The Chancellor Rachel Reeves is travelling to China in a bid to boost trade and economic ties, as she faces pressure over government borrowing costs hitting their highest level in years.

The three day-visit has been criticised by some Conservatives who claim she should have cancelled the trip to prioritise dealing with economic issues at home.

Government borrowing costs have hit their highest levels for several years, meaning that uses up more tax revenue, leaving less money to spend on other things.

Economists have warned this could mean spending cuts affecting public services or tax rises that could hit people's pay or businesses' ability to grow.

On Thursday, the pound fell to its lowest level in more than a year - but the Treasury said markets continued to "function in an orderly way".

Travelling to China with the chancellor are senior financial figures, including the governor of the Bank of England and the chair of HSBC.

There she will meet China's Vice Premier He Lifeng in Beijing before flying to Shanghai for discussion with UK firms operating in China.

The government is looking to revive an annual economic dialogue with China that has not been held since the pandemic.

Ties have been strained in recent years by growing concerns about the actions of China's Communist leaders, allegations of Chinese hacking and spying and its jailing of pro-democracy figures in Hong Kong.

The Conservatives have criticised the chancellor for proceeding with the planned trip rather than staying in the UK to address the cost of government borrowing and slide in the value of the pound.

Shadow chancellor Mel Stride accused Reeves of being "missing in action" and said she should have stayed in the UK.

But Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones, standing in for Reeves in the Commons on Thursday, said the trip was "important" for UK trade and there was "no need for an emergency intervention".

Former chancellor Philip Hammond also told the World at One programme on Thursday that he "wouldn't personally recommend the chancellor cancels her trip to China. This can wait until she gets back next week".

Governments generally spend more than they raise in tax so they borrow money to fill the gap, usually by selling bonds to investors.

Interest rates - known as the yield - on government bonds have been going up since around August, a rise that has also affected government bonds in the US and other countries.

The yield on a 10-year bond has surged to its highest level since 2008, while the yield on a 30-year bond is at its highest since 1998, meaning it costs the government more to borrow over the long term.

Reeves has previously committed only to make significant tax and spend announcements once a year at the autumn Budget.

But if higher borrowing costs persist, there is the possibility of cuts to spending before that or at least lower spending increases than would otherwise happen.

Any further spending cuts could be announced in the chancellor's planned fiscal statement on 26 March , ahead of a spending review that has already asked government departments to find efficiency savings worth 5% of their budgets.

On a clear day, the skyscrapers of Tel Aviv are visible from the hill above Karnei Shomron, an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank.

"I do feel different from Tel Aviv," said Sondra Baras, who has lived in Karnei Shomron for almost 40 years. "I'm living in a place where my ancestors lived thousands of years ago. I do not live in occupied territory; I live in Biblical Judea and Samaria."

For many settlers here, the line between the State of Israel, and the territory it captured from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war, has been erased from their narrative.

The visitors' audio-guide at the hill-top viewpoint describes the West Bank as "a region of Israel" and the Palestinian city of Nablus as the place where God promised the land to the Jews.

But formal annexation of this territory has so far remained a dream for settlers like Sondra, even while settlements - viewed as illegal by the UN's top court and most other countries - have mushroomed year after year.

Now many see an opportunity to go further, with the election of Donald Trump as the next US president.

"I was thrilled that Trump won," Sondra told me. "I very much want to extend sovereignty in Judea and Samaria. And I feel that's something Trump could support."

There are signs that some in his incoming administration might agree with her.

Mike Huckabee, nominated as Trump's new ambassador to Israel, signalled his support for Israeli claims on the West Bank in an interview last year.

"When people use the term 'occupied', I say: 'Yes, Israel is occupying the land, but it's the occupation of a land that God gave them 3,500 years ago. It is their land,'" he said.

Yisrael Gantz, head of the regional settlement council that oversees Karnei Shomron, says he has already noticed a change in tone from the incoming Trump administration as a result of the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel, which triggered the war on Gaza.

"Both here in Israel and in the US, they understand that we must apply sovereignty here," he told me. "It's a process. I can't tell you it will be tomorrow. But in my eyes, the dream of a two-state solution is dead."

US President Joe Biden has always maintained the US position in support of a future Palestinian state alongside Israel. Asked whether he was hearing something different from the incoming Trump administration, Mr Gantz replied, "Of course, yes."

But there are also signs that Israelis lobbying for annexation of the West Bank - some of them in cabinet positions - might be disappointed in Trump's decisions.

Their hopes have been fuelled by memories of his first term as president, during which he broke with decades of US policy - and international consensus - by recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights, which were captured from Syria in 1967.

But supporting annexation of the West Bank would be a much bigger and thornier issue for Trump.

It would likely alienate Washington's other key ally, Saudi Arabia, complicating Trump's chances for a wider regional deal.

It could also alienate some moderate Republicans in the US Congress, concerned about the impact on West Bank Palestinians, and their future status under Israeli rule.

Settler leader Sondra Baras told me that West Bank Palestinians who did not want to live in Israel could "go wherever they want".

Challenged on why they should leave their homeland, she said: "I'm not kicking them out, but things change. How many wars did they start? And they lost."

"If sovereignty were to go forward, there would be a lot of yelling and screaming, absolutely," she continued. "But at some point, you create a fact that's irreversible."

Shortly after Trump's election victory last November, Israel's far-right Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, publicly called for annexing the Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

"2025 must be the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria," he said.

Whether or not the new US president agrees, many Palestinians say discussion of formal annexation misses the point - that Israel is, in practice, already annexing territory here.

One of them is Mohaib Salameh. He leads me across the rubble of his family home, built on private Palestinian land, on the outskirts of Nablus. The building was ruled illegal by an Israeli court last year and demolished.

Israel has full control over security and planning in 60% of the West Bank on an interim basis, as outlined in the Oslo peace accords three decades ago.

While settlements are expanding, permits for Palestinian homes are almost never granted. And lawyers say demolitions like this are increasing.

"This is all part of policies to force us to leave," Mohaib said. "It's a policy of forced migration. What difference does it make to them [Israelis] if I build here or not? We pose no threat to them."

Palestinians are also increasingly being forced off their land by violent Israeli settlers - who have been sanctioned by the US and UK, but largely left unchallenged by Israeli courts at home.

Activists say more than 20 Palestinian communities in the West Bank have been expelled over the past few years by increasingly violent attacks, and that settlers are now encroaching into new areas outside Israel's interim civil control.

Mohaib told me that no US president had ever protected Palestinians, and that he doesn't believe Donald Trump will either.

America's next president is widely seen as a friend of Israel.

But he's also a man who also likes closing deals - and avoiding conflicts.

Donald Trump has said that a meeting is being arranged between himself and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The US president-elect gave no timeline for when the meeting might take place.

"He wants to meet and we are setting it up," he said in remarks at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

Trump has promised to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine soon after he takes office on 20 January and has expressed scepticism about US military and financial support for Kyiv.

The planet has moved a major step closer to warming more than 1.5C, new data shows, despite world leaders vowing a decade ago they would try to avoid this.

The European Copernicus climate service, one of the main global data providers, said on Friday that 2024 was the first calendar year to pass the symbolic threshold, as well as the world's hottest on record.

This does not mean the international 1.5C target has been broken, because that refers to a long-term average over decades, but does bring us nearer to doing so as fossil fuel emissions continue to heat the atmosphere.

Last week UN chief António Guterres described the recent run of temperature records as "climate breakdown".

"We must exit this road to ruin - and we have no time to lose," he said in his New Year message, calling for countries to slash emissions of planet-warming gases in 2025.

Global average temperatures for 2024 were around 1.6C above those of the pre-industrial period - the time before humans started burning large amounts of fossil fuels - according to Copernicus data.

This breaks the record set in 2023 by just over 0.1C, and means the last 10 years are now the 10 warmest years on record.

The Met Office, Nasa and other climate groups are due to release their own data later on Friday. All are expected to agree that 2024 was the warmest on record, although precise figures vary slightly.

Last year's heat is predominantly due to humanity's emissions of planet-warming gases, such as carbon dioxide, which are still at record highs.

Natural weather patterns such as El Niño - where surface waters in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean become unusually warm - played a smaller role.

"By far and away the largest contribution impacting our climate is greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere," Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus, tells the BBC.

The 1.5C figure has become a powerful symbol in international climate negotiations ever since it was agreed in Paris in 2015, with many of the most vulnerable countries considering it a matter of survival.

The risks from climate change, such as intense heatwaves, rising sea-levels and loss of wildlife, would be much higher at 2C of warming than at 1.5C, according to a landmark UN report from 2018.

Yet the world has been moving closer and closer to breaching the 1.5C barrier.

"When exactly we will cross the long-term 1.5C threshold is hard to predict, but we're obviously very close now," says Myles Allen of the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford, and an author of the UN report.

The current trajectory would likely see the world pass 1.5C of long-term warming by the early 2030s. This would be politically significant, but it wouldn't mean game over for climate action.

"It's not like 1.49C is fine, and 1.51C is the apocalypse - every tenth of a degree matters and climate impacts get progressively worse the more warming we have," explains Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth, a research group in the US.

Even fractions of a degree of global warming can bring more frequent and intense extreme weather, such as heatwaves and heavy rainfall.

In 2024, the world saw blistering temperatures in west Africa, prolonged drought in parts of South America, intense rainfall in central Europe and some particularly strong tropical storms hitting north America and south Asia.

These events were just some of those made more intense by climate change over the last year, according to the World Weather Attribution group.

Even this week, as the new figures are released, Los Angeles has been overwhelmed with destructive wildfires fuelled by high winds and a lack of rain.

While there are many contributing factors to this week's events, experts say conditions conducive to fires in California are becoming more likely in a warming world.

It wasn't only air temperatures that set new marks in 2024. The world's sea surface also reached a new daily high, while the total amount of moisture in the atmosphere reached record levels.

That the world is breaking new records is not a surprise: 2024 was always expected to be hot, because of the effect of the El Niño weather pattern - which ended around April last year - on top of human-caused warming.

But the margin of several records in recent years has been less expected, with some scientists fearing it could represent an acceleration of warming.

"I think it's safe to say that both 2023 and 2024 temperatures surprised most climate scientists - we didn't think we'd be seeing a year above 1.5C this early," says Dr Hausfather.

"Since 2023 we've had around 0.2C of extra warming that we can't fully explain, on top of what we had expected from climate change and El Niño," agrees Helge Gößling, a climate physicist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany

Various theories have been suggested to explain this 'extra' warmth, such as an apparent reduction in the low-level cloud cover that tends to cool the planet, and prolonged ocean heat following the end of El Niño.

"The question is whether this acceleration is something persistent linked to human activities that means we will have steeper warming in the future, or whether it is a part of natural variability," Dr Gößling adds.

"At the moment it's very hard to say."

Despite this uncertainty, scientists stress that humans still have control over the future climate, and sharp reductions in emissions can lessen the consequences of warming.

"Even if 1.5 degrees is out the window, we still can probably limit warming to 1.6C, 1.7C or 1.8C this century," says Dr Hausfather.

"That's going to be far, far better than if we keep burning coal, oil and gas unabated and end up at 3C or 4C - it still really matters."

The Chancellor Rachel Reeves is travelling to China in a bid to boost trade and economic ties, as she faces pressure over government borrowing costs hitting their highest level in years.

The three day-visit has been criticised by some Conservatives who claim she should have cancelled the trip to prioritise dealing with economic issues at home.

Government borrowing costs have hit their highest levels for several years, meaning that uses up more tax revenue, leaving less money to spend on other things.

Economists have warned this could mean spending cuts affecting public services or tax rises that could hit people's pay or businesses' ability to grow.

On Thursday, the pound fell to its lowest level in more than a year - but the Treasury said markets continued to "function in an orderly way".

Travelling to China with the chancellor are senior financial figures, including the governor of the Bank of England and the chair of HSBC.

There she will meet China's Vice Premier He Lifeng in Beijing before flying to Shanghai for discussion with UK firms operating in China.

The government is looking to revive an annual economic dialogue with China that has not been held since the pandemic.

Ties have been strained in recent years by growing concerns about the actions of China's Communist leaders, allegations of Chinese hacking and spying and its jailing of pro-democracy figures in Hong Kong.

The Conservatives have criticised the chancellor for proceeding with the planned trip rather than staying in the UK to address the cost of government borrowing and slide in the value of the pound.

Shadow chancellor Mel Stride accused Reeves of being "missing in action" and said she should have stayed in the UK.

But Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones, standing in for Reeves in the Commons on Thursday, said the trip was "important" for UK trade and there was "no need for an emergency intervention".

Former chancellor Philip Hammond also told the World at One programme on Thursday that he "wouldn't personally recommend the chancellor cancels her trip to China. This can wait until she gets back next week".

Governments generally spend more than they raise in tax so they borrow money to fill the gap, usually by selling bonds to investors.

Interest rates - known as the yield - on government bonds have been going up since around August, a rise that has also affected government bonds in the US and other countries.

The yield on a 10-year bond has surged to its highest level since 2008, while the yield on a 30-year bond is at its highest since 1998, meaning it costs the government more to borrow over the long term.

Reeves has previously committed only to make significant tax and spend announcements once a year at the autumn Budget.

But if higher borrowing costs persist, there is the possibility of cuts to spending before that or at least lower spending increases than would otherwise happen.

Any further spending cuts could be announced in the chancellor's planned fiscal statement on 26 March , ahead of a spending review that has already asked government departments to find efficiency savings worth 5% of their budgets.

The death of a teenage boy sparked violent protests in a city in north-west China, the BBC has confirmed through verified video.

In the videos shared on social media, protesters can be seen hurling objects at police and officers beating some demonstrators in Pucheng in Shaanxi province.

Authorities said the teenager fell to his death on 2 January in an accident at his school dormitory. But following his death allegations began spreading on social media that there had been a cover-up.

Protests erupted soon after and lasted several days, before they were apparently quelled earlier this week. The BBC has seen no further evidence of protest in Pucheng since then.

Public demonstrations are not uncommon in China, but authorities have been particularly sensitive about them since the 2022 White Paper protests against Covid policies, which saw rare criticism of the Chinese Communist Party and President Xi Jinping.

State media has been silent on the protests in Pucheng. Any clips or mention of the demonstrations have been largely censored from Chinese social media, as is usually the case for incidents deemed sensitive by authorities.

But several videos have been leaked out of China and posted on X.

The BBC has confirmed these videos were filmed at the Pucheng Vocational Education Centre, and found no earlier versions online prior to the reported outbreak of the protests over the past few days.

When contacted by the BBC, a representative from the publicity department of the Pucheng government denied there had been protests. There was no answer when we rang an official handling media queries.

In a statement released earlier this week, local authorities said that the teenager surnamed Dang was a third-year student at the education centre in Pucheng.

Prior to his death, Dang had been woken up in the night by other students chatting in his dormitory, their statement said. He got into an argument and altercation with a boy, which was resolved by a school official.

Later that night, his body was found by another student at the foot of the dormitory block.

The statement described it as "an accident where a student fell from a height at school". It added that the police had conducted investigations and an autopsy, and "at present exclude it as a criminal case".

But allegations have swirled online for days that there was more to the story and that the school and authorities were hiding the truth. One account claimed, without proof, that Dang killed himself after he was bullied by the boy he'd fought with earlier.

Unverified remarks from his family have been circulating, alleging that the injuries on Dang's body were inconsistent with the authorities' version of events and that they were not allowed to examine his body for long.

The allegations appeared to have incensed many in Pucheng, sparking protests that drew at least hundreds of people.

Bullying has become a highly sensitive topic in China in recent years, with past cases of student deaths triggering protests. Last month, a Chinese court handed out lengthy jail sentences to two teenagers who murdered a classmate.

There are also videos posted on X on Monday, which the BBC has confirmed were filmed at the Pucheng Vocational Education Centre, showing people mourning the teenager's death. They placed flowers and offerings at the entrance of the school, and conducted a traditional mourning ritual by throwing pieces of paper from the rooftop of a school building.

Other videos circulating online appear to show demonstrators, many of them young, storming a building and clashing with police while shouting "give us the truth".

One verified clip shows a school official confronted by shouting protesters who shove him around. Others show destroyed offices in the compound, and protesters pushing down a barricade at the school entrance.

Another show protesters hurling objects such as traffic cones at groups of retreating police; and officers tackling and detaining people while beating them with batons. Some protesters are seen with blood on their heads and faces.

There is little information on what happened next, but reports on social media suggest a much larger police presence in Pucheng in recent days with no more reports of demonstrations.

Authorities have also urged the public not to "create rumours, believe in rumours, or spread rumours".

Commuters are being warned of icy roads and travel disruption, as temperatures plummeted again overnight across the UK.

Fresh weather warnings have been issued, with snow, ice and fog forecast across southern England, Wales, Northern Ireland and northern Scotland on Thursday.

It will be mainly dry elsewhere with winter sunshine, but temperatures could fall again to as low as -16C on Thursday night.

The cold snap has already brought heavy snowfall to some areas, and dozens of flood alerts and warnings are in place due to either heavy rain or melting snow.

On Wednesday the lowest temperature recorded was -8.4C (16F) in Shap, Cumbria, according to the Met Office.

It comes as an amber cold health alert remains in place for all of England until Sunday, meaning the forecast weather is expected to have significant impacts across health - including a rise in deaths.

The Met Office says travel disruption to road and rail services is likely on Thursday in areas covered by warnings, as well potential for accidents in icy places.

There are five warnings in place:

• A yellow warning for snow and ice is in place for northern Scotland until midnight on Thursday
• A yellow warning for ice has been issued until 10:30 across southern England and south-east Wales
• Two yellow warnings for snow and ice are in force until 11:00 GMT - one across western Wales and north-west England, and south-west England; and another for Northern Ireland
• A yellow warning for fog until 09:00 in Northern Ireland

On Wednesday snow caused some roads to close and motorists to be stationary for "long periods of time" in Devon and Cornwall, according to authorities there.

Gritters working into Thursday morning have been fitted with ploughs to clear routes in the area.

Car insurer RAC said it has seen the highest levels of demand for rescues in a three-day period since December 2022.

"Cold conditions will last until at least the weekend, so we urge drivers to remain vigilant of the risks posed by ice and, in some locations, snow," said RAC breakdown spokeswoman Alice Simpson.

National Rail have also advised passengers to check before they travel, as ice and snow can mean speed restrictions and line closures.

On Wednesday evening, poor weather was affecting Northern and Great Western Railway.

Buses are also replacing trains between Llandudno Junction and Blaenau Ffestiniog until Monday.

• Get the forecast in your area on BBC Weather

The wintry conditions have caused significant disruption across the UK since snow swept many parts of the country at the weekend.

Hundreds of schools were closed in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, including schools in Yorkshire, Merseyside, the Midlands and Aberdeenshire.

The country has also been hit by widespread flooding in recent days. Currently there are 68 flood warnings - meaning flooding is expected - in England and three in Wales.

The weather is expected to be less cold over the weekend.

US aviation giant Boeing has told BBC News it is donating $1m (£812,600) to an inauguration fund for President-elect Donald Trump.

Google has also confirmed that it has made a similar donation as the two firms join a growing list of major American companies contributing to the fund.

The list also includes oil producer Chevron and technology giants Meta, Amazon and Uber.

Trump's inauguration, marking the start of his second term in the White House, is set to take place on 20 January.

"We are pleased to continue Boeing's bipartisan tradition of supporting US Presidential Inaugural Committees," Boeing said.

The company added that it has made similar donations to each of the past three presidential inauguration funds.

Boeing is working to recover from a safety and quality control crisis, as well as dealing with the losses from a strike last year.

The company is also building the next presidential aircraft, known as Air Force One. The two jets are expected to come into service as early as next year.

During his first term as president, Trump forced the plane maker to renegotiate its contract, calling the initial deal too expensive.

Google became the latest big tech firm to donate to the fund, following similar announcements by Meta and Amazon. It also said it will stream the event around the world.

"Google is pleased to support the 2025 inauguration, with a livestream on YouTube and a direct link on our homepage," said Karan Bhatia, Google's global head of government affairs and public policy.

Car companies Ford, General Motors and Toyota have also donated a $1m each to the inaugural committee.

In the energy industry, Chevron confirmed that it has made a donation to the fund but declined to say how much.

"Chevron has a long tradition of celebrating democracy by supporting the inaugural committees of both parties. We are proud to be doing so again this year," said Bill Turene, Chevron's manager of global media relations.

The accused mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks on the US will no longer plead guilty on Friday, after the US government moved to block plea deals reached last year from going ahead.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two co-defendants reached agreements in July to plead guilty to all charges in exchange for not facing a death penalty trial.

In a filing with a federal appeals court, the justice department argued that the government would be irreparably harmed if the pleas were accepted.

In its decision, the court said it needed more time to weigh the case and put the proceedings on hold. It has not yet ruled on whether Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin has the power to walk back the plea deal.

The ruling comes after a military judge and appeals panel rejected a previous move by Austin to revoke the agreements, which had been signed by a senior official he appointed.

Families of some of those killed in the 9/11 attacks had criticised the deals, while others saw them as a way of moving the complex and long-running case forward.

• Khaled Sheikh Mohammed and two co-defendants reached agreements
• Plea deal with accused 9/11 plotters revoked

In its filing, the government said going ahead with the deals would mean it was denied the opportunity to "seek capital punishment against three men charged with a heinous act of mass murder that caused the death of thousands of people and shocked the nation and the world".

"A short delay to allow this Court to weigh the merits of the government's request in this momentous case will not materially harm the respondents," it said.

Almost 3,000 people were killed in the 11 September 2001 attacks, when hijackers seized passenger planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside of Washington. Another plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back.

The three men have been in US custody for over 20 years and the pre-trial hearings in the case have lasted for more than a decade.

Arguments have focused on whether evidence has been tainted by torture the defendants faced in CIA custody after their arrests.

Mohammed was subjected to simulated drowning, or "waterboarding", 183 times while held in secret CIA prisons following his arrest in 2003. Other so-called "advanced interrogation techniques" included sleep deprivation and forced nudity.

Several family members of victims had criticised the deal struck last year as being too lenient.

Speaking to the BBC's Today Programme last summer, Terry Strada, whose husband, Tom, died in the attacks, described the deals as "giving the detainees in Guantanamo Bay what they want".

Others said they were disappointed by further delays to the case.

Stephan Gerhardt, whose younger brother Ralph was killed in the attacks, flew to Guantanamo Bay to watch Mohammed plead guilty.

He said that while the deals were "not a victory" for the families, he had accepted them as a way of moving forward.

"It's not the conclusion to this case that anyone wanted… [But] it is time to find a way to close this, to convict these men because they're not getting younger, they're not in great health," he said.

"Let's convict them so they don't die innocent because that would be the bigger moral tragedy that they die innocent and the families don't even have a conviction."

Police are searching for two sisters in Aberdeen who were last seen three days ago.

Eliza and Henrietta Huszti, both 32 and who live in Aberdeen city centre, were last seen in Market Street at Victoria Bridge at about 02:12 GMT on Tuesday.

They then crossed the bridge and turned into a footpath next to the River Dee in the direction of Aberdeen Boat Club.

Police Scotland said they are carrying "extensive enquires" and searches to find the sisters, including the use of police dogs and the marine unit.

Both Eliza and Henrietta are described as being white, slim build with long, brown hair.

Police said the side of Victoria Bridge in the Torry area, where they were last seen, contained many commercial and industrial units and searches are ongoing there.

It added it was urging businesses in and around the South Esplanade and Menzies Road area to review CCTV footage recorded in the early hours of Tuesday and dashcam footage.

Ch Insp Darren Bruce said: "We are continuing to speak to people who know Eliza and Henrietta and we urge anyone who has seen them or who has any information regarding their whereabouts to please contact 101 quoting incident number 0735 of Tuesday, 7 January, 2025."

Welcome to the Thistle - the UK's first and only drug consumption room.

After nearly a decade of deadlock and wrangling over drug laws the centre is finally ready to open.

On Monday it will welcome its first clients who will come in to inject illegally-bought heroin or cocaine under medical supervision.

The Thistle is based in Glasgow's east end, where there is a high population of users who take drugs in public.

Funded by the Scottish government, its aim is to reduce overdoses and drug-related harm as well as making drug use less visible to the community.

Users not prosecuted

Drug laws are set at Westminster but are enforced by the Scottish courts.

This scheme can only go ahead because Scotland's senior prosecutor, the Lord Advocate, announced a change in policy which meant users would not be prosecuted for possessing illegal drugs while at the facility.

The UK government said it had no plans to introduce other consumption rooms but it would not interfere in the Glasgow project.

Some local residents are against the plan, saying they think it will bring more dealing to the area, and an addictions charity claimed it would "encourage people to harm themselves."

BBC Scotland News was given a tour of the facility.

The Thistle is modelled on more than 100 similar facilities across the world.

It will be open between 09:00 and 21:00 and will operate 365 days a year.

People who arrive at the centre with drugs have to be registered with the service before they are permitted entry.

Inside, there are eight booths where nursing staff will supervise injections and respond to overdoses.

The consumption room will not have the ability to test the drugs being taken, but will provide a safe environment for those using them.

Service manager Lynn Macdonald said staff were still unsure how many injections would take place each day.

"Some services similar in size to this in other countries are seeing up to 200 people a day but it's really difficult to predict," she said.

"You will have some people who will maybe come in once a day, you'll have some people who maybe come in twice a day.

"You'll maybe have some people who come in 10 times a day depending on their drug use pattern."

The service also provides medical consultation rooms, a recovery and observation room and a kitchen and lounge area.

Users will also have access to a clothing bank and showers.

The Thistle's running costs will reach almost £7m over the next three years.

It is situated in the city's Hunter Street beside a clinic where 23 long-term drug users are currently prescribed pharmaceutical heroin.

The new facility will not provide drugs - users bring their own supply.

A previous report by the NHS estimated there were "approximately 400 to 500 people injecting drugs in public places in Glasgow city centre on a regular basis".

Dr Saket Priyadarshi – head of alcohol and drug recovery services at NHS Greater Glasgow – is the clinical lead for the service.

"We have a concentration of sites that are long-standing public injection sites," he said.

"We also know that in the vicinity, there is a concentration of people involved in injecting away from home and who experience some of the highest rates of drug-related harm and fatality in Scotland, if not the United Kingdom.

"It makes sense to deliver at this site, which is where the problem is."

Dr Priyadarshi said he hoped the service would improve issues around drug-related litter and visible public injecting in the local area.

"We are not saying that is going to, in any way, affect the national drug-related death picture, or even the wider city," he said.

"We are focused on a very concentrated small population.

"Having said that, by setting an example, I do hope that other parts of Scotland will consider whether it is relevant for them."

Legal barriers

The consumption room is not a new concept.

First trialled in Switzerland in 1986, such facilities have since spread to other European countries including Denmark, Portugal, the Netherlands, Germany and Spain, as well as facilities in Canada and New York City.

Dr Priyadarshi was part of a think tank that first proposed establishing a consumption room in Scotland as early as 2008.

Glasgow's Joint Integration Board – a body comprising the local NHS and Glasgow City Council that administers health and social care services – first approved plans for the facility in 2016.

It came after an HIV outbreak among the city's injecting drug users a year earlier, the worst the UK had seen for three decades.

For the 2016 plan to work, users needed to be allowed to bring class-A drugs - bought from dealers – to an NHS site without being prosecuted.

Despite the proposals being backed by the Scottish government, drug laws are reserved to Westminster.

The Home Office would not back the plan and it was shelved in 2018.

However, it was revived when Scotland's Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain KC stated that it would "not be in the public interest" to bring proceedings in such cases in 2023.

Community concerns

Health officials were required to consult the local community in the nearby Calton neighbourhood before final sign-off by the Lord Advocate.

Over the course of a year, BBC Scotland News has attended numerous drop-in meetings between the centre's staff and local residents looking for information about the scheme.

Some remain unconvinced, citing concerns over potential rises in drug dealing and disorder in the neighbourhood.

Others complained about under-investment in one of the poorest areas of the city.

Annemarie Ward is the chief executive of the charity Faces and Voices of Recovery UK, which helped draft the Scottish Conservatives' Right to Recovery Bill making its way through the Scottish Parliament.

She questioned spending priorities and stated that the facility was a "misnomer of treatment".

Ms Ward said: "It is a harm reduction intervention, not a treatment.

"It is not in any way innovative or progressive to watch someone harm themselves so drastically and so catastrophically."

She said it was a "travesty and a devastation" that addicts often don't have access to recovery services.

Ms Ward added: "Does it stop people from dying? I don't think it does. I think it encourages people to continue to harm themselves.

"I would like to see the money go into services that can help people get their lives back. "

The Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain KC said: "This policy is an extension of the principles of diversion from prosecution.

"That is a process by which the procurator fiscal can refer a case to a local authority, or other identified agency, as a means of addressing underlying causes of offending.

"In diverting cases we aim to break cycles of harm and reduce the impact of crime on communities."

She said she was satisfied that the Glasgow facility could provide a way for support services to engage with some of the most vulnerable people in society.

"I understand that this policy may be a source of anxiety for some who live and work near the facility," she added.

"The policy is very narrow and does not mean other offending will be tolerated.

"Supply offences are not included and Police Scotland will enforce these, and other crimes, as they always have."

'Everybody is using'

Julie – not her real name – has been using drugs for six years and was sleeping rough in the city centre when she spoke to BBC Scotland in December.

"The drug situation in Glasgow is a lot harder and more serious now," she said.

"Everybody is using. You go down a street, you'll see paraphernalia. You go on a corner, you'll see someone taking drugs, not caring, bold as brass.

"With this consumption room – I think everyone will use it. But it will be about trust."

David Clark is also on the streets and is trying to get off drugs after a relapse.

He pointed out the one-mile distance between the city's shopping district where some users congregate and the consumption room.

"If it is run right, it's a good thing," he said.

"But when people buy drugs down here [in the city centre], they won't want to walk away up there [to Hunter Street], will they?

"That's the catch."

He added: "But my thumbs are up for that kind of stuff if it will save lives."

Drug deaths

Scotland's drug death crisis is not going away.

The number of fatal overdoses steadily rose throughout the 2010s until a record high of 1,339 in 2020.

Since then, the numbers have stabilised but remained stubbornly high.

While England and Wales saw record overdose deaths in 2023, the death rate in Scotland for the same year was more than double.

In 2021, the Scottish government declared its "national mission" to tackle drug deaths, with £250m funding over five years.

This led to a widespread rollout of the overdose prevention drug naloxone, a focus on improving addiction treatment standards and pledges to increase places in residential rehabilitation facilities.

Scottish Health Secretary Neil Gray has welcomed the centre's opening.

He said: "It's absolutely rooted in the centre of the national mission about reducing harm.

"It is about making sure people are able to, in a stigma free way, access services and support. Because it's not just about the safer consumption element.

"It's also about the wraparound and holistic interventions that are available as part of that."

The UK government said it had "no plans to introduce consumption rooms".

It added: "We will also continue to take preventative public health measures to tackle the biggest killers in our society, including drug misuse, and better support people to live longer, healthier lives."

A spokesperson said the UK government "will not interfere with the independence of the Lord Advocate with respect to the pilot drug consumption room in Glasgow".

The government has announced plans to cap the price of resale tickets in a clamp-down on ticket touts who bulk buy tickets and then resell them for huge profits.

The cap would apply to tickets in the live events industry including sport, music, comedy and theatre.

It was one of the government's election promises, after complaints from fans and concert-goers about the massively inflated cost of some resale tickets.

A public consultation will now be launched to consider the cap and how much it will be - anywhere from the ticket's face value or up to 30% on top of the original price.

Separately, the government is also putting out a call for evidence on dynamic pricing, which is where the price of tickets rise at times of high demand.

Hundreds of people complained after experiencing dynamic pricing when Oasis tickets went on sale last August, with some fans charged more than £350 for tickets with an initial face value of £150.

According to analysis by the Competition and Market Authority (CMA), tickets sold on the resale market are typically marked up by more than 50%.

Investigations by Trading Standards have uncovered evidence of tickets being resold for up to six times their original cost.

Fans for music artists including Coldplay and Taylor Swift have complained that minutes after tickets to their concerts sold out, resale tickets were listed online for thousands of pounds.

The government says its consultation will seek views on capping resale prices on a range, from the original price to up to a 30% uplift.

Ministers are also proposing limiting the number of tickets that resellers can sell, to the maximum they are allowed to purchase in the original ticket sale.

They also want to create new legal obligations for ticket resale websites and apps to oversee the accuracy of information they provide to fans - with Trading Standards and the Competition and Marketing Authority responsible for enforcement.

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said: "We are taking action to strengthen consumer protections, stop fans getting ripped off and ensure money spent on tickets goes back into our incredible live events sector, instead of into the pockets of greedy touts."

Alongside the consultation, ministers have launched a call for evidence into dynamic pricing - which is says is often used to sell unsold tickets with lower prices but has meant some customers have been caught out paying higher prices for high-demand events.

"The call for evidence will seek views on how the ticketing system in the live events sector is working for fans and whether the current system provides sufficient protection from unfair practices," the governments aid.

Last year, Oasis fans were asked to pay as much as £350 per ticket, around £200 more than had been advertised, due to demand.

Previously, Noel and Liam Gallagher said they had not been aware that dynamic pricing would be used for their UK stadium shows next summer - but acknowledged that the roll out of the tickets had not gone as planned.

Ticketmaster has said it does not set prices and that it is down to the "event organiser" who "has priced these tickets according to their market value".

'Potentially game-changing'

Ticket resale sites have previously defended their services, with Viagogo saying its site ensures resales are "a secure, safe transaction".

Viagogo's boss previously told the BBC lots of fans actually prefer buying on Viagogo instead of buying tickets direct.

"They don't want to be forced to get up on Friday morning and wait in a queue that may or may not happen," he says.

In a statement, Viagogo said it would "continue to constructively engage with the government".

It added that it will "look forward to responding in full to the consultation and call for evidence on improving consumer protections in the ticketing market".

Meanwhile, Ticketmaster said it would support a cap on the reselling of tickets.

"Since 2018, our resale has been capped at face value, providing fans a safe place to sell tickets they can't use at the original price set by artists and event organisers," it said.

"We support proposals to introduce an industry-wide resale price cap. We also urge the government to crack down on bots and ban speculative ticket sales."

Campaigners and music artists have welcomed the consultation. UK Music, which represents the UK's music industry, said it wanted a "clear price cap".

Musician and DJ Fatboy Slim gave his backing to the government's proposals, saying it was "great to see money being put back into fans' pockets instead of resellers".

Labour's Sharon Hodgson, the MP who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on ticket abuse and has been campaigning for 15 years on the issue, also welcomed the government's proposal.

"I hope all those who have been affected by the inflated prices, speculative ticket selling or fallen victim to scams that are prolific within the secondary market will get involved in this consultation," she said.

FanFair Alliance, a campaign group that was set up against ticket touts, called the measures "potentially game-changing".

It pointed to other countries - such as Ireland which banned ticket touting in 2021 - saying it shows "how legislation to prevent the resale of tickets for profit can massively curb the illegal and anti-consumer practices of online ticket touts and offshore resale platforms. The UK simply needs to follow their example".

The US Supreme Court has rejected Trump's last-minute bid to halt his Friday sentencing in his hush-money criminal case.

The president-elect had urged the top court to consider whether he was entitled to an automatic stay of his sentencing, but the justices rejected the application by 5-4.

Trump was found guilty of falsifying records to disguise reimbursements for a $130,000 hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels as legal expenses in 2016.

Justice Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the case, indicated in a recent ruling that he will not consider a jail term for Trump.

Three lower New York courts had rejected Trump's delay attempt before the Supreme Court made a final decision on Thursday evening to let the sentencing proceed as scheduled.

The justices denied Trump's petition because they believed his concerns could be addressed during an appeal.

They also wrote that the burden of attending a sentencing was "insubstantial".

Trump's lawyers had also asked the Supreme Court to consider whether presidents-elect had immunity from criminal prosecution.

Manhattan prosecutors had urged the Supreme Court to reject Trump's petition, arguing there was a "compelling public interest" in holding the sentencing and that there was "no basis for such an intervention".

Following the jury's guilty verdict in May 2024, Trump was intitially set to be sentenced in July, but his lawyers successfully persuaded Justice Merchan to delay the sentencing on three separate occasions.

Last week, Justice Merchan declared the sentencing would move forward on 10 January, just days before Trump is sworn in again as president.

The days since have seen a volley of appeals and court filings from Trump's attorneys, trying to stave off the sentencing.

But in swift succession, New York appeals courts rejected the bids.

Finally on Wednesday, Trump's lawyers petitioned the Supreme Court to intervene.

The court should stay the proceedings "to prevent grave injustice and harm to the institution of the Presidency and the operations of the federal government", they wrote.

The bench's 6-3 conservative majority had handed Trump a major victory last year, when they ruled that US presidents had immunity from criminal prosecution for "official acts" undertaken in office.

That decision gutted a federal prosecution against Trump on charges he illegally interfered in the 2020 election outcome, which he denied and pleaded not guilty.

But since his re-election, Trump's lawyers have tried to persuade a series of judges that those presidential immunity protections should also apply to a president-elect in this Manhattan criminal case.

Manhattan prosecutors argued in their own brief to the Supreme Court that Trump's "extraordinary immunity claim is unsupported by any decision from any court".

"It is axiomatic that there is only one President at a time," the prosecutors wrote.

Separately, a group of former public officials and legal scholars filed an amicus brief - effectively a letter of support - to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to reject Trump's "attempt to avoid accountability".

Former health secretary Jeremy Hunt has apologised to the families of Lucy Letby's victims.

Mr Hunt opened his appearance at the Thirlwall Inquiry at Liverpool town hall by saying that Letby's crimes had been committed "on [his] watch".

The inquiry is looking into how Letby, 35, was able to kill seven babies and try to kill seven others while working at the Countess of Chester hospital between 2015 and 2016.

Mr Hunt apologised "for anything that didn't happen that could potentially have prevented such an appalling crime".

He said "although you don't bear response for everything that happens on every ward in the NHS, [as health secretary] you do have ultimate responsibility for the NHS".

He said lessons had not been learned from previous inquiries, or the right systems were not in place that could have prevented "this appalling tragedy".

He added he bore the "ultimate responsibility".

'Malicious actors'

He said: "I think one of the things that could have potentially meant that what happened at the Countess of Chester was spotted earlier and the dots were joined up would have been having medical examiners."

The introduction of medical examiners across the NHS in England and Wales - to provide independent scrutiny of causes of death, address any concerns from bereaved families, work with coroners and review medical records - had been recommended by previous healthcare inquiries.

The system was first suggested at the inquiry into the crimes of serial killer GP Harold Shipman in 2004 and then further recommended by Sir Robert Francis in his 2013 report into the neglect of hundreds of patients at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, the Thirlwall inquiry heard.

Mr Hunt said it was only when the issue of funding medical examiners came across his desk again in 2023 when he was chancellor that he "pushed it through".

Since last September all deaths in any health setting in England and Wales that are not investigated by a coroner are being reviewed by NHS medical examiners.

He suggested medical examiners should be trained to see the signs or patterns of malicious harm in the work of a healthcare professional and that having "malicious actors" such as Shipman and Letby at the backs of their minds could make a "big difference".

The inquiry heard a non-statutory rollout of medical examiners in England and Wales began in 2019.

Mr Hunt said: "I think the medical examiner system, when it works well, is incredibly important to a healthcare system because I think it's not just important for learning from mistakes, it's also very important for families who have been bereaved to have someone independent that they can talk to and raise concerns.

"Feedback from relatives was a very important clue for them as to where things might be going wrong."

Mr Hunt also spoke about a shortage of doctors.

"Historically we have never trained enough," he said.

"I increased training places by 25% in 2016, and doubled [them] again as Chancellor.

"Doctors are being increased, but the trouble is it takes seven years - the first new doctors from the 2016 increase didn't come out until last year."

The inquiry continues.

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High winds and lack of rain are the main factors driving the Southern California fires, but climate change is altering the background conditions, increasing the likelihood of these conflagrations, say experts.

Researchers have shown that a warming world increases the number of "fire weather" days, when conditions are more suited to outbreaks of fire.

California is particularly vulnerable right now because of a lack of rain in recent months, following a very warm summer.

The powerful Santa Ana winds that naturally occur at this time of year, combined with the dry conditions, can result in fast moving and dangerous fire outbreaks.

Reaching 60-70 mph, these strong, dry winds blow from the interior of Southern California towards the coast and this month has seen the worst high wind event in the area in over a decade.

The winds are drying out the lands, and researchers say that while the strongest winds will occur at the start of this outbreak, the driest vegetation will come at the end, meaning these fires could drag on for quite some time.

The high wind speeds are also altering the location of the fires. Many outbreaks occur high up on mountains, but these recent fires have rapidly moved down into the valleys and into areas where more people live.

"That's where there are more potential ignition sources," said climate researcher Daniel Swain from UCLA in a social media post.

"It's also where it's harder to turn off the power pre-emptively than it is in other locations where these public safety power shut offs are more common and are prepped for at a more regular basis. So there's going to be some potential challenges there."

The impact of a changing climate is evident in the bigger picture for the state.

California has experienced a decades-long drought that ended just two years ago. The resulting wet conditions since then have seen the rapid growth of shrubs and trees, the perfect fuel for fires.

However last summer was very hot and was followed by dry autumn and winter season - downtown Los Angeles has only received 0.16 inches of rain since October, more than 4 inches below average.

Researchers believe that a warming world is increasing the conditions that are conducive to wildland fire, including low relative humidity.

These "fire weather" days are increasing in many parts of the world, with climate change making these conditions more severe and the fire season lasting longer in many parts of the world, scientists have shown.

In California, the situation has been made worse by the topography with fires burning more intensely and moving more rapidly in steep terrain. This area of California is also dominated by naturally very fire-prone shrub vegetation.

"While fires are common and natural in this region, California has seen some of the most significant increases in the length and extremity of the fire weather season globally in recent decades, driven largely climate change," said Professor Stefan Doerr, Director of the Centre for Wildfire Research, at Swansea University.

"That said, it is too early to say to what degree climate change has made these specific fires more extreme. This will need to be evaluated in a more detailed attribution analysis."

"Can that chap sit, do we think?" asks Dr Raj Paw, a senior consultant in the emergency department at Warwick Hospital.

He is speaking about a patient in his 90s who was brought in after collapsing at home, where he was found cold and confused.

Now he is stable. Could that open up a bed?

"If we can get him to sit then he could go into one of the chairs, and that would free up his bed," Dr Paw says.

This is the sort of conversation doctors and nurses are having in hospitals up and down the country as a severe flu season puts the NHS under pressure.

More than a dozen hospitals have declared critical incidents - including some of those considered among the best in the country.

Earlier this week, the BBC visited Warwick Hospital. It is run by the South Warwickshire trust, which is one of the top rated in the country and has prided itself on the smooth running of its four hospitals.

But the caseload has been overwhelming this week.

Warwick Hospital has 375 beds and at one point the predicted demand was almost 100 more than that. For the first time ever, it's had to declare a critical incident - the highest alert level in the NHS.

The BBC was there when hospital administrators made the call. Declaring a critical incident is a warning to the local health system that things are getting bad. Often, it frees up hospitals to redeploy doctors and create new temporary ward space.

Over a two-day period, the BBC saw doctors and nurses doing just that: finding stop-gap solutions to treat patients in whatever safe settings could be established.

With emergency departments overflowing, sick people need to be treated in the chairs they're sitting in.

Others have had to wait in ambulances parked outside emergency units for hours before they could even be taken inside.

One such patient is Percy, who is in his 80s and experiencing liver failure. He came to hospital because he had been feeling sick and had lost weight over recent weeks.

Dr Arun Jeyakumar, a senior registrar on the ward, is one of the doctors sent out to check on patients like Percy.

Hopping into the ambulance, he has a brief consultation with him. He tells Percy that everything is being done to get him into the hospital.

Percy smiles back weakly, resigned to the wait.

The paramedic who brought him to the hospital is also resigned: he's seen plenty of cases like Percy's this season.

He turns up the heating in the back of the ambulance and sits down again as Dr Jeyakumar hops out and closes the doors.

Back in the emergency department, doctors, nurses and consultants discuss how to make space for new arrivals.

Beds are at an absolute premium in the hospital. So many patients have arrived that a room near the ambulance entrance has been set up for people considered "fit to sit".

Every chair is occupied.

"It isn't ideal," one doctor says. "But it is safe."

Porters have to wheel beds through this open space, between patients being treated in chairs and nurses kneeling on the floor to remove cannulas. Drip stands are shuffled back and forth to make room.

We see a nurse taking a patient, who is still attached to a drip, to the loo in a wheelchair.

She leaves the chair in the corridor and helps the patient in. A porter comes and goes to move the vacant wheelchair.

The nurse dashes back out. "That's my wheelchair," she cries.

We roll it back to her and she starts to laugh. "You can't take your eye off them for a second or another patient will be in it," she says - only half joking.

Elsewhere, Percy makes it it from the ambulance to the emergency department, after a three hour wait.

"It's getting worse," he says, wincing as he closes his eyes - but it will be another 12 hours before Percy is admitted to a ward.

When we see him finally being moved, he is contorted in his bed from the pain, clutching onto a sick bowl.

Dr Paw's first job during his rounds is to check the cubicles to see who he can move off beds.

He has a full waiting room just beyond the doors and four ambulances banked up outside.

A woman in the last cubicle he visits is crying. Dr Paw receives an update from a nurse on her condition and orders some morphine.

"You're in the right place," he tells the patient. "We'll sort out your pain."

Dr Paw tells us: "The people that come in now are sicker than they used to be. And here we are, trying to get them out quicker."

He then moves on to a man who was admitted for a heart attack two days ago but is no longer receiving active treatment. Can he safely be moved, Dr Paw wonders.

"These are the decisions we're being forced to make," he tells the BBC.

"I'm considering moving a heart attack patient to the waiting room so I can have his cubicle."

Another patient Dr Paw saw the previous day is still waiting for a bed in the ward more than 24 hours later.

"It's rubbish. It's not what should happen," Dr Paw says. "People shouldn't be spending 27, 28 hours in an emergency department."

At one point during our time at the hospital we were taken to a bank of screens displaying statistics.

It showed that patients in the emergency department were waiting nearly 30 hours for a bed and there were six ambulances queued up outside. One had been there for four hours.

"It's the worst I've ever seen it," one doctor says.

South Warwickshire Trust has since lifted Tuesday's critical incident declaration - however, staff tell the BBC they still face a similar level of pressure.

When David Lammy is asked about the new government's relations with the incoming US administration, he likes to talk about the dinner he and the prime minister had with Donald Trump in New York last September.

"We had a very good meal," the foreign secretary said on Thursday. "We had a long time to discuss the issues. He was an extremely gracious host, very affable, very warm indeed about our great country."

And throughout a series of media interviews, briefings and a speech at the Foreign Office, Lammy talked up UK-US relations, even daring to speak of a "special relationship", a phrase largely avoided by diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic.

The UK and the US, he said, were "required to work very closely together" on global challenges.

They include challenges such as the wars in Europe and the Middle East and what he called "the growing problems in Sudan". He cited the "close cooperation" between both countries on military and intelligence matters.

But what was striking was how far the foreign secretary was willing to challenge Trump only days before his inauguration.

The president-elect's refusal to rule out military action against Greenland was, Lammy said, an example of his "destabilising" rhetoric. He said Trump was focused on Arctic security but such an attack by one member of Nato on another was "simply not going to happen".

He said Trump was right to ask Europe to do more to defend itself but questioned his call for Nato members to spend 5% of their national income on defence, noting the US was itself spending only 3.38 %.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme earlier in the day, Lammy had cast doubt on Trump's campaign promise of a quick ceasefire in Ukraine.

"I see no evidence that Putin wants to come to the table to negotiate," he said.

"I think the indications are, from what I've seen over the last few days, a slight pushback on this sense that somehow a deal will be achieved on 21 January, I think that's now unlikely. And we're hearing that actually the timetable's moved down somewhat towards Easter."

Lammy played down the influence of Elon Musk, the wealthy ally of Trump who in recent days has personally attacked British ministers on X. He said the tech boss would have only a "domestic portfolio" in the new administration and his role had not come up in talks between British and Trump officials.

The foreign secretary also emphasised the need to engage with China – on trade, climate, health and artificial intelligence - and urged the country "not to throw in its lot" with Russia. This position is at odds with that held by Trump allies who see China already as a key member of an anti-Western axis including Russia, Iran and North Korea.

Lammy calls his approach to foreign policy "progressive realism". He said this means seeking progressive ends while accepting the world as it is.

When applying this framework to Trump, he said he will be guided more by the president-elect's actions than his rhetoric. We shall learn in coming days how far the two remain apart.

And as for that dinner with Trump last autumn, Lammy rarely mentions the fact the meal was almost the cause of a diplomatic upset.

He and Sir Keir Starmer were presented with large plates of Guyanese chicken, somewhat to the dismay of the vegetarian prime minister.

In the national interest, the foreign secretary was obliged to eat more chicken that night than he might have expected.

A judge has thrown out a man's attempt to sue a council to recover from a rubbish tip a Bitcoin hard drive which he says is now worth about £600m.

James Howells had argued that his former partner had mistakenly dumped the hard drive containing a Bitcoin wallet in 2013, and he wanted to access the site and recover the cryptocurrency.

But Newport council asked a High Court judge to strike out Mr Howells' legal action to access the landfill or get £495m in compensation.

Judge Keyser KC said there were no "reasonable grounds" for bringing the claim and "no realistic prospect" of succeeding at a full trial.

During the hearing in December the court heard how Mr Howells had been an early adopter of Bitcoin and had successfully mined the cryptocurrency.

As the value of his missing digital wallet soared, Mr Howells organised a team of experts to attempt to locate, recover and access the hard drive.

He had repeatedly asked permission from the council for access to the site, and had offered it a share of the missing Bitcoin if it was successfully recovered.

Mr Howells successfully "mined" the Bitcoin in 2009 for almost nothing, and says he forgot about it altogether when he threw it out.

The value of the cryptocurrency rose by more than 80% in 2024, and Mr Howells believes his 8,000 bitcoins to now be worth more than £600m.

But James Goudie KC, for the council, argued that existing laws meant the hard drive had become its property when it entered the landfill site. It also said that its environmental permits would forbid any attempt to excavate the site to search for the hard drive.

The offer to donate 10% of the Bitcoin to the local community was encouraging the council to "play fast and loose" by "signing up for a share of the action," said Mr Goudie.

In a written judgement the judge said: "I also consider that the claim would have no realistic prospect of succeeding if it went to trial and that there is no other compelling reason why it should be disposed of at trial."

The landfill holds more than 1.4m tonnes of waste, but Mr Howells said he had narrowed the hard drive's location to an area consisting of 100,000 tonnes.

Mr Howells has speculated that, by next year, the Bitcoin on his hard drive could be worth £1bn.

He told BBC Wales outside the court hearing in Cardiff last December that he believed in his case and was willing to take it all the way to Supreme Court.

Video game giant Ubisoft has announced a further delay to its upcoming Assassin's Creed Shadows.

The long-running series is one of the French publisher's flagship franchises, with recent instalment, Valhalla, reportedly making more than $1bn.

Assassin's Creed Shadows, set in 16th Century Japan, was due to be released last November before an initial delay to February 2025.

Announcing the new release date of 20 March, executive producer Marc-Alexis Coté said a "few additional weeks are needed" to ensure the game's launch goes smoothly.

Players complained that Ubisoft's major 2024 release, Star Wars Outlaws, was launched with bugs and glitches.

The company's bosses told investors the sci-fi tie-in's sales were "softer than expected" and said "learnings" from Outlaws' launch had prompted the original delay to Assassin's Creed Shadows.

In his update, Mr Coté thanked fans for their support and said the extra time would allow the development team to implement "valuable feedback" from gamers.

Assassin's Creed Shadows is seen as an important title for Ubisoft - one of the biggest gaming companies in the world with an estimated 13,000 employees worldwide.

Its other 2024 titles, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown and pirate-themed online game Skull & Bones, were also reported to have fallen below the company's expectations.

The company also discontinued online shooter XDefiant and closed three of its studios.

In a conference call held around the same time as the Assassin's Creed delay was made public, CEO Yves Guillemot told investors Ubisoft was "taking decisive steps" to reshape the company.

It was also looking to "drive significant cost reductions", the meeting heard.

'Strong appeal'

BBC Newsbeat previously spoke to James Batchelor, former editor-in-chief of Gamesindustry.biz, who said the Assassin's Creed series is a "golden goose" for Ubisoft.

He said moving the game from its original November release date meant Ubisoft had missed out on sales from the busy pre-Christmas sales period.

But, he also said it would have faced stiff competition in February - a crowded month for high-profile new releases, with Monster Hunter Wilds, Avowed and Civilization VII also due to come out.

While Ubisoft's 2024 had been "tough", James told Newsbeat that colleagues who'd played preview versions of Assassin's Creed Shadows were impressed with the game.

He also pointed out that its feudal Japan setting was one series fans had been requesting for a long time, and he expected this to drive sales.

"Whether or not it sells quite the levels it would have done in November, or whether it sells as well as they hope. I don't know," he said.

"But of all the things they've put out in the last year and the varied performance they've had, this one has got the strongest chance and the strongest appeal."

Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays - or listen back here.

Deadly wildfires have devastated parts of the city of Los Angeles and the wider county, destroying many homes and businesses, as well as schools and places of worship.

Here are some of the most striking images of places seen before and after the wildfires tore through them.

• Follow live: New wildfire sweeps through Hollywood Hills
• In maps: Thousands of acres on fire in LA
• What role is climate change playing?

Pacific Palisades

This affluent suburb is among those that have been the hardest hit, with many residents being unable to gather much or anything of value before they were had to flee.

Below are images showing the destruction some businesses have suffered.

The Palisades Charter High School is among landmarks in the Pacific Palisades area to have been damaged in the fires.

The well-known school counts celebrities including Will.i.am and Forest Whitaker among its alumni, and has been a filming location for Hollywood hits including Carrie, Teen Wolf and Freaky Friday.

Read more about what happened to the school here.

Pacific Coast Highway

Houses that sit along parts of the major state highway have also been hit by the Palisades fire, including in the city of Malibu.

Satellite imagery below shows what the coastline looked like before and after the fires took hold.

Altadena

The Eaton Fire has destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses in Altadena, which lies behind the mountains north of Los Angeles.

Below you can see the damage the fire caused to one home, as well as a wider look at the full extent of the damage the neighbourhood has suffered.

Pasadena

In nearby Pasadena, a Jewish temple was among the buildings lost to the Eaton Fire.

According to its website, the temple's congregation has more than 100 years of history in the area.

The Los Angeles wildfires are on track to be among the costliest in US history, with losses already expected to exceed more than $50bn (£40bn).

In a preliminary estimate, private forecaster Accuweather said it expected losses of between $52bn and $57bn as the blazes rip through an area that is home to some of the most expensive property in the US.

The insurance industry is also bracing for a major hit, with analysts from firms such as Morningstar and JP Morgan forecasting insured losses more than $8bn.

Nearly 2,000 structures have been damaged or destroyed in the fires, which has also claimed at least five lives.

With authorities still working to contain the fires, the scope of the losses is still unfolding.

"This is a terrible disaster," said Accuweather chief meteorologist Jonathan Porter.

The 2018 fire that broke out in northern California near the town of Paradise currently ranks as the disaster with highest insured costs, at roughly $12.5bn, according to insurance giant Aon.

That blaze, known as the Camp fire, killed 85 people and displaced more than 50,000.

The high property values in this case mean it is likely to end up as one of the top five costliest wildfires in the US, said Aon, which looks at insured losses.

Nearly 200,000 people in the Los Angeles area are under evacuation orders, with another 180,000 facing warnings.

Even after the situation is under control, Mr Porter said the events could have long-term affects on health and tourism.

It also spells trouble for the insurance industry, which was already in crisis.

Homeowners in the US with mortgages are typically required by banks to have property insurance.

But companies have been hiking prices - or cancelling coverage altogether - in the face of increasing risks of natural disaster such as fires, floods and hurricanes.

As companies stop offering coverage, people are turning in surging numbers to home insurance plans offered by state governments, which are typically more expensive while offering less protection.

In California, the number of policies offered through the state's Fair plan has more than doubled since 2020, from about 200,000 to more than 450,000 in September of last year.

Areas hit by the fires rank as some of the places with highest take-up, according to data from the programme, which was already warning of risks to its financial stability.

Denise Rappmund, a senior analyst at Moody's Ratings, said the fires would have "widespread, negative impacts for the state's broader insurance market".

"Increased recovery costs will likely drive up premiums and may reduce property insurance availability," she said, adding that the state was also facing potential long-term damage to property values and strain to public finances.

Nothing has been more important to the Labour Party under Sir Keir Starmer than economic credibility.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has set out clear fiscal rules, such as getting debt falling as a share of national income by the end of this parliament, and she has made sticking to these rules a crucial test of the government's credibility.

That's what makes the recent rise in government borrowing costs potentially so dangerous for Reeves, the Treasury and - arguably - Sir Keir Starmer's entire political project.

If the government has to spend a lot more money paying interest on debt, then it is less likely to meet its rules.

On current trends, 26 March is set to become a critical date.

That is when the independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) will deliver its latest forecasts, including an assessment of whether the government is on course to meet its fiscal rules or not.

Suppose the OBR says the government is not on course. It's important to stress this may not happen - but it is something that senior government figures are growing more jittery about by the minute.

Reeves would have a decision to make.

She has previously committed only to make significant tax and spend announcements once a year at the autumn Budget.

A Treasury spokesperson said last night that "meeting the fiscal rules is non-negotiable".

That would suggest she would have to break her commitment and announce, or at least pave the way for, measures to bring the government in line with its rules.

What could that mean?

In principle, it could mean either tax rises or spending restraint.

In practice, given the significant increase in employers' National Insurance rates in October, it would mean spending restraint - Darren Jones, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, practically said as much in the Commons today.

To be clear, spending restraint would not necessarily mean spending cuts, just much lower spending increases than would otherwise happen.

This is where economics could collide with politics fast.

It's all very well for the Treasury to take measures to soothe the bond markets, where government debt is traded.

But just because a strategy is the most economically viable available, that doesn't mean it is politically viable in a Labour Party made up of MPs who have spent the past 14 years decrying Conservative austerity.

Many Labour MPs, among them cabinet ministers, believe there is little fat left to trim from the state.

They were already anxious about a tough multi-year spending review, expected to conclude around June, before borrowing costs rose.

There is almost a risk of a paradox: that any acts of spending restraint visible and significant enough to calm the markets might, by definition, be too visible and too significant to fly politically among Labour MPs - especially after the controversy of the cut to the winter fuel payment for pensioners.

Labour figures argue that successive Conservative governments dealt with similar problems by piling the most painful spending measures towards the end of five-year forecast periods - hoping that by the year at which those "pencilled-in" measures were reached, circumstances would have changed.

But some also voice a fear that - precisely because of the Conservatives having done this - repeating the trick would be given short shrift by the markets: the fiscal sins of previous governments being visited on this new one.

Unlike recent Conservative debates on economic policy, the Labour Party has one big asset.

In 2022, when Liz Truss decided to go big, with a radical tax-cutting agenda, the Conservative Party had no consensus on how to approach the economy.

The 2022 leadership election in which Truss defeated Rishi Sunak was essentially a clash of economic ideas.

She won that argument with Tory members, having lost it among the party's MPs - and then lost it unambiguously with the public and the markets within 49 days.

The Labour Party, give or take some sotto voce debates about tax for the wealthiest and welfare for the poorest, does broadly have an economic consensus, especially when it comes to what the Conservatives did wrong.

But what if these shared beliefs in how best to run the economy turn out to be products of the low interest rate era?

And how do you maintain that consensus if the markets disagree?

This is a political worst case scenario for Reeves.

Asking influential Labour figures about the markets this morning was to be told that lines go down as well as up, that the markets can move the other way in rapid time.

But all acknowledge that it is a bad sign when the value of the currency goes down at the same time as the cost of borrowing goes up.

And all are watching anxiously to see how things develop.

As one government source said to me: "It's definitely not tin hat time yet."

Government borrowing costs have been steadily rising in recent months, and have now hit their highest levels for several years.

Why is this happening and how does it affect ordinary people?

What's happening in the bond markets?

A bond is a bit like an IOU that can be traded in the financial markets.

Governments generally spend more than they raise in tax so they borrow money to fill the gap, usually by selling bonds to investors.

As well as eventually paying back the value of the bond, governments pay interest at regular intervals so investors receive a stream of future payments.

UK government bonds - known as "gilts" - are normally considered very safe, with little risk the money will not be repaid. They are mainly bought by financial institutions, such as pension funds.

Interest rates - known as the yield - on government bonds have been going up since around August.

The yield on a 10-year bond has surged to its highest level since 2008, while the yield on a 30-year bond is at its highest since 1998, meaning it costs the government more to borrow over the long term.

The pound has also fallen in value against the dollar over the last few days. On Tuesday it was worth $1.25 but is currently trading at $1.23.

Why are bond yields rising?

Yields are not just rising in the UK. Borrowing costs have also been going up in the US, Japan, Germany and France, for instance.

There is a great deal of uncertainty around what will happen when President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House later this month. He has pledged to bring in tariffs on goods entering the US and to cut taxes.

Investors worry that this will lead to inflation being more persistent than previously thought and therefore interest rates will not come down as quickly as they had expected.

But in the UK there are also concerns about the economy underperforming.

Inflation is at its highest for eight months - hitting 2.6% in November - above the Bank of England's 2% target - while the economy has shrunk for two months in a row.

Analysts say it is these wider concerns about the strength of the economy that is driving down the pound, which typically rises when borrowing costs increase.

How does it affect me?

The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has pledged that all day-to-day spending should be funded from taxes, not from borrowing.

But if she needs more money to pay back higher borrowing costs, that uses up more tax revenue, leaving less money to spend on other things.

Economists have warned that this could mean spending cuts which would affect public services, and tax rises that could hit people's pay or businesses' ability to grow and hire more people.

The government has committed to having only one fiscal event a year, where it can raise taxes, and this is not expected until the autumn.

So if higher borrowing costs persist, we may be more likely to see cuts to spending before that.

Some people may be wondering about the impact of higher gilt yields on the mortgage market, particularly after what happened after Liz Truss's mini-Budget in September 2022.

Although yields are higher now than they were then, they have been creeping up slowly over a period of months, whereas in 2022 they shot up over a couple of days. That speedy rise led to lenders quickly pulling deals while they tried to work out what interest rate to charge.

Analysts and brokers say the current unease in the markets is having some effect on the pricing of mortgages. Many were expecting to see some falls in rates at the start of the year but instead lenders are holding off from cuts to see what happens.

What happens next?

The Treasury has said there is no need for an emergency intervention in the financial markets.

It has said it will not make any spending or tax announcements ahead of the official borrowing forecast from its independent watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), due on 26 March.

If the OBR says the chancellor is still on track to meet her self-imposed fiscal rules then that might settle the markets.

However, if the OBR were to say because of slower growth and higher-than-expected interest rates, the chancellor were likely to break her fiscal rules then that would potentially be a problem for Reeves.

Flu cases are skyrocketing, causing huge problems for hospitals, NHS England bosses are warning.

Last week the number of patients in hospital in England with the virus topped 5,400 a day on average – around 1,000 higher than a week before.

NHS England's Prof Julian Redhead said cases were going up at a "concerning rate" with hospitals "bursting with patients".

He said this was causing delays in A&E and for ambulances as staff struggled to cope with the demands being placed on them.

It comes as around 20 NHS trusts have been forced to declare critical incidents because of the pressures they are facing.

Prof Redhead, NHS England's national director for emergency care, said the "skyrocketing" flu cases came on top of continued pressure being caused by other viruses, including Covid and the vomiting bug Norovirus.

He apologised for the problems being seen, saying staff were frustrated with the quality of care being provided under such pressures.

"I'm really proud of the way my colleagues have responded to the pressure...but nobody wants to see delays in the ambulances going out and the delays in patients getting to beds that they need. No one will be proud of that system which is occurring."

The number of patients with flu is more than three times higher than they were this time last year – and are now on par with what was seen in early 2023 – one of the worst flu seasons for many years.

Along with the bad weather and flooding, it has meant the NHS has had a "brutal" start to the new year, according to Saffron Cordery, of NHS Providers, which represents health managers.

And she added: "We're not out of the woods yet. Things are likely to get worse before they get better.

"Stresses and strains on emergency services are a huge concern with many patients facing long waits for ambulances and in A&Es."

'Like Victorian workhouse'

Liz Shearer is just one of many people who have shared their experiences with the BBC of the care being provided.

Her elderly mother spent more than 30 hours in a corridor on a hospital trolley last week because there were no bays available. She was taken to hospital after collapsing at her care home.

"I've never experienced anything like that in my life. It was like a Victorian workhouse. The nurses were saying how bad it is, and they were saying they just had to crack on with it."

Yvonne Wolstenholme spent 13 hours in A&E after she was sent there by her GP because she was struggling to breathe.

"It was absolutely heaving," she said. "Staff are snowed under, they really are rushing around like headless chickens and it's not because of a lack of skill, it's the lack of time to see individual patients.

"While I was there, there were at least eight ambulance crews waiting to hand over patients and obviously they are not out on the streets if they are there waiting."

Official figures released on Thursday showed just how much the emergency care system was struggling.

• The average ambulance response time for immediately life-threatening category one calls, such as cardiac arrests, was 8 mins 40 seconds in December. The target is 7 minutes
• For category two calls, which includes heart attacks and strokes, it was 47 mins 26 seconds. The target is 18 minutes
• Just 71% of patients visiting A&E were seen and treated or admitted within the target time of four hours

But there was more positive news on routine treatment, with the hospital waiting list falling to 7.48 million at the end of November – down from 7.54 million the month before and below the record-high of 7.77 million in September 2023.

Similar pressures are being experienced in other parts of the UK with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all missing their key targets.

The Royal College of Emergency Medicine in Scotland said this week hosptials there were "gridlocked" and in the middle of their own winter crisis.

Dr Tim Cooksley, of of the Society for Acute Medicine, said the NHS was experiencing an "appalling" winter crisis.

"The reality for patients and staff is corridors full of patients experiencing degrading care, being treated in the backs of ambulances because there is simply no space in hospital and the immense physical and emotional harm that inevitably results.

"The fundamental issue is that there is a continued lack of capacity throughout the year - a tough flu season must not be used as a political excuse for the current situation."

A judge has thrown out a man's attempt to sue a council to recover from a rubbish tip a Bitcoin hard drive which he says is now worth about £600m.

James Howells had argued that his former partner had mistakenly dumped the hard drive containing a Bitcoin wallet in 2013, and he wanted to access the site and recover the cryptocurrency.

But Newport council asked a High Court judge to strike out Mr Howells' legal action to access the landfill or get £495m in compensation.

Judge Keyser KC said there were no "reasonable grounds" for bringing the claim and "no realistic prospect" of succeeding at a full trial.

During the hearing in December the court heard how Mr Howells had been an early adopter of Bitcoin and had successfully mined the cryptocurrency.

As the value of his missing digital wallet soared, Mr Howells organised a team of experts to attempt to locate, recover and access the hard drive.

He had repeatedly asked permission from the council for access to the site, and had offered it a share of the missing Bitcoin if it was successfully recovered.

Mr Howells successfully "mined" the Bitcoin in 2009 for almost nothing, and says he forgot about it altogether when he threw it out.

The value of the cryptocurrency rose by more than 80% in 2024, and Mr Howells believes his 8,000 bitcoins to now be worth more than £600m.

But James Goudie KC, for the council, argued that existing laws meant the hard drive had become its property when it entered the landfill site. It also said that its environmental permits would forbid any attempt to excavate the site to search for the hard drive.

The offer to donate 10% of the Bitcoin to the local community was encouraging the council to "play fast and loose" by "signing up for a share of the action," said Mr Goudie.

In a written judgement the judge said: "I also consider that the claim would have no realistic prospect of succeeding if it went to trial and that there is no other compelling reason why it should be disposed of at trial."

The landfill holds more than 1.4m tonnes of waste, but Mr Howells said he had narrowed the hard drive's location to an area consisting of 100,000 tonnes.

Mr Howells has speculated that, by next year, the Bitcoin on his hard drive could be worth £1bn.

He told BBC Wales outside the court hearing in Cardiff last December that he believed in his case and was willing to take it all the way to Supreme Court.

Nothing has been more important to the Labour Party under Sir Keir Starmer than economic credibility.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has set out clear fiscal rules, such as getting debt falling as a share of national income by the end of this parliament, and she has made sticking to these rules a crucial test of the government's credibility.

That's what makes the recent rise in government borrowing costs potentially so dangerous for Reeves, the Treasury and - arguably - Sir Keir Starmer's entire political project.

If the government has to spend a lot more money paying interest on debt, then it is less likely to meet its rules.

On current trends, 26 March is set to become a critical date.

That is when the independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) will deliver its latest forecasts, including an assessment of whether the government is on course to meet its fiscal rules or not.

Suppose the OBR says the government is not on course. It's important to stress this may not happen - but it is something that senior government figures are growing more jittery about by the minute.

Reeves would have a decision to make.

She has previously committed only to make significant tax and spend announcements once a year at the autumn Budget.

A Treasury spokesperson said last night that "meeting the fiscal rules is non-negotiable".

That would suggest she would have to break her commitment and announce, or at least pave the way for, measures to bring the government in line with its rules.

What could that mean?

In principle, it could mean either tax rises or spending restraint.

In practice, given the significant increase in employers' National Insurance rates in October, it would mean spending restraint - Darren Jones, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, practically said as much in the Commons today.

To be clear, spending restraint would not necessarily mean spending cuts, just much lower spending increases than would otherwise happen.

This is where economics could collide with politics fast.

It's all very well for the Treasury to take measures to soothe the bond markets, where government debt is traded.

But just because a strategy is the most economically viable available, that doesn't mean it is politically viable in a Labour Party made up of MPs who have spent the past 14 years decrying Conservative austerity.

Many Labour MPs, among them cabinet ministers, believe there is little fat left to trim from the state.

They were already anxious about a tough multi-year spending review, expected to conclude around June, before borrowing costs rose.

There is almost a risk of a paradox: that any acts of spending restraint visible and significant enough to calm the markets might, by definition, be too visible and too significant to fly politically among Labour MPs - especially after the controversy of the cut to the winter fuel payment for pensioners.

Labour figures argue that successive Conservative governments dealt with similar problems by piling the most painful spending measures towards the end of five-year forecast periods - hoping that by the year at which those "pencilled-in" measures were reached, circumstances would have changed.

But some also voice a fear that - precisely because of the Conservatives having done this - repeating the trick would be given short shrift by the markets: the fiscal sins of previous governments being visited on this new one.

Unlike recent Conservative debates on economic policy, the Labour Party has one big asset.

In 2022, when Liz Truss decided to go big, with a radical tax-cutting agenda, the Conservative Party had no consensus on how to approach the economy.

The 2022 leadership election in which Truss defeated Rishi Sunak was essentially a clash of economic ideas.

She won that argument with Tory members, having lost it among the party's MPs - and then lost it unambiguously with the public and the markets within 49 days.

The Labour Party, give or take some sotto voce debates about tax for the wealthiest and welfare for the poorest, does broadly have an economic consensus, especially when it comes to what the Conservatives did wrong.

But what if these shared beliefs in how best to run the economy turn out to be products of the low interest rate era?

And how do you maintain that consensus if the markets disagree?

This is a political worst case scenario for Reeves.

Asking influential Labour figures about the markets this morning was to be told that lines go down as well as up, that the markets can move the other way in rapid time.

But all acknowledge that it is a bad sign when the value of the currency goes down at the same time as the cost of borrowing goes up.

And all are watching anxiously to see how things develop.

As one government source said to me: "It's definitely not tin hat time yet."

Lily Allen has said she is taking a break from her podcast for "a few weeks" because her mental health is "spiralling" and she is not "in a good place".

Speaking on the latest episode of Miss Me?, the pop star-turned-actor said she had been going through a "tough period".

It comes amid reports of a split from her husband, Stranger Things star David Harbour.

Allen, who co-hosts the show with her friend, presenter Miquita Oliver, said she was currently "unable to concentrate on anything except the pain I'm going through".

"I'm finding it hard to be interested in anything. I'm really not in a good place," she said on Thursday's episode.

"I know I've been talking about it for months, but I've been spiralling and spiralling and spiralling, and it's got out of control. I've tried.

"I came to the Miss Me? Christmas lunch and had a panic attack and had to go home," the 39-year-old added. "And I went to see something at the theatre the other night with my friends... and I had to leave at half-time.

"I just can't concentrate on anything except the pain that I'm going through. And It's really hard."

The singer, who now lives in the US, went on to say she was "going away next week", adding: "You're not going to hear me for a few weeks, listeners."

But despite "rumours" that she was going into drug rehab, she said that was not the case and she had not relapsed.

She didn't say where she's going, but said she is "not allowed my phone".

'Source of joy'

Allen also said her two daughters - whom she shares with her ex-husband Sam Cooper and recently went on safari with - had been a great help of late.

"It's really tough - they are always there and you have to be present and there for them," she said.

"And that's OK. When things in life are going well and swimmingly and you're coping, it's really nice to have the kids around - they're a joy to be around, in fact one of the main sources of joy in one's life.

"But when things are not going so well and life is tough - as it is for many people for all manner of reasons - having to hold things together is really hard."

Co-host Oliver told listeners she would "drive this ship" in Allen's absence and "wait for the captain to return".

The BBC Sounds podcast, which launched last year, sees childhood friends Allen former Popworld host Oliver indulge in twice weekly "transatlantic catch-ups, discussing the highs and lows of their lives and the biggest cultural moments of the week".

Allen made her West End theatre debut in 2:22 - A Ghost Story in 2021, and is due to return to the stage in Hedda, a new version of Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, at Bath Theatre Royal's Ustinov Studio in July.

She is also reportedly filming a screen adaptation of Virginia Woolf's comic novel Night and Day.

The Brit Award winner mentioned in a previous episode that she was hoping to go back into the studio to record more music later this year.

Elon Musk's online attacks on former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown over grooming gangs draw on a baseless claim about a Home Office memo supposedly issued 17 years ago, research by BBC Verify has established.

A wave of social media posts - including some amplified by Mr Musk - allege that a 2008 Home Office document advised police not to intervene in child grooming cases because victims had "made an informed choice about their sexual behaviour".

But BBC Verify has carried out extensive searches of Home Office circulars issued across that period and found no evidence that any document containing this advice exists.

Brown - who was prime minister in 2008 - has called the allegations "a complete fabrication" and the Home Office says there "has never been any truth" to them.

'Informed choice'

Social media posts referencing a memo and using either the phrase "informed choice" or a variation like "lifestyle choice" have circulated for several years with some gaining traction.

But that intensified dramatically since the start of the year, with posts repeating the claim generating tens of millions of views in the past week after Mr Musk amplified several of them on his social media platform, X.

In one post, which has received over 25 million views, Mr Musk alleged that "Gordon Brown sold those little girls for votes" while reposting another user, June Slater, using words that were apparently a variation of the memo claim.

The original unfounded claim about a Home Office circular to police seems to stem from an interview Nazir Afzal - the former Crown Prosecution Service chief prosecutor for north-west England - gave to the BBC on 19 October 2018. He now admits that he had not seen any such circular himself, despite apparently stating its existence as fact.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's PM programme, he told presenter Carolyn Quinn at the time:

"You may not know this, but back in 2008 the Home Office sent a circular to all police forces in the country saying 'as far as these young girls who are being exploited in their towns and cities we believe they have made an informed choice about their sexual behaviour and therefore it's not for you police officers to get involved in".

Although the programme is no longer available to listen to on the BBC's website, a version has been uploaded to YouTube. BBC Verify has also accessed the programme through the BBC's in-house archives to confirm the audio is genuine.

The first post referencing Mr Afzal's claim appears to have been made one month after his interview, BBC Verify has found. But the first post to gain considerable traction was in July 2019.

Since then posts with versions of the claim have circulated occasionally on X and other platforms, with some posts from larger accounts in 2024 getting more attention, before intensifying massively in recent days.

Misinterpreted instructions

Speaking to BBC Verify, Mr Afzal clarified his position admitting that he has never seen any circular with the form of words that he used in his 2018 interview.

Instead he now says he was referring to police officers who had told him some officers had misinterpreted instructions in a circular sent by the Home Office.

Mr Afzal pointed us to Home Office circular 017/2008 which is about the police's powers under the 1989 Children's Act.

However, the words "informed choice" do not appear anywhere in the text, nor is the circular about child grooming gangs.

It does contain, however, a section on how to judge significant harm to a child. "It is important always to take account of the child's reactions, and his or her perceptions, according to the child's age and understanding," it reads.

It seems difficult to understand how any police officer could misconstrue this section in the way Mr Afzal described in his 2018 interview

He told BBC Verify he was "paraphrasing what I thought that meant to them", when he gave his Radio 4 interview.

Asked how officers could have interpreted circular 17/2008 in this way, Mr Afzal said:

"You're right, it doesn't stack up. It doesn't give an excuse or explanation, but I can't give you any other circular."

BBC Verify also asked Mr Afzal if he could put us in touch with any of the officers that may have misinterpreted the circular in way he described, but he was unable to do this.

Mr Afzal's claim was not a one off. One year before his 2018 interview, Mr Afzal wrote an article for the International Business Times where he also stated the claim as fact:

"The term "child prostitute" was used extensively to describe them and it should be noted both that the Home Office in a circular to police in 2008 used that term and spoke of girls making an "informed choice" to engage in this behaviour. Parliament only finally removed the term from all laws a couple of years ago."

Despite interest in the claim going back several years we have been unable to identify any individual who is able to provide evidence of any circular to this effect.

Home Office memos contain no reference to term

The purpose of the circulars - or memos - is to provide police forces with guidance, policy updates and administrative instructions.

The Home Office says all memos and circulars to police forces are published online in the National Archives. They are also kept in the library of the College of Policing website.

BBC Verify searched all the circulars for 2008 and could find no reference to "informed choice" or "child prostitute" or any phrase similar to the one cited in the social media posts.

Of the 32 circulars listed on the National Archives website for 2008, only one - 017/2008 - falls under the category "child abuse". We have also searched circulars for 2007, 2009 and 2010 and found no references to "informed choice". We also searched for other phrases in Mr Afzal's original statements and variations from later social media posts - for example "get involved", "sexual behaviour" and "lifestyle choice" - and found no occurrences.

• Victims want action, child abuse inquiry chair says
• What is Starmer's record on prosecuting grooming gangs?
• Starmer attacks those 'spreading lies' on grooming gangs

There have been several Freedom of Information requests regarding a supposed memo or circular with the "informed choice" phrase, but no police force has found any trace of such a communication.

We were able to find a circular from 2009 that links to a webpage that further links to a document on child sexual exploitation released by the Department for Children, Schools and Families that mentions the phrase "informed choice". It is not an instruction to police and the context it appears in is emphasising situations where local agencies might need to report sexual activity in order to protect children "unable to make an informed choice".

There were circulars in 2007 and 2010 that contained the phrase "child prostitute". The first was in connection with some technical changes to offences like "controlling a child prostitute". The second again dealt with technical changes but this circular on prostitution also said: "In short, any steps taken, whether relating to criminal proceedings or not, should be designed to protect the child from continuing sexual exploitation and abuse."

The term "child prostitute" was taken out of the law in 2015 as it could imply that children could consent to abuse.

Circulars and memos are received by senior individuals in each police force, former Chief Constable of Norfolk Constabulary Simon Bailey told BBC Verify.

"They would've gone to crime registrars and the head of the crime and they would've cascaded the guidance," he said.

If there was any doubt about how to interpret the guidance a force would have gone back to the Home Office to seek clarity, Mr Bailey added.

"And even going back 17 years, I cannot believe the Home Office would've sent out a circular of that nature."

'Never been any truth'

In a statement to BBC Verify, the Home Office said it had never instructed police not to go after grooming gangs:

"There has never been any truth in the existence of a Home Office circular telling police forces that grooming gangs should not be prosecuted, or that their victims were making a choice, and it is now clear that the specific circular which was being referred to does absolutely no such thing."

Jacqui Smith - now Baroness Smith - was the Labour Home Secretary in 2008. She told BBC Verify: "It is categorically wrong that the Home Office or I instructed police forces not to prosecute grooming gangs or not to protect young girls."

A spokesperson for Gordon Brown said: "There is no basis for such allegations at all. They are a complete fabrication. There is no foundation whatsoever for alleging that Mr Brown sent, approved or was in anyway involved with issuing a circular or statement to the police because it did not happen."

'Got lost in translation'

BBC Verify has attempted to speak to those who repeated the claim on X and had their posts amplified by Mr Musk.

In one post, Mr Musk alleged that "Gordon Brown committed an unforgivable crime against the British people" and shared a video clip from campaigner Maggie Oliver appearing on GB News.

In the clip, Ms Oliver alleged: "Gordon Brown sent out a circular to all the police forces in the UK saying 'do not prosecute these rape gangs, these children are making a lifestyle choice'."

Ms Oliver said that she based her claim on what Mr Afzal said:

"My knowledge of this comes from what Nazir Afzal said publicly in 2018 in his BBC interview."

BBC Verify also reached out to June Slater, whose post was also amplified by Mr Musk. She told us she had not seen the memo, but her claim was also based on what Mr Afzal and Ms Oliver had previously said:

"I thought he was a reliable source as is Maggie Oliver."

Asked if he regretted the misinformation that had stemmed from his statements, Mr Afzal told BBC Verify:

"I regret that people have interpreted what I interpreted and that it's sort of got lost in translation."

BBC Verify also contacted the Police Federation, the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) and the College of Policing about the alleged circular.

The NPCC referred us to the Home Office's statement while the College of Policing said it was not aware of any circular.

'Allegations ignored'

While there is no evidence for the existence of the circular, the performance of the police and other institutions in protecting victims and investigating abuse has been heavily criticised during this period.

Prof Alexis Jay - who carried out the independent inquiry into child abuse - said some victims would never recover from their experiences.

"We heard time and time again how allegations of abuse were ignored, victims were blamed and institutions prioritised their reputations over the protection of children."

Additional reporting by Ned Davies and Lucy Gilder.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

Threads and Instagram users will no longer be able to opt out of being shown political content from people they do not follow, parent company Meta has announced.

The head of the platforms Adam Mosseri said it followed Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg's reorienting the company towards "free expression" - a move that saw it ditch fact checkers on Tuesday.

Mr Mosseri said Meta would begin recommending political content in a "responsible and personalised way" from this week in the US, and globally from next week.

It represents a U-turn on his previous stance on news and political content on Threads, which he said in 2023 the platform would not "do anything to encourage".

"Any incremental engagement or revenue they might drive is not at all worth the scrutiny, negativity (let's be honest), or integrity risks that come along with them," he wrote in a Threads post at the time.

But on Wednesday, he said it had "proven impractical to draw a red line around what is and is not political content" - and users have asked to be shown more, not less, of this content than in years prior.

A setting that currently allows Threads and Instagram users to toggle political content recommendations on or off will be changed to provide three options for how much they are shown - less, standard and more.

This will opt users in to seeing a "standard" amount by default.

Mixed response

Mr Mosseri said Instagram - which Meta acquired for $1bn in 2012 - was founded upon the values of creativity and "giving anybody a voice".

"My hope is that this focus on free speech is going to help us do even a bit better along that path," he said in an Instagram video.

There has been considerable criticism of the changes Meta has already announced, with concerns expressed about the impact on minority groups.

The company has also been accused of pandering to the incoming Trump administration, which has previously been very critical of Meta and Mr Zuckerberg.

Some users have also reacted to these latest changes on Threads and Instagram with dismay.

"Well, time to delete the Threads app. It was nice while it lasted," said one Threads user responding to Mr Mosseri's posts.

On Instagram - where Mr Mosseri said accounts focused on politics now "don't have to worry about becoming non-recommendable" to other users - some users praised the move as "a good step towards the freedom on the platform".

Many have also, however, expressed concern about the effect that increasing content recommendations about social issues and politics could have on amplifying misinformation and hate speech.