welsh government's current target is to eliminate waiting times of more than two years by next March, and for the overall waiting list to be cut by 200,000 between April 2025 and March 2026.

Latest figures show that more than 8,000 patients are still waiting more than two years, compared with just 168 in England. The overall list is still hovering near where it was in April at just under 800,000.

Opposition parties may be hoping that voters have already made up their minds on the Labour record, however.

The Welsh party was in the headlines for the wrong reasons last year, during Vaughan Gething's brief reign as first minister, following a row over donations to his leadership campaign.

He maintained that all current rules were followed and said he regretted the "anxieties" caused by the donations.

It was an ugly period for the Labour group in the Senedd, which split acrimoniously over the matter.

According to Cathy Owens, a political consultant and former Labour special adviser, the "internecine warfare" kick-started the party's drop in the polls in Wales.

Embracing the 'hanging baskets' theory

Welsh Labour has not been immune to the party's decline in popularity across the rest of the country either.

At the start of the year, Labour, the Conservatives and Reform UK were all averaging about 25% across Britain. In May that all changed: for more than five months, Reform's average polling has hovered around 30%, while the two other parties have now fallen below 20%.

Cathy Owens believes the party needs to embrace the "hanging baskets" theory of politics - the idea that voter attitudes can be boosted by highly visible changes (hence flower-filled baskets).

"Voters want to see the good stuff immediately, and they're not," she says. "All people see are negative headlines and there is no exclusivity for Wales about this. Welsh voters are reading and responding in the same way as [others]."

Then there is the question of whether Labour governments in Westminster and the Senedd are working well for Wales.

There have been benefits, such as £1.7bn of extra funding announced by Rachel Reeves in last year's Budget, along with funding for coal tip safety and investment in Wales's railways. But the UK party has not delivered on a long list of Welsh Labour demands.

For example, Welsh Labour wants the Barnett formula reformed (the system that awards Treasury cash to devolved nations), plus they want devolution of the Crown Estate so that profits from Crown-held lands inside Wales go to the Welsh government, as well as a loosening of restrictions on the Welsh government's ability to borrow.

One Welsh Labour source argues that Eluned Morgan needs to be firmer on these demands. "We all hate it when the first minister says she is going to pester Keir Starmer and ask him for something.

"It's as if she is asking a friend to lend her a tenner to buy a round [in the pub]."

But others have more sympathy given the context.

"If anyone thought that a UK Labour government could make up for 14 years of austerity on things like transport in such a short space of time," says Ms Owens, "then that was not going to happen."

'Cheesed off' voters turn to Plaid

As Labour struggles, two alternatives have emerged. Plaid Cymru has been trying to portray itself more as a government-in-waiting - and achieved success in the Caerphilly by-election.

They promise to build more surgical hubs than Labour to help bring down NHS waiting lists; to pilot a scheme to give extra money to Wales's poorest parents; to invest £800m to expand Wales's childcare options; and to introduce favourable business rates for small Welsh retailers.

Its ultimate goal remains independence but its current leader, Rhun ap Iorwerth, has taken a fresh approach, acknowledging that the idea of Wales going it alone frightens some voters.

At its conference last month, the party promised its plan for independence would not come until the second term of a Plaid-led Welsh government.

One Welsh Labour source has their own take on this. "No one in Wales thinks Wales will actually become independent," the source says.

"People are voting for Plaid Cymru because they're cheesed off with Labour and they now have an alternative."

Reform UK, meanwhile, is a more curious case from a Welsh perspective: it came second under the winner takes it all first-past-the-post vote in the Caerphilly by-election, getting 36% of the vote.

Yet it does not have a Welsh leader, nor a specific set of Welsh policies.

The party has, however, called for the Welsh government to scrap its Nation of Sanctuary programme, which is designed to help asylum seekers and refugees. (The programme has cost £55m since 2019, less than 0.5% of Welsh government spending, with £45m of the funding allocated to Ukrainians.)

The party also says it would scrap the two-child benefit cap, which affects about 21,000 families in Wales, according to government statistics published last year.

As for the Welsh Conservatives, they concede in both public and private that next May will be tough, with the party's economy and rural affairs spokesperson, Samuel Kurtz, telling the BBC in October that the Tories were still "paying a penance" for their time in national government.

Wales's 'presidential-style' operation

In the early hours after the Caerphilly defeat, the former first minister, Lord Carwyn Jones, urged the party not to descend into a "war of words" between Westminster and Cardiff Bay.

The plea is not being completely heeded. Some accuse the national party of complacency.

"Labour people in Wales have been trying to send a message up the M4," argues one senior Labour source. "The UK government needs to move faster and further on its commitments [to Wales] and take on board how big a risk next May is."

One source described the prime minister as a "top-down ivory tower leader" – a common refrain from some Labour politicians who think Sir Keir lacks a proper grasp.

Others argue the local campaign was chaotic and lacked focus – especially on social media – until Westminster figures got involved.

"Welsh Labour has not got the capacity, not got the right people in there," says one Westminster source. "Caerphilly was absolute carnage."

Labour says that next May's campaign will be led by Eluned Morgan. "Anything else will fail," one Member of the Senedd (MS) warned.

Some assembly members have been concerned about too much of a "London" influence creeping into the campaign ahead of next year's election.

The deputy First Minister, Huw Irranca-Davies, told me that the campaign would be "led by Eluned Morgan and Welsh Labour", but added, "We will definitely draw in all the talents in order to help as well."

The Treasury Minister and Swansea West MP Torsten Bell will act as a link between Cardiff and Westminster.

One source said next May would be a "presidential-style" operation.

'Baked-in defeat' vs turning the tide

So can Labour avoid defeat in the Senedd?

Plenty of Labour politicians have said in public that the party can turn things around - although the national party may well find itself distracted by its own leadership speculation.

Last week, allies of the prime minister briefed journalists about an imminent leadership threat from the English Health Secretary Wes Streeting.

Streeting dismissed the claims as "nonsense". Yet the turmoil certainly won't have helped to focus minds in London on the party's problem in Wales.

Many in Welsh Labour are hoping for big investment announcements from their colleagues at Westminster, such as the new nuclear power station on Anglesey announced recently.

The question is, will it be enough?

Alun Davies, who is assembly member for Blaenau Gwent, published a letter he sent to local party members, recalling his experiences recently on the doorstep.

"It can't get any worse," he said voters had told him. "And you lot need a kick."

Another source said that their biggest concern was a "baked-in defeat" and "not enough time to turn it round".

"If we could make really significant inroads in waiting times, and get significant funding in the Budget, it might at least help us build a narrative that two Labour governments working together is better for Wales," the source added.

But the one word slogan that propelled Labour to a landslide win at last year's general election could come back to haunt the party in Wales: change.

Labour's opponents in Wales sense that voters may just be ready for it after more than a century.

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Younger Australian teenagers on Instagram, Facebook and Threads are being told their accounts will be shut down ahead of the country's social media ban for under-16s.

Meta, which owns the three brands, said it had begun notifying users it believes to be between 13 and 15 years old by text, email and in-app messages that their accounts would start being deactivated from 4 December.

The ban in Australia comes into force on 10 December. It affects a number of platforms which also include TikTok, YouTube, X and Reddit.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the "world-leading" ban was aimed at "letting kids be kids". Meta and other firms oppose the measure but said they would comply.

Australia's internet regulator has estimated there are 150,000 Facebook users and 350,000 teens on Instagram in the 13-15 age bracket.

From 4 December, children aged below 16 will not be able to create accounts on Meta's social media platforms.

The company said it was asking young users to update their contact details so they could be notified when they became eligible to open an account.

They can download and save their posts, videos and messages before their accounts are shut down.

Meta said that teens who said they were old enough to use Instagram, Facebook and Threads could challenge the restriction by taking a "video selfie" to be used in facial age scans.

They could also provide a driver's licence or other government issued-ID.

All these verification methods were tested by the UK-based Age Check Certification Scheme (ACCS) earlier this year, in a report commissioned by the Australian state.

While the ACCS said that all methods had their merits, it added: "We did not find a single ubiquitous solution that would suit all use cases, nor did we find solutions that were guaranteed to be effective in all deployments."

Social media platforms which fail to take "reasonable steps" to block under-16s face fines of up to A$50m (£25m).

"While we are working hard to remove all users who we understand to be under the age of 16 by 10 December, compliance with the law will be an ongoing and multi-layered process," Antigone Davis, vice-president and global head of safety at Meta, told Reuters Financial.

Meta wants to see a law where under-16s have to get parental approval before they download a social media app.

The firm told Australia's Seven News: "Teens are resourceful, and may attempt to circumvent age assurance measures to access restricted services."

But it said: "We're committed to meeting our compliance obligations and are taking the necessary steps to comply with the law."

Australia's e-Safety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, said the ban was aimed at proctecting teens "from pressures and risks they can be exposed to while logged in to social media accounts".

In a move seemingly to avoid being included in the ban, gaming platform Roblox this week announced that children under 16 would be unable to chat to adult strangers.

Mandatory age checks will be introduced for accounts using chat features, starting in December for Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands, then the rest of the globe from January.

• Roblox blocks children from chatting to adult strangers
• Enforcing Australia's social media ban is possible but contains risks, report says

Which firms does Australia's social media ban apply to?

The e-safety commissioner has published a list of which social media platforms will be impacted by the age ban.

They are:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Kick
• Reddit
• Snapchat
• Threads
• TikTok
• X (formerly Twitter)
• YouTube

Platforms not included are:

• Discord
• GitHub
• Google Classroom
• LEGO Play
• Messenger
• Roblox
• Steam and Steam Chat
• WhatsApp
• YouTube Kids

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Perfectionism has a great reputation. It's one of the most common answers used in a job interview to spin the dreaded "What's your weakness?" into a humblebrag.

For many, it's about striving for excellence or working tirelessly to reach the highest standard.

But what happens when these high (and sometimes unrelenting) expectations of yourself are exactly what's holding you back?

"I know perfectionism is an illusion, but I am always trying to chase it," admits 25-year-old Aswan.

Even in the workplace, she feels the pressure, "I know that I can make a mistake and I won't lose my job, yet I constantly feel like I'm one strike away from being fired".

It's an anxiety shared by many perfectionists, says health psychologist Dr Sula Windgassen. Speaking on the BBC Sounds podcast Complex, she explains: "Poor self-esteem tends to go hand in hand with perfectionism because there is this fear of failing".

That fear often fuels procrastination. Aswan remembers taking her driving theory test: "I got so pent up about passing it first time that when I failed by a couple of points I've never tried to get it back." That was almost four years ago.

Perfectionism can be rooted in personality, but childhood experiences, school environments, and parental expectations can also shape what we grow up believing is "good enough".

Breaking the cycle

While perfectionism isn't a clinical diagnosis, its effects are very real - from anxiety and tiredness to stress-related physical symptoms such as a weakened immune system.

Still, experts say the cycle can be broken. Dr Windgassen suggests beginning what's known in psychology as a behavioural experiment.

It starts by asking yourself what you think will happen if the outcome isn't perfect - writing down your predictions, and then testing them in real time.

Was the outcome as bad as you expected? And what positive things came from this new approach? It might be that you manage to go to sleep at 10pm rather than 1am, leaving you feeling more refreshed.

For 26-year-old Dayna, who describes herself as a "former perfectionist", it's a trait she is relieved to have left behind. She once sacrificed her wellbeing in pursuit of flawless results and it's something she never wants to repeat.

"I kept a journal to gain more self-awareness about my tendencies and read self-help books," says Dayna.

"I had to learn the hard way how to develop coping mechanisms and strategies to not sacrifice everything and that being a perfectionist is not a noble quality as I used to think it might be."

At times, her harsh inner critic took over and eventually the path to perfectionism led to burnout.

Looking back, Dayna remembers feeling chronically anxious and stressed.

"Right now I have become content with just trying my best and accepting that I can't always get the outcome I want but the outcome I get will be more than good enough and I am at peace with that now."

Not all perfectionism is necessarily harmful. One form, known as perfectionistic striving, focuses on setting more ambitious personal goals. When these goals can be adapted in response to changing circumstances, they tend to cause less stress and lead to more positive outcomes. For example, an athlete setting tough goals, but cutting back on training when they're injured.

But it still has its limitations. A research paper published in July 2025 by the British Psychological Society found that aiming for excessively high goals often leads to long working hours, with only marginal gains in performance.

Working through these perfectionistic tendencies can be uncomfortable, says Dr Windgassen - but that discomfort is part of the process.

"That's not a sign that you shouldn't do it - it's a sign that you should," she says.

Senior Pentagon officials have arrived in Ukraine to "discuss efforts to end the war" with Russia, the US military has said.

The team, led by US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, is expected to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv on Thursday when he returns from a trip to Turkey.

Reports began surfacing on Wednesday that the US and Russia had prepared a new peace plan, containing major concessions from Ukraine. Neither Washington nor Moscow has officially confirmed the plan.

Earlier in the day, at least 25 people were killed in a Russian missile and drone attack on Ukraine's western city of Ternopil, officials there said. Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

In Kyiv, Driscoll is joined by the US Army's chief of staff Gen Randy George, top US army commander in Europe Gen Chris Donahue, and Srg Maj of the Army Michael Weimer.

"Secretary Driscoll and team arrived this morning in Kyiv on behalf of the administration on a factfinding mission to meet Ukrainian officials and discuss efforts to end the war," Army spokesman Col David Butler said in a statement.

Driscoll was pictured meeting Ukrainian Defence Minister Denys Shmyhal on Wednesday.

Driscoll and Gen George are the most senior US military officials to hold talks in the Ukrainian capital since President Donald Trump took office in January.

The Ukrainian authorities have not publicly commented on what issues are being discussed with the Americans.

However, one Ukrainian official told CBS, the BBC's US media partner, that the focus would be on the military situation on the ground - in addition to plans for a possible ceasefire.

The official - who was not named - said: "Presidents Zelensky and Trump have already agreed to stop the conflict along the existing lines of engagement, and there are agreements on granting security guarantees".

It comes as a number of outlets are reporting that the US and Russia have privately drawn up proposals on how to end the war.

Citing people familiar with the matter, Axios, the Financial Times and Reuters reported that the plans call for Kyiv to give up some territories and weapons, as well as to significantly cut Ukraine's Armed Forces.

Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian leader Vladimir Putin's envoy Kirill Dmitriev are believed to have been involved in working on the 28-point peace plan.

The BBC has asked the White House and a representative for Witkoff to comment.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov appeared to downplay the reports.

"In this case, we have no additional innovations to what we call 'the spirit of Anchorage'," he told Russia's state-run media on Wednesday - referring to the August summit between Putin and Trump in the US state of Alaska.

Any agreements reached during the one-day meeting have not been made public.

President Zelensky has repeatedly ruled out any territorial concessions to Russia.

Kyiv and its Western allies, including the US, have been calling for an immediate ceasefire along the vast front line, but Moscow has ruled that out, repeating demands that Ukraine says amount to its de facto capitulation.

Earlier this month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow's pre-conditions for a peace deal - including ceding territory, tough curbs on the size of Ukraine's military and the country's neutrality - had not changed since Putin laid them out two months before the full-scale invasion.

The COP31 climate meeting is now expected to be held in Turkey after Australia dropped its bid to host the annual event.

Under the UN rules, the right to host the COP in 2026 falls to a group of countries made up of Western Europe, Australia and others.

A consensus must be reached but neither country had been willing to concede. Australia has now agreed to support the Turkish bid in return for their minister chairing the talks following negotiations at COP30, currently being held in Brazil.

This unusual arrangement has taken observers by surprise. It is normal for a COP president to be from the host country and how this new partnership will work in practice remains to be seen.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has called the compromise with Turkey an "outstanding result" in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), noting Pacific issues would be "front and centre".

He added that he had spoken to Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape and Prime Minister Rabuka of Fiji.

However, Papua New Guinea's Foreign Minister Justin Tkatchenko told the AFP news agency "we are all not happy. And disappointed it's ended up like this".

Solomon Islands leader Jeremiah Manele earlier told the ABC he would be "disappointed" if Australia didn't secure the event.

Despite this, there will be relief among countries currently meeting at COP30 in the Brazilian city of Belém that a compromise has been reached as the lack of agreement on the venue was becoming an embarrassment for the UN.

Australia has pushed hard to have the climate summit in the city of Adelaide, arguing that they would co-host the meeting with Pacific island states who are seen as among the most vulnerable to climate change and rising sea levels.

Turkey, which has proposed hosting COP31 in the city of Antalya, felt that they had a good claim to be the host country as they had stood aside in 2021 and allowed the UK to hold the meeting in Glasgow.

If neither country was willing to compromise then the meeting would have been held in the German city of Bonn, the headquarters of the UN's climate body.

As a result of discussions at COP30, a compromise appears to have been reached.

This includes pre-COP meeting will be held on a Pacific island, while the main event is held in Turkey. Australia's climate minister Chris Bowen will be its president.

"Obviously, it would be great if Australia could have it all, but we can't have it all," Mr Bowen told reporters outside the Australian delegation offices here in Belém.

"This process works on consensus, and consensus means if someone objected to our bid, it would go to Bonn."

"That would mean 12 months with a lack of leadership, no COP president in place, no plan, that would be irresponsible for multilateralism in this challenging environment."

Mr Bowen believes having a COP president not from the host country will work and that he will have the considerable authority reserved for the president of these gatherings.

"As COP president of negotiations, I would have all the powers of the COP presidency to manage, to handle the negotiations, to appoint co-facilitators, to prepare draft text, to issue the cover decision," he said.

He also confirmed to the BBC that Turkey will also appoint a president who will run the venue, organise the meetings and schedules.

Australia's climbdown will be embarrassing for the government of Mr Albanese, after lobbying long and hard to win support among the other nations in the Western Europe group.

The compromise will have to be ratified by more than 190 countries gathered here for COP30.

Given the difficulties in getting to this compromise, there are unlikely to be any objections.

Nine people have been killed in Russian strikes on Ukraine overnight, Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky has said.

Russia launched more than 470 drones and 47 missiles in the "brazen attack", he wrote in a post on Telegram.

Three districts of Ukraine's second city, Kharkiv, were hit by a massive drone attack which injured more than 30 people, including children. Photos posted online showed buildings and cars ablaze.

Power cuts are affecting a number of regions across the country, Ukraine's energy ministry said.

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At least 25 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip, the Hamas-run health ministry has said.

Ten people, including a woman and a young girl, were killed when a ministry of religious endowments building in the eastern Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City was hit, according to rescuers.

The Israeli military said it had struck "Hamas terrorist targets" after it said gunmen had opened fire towards an area where its soldiers were operating in the southern city of Khan Younis, in violation of the five-week-old ceasefire agreement.

There was no immediate comment from Hamas.

The flare-up of violence comes after the UN Security Council passed a resolution that endorsed US President Donald Trump's Gaza peace plan to end two years of devastating war.

Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesman for Gaza's Hamas-run Civil Defence agency, told the BBC that Israeli air, drone and artillery strikes hit several locations in Gaza City and Khan Younis shortly after sunset on Wednesday.

The attacks marked a sharp escalation after several days of relative calm, he said.

The Civil Defence reported that the strike in Zeitoun caused severe damage to the religious endowments ministry's building and surrounding structures, and posted a video showing its rescue workers appearing to find two people buried under rubble.

Photos published by the Anadolu news agency meanwhile showed the bodies of three young children reportedly recovered from the scene.

In a separate incident in Gaza City, one person was killed and several others were wounded when a drone struck a group of people at Shejaiya junction on Salah al-Din Street, Gaza's main north-south road, according to Mr Bassal.

He said another person was killed when a tank shell struck a house belonging to the Balboul family in Shejaiya's Mushtaha Street, which is also in eastern Gaza City.

In Khan Younis, three people were killed and a number were wounded in a strike on a group inside a sports club run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa), he added.

In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that "several terrorists opened fire toward the area where IDF soldiers are operating in Khan Younis" earlier on Wednesday.

"This action constitutes a violation of the ceasefire agreement. No IDF injuries were reported," it added. "In response, the IDF began striking Hamas terrorist targets across the Gaza Strip."

Israeli public broadcaster Kan cited a security source as saying the targets of the strikes were the commander of the Zeitoun Battalion of Hamas's military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and the commander of its naval force.

On Monday, the UN Security Council passed a resolution that sought to shore up the fragile ceasefire, which took effect on 10 October.

Member states authorised the creation of a transitional governance body called the Board of Peace, which will be chaired by President Trump, and a temporary International Stabilisation Force (ISF), which will be tasked with ensuring "the process of demilitarizing the Gaza Strip".

Trump hailed the resolution as "a moment of true historic proportion".

A Hamas statement reiterated that the group would not give up its weapons without a Palestinian state, arguing its fight against Israel was legitimate "resistance".

Israel's ambassador to the UN stressed the importance of disarmament, saying that his country would "not stop or let up" until Hamas no longer presented "a threat".

The Israeli military launched an offensive in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

At least 69,500 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since then, including 280 during the ceasefire, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

Thirty-five people and three institutions have gone on trial in North Macedonia over a devastating fire at a nightclub that killed 63, mainly young, people in March.

"I know about the pain of loved ones, we are all parents," Judge Diana Gruevska-Ilievska told the crowded courtroom, filled with defendants and dozens of victims' relatives. She promised the case would be conducted in a transparent and disciplined manner.

Club Pulse, in the eastern town of Kocani, was packed with young Macedonians attending a concert by a popular hip-hop duo when sparks from pyrotechnic devices set fire to the ceiling.

Prosecutors told the trial that years of failings had turned the club into a death trap.

Three former mayors of Kocani, the nightclub's owner and public licensing officials are among those charged.

They are accused of endangering public safety by allowing an unsafe venue to operate.

The judge warned the court that the trial could last for "five months or five years".

Defence lawyers attempted to delay the start of proceedings due to the charges being merged into a single case. The judge rebuffed them, ruling this did "not violate any rights of the parties".

At the time of the tragedy, authorities said only one proper exit was functioning at the club as the back door had been locked.

Sparks from the pyrotechnics spread quickly on the club's ceiling, which had been made of flammable material.

About 500 people were inside the club at the time, leaving 59 dead and some 200 others injured. Four of the injured died later. Many were unable to escape because of blocked exits.

Outrage after the fire prompted protests in the Macedonian capital Skopje and elsewhere, with victims' families organising local marches in Kocani itself.

Another protest entitled "March of the Angels" took place in Skopje days before the trial began, organised under a Macedonian social media campaign called "Who's Next?".

Prosecutors told the trial that the Kocani disaster was not the result of one person's actions or mistakes - rather it arose out of a series of institutional failures and a lack of responsibility.

None of the defendants had wanted to face up to the danger that had been there for years, according to prosecutor Borche Janev.

Prosecutors allege that licences for the club were issued unlawfully, inspections were not carried out and overcrowding was allowed at the venue.

Another allegation is that there was no permit for the band to set off the pyrotechnic devices that started the fire.

"If we remain silent and lose the truth... we will never have the strength as a society to embark on a path to healing," Janev was quoted by local media as telling the court.

A prominent French anti-drugs campaigner whose brother was killed by drugs criminals last week, five years after the murder of his elder brother, has vowed to stand up to intimidation and "keep telling the truth about drugs violence".

Amine Kessaci, 22, was writing in Le Monde newspaper a day after the funeral of his younger brother Mehdi, whose murder last week has been described by the government as a turning-point in France's drugs wars.

"Yesterday I lost my brother. Today I speak out," he wrote in his opinion piece.

"[The drugs-traffickers] strike at us in order to break, to tame, to subdue. They want to wipe out any resistance, to break any free spirit, to kill in the egg any embryo of revolt."

Mehdi Kessaci, 20, was shot dead last Wednesday as he parked his car in central Marseille in what appears to have been a warning or punishment aimed at his older brother, Amine, from the city's drugs gangs.

Speaking after a ministerial meeting on drugs crime at the Elysée palace on Tuesday, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said: "We all agreed that this premeditated murder was something totally new. It's clearly a crime of intimidation. It's a new level of violence."

Mehdi was the second Kessaci brother to be killed by drugs criminals. In 2020 the body of Brahim Kessaci, then 22, was found in a burnt-out car.

That murder prompted Amine to launch his association, Conscience, which aims to expose the damage to working-class communities caused by gangs.

Marseille is renowned for worsening drugs wars, and Amine Kessaci recently wrote a book called Marseille Wipe your Tears – Life and Death in a Land of Drugs.

In his Le Monde article, Amine revealed he was recently warned by police to leave Marseille because of threats to his life.

He attended his younger brother's funeral wearing a bullet-proof jacket and under heavy police protection.

"I speak because I have no choice but to fight if I don't want to die. I speak because I know that silence is the refuge of our enemies," he wrote, urging courage from citizens, and action from the government.

Mehdi Kessaci's murder has brought the national spotlight back on a drugs trafficking problem that French experts and ministers agree is reaching almost unmanageable proportions.

According to Senate member Étienne Blanc, author of a recent study, turnover in the drugs trade in France is now €7bn (£6bn) – or 70% of the entire budget of the justice ministry.

He said around 250,000 people drew a living from the trade in France – more than the entire number of police and gendarmes, which is 230,000. According to Le Monde, the country counts 1.1 million users of cocaine.

President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday launched a broadside against such consumers, telling the weekly cabinet meeting that "sometimes it is the city-centre bourgeoisie that is funding the traffickers".

Macron had called a special drugs summit the day before in response to Amine's murder and in order to review progress on a new anti-drugs law that was passed in June.

It sets up a special prosecutor's office dedicated to organised crime - similar to the office that tackles terrorism - which will eventually have 30 specialised magistrates.

Under the law, senior drugs convicts are made to serve their terms in isolation in a specially converted prison where it is hoped it will be harder to continue running operations from behind bars.

According to Laurent Nuñez, there is evidence that the crackdown on drugs crime is having an effect - with the number of homicides in Marseille down from 49 in 2023 to 24 in 2024.

The number of dealing points in the city had halved from 160 to 80, he added.

"The war is not won, but we do have results."

According to the author of a recent book, Narcotraffic, Europe's poison, "France is at the heart of the geopolitics of drugs. With its two major ports of Marseille and Le Havre, it has an ideal geographical position in this Europe of free movement."

Mathieu Verboud said that the growth in world production of cocaine had triggered an "explosion of supply and demand. The market has gone through the roof and so have the profits."

The sheer wealth of drugs organisations meant they had the power to corrupt everyone from dock-workers to local politicians, the author warned, a process he said was already well-advanced in countries like the Netherlands and Belgium.

Several French politicians have said it is time to call in the army to deal with drugs-trafficking and the gangs which hold sway in many high-immigration city estates.

Christian Estrosi, mayor of the southern coastal city of Nice, said: "Narcotrafficking has transformed into narcoterrorism. Its aim now is to terrorise, subjugate and rule.

"We have already successfully deployed the means to fight terrorism. It's time to act with determination against narcoterrorism."

Estrosi was referring to wave of deadly jihadist attacks in the mid 2010s, when France deployed hundreds of soldiers on to the streets of many cities where they continue to patrol.

Italy's top appeals court has ruled that a Ukrainian man suspected of involvement in blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipelines between Russia and Germany should be extradited to Berlin.

There, former Ukrainian military officer Serhiy Kuznetsov will face a charge of anti-constitutional sabotage. He is due to be removed from Italy under German police escort in the next few days.

Prosecutors believe Mr Kuznetsov coordinated and led a group that planted explosives on the pipes deep beneath the Baltic Sea in 2022, though they have not disclosed any evidence.

The case has serious implications for relations between Ukraine and Germany, which is the biggest source of military aid for Kyiv in Europe.

Mr Kuznetsov's lawyer said his client "feels like a scapegoat" and is "very sad" that his government has not spoken out in his defence, or even confirmed that he was a serving soldier at the time of the blasts.

"If he carried out the attack, then he did so because he was ordered to do so because he was for sure a captain of the Ukrainian army," Nicola Canestrini said after Wednesday's hearing.

The BBC has seen a copy of Mr Kuznetsov's military ID among the court papers. He has not commented publicly on whether he was involved in the explosions.

"The Ukrainian government knows exactly where he was every day of September 2022," his lawyer said. "So, if he's innocent, why don't they say it? If he did it, why don't they say it? That's his question."

The BBC has approached government and security sources in Kyiv, but they have not commented.

Mr Kuznetsov was arrested in northern Italy in late August, at a glamping site near the city of Rimini where he had booked in for a few nights with his wife and two of their children.

His passport details were entered online at check-in, and in Italy that information is automatically transferred to the carabinieri, the local police.

Later that night, officers came knocking at the family's door.

A month later, a second Ukrainian suspect was detained at his home close to Poland's capital Warsaw on another arrest warrant issued by Germany.

Volodymyr Zhuravlyov, an amateur deep-sea diver, has lived in Poland with his family since just before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

He was held in custody for 17 days, but a court then refused to extradite him.

The judge delivered a passionate speech, arguing that no Ukrainian could be prosecuted for what he characterised as a legitimate act of self-defence against Russia's "bloody and genocidal" invasion of Ukraine.

In Italy, further from Ukraine, the mood and the politics are very different.

Mr Canestrini described the Italian appeal court's ruling as a "great disappointment", but said the fight for his client would now move to Germany - with the aim of having Mr Kuznetsov acquitted on the same grounds.

Many Ukrainians consider whoever did destroy Nord Stream to be heroes for taking out an important revenue source for Russia, and struggle to understand why Germany - a key ally of Ukraine - is pursuing this prosecution.

On Wednesday, one man stood outside the palatial courthouse in Rome wrapped in a Ukrainian flag and holding a poster that read: "Serhiy Kuznetsov is a defender, not a criminal."

Younger Australian teenagers on Instagram, Facebook and Threads are being told their accounts will be shut down ahead of the country's social media ban for under-16s.

Meta, which owns the three brands, said it had begun notifying users it believes to be between 13 and 15 years old by text, email and in-app messages that their accounts would start being deactivated from 4 December.

The ban in Australia comes into force on 10 December. It affects a number of platforms which also include TikTok, YouTube, X and Reddit.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the "world-leading" ban was aimed at "letting kids be kids". Meta and other firms oppose the measure but said they would comply.

Australia's internet regulator has estimated there are 150,000 Facebook users and 350,000 teens on Instagram in the 13-15 age bracket.

From 4 December, children aged below 16 will not be able to create accounts on Meta's social media platforms.

The company said it was asking young users to update their contact details so they could be notified when they became eligible to open an account.

They can download and save their posts, videos and messages before their accounts are shut down.

Meta said that teens who said they were old enough to use Instagram, Facebook and Threads could challenge the restriction by taking a "video selfie" to be used in facial age scans.

They could also provide a driver's licence or other government issued-ID.

All these verification methods were tested by the UK-based Age Check Certification Scheme (ACCS) earlier this year, in a report commissioned by the Australian state.

While the ACCS said that all methods had their merits, it added: "We did not find a single ubiquitous solution that would suit all use cases, nor did we find solutions that were guaranteed to be effective in all deployments."

Social media platforms which fail to take "reasonable steps" to block under-16s face fines of up to A$50m (£25m).

"While we are working hard to remove all users who we understand to be under the age of 16 by 10 December, compliance with the law will be an ongoing and multi-layered process," Antigone Davis, vice-president and global head of safety at Meta, told Reuters Financial.

Meta wants to see a law where under-16s have to get parental approval before they download a social media app.

The firm told Australia's Seven News: "Teens are resourceful, and may attempt to circumvent age assurance measures to access restricted services."

But it said: "We're committed to meeting our compliance obligations and are taking the necessary steps to comply with the law."

Australia's e-Safety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, said the ban was aimed at proctecting teens "from pressures and risks they can be exposed to while logged in to social media accounts".

In a move seemingly to avoid being included in the ban, gaming platform Roblox this week announced that children under 16 would be unable to chat to adult strangers.

Mandatory age checks will be introduced for accounts using chat features, starting in December for Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands, then the rest of the globe from January.

• Roblox blocks children from chatting to adult strangers
• Enforcing Australia's social media ban is possible but contains risks, report says

Which firms does Australia's social media ban apply to?

The e-safety commissioner has published a list of which social media platforms will be impacted by the age ban.

They are:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Kick
• Reddit
• Snapchat
• Threads
• TikTok
• X (formerly Twitter)
• YouTube

Platforms not included are:

• Discord
• GitHub
• Google Classroom
• LEGO Play
• Messenger
• Roblox
• Steam and Steam Chat
• WhatsApp
• YouTube Kids

Albania's prime minister accused Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood of "ethnic stereotyping" after she singled out Albanian families in a speech about abuses of the asylum system.

Edi Rama criticised Mahmood for telling MPs around 700 Albanian families were "living in taxpayer-funded accommodation having failed their asylum claims" as she announced major reforms on Monday.

Rama called the number a "statistical drop in the ocean of post-Brexit Britain's challenges".

Official data show the UK has deported more than 13,000 people to Albania since a returns deal was signed in 2022. Rama called the deal one of "Europe's most successful partnerships on illegal migration."

Mahmood's comments came as she announced major changes to the UK's "out of control and unfair" asylum system.

Speaking in the House of Commons, Mahmood said: "If we fail to deal with this crisis, we will draw more people down a path that starts with anger and ends in hatred."

The reforms will make refugee status temporary, extend the wait for permanent settlement from five years to 20, and allow the removal of families with children who have no right to remain.

Alongside tightening access to refugee status, the UK would create new legal routes to the UK, with an annual cap on numbers.

As part of her speech, Mahmood told MPs "we must remove those who have failed asylum claims, regardless of who they are".

"There are, for instance, around 700 Albanian families living in taxpayer-funded accommodation having failed their asylum claims - despite an existing returns agreement, and Albania being a signatory to the European convention on human rights," she added.

Posting on social media, Rama said: "How can a Labour Home Secretary so poorly echo the rhetoric of the populist far-right – and single out 700 Albanian families, a statistical drop in the ocean of post-Brexit Britain's challenges – precisely at a moment when the UK and Albania have built one of Europe's most successful partnerships on illegal migration?"

"Let us also be clear: Albanians are net contributors to the British economy, and the number of Albanians receiving UK benefits is very low relative to other communities.

"To single them out again and again is not policy - it is a troubling and indecent exercise in demagoguery.

"Official policy should never be driven by ethnic stereotyping. That is the very least humanity expects from the great Great Britain."

Rama has repeatedly clashed with British politicians over their descriptions of Albanian nationals.

In May, Sir Keir Starmer travelled to the Albanian capital Tirana only to be told by Rama he would not host UK "return hubs" for failed asylum seekers from other countries.

During the same press conference, Rama accused the previous Conservative government of "stigmatising" Albanians and warning that "cursing the Albanians was not a good idea, because the curse went back and they are now out of the parliament".

A combative figure on social media, Rama has also previously invited Reform UK leader Nigel Farage to come to Albania to debate his claim one in 50 Albanians in Britain were in prison.

Rama dismissed the figure as "bonkers" and accused Farage of peddling "post-truth Brexit playbook" politics.

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A South Korean passenger ferry carrying 246 passengers and 21 crew has run aground on rocks off the country's south-east coast.

The Queen Jenuvia 2 is stuck on a reef and unable to move, but there is currently no risk of sinking or capsizing, according to the Coast Guard. People are currently being moved to patrol boats, it said.

The accident happened near Jangsan Island in Sinan County on Wednesday evening local time. The vessel ran aground on rocks near the uninhabited island of Jogdo.

Local media reported that five people sustained minor injuries from the impact of the grounding, but there have been no other casualties.

South Korean Prime Minister Kim Min-seok has ordered all available vessels to be mobilised to rescue the ferry.

"We have confirmed that there is currently no flooding. We are transferring passengers to patrol boats and moving them to a safe location," a Coast Guard official said, Chosun Ilbo newspaper reports.

The Coast Guard plans to move the vessel ashore at high tide.

The ferry was travelling to the port city of Mokpo after departing from the resort island of Jeju, carrying 246 passengers and 21 crew members, the Coast Guard.

The area is near the site of the sinking of the Sewol ferry in 2014 that killed more than 300 people, mostly school children heading for a school trip.