Hundreds of Tibetans protesting against a Chinese dam were rounded up in a harsh crackdown earlier this year, with some beaten and seriously injured, the BBC has learnt from sources and verified footage.

Such protests are extremely rare in Tibet, which China has tightly controlled since it annexed the region in the 1950s. That they still happened highlights China's controversial push to build dams in what has long been a sensitive area.

Claims of the arrests and beatings began trickling out shortly after the events in February. In the following days authorities further tightened restrictions, making it difficult for anyone to verify the story, especially journalists who cannot freely travel to Tibet.

But the BBC has spent months tracking down Tibetan sources whose family and friends were detained and beaten. BBC Verify has also examined satellite imagery and verified leaked videos which show mass protests and monks begging the authorities for mercy.

The sources live outside of China and are not associated with activist groups. But they did not wish to be named for safety reasons.

In response to our queries, the Chinese embassy in the UK did not confirm nor deny the protests or the ensuing crackdown.

But it said: "China is a country governed by the rule of law, and strictly safeguards citizens' rights to lawfully express their concerns and provide opinions or suggestions."

The protests, followed by the crackdown, took place in a territory home to Tibetans in Sichuan province. For years, Chinese authorities have been planning to build the massive Gangtuo dam and hydropower plant, also known as Kamtok in Tibetan, in the valley straddling the Dege (Derge) and Jiangda (Jomda) counties.

Once built, the dam's reservoir would submerge an area that is culturally and religiously significant to Tibetans, and home to several villages and ancient monasteries containing sacred relics.

One of them, the 700-year-old Wangdui (Wontoe) Monastery, has particular historical value as its walls feature rare Buddhist murals.

The Gangtuo dam would also displace thousands of Tibetans. The BBC has seen what appears to be a public tender document for the relocation of 4,287 residents to make way for the dam.

The BBC contacted an official listed on the tender document as well as Huadian, the state-owned enterprise reportedly building the dam. Neither have responded.

Plans to build the dam were first approved in 2012, according to a United Nations special rapporteurs letter to the Chinese government. The letter, which is from July 2024, raised concerns about the dam's "irreversible impact" on thousands of people and the environment.

From the start, residents were not "consulted in a meaningful way" about the dam, according to the letter. For instance, they were given information that was inadequate and not in the Tibetan language.

They were also promised by the government that the project would only go ahead if 80% of them agreed to it, but "there is no evidence this consent was ever given," the letter goes on to say, adding that residents tried to raise concerns about the dam several times.

Then, in February, officials told them they would be evicted imminently, while giving them little information about resettlement options and compensation, the BBC understands from two Tibetan sources.

This triggered such deep anxiety that villagers and Buddhist monks decided to stage protests, despite knowing the risks of a crackdown.

'They didn't know what was going to happen to them'

The largest one saw hundreds gathering outside a government building in Dege. In a video clip obtained and verified by the BBC, protesters can be heard calling on authorities to stop the evictions and let them stay.

Separately, a group of residents approached visiting officials and pleaded with them to cancel plans to build the dam. The BBC has obtained footage which appears to show this incident, and verified it took place in the village of Xiba.

The clip shows red-robed monks and villagers kneeling on a dusty road and showing a thumbs-up, a traditional Tibetan way of begging for mercy.

In the past the Chinese government has been quick to stamp out resistance to authority, especially in Tibetan territory where it is sensitive to anything that could potentially feed separatist sentiment.

It was no different this time. Authorities swiftly launched their crackdown, arresting hundreds of people at protests while also raiding homes across the valley, according to one of our sources.

One unverified but widely shared clip appears to show Chinese policemen shoving a group of monks on a road, in what is thought to be an arrest operation.

Many were detained for weeks and some were beaten badly, according to our Tibetan sources whose family and friends were targeted in the crackdown.

One source shared fresh details of the interrogations. He told the BBC that a childhood friend was detained and interrogated over several days.

"He was asked questions and treated nicely at first. They asked him 'who asked you to participate, who is behind this'.

"Then, when he couldn't give them [the] answers they wanted, he was beaten by six or seven different security personnel over several days."

His friend sustained only minor injuries, and was freed within a few days. But others were not so lucky.

Another source told the BBC that more than 20 of his relatives and friends were detained for participating in the protests, including an elderly person who was more than 70 years old.

"Some of them sustained injuries all over their body, including in their ribs and kidneys, from being kicked and beaten… some of them were sick because of their injuries," he said.

Similar claims of physical abuse and beatings during the arrests have surfaced in overseas Tibetan media reports.

The UN letter also notes reports of detentions and use of force on hundreds of protesters, stating they were "severely beaten by the Chinese police, resulting in injuries that required hospitalisation".

After the crackdown, Tibetans in the area encountered even tighter restrictions, the BBC understands. Communication with the outside world was further limited and there was increased surveillance. Those who are still contactable have been unwilling to talk as they fear another crackdown, according to sources.

The first source said while some released protesters were eventually allowed to travel elsewhere in Tibetan territory, others have been slapped with orders restricting their movement.

This has caused problems for those who need to go to hospital for medical treatment and nomadic tribespeople who need to roam across pastures with their herds, he said.

The second source said he last heard from his relatives and friends at the end of February: "When I got through, they said not to call any more as they would get arrested. They were very scared, they would hang up on me.

"We used to talk over WeChat, but now that is not possible. I'm totally blocked from contacting all of them," he said.

"The last person I spoke to was a younger female cousin. She said, 'It's very dangerous, a lot of us have been arrested, there's a lot of trouble, they have hit a lot of us'… They didn't know what was going to happen to them next."

The BBC has been unable to find any mention of the protests and crackdown in Chinese state media. But shortly after the protests, a Chinese Communist Party official visited the area to "explain the necessity" of building the dam and called for "stability maintenance measures", according to one report.

A few months later, a tender was awarded for the construction of a Dege "public security post", according to documents posted online.

The BBC has been monitoring the valley via satellite imagery for months. For now, there is no sign of the dam's construction nor demolition of the villages and monasteries.

The Chinese embassy told us authorities were still conducting geological surveys and specialised studies to build the dam. They added the local government is "actively and thoroughly understanding the demands and aspirations" of residents.

Development or exploitation?

China is no stranger to controversy when it comes to dams.

When the government constructed the world's biggest dam in the 90s - the Three Gorges on the Yangtze River - it saw protests and criticism over its handling of relocation and compensation for thousands of villagers.

In more recent years, as China has accelerated its pivot from coal to clean energy sources, such moves have become especially sensitive in Tibetan territories.

Beijing has been eyeing the steep valleys and mighty rivers here, in the rural west, to build mega-dams and hydropower stations that can sustain China's electricity-hungry eastern metropolises. President Xi Jinping has personally pushed for this, a policy called "xidiandongsong", or "sending western electricity eastwards".

Like Gangtuo, many of these dams are on the Jinsha (Dri Chu) river, which runs through Tibetan territories. It forms the upper reaches of the Yangtze river and is part of what China calls the world's largest clean energy corridor.

Gangtuo is in fact the latest in a series of 13 dams planned for this valley, five of which are already in operation or under construction.

The Chinese government and state media have presented these dams as a win-win solution that cuts pollution and generates clean energy, while uplifting rural Tibetans.

In its statement to the BBC, the Chinese embassy said clean energy projects focus on "promoting high-quality economic development" and "enhancing the sense of gain and happiness among people of all ethnic groups".

But the Chinese government has long been accused of violating Tibetans' rights. Activists say the dams are the latest example of Beijing's exploitation of Tibetans and their land.

"What we are seeing is the accelerated destruction of Tibetan religious, cultural and linguistic heritage," said Tenzin Choekyi, a researcher with rights group Tibet Watch. "This is the 'high-quality development' and 'ecological civilisation' that the Chinese government is implementing in Tibet."

One key issue is China's relocation policy that evicts Tibetans from their homes to make way for development - the same fate awaits the villagers and monks living near the Gangtuo dam. More than 930,000 rural Tibetans are estimated to have been relocated since 2000, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Beijing has always maintained that these relocations happen only with the consent of Tibetans, and that they are given housing, compensation and new job opportunities. State media often portrays it as an improvement in their living conditions.

But rights groups paint a different picture, with reports detailing evidence of coercion, complaints of inadequate compensation, cramped living conditions, and lack of jobs. They also point out that relocation severs the deep, centuries-old connection that rural Tibetans share with their land.

"These people will essentially lose everything they own, their livelihoods and community heritage," said Maya Wang, interim China director at HRW.

There are also environmental concerns over the flooding of Tibetan valleys renowned for their biodiversity, and the possible dangers of building dams in a region rife with earthquake fault lines.

Some Chinese academics have found the pressure from accumulated water in dam reservoirs could potentially increase the risk of quakes, including in the Jinsha river. This could cause catastrophic flooding and destruction, as seen in 2018, when rain-induced landslides occurred at a village situated between two dam construction sites on Jinsha.

The Chinese embassy told us that the implementation of any clean energy project "will go through scientific planning and rigorous demonstration, and will be subject to relevant supervision".

In recent years, China has passed laws safeguarding the environment surrounding the Yangtze River and the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau. President Xi has personally stressed the need to protect the Yangtze's upper reaches.

About 424 million yuan (£45.5m, $60m) has been spent on environmental conservation along Jinsha, according to state media. Reports have also highlighted efforts to quake-proof dam projects.

Multiple Tibetan rights groups, however, argue that any large-scale development in Tibetan territory, including dams such as Gangtuo, should be halted.

They have staged protests overseas and called for an international moratorium, arguing that companies participating in such projects would be "allowing the Chinese government to profit from the occupation and oppression of Tibetans".

"I really hope that this [dam-building] stops," one of our sources said. "Our ancestors were here, our temples are here. We have been here for generations. It is very painful to move. What kind of life would we have if we leave?"

Additional reporting by Richard Irvine-Brown of BBC Verify

Warning: This story contains descriptions of sexual abuse

The Pelicot rape trial, which ended in France on Thursday, held a terrible fascination for almost every woman I know. As it unfolded in an Avignon court, I found myself following every awful detail, then discussing it with my female friends, my daughters, colleagues, even women in my local book club, as we tried to process what happened.

For nearly a decade, Gisèle Pelicot's husband had been secretly drugging her and inviting men he'd met on the internet to have sex with his "Sleeping Beauty" wife in the marital bedroom while he videoed them.

These strangers, ranging from 22 to 70 years in age, with jobs that included fireman, nurse, journalist, prison warden and soldier, complied with Dominique Pelicot's instructions. Such was their desire for a submissive female body to penetrate, they blithely had sex with a retired grandmother whose heavily sedated body resembled a rag doll.

There were 50 men in court, all living within a 50km (30 mile) radius of Mazan, a small town in southern France where the Pelicots lived. They were, apparently, just like "any other man".

One woman in her 30s told me "When I first read about it, I didn't want to be around men for at least a week, even my fiancé. It just horrified me."

Another in her late 60s, so close to Gisèle Pelicot's age, couldn't stop thinking about what men's minds could be harbouring, even her husband and sons. "Is this just the tip of the iceberg?"

As Dr Stella Duffy, 61, an author and therapist, wrote on Instagram on the day the verdict was delivered: "I hope and try to believe #notallmen, but I imagine the wives and girlfriends and best mates and daughters and mothers of Gisèle Pelicot's village thought that too. And now they know different. Every woman I talk to says this case has changed how she views men. I hope it's changed how men view men too."

Now that justice has been done, we can look beyond this monstrous case and ask: where did these men's callous and violent behaviour come from? Could they not see that sex without consent is rape?

But there is a broader question too. What does the fact that so many men in a relatively small area shared this fantasy of extreme domination over a woman say about the nature of male desire?

How the internet changed the norm

It is hard to imagine the scale of the orchestrated rapes and sexual assaults of Ms Pelicot without the internet.

The platform on which Dominique Pelicot advertised for men to rape his wife was an unmoderated French website, which made it easier to bring together people who shared sexual interests, with no holds barred, than it would have been in the days before the internet. (It has now been closed down.)

One of Ms Pelicot's lawyers likened the site to a "murder weapon", telling the court that without it the case "would never have reached such proportions".

But the internet has played a role in gradually changing attitudes to sex in consensual and non-abusive settings too, normalising what many might have once seen as extreme.

In the shift from old school skin mags and blue movies bought in a murky Soho sex shop to modern-day websites like PornHub, which had 11.4 billion mobile visits globally in the month of January 2024 alone, the boundaries of porn have expanded hugely. Adding in more and more extreme or niche activity ramps up the expectation, so "vanilla" sex may become mundane.

According to a survey of UK online users in January 2024, almost one in 10 respondents aged between 25 and 49 years reported watching porn most days, the great majority of them male.

Twenty-four-year-old university graduate Daisy told me that most people she knows watch porn, including her. She prefers to use a feminist site whose search filters include "passionate" and "sensual", as well as "rough". But some of her male friends say they no longer watch porn "as they couldn't have a nice time having sex because of watching too much porn when they were just kids".

A 2023 study for the children's commissioner for England, Dame Rachel de Souza, found that a quarter of 16 to 21-year-olds first saw pornography on the internet while still at primary school.

At the time Ms de Souza said: "The adult content which parents may have accessed in their youth could be considered 'quaint' in comparison to today's world of online pornography."

Does porn really shape attitudes?

Children who regularly viewed porn on mobiles before puberty inevitably grow up with different sexual expectations than those aroused by Playboy in the 20th century.

While no direct causal link has been established, there is substantial evidence of an association between the use of pornography and harmful sexual attitudes and behaviours towards women.

According to government research before the Covid-19 pandemic: "There is evidence that use of pornography is associated with greater likelihood of desiring or engaging in sexual acts witnessed in porn, and a greater likelihood of believing women want to engage in these specific acts."

Some of those acts may involve aggressive, dominating behaviour such as face slapping, choking, gagging and spitting. Daisy told me: "Choking has become normalised, routine, expected, like neck-kissing. With the last person I was seeing, I told him from the start that I wasn't into choking and he was fine with that."

But she believes that not all women will speak out. "And in my experience most men don't want a woman to be dominant in the bedroom. That's where they want to have the power."

Forty years older than Daisy, Suzanne Noble has written about her own sexual adventures and now has a website and podcast called Sex Advice for Seniors. She believes that the availability of porn that depicts rape fantasies normalises an act that is rooted in violence and depicts rape as an activity women crave.

"There's simply not enough education about the difference between re-enacting a fantasy that involves a pseudo-rape, with a completely non-consensual version of the same," she argues.

From small ads to real life

Just as the internet brought porn out of backstreets and into bedrooms, it has also facilitated easier access to events in real life. Previously people into, say, S&M (sadomasochism), might have connected through small ads in the back of "contact" magazines, using Post Office boxes rather than mail to their own homes. It was a very slow and arduous way of setting up a sexual encounter. Now it's far easier to connect with those groups online then plan to meet in person.

In the UK, it has become mainstream to find love and relationships through dating apps, and so too is it easier to connect with people who wish to try out particular sexual kinks, with a plethora of social apps such as Feeld, which is designed for people to explore "desire outside of existing blueprints". Its online glossary includes a list of 31 desires, including polyamory, bondage and submission.

Albertina Fisher is an online psychosexual therapist who, in the course of her job, talks to her clients about their sexual fantasies. "There is nothing wrong with having a sexual fantasy — the difference is if fantasy becomes behaviour without consent," she says.

Male and female fantasies are different she tells me, "but they very often include submission and domination. The key thing about sexual preferences such as BDSM (bondage, discipline or domination, sadism, and masochism) is that it is safe, sane and consensual. What two people want to do together is absolutely fine." This, she stresses, is the case when both consent.

All of this is, of course, entirely separate to the Pelicot case. "That is sexual violence," she says. "And it's extremely distressing that this can happen within what appeared to be a loving relationship. Acting out a fantasy without consent is an extreme form of narcissism.

"With the partner incapacitated, all their needs are denied. So you have a fantasy of a woman who you don't have to worry about pleasing."

Questions around desire

A key and problematic aspect of the whole question of fantasy is desire. In the post-Freudian age it has become a truism that desires should not be repressed. And much of the liberation theory of the 1960s emphasised self-actualisation through the realisation of sexual desire.

But male desire has become an increasingly contested concept, not least because of the questions of power and domination often entangled within it.

The men who stood trial in the Pelicot case struggled to see themselves as perpetrators. Some argued that they assumed Ms Pelicot had consented, or that they were taking part in a libertine sex game. As many of them saw it, they were simply pursuing their desires.

There is a dark borderline where a very basic form of heterosexual male desire - (or the primal urge to have sex with a woman, or women, in the most uncomplicated manner) - can grow into a shared endeavour, creating an esprit de corps of boundary-pushing that may pay little heed or care to the female experience.

This perhaps explains why an OnlyFans performer, Lily Phillips, recently drew a huge queue of participants in her quest to have sex with 100 men in one day.

The tendency to objectify women may in some cases also develop into a desire to annihilate the whole question of female desire, let alone agency.

Obviously male desire takes many forms, most of an entirely healthy nature, but it has traditionally been constrained by cultural limits. Now those limits have shifted radically in the UK and elsewhere in the West, and the underlying conviction that the realisation of desire is an act of self-liberation amounts to a potent and sometimes troubling combination.

The appeal of Andrew Tate

Andre de Trichateau, a therapist based in South Kensington, London, brought up the appeal of masculinist influencers such as Andrew Tate, a self-proclaimed "misogynist", who has 10.4 million followers on X.

Mr de Trichateau says that he has encountered men feeling demeaned and displaced by the rise of feminism. "Some men don't know who to be," he says. "Men are socialised to be dominant but also expected to be in touch with their emotions, able to show vulnerability.

"This confusion can lead to anger, directed to the feminist movement, and [in turn this can lead them to] people such as Tate."

With a 60% male client base, Mr de Trichateau observes that "men can be socialised to view power and dominance as part of their identity".

"This is not to justify anything like the Pelicot case," he continues, "but objectively I can see that such behaviour is an escape from powerlessness and inadequacy. It's tantalising and forbidden.

"The case is disturbing because it shows the extremities that people will go to."

He also pointed out that online groups such as the one Mr Pelicot used can be very powerful. "In a group you are accepted. Ideas are validated. One person says its OK then everyone will go along with it."

Many of the conversations during and since the Pelicot trial have focused on how to make the distinction between consensual and non-consensual sex and whether it should be better defined in law - but the problem is that what consent amounts to is a complex question.

As 24-year-old Daisy sees it, some women of her age tend to go along with men's sexual preferences regardless of their own feelings. "They think something is hot if the man they are with thinks it's hot."

So, if heterosexual men, in particular, really are increasingly taking their sexual cues from pornography, then that prompts further questions about the changing shape of male desire. And if young women can feel that the price of intimacy is to go along with those desires, however extreme, then arguably consent is not a black and white matter.

Ultimately, there may be widespread relief that the Pelicot case is over and that justice was served, but it leaves behind even more questions - questions that, in the spirit of an amazingly strong French woman, are perhaps best discussed out in the open.

Lead image credit: Getty

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A suspect has been arrested in New York over the death of a woman who was set on fire on a subway train in Brooklyn.

Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch described the incident on Sunday as "one of the most depraved crimes one person could possibly commit against another human being".

She said the woman was sleeping on a stationary F train to Brooklyn when she was approached by the suspect who used a lighter to ignite her clothing.

The victim died at the scene, she said, adding that the suspect had been taken into custody after he was detained on another subway train.

Police said the woman, who has not been named, was sleeping in a subway carriage at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station in Brooklyn at about 07:30 local time (12:30 GMT) when a man approached her.

There was no interaction before the attack, police said, adding that they did not believe the two people knew each other.

The man got off the train as police officers on patrol in the station rushed to the fire.

"What they saw was a person standing inside the train car fully engulfed in flames," Ms Tisch said.

Police are still working to identify the victim and the motive for the attack.

If you asked TV viewers to name a favourite double act, chances are the two stars of Vengeance Most Fowl would be close to the top of the list.

It's Wallace & Gromit's first major appearance in over a decade, and the first film not to feature the voice of Peter Sallis as the cheese-loving inventor.

"It has been quite emotional [doing this production] since we lost Peter, he was such an original, unique voice," says Nick Park of Sallis, who died in 2017 at the age of 96.

"So it's very hard for anyone to step into his shoes. But we have been blessed with a youngish actor whom we've known for many years who can do a fantastic Wallace impersonation.

"He's stepped in very kindly, and is just great. It's hard to tell them apart."

Take a bow, Ben Whitehead - the 47-year-old actor and voice artist says he feels honoured to be taking on the role. But also admits to feeling a degree of pressure.

"Enormous pressure!" he tells the BBC.

"Because it's a very popular character. I got to work with Peter [Sallis] a couple of times for [2005's] The Curse of the Were-Rabbit film.

"So yeah, there's a great deal of pressure with that. And I feel very grateful to Aardman for giving me so much time to build the character.

"You kind of have to do the 'hmm' and the 'hee-hee'," he continues - demonstrating some Wallace-isms that sound indistinguishable from Peter Sallies's Yorkshire tones.

"Definitely the elongation of the vowels like 'cheeeeese'!"

Why return now?

Fans have been clamouring for more from the plasticine pair for years. So why now?

"Whenever we've done talks around the world, the last question is always, 'When is the next Wallace & Gromit film?', explains Park. "The last time we did that I just came home burning with this idea that's been around for years."

The idea was - what if Wallace created a pre-programmed, voice-controlled smart Gnome.

Enter Norbot, but of course regular viewers of Wallace & Gromit will be unsurprised to learn that the inventor's well-intentioned idea, as usual, ends up causing mayhem.

This isn't the only familiar element to appear in this latest story.

This new adventure also features an old villain, the criminal mastermind Feathers McGraw, a chicken-impersonating-penguin whom Wallace & Gromit - mostly Gromit - defeated in 1993's The Wrong Trousers.

"Whenever we're out and about talking about the future of Wallace & Gromit, the single most asked question is 'when will Feathers be back?", says Merlin Crossingham, who directs Vengeance Most Fowl alongside Nick Park.

"Everybody loves a villain, it's often said your film is only as good as its villain, [so it] seemed a perfect opportunity to bring Feathers back for this story."

Wallace & Gromit were first introduced to audiences with 1989's A Grand Day Out. Since then their adventures have involved everything from malfunctioning clothing to mysterious were-rabbits.

"I think Wallace & Gromit have so many facets to their relationship," says Crossingham.

"They are best pals. They're kind of partners in crime, they're man and dog. And hopefully in the films, their stories, and their relationship everybody young and old relates to them.

"I truly think it's that relatability, not just of their simplicity of lifestyle from which madness erupts.

"But everybody somewhere in the stories connects with them on some level.

"And I think that what Nick has created, right back at the beginning with A Grand Day Out, has really struck a chord with people."

'Christmas day ratings battle'

The last time a new Wallace & Gromit adventure went out on Christmas Day was in 2008 with A Matter of Loaf and Death. It was day's most-watched show, with more than 16 million viewers tuning in.

It was also the most-watched show of the entire year.

While it's still possible that it could repeat that feat, it's up against some extremely tough competition.

"Bring it on, Gavin & Stacey!" jokes Crossingham, acknowledging the huge popularity of the Essex and Barry-based comedy, whose finale also goes out on Christmas Day.

However while Gavin & Stacey might be reaching its conclusion, this definitely isn't a finale for Wallace & Gromit.

"[It's] certainly not the end," says Nick Park. "I think there's plenty of bounce still in their bungee.

"We'll carry on. There's always ideas worth kicking about."

"Give us a minute though," Interjects Merlin. "They take a while to make!"

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is on BBC One at 18.10 on Christmas Day.

Rome's world-famous Trevi Fountain has re-opened after a three-month restoration.

Built in the 18th Century by Italian architect Nicola Salvi on the façade of the Poli Palace, the historic fountain is one of the city's most visited spots.

Between 10,000 and 12,000 tourists used to visit the Trevi Fountain each day, but a new queuing system has been installed to prevent large crowds massing near the landmark.

Speaking on Sunday Mayor of Rome Roberto Gualtieri said imposing the limit will "allow everyone to better enjoy the fountain, without crowds or confusion".

Gualtieri also said city authorities were considering charging a modest entry price to finance the fountain's upkeep.

Sunday's re-opening took place under light rain in the presence of several hundred tourists, many of whom followed the mayor by throwing a coin into the fountain.

The three-month cleaning project involved removing mould and calcium incrustations.

The fountain and other key city sites have been cleaned ahead of the jubilee of the Roman Catholic Church which begins on Christmas Eve.

Its poor structural condition was exposed in 2012 when bits of its elaborate cornice began falling off after an especially harsh winter which required a multi-million euro renovation the following year.

Making a wish and tossing a coin into the water is such a tradition that the city authorities used to collect around €10,000 (£8,300; $10,500) a week.

The money was donated to a charity that provides meals for the poor.

The Trevi fountain

• Commissioned by Pope Clement XII in 1730
• It is the end point of one of the aqueducts that supplied ancient Rome with water
• The Acqua Vergine runs for a total of 20km (12 miles) before flowing into the fountain
• Tourists can drink from a special tap tucked away at one side
• According to legend, the water source was discovered in 19 BC by thirsty Roman soldiers directed to the site by a young virgin - which is why it is called Virgin Waters
• The tradition of throwing coins into the fountain was made famous by Frank Sinatra's Three Coins in the Fountain in the 1954 romantic comedy of the same name

The rhetoric on social media following the murder of healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York earlier this month has been "extraordinarily alarming", US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says.

"It speaks of what is really bubbling here in this country, and unfortunately we see that manifested in violence, the domestic violent extremism that exists," he told CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday.

Some on social media have celebrated Luigi Mangione, the man accused of shooting dead Mr Thompson, and shared anger at America's private health insurers.

Mayorkas said he was "alarmed by the heroism that is being attributed to an alleged murderer of a father of two children on the streets in New York".

Mr Thompson, the 50-year-old CEO of the largest US health insurer UnitedHealthcare, was gunned down outside a Manhattan hotel early on 4 December triggering a massive manhunt for the killer.

Mr Mangione, 26, was arrested days later in Pennsylvania and flown to New York where he is facing both federal and state charges, including first-degree murder in furtherance of terrorism.

Investigators accuse him of carrying out a targeted killing, pointing to evidence that suggests a long-held animosity towards the US healthcare industry. On social media, support for Mr Mangione has often been accompanied by grievances and complaints with the health insurance sector.

• The dark fandom behind CEO murder suspect

"We have been concerned about the rhetoric on social media for some time," Mayorkas said on Sunday. "We've seen narratives of hate. We've seen narratives of anti-government sentiment. We've seen personal grievances in the language of violence."

Mayorkas, whose homeland security department is in part responsible for protecting Americans from domestic terrorism, said his department sees a "wide range of narratives" that "drive some individuals to violence."

"It's something that we're very concerned about," he said. "That is a heightened threat environment."

But the 65-year-old, whose time at the helm of the department will end next month, stressed that Mr Thompson's killing was "the actions of an individual [and] not reflective of the American public".

Mr Mangione will remain behind bars in New York as his lawyers said last week that they would not present an application for bail. He is in federal custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center Brooklyn, the same facility where Sean 'Diddy' Combs is being held.

He will likely be assigned a roommate and have daily visits from medical and psychological services, law enforcement sources told the BBC's US partner CBS.

While New York does not have the death penalty, he faces four federal charges, including murder and stalking, which could make him eligible for the punishment. He also faces multiple state charges.

He is expected to be arraigned on those state charges in New York on Monday. Mr Mangione faces 11 counts, including murder in the first degree and murder as a crime of terrorism.

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.

President-elect Donald Trump has demanded Panama reduce fees on the Panama Canal or return it to US control, accusing the central American country of charging "exorbitant prices" to American shipping and naval vessels.

"The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous, highly unfair," he told a crowd of supporters in Arizona on Sunday.

"This complete rip-off of our country will immediately stop," he said, referring to when he takes office next month.

His remarks prompted a quick rebuke from Panama's president, who said "every square metre" of the canal and surrounding area belong to his country.

President José Raúl Mulino added that Panama's sovereignty and independence were non-negotiable.

Trump made the comments to supporters of Turning Point USA, a conservative activist group that provided significant support to his 2024 election campaign.

It was a rare example of a US leader saying he could push a country to hand over territory - although he did not explain how he would do so - and a sign of how American foreign policy and diplomacy may shift once he enters the White House following his inauguration on 20 January.

Trump's comments followed a similar post a day earlier in which he said the Panama Canal was a "vital national asset" for the US.

If shipping rates are not lowered, Trump said on Sunday, "we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us, in full, quickly and without question".

The 51-mile (82km) Panama Canal cuts across the central American nation and is the main link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

• Can the Panama Canal save itself?
• Will Trump's victory spark a global trade war?
• What Trump tariffs could mean for consumers

It was built in the early 1900s and the US maintained control over the canal zone until 1977, when treaties gradually ceded the land back to Panama. After a period of joint control, Panama took sole control in 1999.

Up to 14,000 ships cross the canal per year, including container ships carrying cars, natural gas and other goods, and military vessels.

As well as Panama, the president-elect also took aim at Canada and Mexico over what he called unfair trade practices. He accused them of allowing drugs and immigrants into the US, although he called Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum a "wonderful woman".

Trump hits the usual themes

Trump made his remarks in front of thousands at Turning Point's annual conference, one of the country's largest gatherings of conservative activists.

Turning Point poured huge resources into get-out-the-vote efforts in swing states designed to bolster Trump and other Republicans during the election campaign.

It was his first speech since a deal passed Congress this week to keep the US government open, after several provisions were removed including one that would have increased the country's debt ceiling.

Trump had supported raising the debt ceiling, which restricts the amount of money the US government can borrow.

But his speech on Sunday avoided that issue entirely, instead recapping his election victory and hitting on themes – including immigration, crime and foreign trade – that were mainstays of his campaign.

He did, however, mention Elon Musk.

"You know, they're on a new kick," he said. "All the different hoaxes. The new one is that President Trump has ceded the presidency to Elon Musk."

"No, no, that's not happening," he said. "He's not gonna be president."

Several speakers here at the conference were critical of government spending and of politicians in both parties – however the divisions inside the Republican Party which have played out in Congress in recent days were mostly muted.

Women's charities have praised the yoga instructor who was seriously injured during this summer's Southport stabbings for being "so courageous" while recently speaking in public for the first time about her experiences.

Leanne Lucas was overseeing a Taylor Swift-themed dance and yoga class in the Merseyside town on 29 July when a knifeman entered and killed three girls. He stabbed eight other girls and a local man who had rushed to protect them.

Ms Lucas, who was also trying to shield two girls from the knifeman, suffered serious stab wounds.

At a vigil in Liverpool last month to remember women and girls who had lost their lives to male violence, she said: "The guilt, shame and fear we can feel as women will be outshone by courage, fierceness and our ability to connect."

Addressing the crowd, she added: "Raise your voice and share your stories. Often we don't realise how powerful we are."

Sandy Withe, who is involved with the Birkenhead-based Tomorrow's Women charity, described Ms Lucas's actions as "so brave and courageous".

She added: "I admire people like that – for it to be recent to happen to her and then to stand up in front of those people and to let people know that there is help out there as well."

Since 2009, 74 women and girls have been killed in Merseyside, which has seen some of the highest rates of violence by men against women and girls in England.

High-profile cases include the stabbing of Ava White, who was just 12 when she was attacked by a boy at a Christmas lights switch-on event in 2021.

Other victims include nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel, 28-year-old Ashley Dale, and 26-year-old Elle Edwards, who was shot on Christmas Eve 2022.

The Rape and Sexual Abuse Support Merseyside (RASA) charity, which was involved in November's vigil in Liverpool, believes it is vital to keep the issue of violence against women and girls in the public eye.

Operations manager Lorraine Wood said: "The names are read of all the women that have lost their lives and each year the number [is] growing.

"It's really important that we do come together regularly to remember those women - those women should never be forgotten."

Violence against women and girls has been described as a national emergency by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper.

In January, for the first time, Liverpool will join other cities taking part in the UK Women's March.

Among other things, it will highlight and condemn the rise in violence against women and girls.

Merseyside Police said tackling it was a priority for the force, and that officers were putting women's voices at the heart of their work.

Listen to the best of BBC Radio Merseyside on Sounds and follow BBC Merseyside on Facebook, X, and Instagram. You can also send story ideas to northwest.newsonline@bbc.co.uk

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Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico has made a surprise visit to Moscow for talks with Vladimir Putin - becoming only the third Western leader to meet the Russian leader since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago.

Fico - a vocal critic of the European Union's support for Kyiv in the war - said they discussed supplies of Russian gas to Slovakia - which his country relies on.

A deal with Russian gas giant Gazprom to transit energy through Ukraine to Slovakia is due to expire at the end of this year.

"Top EU officials were informed about my journey and its purpose... on Friday," Fico wrote on Facebook.

Fico said the meeting in Moscow was a reaction to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky telling EU leaders that Ukraine remains opposed to Russian gas being piped through its territory.

The Slovakian PM, who survived being shot earlier this year, also said he had a "long conversation" with Putin and the two "exchanged views on the military situation in Ukraine".

Both discussed "the possibilities of an early, peaceful end of the war" and mutual relations between Russia and Slovakia, Fico wrote on Facebook.

• Russia sanctions: What impact have they had on its oil and gas exports?
• Watch BBC challenge Putin on his 25 years in power in Russia

Slovakia and Hungary, which both depend on Russian gas, have raised concerns about the prospect of supplies being interrupted.

In October 2023, when Fico became prime minister again, he ended Slovakia's military aid to Ukraine.

But, he has insisted he wants to be a "good, friendly neighbour" to Ukraine.

Fico's meeting with Putin came as the leaders of Italy, Sweden, Greece and Finland met on Sunday for a security summit.

Speaking afterwards, Finland's Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said Russia was a "permanent and dangerous threat" to the EU.

He also stressed the need for increased defence spending and support for Ukraine.

At least 28 people, including children, have died in a wave of Israeli military strikes throughout the Gaza Strip, according to Gaza's civil defence agency.

A school sheltering displaced families was among the facilities struck, killing eight people including four children over the weekend, the agency said.

It comes as the UN issues a plea for Israel to cease its attacks in the vicinity of a hospital in Gaza's north.

The Israeli military claimed a Hamas command centre was inside the compound of the Musa bin Nusair school in Gaza City, and has not commented on reports of attacks by the hospital.

"Hamas systematically violates international law," the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on social media, adding that Israel's response would be to "act with force and determination against the terrorist organizations".

Gaza's civil defence agency spokesperson Mahmoud Bassal told the AFP news agency that the school had been repurposed as a shelter for Palestinians displaced by the war.

One displaced man who had been staying at the school, Abu, told BBC Arabic that the attack came while he was asleep.

"We were sleeping peacefully, then suddenly we woke up to the sound of a very powerful explosion," he said.

Another man Mahmoud said he was asleep in a tent in the schoolyard when the attack took place.

"Stones and shrapnel were flying, the school's walls fell on our heads," he told BBC Arabic.

On Sunday, Pope Francis condemned the Israeli attacks on Gaza for a second day in a row.

He expressed pain thinking "of such cruelty, to the machine-gunning of children, to the bombing of schools and hospitals".

The director of the Kamal Adwan hospital, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, said its generators had been hit and claimed the Israeli army was targeting the fuel tank.

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, issued a plea to the IDF to cease attacks in the vicinity of the hospital.

Saturday night's reports of "bombardment near Kamal Adwan Hospital and order to evacuate the hospital are deeply worrisome," he said in a statement on social media.

"We call for an immediate ceasefire in the vicinity of the hospital and to protect the patients and health workers."

The hospital's director also released a statement that said Israeli forces were treating the hospital "as if we were a military installation".

"Anyone who steps outside the hospital is at risk of being targeted," Dr Hussam Abu Safiya said.

He added that relocating the operations of the hospital would jeopardise the patients, and called for health staff "be allowed to operate without the threat of evacuation".

Israel has not commented on the reports of an evacuation order.

The BBC has approached the IDF for comment.

Palestinian groups involved in the fighting have told the BBC that a ceasefire deal is "closer than ever".

More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed during the 14-month war between Israel and Hamas, according to figures from Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry.

The war began when Hamas-led gunmen carried out an unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, during which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

The rhetoric on social media following the murder of healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York earlier this month has been "extraordinarily alarming", US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says.

"It speaks of what is really bubbling here in this country, and unfortunately we see that manifested in violence, the domestic violent extremism that exists," he told CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday.

Some on social media have celebrated Luigi Mangione, the man accused of shooting dead Mr Thompson, and shared anger at America's private health insurers.

Mayorkas said he was "alarmed by the heroism that is being attributed to an alleged murderer of a father of two children on the streets in New York".

Mr Thompson, the 50-year-old CEO of the largest US health insurer UnitedHealthcare, was gunned down outside a Manhattan hotel early on 4 December triggering a massive manhunt for the killer.

Mr Mangione, 26, was arrested days later in Pennsylvania and flown to New York where he is facing both federal and state charges, including first-degree murder in furtherance of terrorism.

Investigators accuse him of carrying out a targeted killing, pointing to evidence that suggests a long-held animosity towards the US healthcare industry. On social media, support for Mr Mangione has often been accompanied by grievances and complaints with the health insurance sector.

• The dark fandom behind CEO murder suspect

"We have been concerned about the rhetoric on social media for some time," Mayorkas said on Sunday. "We've seen narratives of hate. We've seen narratives of anti-government sentiment. We've seen personal grievances in the language of violence."

Mayorkas, whose homeland security department is in part responsible for protecting Americans from domestic terrorism, said his department sees a "wide range of narratives" that "drive some individuals to violence."

"It's something that we're very concerned about," he said. "That is a heightened threat environment."

But the 65-year-old, whose time at the helm of the department will end next month, stressed that Mr Thompson's killing was "the actions of an individual [and] not reflective of the American public".

Mr Mangione will remain behind bars in New York as his lawyers said last week that they would not present an application for bail. He is in federal custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center Brooklyn, the same facility where Sean 'Diddy' Combs is being held.

He will likely be assigned a roommate and have daily visits from medical and psychological services, law enforcement sources told the BBC's US partner CBS.

While New York does not have the death penalty, he faces four federal charges, including murder and stalking, which could make him eligible for the punishment. He also faces multiple state charges.

He is expected to be arraigned on those state charges in New York on Monday. Mr Mangione faces 11 counts, including murder in the first degree and murder as a crime of terrorism.

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."