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Billionaire businessman Jared Isaacman has a big vision for the future of humanity.

He set off on his first mission to space in 2021 – a private journey he paid an estimated $200m (£160m) for – and announced that he wanted space travel to be for the masses, not only for the 600 who have experienced it to date – most of them professional astronauts employed by Nasa and the wealthy.

“We want it to be 600,000,” he told reporters.

Later, he added: “I drank the Kool-Aid in terms of the grand ambitions for humankind being a multi-planet species… I think that we all want to live in a Star Wars, Star Trek world where people are jumping in their spacecraft.”

Mr Isaacman, who made much of his $1.9bn (£1.46bn) fortune from a payment processing company that he founded in 1999 aged 16, is said to have bankrolled the rest of the crew of four aboard the SpaceX craft in the 2021 mission, fuelled by a longstanding love of flying and fascination with space.

Since then, there have been more adventures: last year he demonstrated Captain Kirk-like daring by travelling in an upgraded SpaceX capsule and performing the first commercial spacewalk.

During the mission, he tested an experimental spacesuit and a new cost-saving protocol to exit and re-enter the spacecraft without using an airlock.

The photograph of Mr Isaacman, silhouetted with the world at his feet, is now iconic – it demonstrated that this was not a playboy billionaire paying to act out Star Trek, but someone pushing the envelope of what was possible with current technology.

And yet it is a more recent achievement that has drawn greater attention still – being nominated by Donald Trump in December to be the new head of Nasa.

The question is why Trump chose him and what has he asked him to do – especially in the context that the President has appointed SpaceX owner Elon Musk to a government role to cut $2 trillion (£1.6 trillion) off the Federal budget.

The Nasa post is a presidential appointment, though it requires the confirmation of the US Senate. And if confirmed, Mr Isaacman’s appointment will also raise broader questions about the future of humanity in space, given his vision for space travel for the masses – but also the implications for the space agency if Mr Isaacman’s role leads to Nasa’s greater use of the private sector.

In the past, the heads of Nasa have come from a variety of backgrounds: some, such as the previous incumbent Bill Nelson, have been former astronauts; others, such as Michael Griffin (in charge from 2005 to 2009) came from a government background, and before him Dan Goldin was an entrepreneur, striving to lower costs.

Despite their disparate backgrounds, those who have led Nasa have all been company people, charged with defending the space agency and its values.

And yet Mr Isaacman, along with Mr Musk and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, is among a new wave of billionaires who have been challenging the old order in space.

They have accelerated the pace of innovation and are aiming to dramatically reduce the cost of human space travel.

On the day of his nomination in December, Mr Isaacman posted a statement on X that gave an early glimpse into his vision. “This second space age has only just begun,” he wrote.

“There will inevitably be a thriving space economy – one that will create opportunities for countless people to live and work in space… At Nasa, we will… usher in an era where humanity becomes a true spacefaring civilisation.”

Many presidents have talked about sending astronauts to the Moon since the end of the Apollo lunar landings of the 1960s and 70s, but Trump was the first to turn talk into action, authorising Nasa’s Artemis programme to send humans back to the Moon during his first term. His record suggests that he is a big Nasa fan.

But since then, two factors are likely to have changed his thinking: Nasa’s rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), has been delayed and costs have spiralled; at the same time Mr Musk’s SpaceX and Bezos’s Blue Origin are developing reusable low-cost Moon rockets.

That is a worrying backdrop for Nasa, according to Courtney Stadd of New York-based Beyond Earth Institute think tank.

“You have a government looking to slash,” he said at a webinar hosted by Space News. “If you are the new administrator, you are going in in that context, so you are going to have to look at everything that is a drain on your budget…

“This next two years is going to be the equivalent of a tsunami and everything is on the table.”

One of the biggest questions is what to do with the space agency’s SLS Moon rocket. In 2021, Nasa’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), which provides oversight of the space agency for Congress, reported that the cost was $4.1bn (£3.3bn) for each and every launch.

By contrast, SpaceX’s equivalent rocket system, Starship, is estimated to cost around $100m (£80m) per launch – and Musk has said he aims to bring the costs down further to $10m (£8m) as he develops his system.

Bezos’s new Moon rocket, New Glenn, had its maiden test launch at the beginning of January. Blue Origin has not announced its cost per launch, but it is estimated currently to be around $68m (£54.5m).

Competition between the two billionaires is likely to speed up innovation and reduce costs further.

Starship and New Glenn are projected to be cheaper because, unlike SLS, they are designed to be reusable. But “that’s only a part of the reason for the disparity in costs”, according to Dr Adam Baker, an expert on the space industry at Cranfield University.

“SpaceX is given a sum of money and contracted to deliver on time and on budget,” he continues. “They are driven by profit, and they want to minimise costs.

“A Nasa programme is not driven by profit; it is driven by the programme objectives and so those in charge don’t think they need to track costs in the same way.

“There is a general acceptance that SLS has no future.”

The OIG could only come up with a best guess for the full cost of the Artemis programme in its review for Congress because, as it put it: “Nasa lacks a comprehensive and accurate cost estimate that accounts for all programme costs.

“Instead, the Agency’s plan presents a rough estimate that excludes $25bn (£20bn) for key activities”.

Nasa’s project management of SLS is not an aberration – some would say it is typical. For example, the James Webb Space Telescope was given a $1bn (£800m) budget and a launch date of 2010 – but it cost ten times that amount and launched in 2021, earning it the nickname of “the telescope that ate astronomy”.

(Other important scientific programmes had to be scaled back, delayed or scrapped entirely to make way for the overruns.)

It was a similar story of delays and budget overruns during the development of the Space Shuttle in the 1970s and the construction of the International Space Station in the 2000s.

Nasa got away with it because it was responsible for arguably America’s greatest moment when it sent the first astronauts to the Moon. The Apollo programme laid the foundations for America’s technology businesses and ushered in a vibrant new era for the US.

But the world has changed significantly since then, and Nasa has simply not kept up, according to Emeritus Prof John Logsdon, former director of the Space policy Institute at George Washington University. “Changing the way the United States goes about its civilian space programme is long overdue.”

The current model is to give so-called “cost-plus” contracts to big heritage aerospace companies, such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing, which guarantee to pay the development costs and an agreed profit.

The model gave the firms the financial reassurance they needed for ambitious projects such as the space shuttle, the SLS, and developing parts of the Saturn V rocket that took Apollo astronauts to the Moon, but these contracts provided no incentives to cut costs or increase efficiency. For example, there were no penalties for delays or cost overruns.

Dr Simeon Barber at the Open University, who has worked with Nasa on robotic space missions, was originally sceptical that the new commercial companies would deliver. But he is now a convert to the new way of doing things.

“We were used to big projects falling behind schedule and going over budget. But the new companies have shone a light on the old way of doing things.”

Moves to change what some saw as an overly cosy relationship with the heritage space companies gained pace in 2009 when President Obama introduced fixed-price contracts to some private sector firms. The companies were given latitude to innovate to cut costs and increase their profits provided they delivered on schedule and on budget.

Among those firms was the dynamic new start-up, SpaceX, which was awarded a contract to develop its reusable Falcon rockets and Dragon Space capsule to resupply the International Space Station with crew and cargo.

The heritage space company Boeing was also given a similar contract in 2014 to develop its Starliner capsule to do the same job.

SpaceX, with its riskier but faster development processes, began delivering to the ISS within four years of receiving its contract. By contrast, Boeing’s Starliner, which had a series of delays due to technical problems and cost overruns, took 10 years – only to have more issues with some of its engines, which left astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams stranded on the space station.

The ultimate humiliation is that they will be brought back to Earth by rival SpaceX’s Dragon capsule.

“Starliner is an embarrassment for the traditional way of doing business,” says Prof Logsdon. “So, shaking up the system is very positive.”

Prof Logsdon expects big changes under Trump, Mr Musk and Mr Isaacman: scrapping programmes, closing Nasa centres and more contracting out to SpaceX, Blue Origin and other private sector firms. Mr Isaacman has called the SLS “outrageously expensive” and said that the major aerospace contractors are “incentivised to be economically inefficient”.

But changes like that are not going to be easy. Nasa’s budget is controlled by Congress. Although President Trump’s party controls both legislative houses, individual senators and congressmen on the committees that oversee Nasa are from states with jobs and industries dependent on Nasa’s $25bn (£20bn) annual budget.

“Party discipline takes second place where there is constituency money involved,” says Prof Logsdon, a seasoned watcher of the horse trading that goes on with space politics in Congress.

Although Nasa’s projects have been expensive, they have shown us the wonders of the universe and shifted humanity’s perception of ourselves and our place in the cosmos.

The creation of the first reusable space shuttle, the construction of an orbiting space station, the images of distant worlds captured by its robotic spacecraft and the awe-inspiring photos from Hubble have all inspired generations and supercharged interest in science. As a result, senators and congressmen know that America and the world owe Nasa an unpayable debt.

“The old way of doing things gave us a lot of success, so you don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There will be significant change, but not the radical change that Mr Musk and Mr Isaacman want to see,” argues Prof Logsdon.

“There is a delicate balance between the interests of Nasa, Congress and the White House.”

Where that balance will fall will emerge in the coming months: some are speculating that the return-to-the-Moon programme might be scrapped altogether in favour of going straight to Mars, as President Trump alluded to during his inauguration, with the greatest proponent of that policy – Musk – seated nearby.

Others fear cuts in Nasa’s Earth Observation programmes, which monitor and model environmental changes from space, and include the impact of climate change; and some worry that the robotic scientific missions to other planets might be cut back to boost efforts for the human spaceflight programme.

There is concern in some quarters about the close relationship between Mr Isaacman and Mr Musk. Mr Isaacman paid SpaceX for his two ventures into space. The company has already received $20bn (£16bn) in contracts from government since 2008.

But if SLS is scrapped, and SpaceX were to receive the lion’s share of Nasa’s Moon programme work, Mr Musk’s firm stands to receive contracts that might be ten or even a hundred times greater, possibly at the expense of other private-sector players.

And there are many innovative US start-up companies hoping to build parts for spacecraft and infrastructure in Nasa’s return-to-the-Moon programme, including Texas-based Firefly, which has a spacecraft on its way to land on the Moon in March.

But industry analysts say that the US government has a long tradition of breaking up monopolies so that they don’t stifle innovation. And in any case, just because Mr Isaacman has worked with Mr Musk, it does not mean that any outcome is inevitable, argues Prof Logsdon.

“Isaacman is his own man,” he adds. “He is not a disciple of Elon Musk.”

Ultimately, however, it has become painfully clear, even to Nasa’s most ardent supporters, that it needs saving from itself. And the need for Nasa reform is not a partisan issue – Democrat and Republican presidents alike have set the wheels in motion.

But the coincidental timing of the success of SpaceX, Blue Origin and other private-sector space firms with a new administration impatient to cut costs and energise the private sector means that Mr Isaacman has a unique opportunity to make some of the biggest changes to Nasa since its inception.

“Nasa truly is a crown jewel, and we aren’t doing what we should be doing on behalf of the American people,” argued former deputy head of Nasa Lori Garver during the Space News webinar. “That is frustrating for all of us.”

Asked if a private sector billionaire was the right person to be entrusted with one of America’s greatest national treasures, Ms Garver responded: “Jared is a patriot, and he is doing this for public service.

“The truth of Jared agreeing has something to do with him willing to take on these hard things – and there are so many hard things”.

Top image credit: Getty

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Two people have been arrested after a boy and girl were killed in a hit-and-run crash in Essex.

The collision happened in Walthams Place in Pitsea, near Basildon, at about 18:25 GMT.

Essex Police said the car failed to stop at the scene.

A man and a woman have since been arrested on suspicion of causing death by careless driving and failing to stop at the scene of an accident and were taken into custody.

The force said emergency services were sent to the scene, but they could not save the children.

Police appealed for information, particularly CCTV, dashcam or doorbell footage.

Temporary Assistant Chief Constable Stuart Hooper said: “My thoughts are with the friends and family of the girl and boy who have died this evening.

“Specialist officers are supporting them at this truly unimaginably difficult time.

“Our officers will be carrying out inquiries in the area this evening to establish the circumstances which led up to the collision so if you saw anything or have any information please get in contact.”

Of all the possible climate futures, there’s a scenario where the United Kingdom and north-west Europe buck the trend of global warming and instead face plunging temperatures and freezing winters.

It’s not the most likely outcome, but a number of scientists fear that the chance of it happening is growing, and that the consequences would be so great that it deserves proper consideration.

They are concerned that the ocean currents that bring warm water from the tropics to the North Atlantic could weaken – or even collapse – in response to climate change.

Huge uncertainties remain about when – or even whether – a collapse could happen. So, how likely is it, and what would it mean?

The system of Atlantic currents, called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc), is a key reason why the UK is warmer than Moscow, despite being a similar distance from the Equator.

Forming a vital part of our climate system, this conveyor belt distributes energy around the planet, bringing warm, salty water from the tropical Atlantic to cooler regions south of Greenland and Iceland, and also the Nordic Seas.

The warmth from the ocean is transferred to the air above it, helping keep temperatures milder than they otherwise would be.

As this salty water cools, it becomes denser, and sinks, before flowing back towards the southern hemisphere as a deep ocean current. This water eventually gets pulled back up to the surface, and the circulation continues.

But Amoc appears to be getting weaker.

We don’t know for sure, because direct and continuous measurements of Amoc strength have only been taken since 2004. That’s not long enough to be able to identify a definite change.

But indirect evidence suggests it could have already slowed by around 15% over the last couple of centuries, although not all scientists agree.

One indication is the sediments on the ocean floor. Larger grains indicate a stronger current. By measuring the size of the grains and calculating their age, scientists can estimate how much Amoc has slowed over time.

Another piece of evidence is the so-called ‘cold blob’ or ‘warming hole’ in the north Atlantic. This describes a region which appears to have cooled in recent decades, unlike the vast majority of the world.

A slowdown in Amoc – meaning less warmer water would be transported to this region – is seen as a possible culprit.

This is “a very clear signature and footprint of a classic Amoc slowdown” says Matthew England, professor of oceanography at the University of New South Wales.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) expects Amoc to weaken this century. But the major concern is that Amoc could suddenly “switch off”, as appears to have happened repeatedly in the Earth’s past.

Today, global warming appears to be making the water in the north Atlantic less salty, due to extra freshwater from a melting Greenland ice sheet and more rainfall.

As fresher water doesn’t sink as easily, this is expected to slow the circulation and so bring less saltwater northwards from the tropics.

Beyond a “tipping point”, this loop could lead Amoc to runaway collapse.

“We really want to avoid a tipping point because then there’s nothing we can do about it,” warns David Thornalley, professor of ocean and climate science at University College London.

No one really knows how close it may be.

In 2021, the IPCC said it had “medium confidence” that Amoc would not collapse abruptly this century, although it expected it to weaken.

But some more recent studies have pointed to a growing possibility of Amoc passing a tipping point in the coming decades, beyond which full collapse would be inevitable.

Each study comes with various caveats and uncertainties, and different climate models can give different results for a system as complex as Amoc.

“We don’t believe the idea of an Amoc collapse this century has substantially changed because of these new results,” cautions Dr Laura Jackson, oceanographer at the Met Office.

But many scientists are growing increasingly concerned. Prof Thornalley argues that, whatever the imperfections of individual studies, taken together they “lead to a conclusion that we maybe need to be worried”.

Following the new evidence, more than 40 leading ocean and climate scientists signed an open letter last October calling for wider recognition of the “greatly underestimated” risks.

That is not to say the signatories believe Amoc will pass a tipping point this century. But they warn it is now enough of a possibility to warrant proper consideration.

“I’d say you’re looking at a risk of reaching a tipping point in the coming decades that could be at the 10 or 20% level even if we hold the line at 2C warming [above temperatures of the late 19th Century, before humans started significantly warming the climate],” warns Tim Lenton, professor of Earth system science at the University of Exeter.

Given the magnitude of the consequences from Amoc collapse, these probabilities “are not trivial,” he adds.

Even the most likely scenario – where Amoc continues to weaken this century – could have serious effects.

“If the Amoc gradually weakens over the next century, you’re going to get global warming but less warming over Europe,” says Dr Jackson.

That would still mean the UK getting hotter summers with climate change, but a weaker Amoc could also fuel more winter storms as regional temperature patterns change.

A full-scale collapse, meanwhile, would be “like a war situation […] something almost unimaginable,” says Prof Lenton.

While it could take a century or more for impacts to play out, temperatures in northern Europe could fall by a couple of degrees a decade.

In the UK, it could “become horribly, horribly cold … like living in northern Norway,” Prof Thornalley warns.

“Our infrastructure is not set up for that.”

There could be global consequences too, such as shifts to the tropical rain belts.

“That’s a big story,” warns Prof Lenton.

“If you lost the monsoon or seriously disrupted it, you’d have humanitarian catastrophes, in simple terms, in west Africa [and] probably in India.”

How we prepare for this alternative future poses challenges for governments.

Prof Lenton draws parallels with preparations for the Covid-19 pandemic – another major event which scientists had warned about, but had no way of knowing when it might occur.

But a recent report warned the UK has a “glaring national security blind spot for climate threats” such as those posed by Amoc collapse. The government admitted last year that it “has not assessed the effect of any [Amoc] slowing or collapse” on economic planning.

Scientists are clear that the fundamental way to reduce these risks is to cut the greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change.

“We’re playing a bit of a Russian roulette game,” warns Prof England.

“The more we stack up the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, the more we warm the system, the more chance we have of an Amoc slowdown and collapse.

“And so I think people need to not give up, because there’s so much to be gained by reducing emissions.

“The scale of change is just so much worse if we do nothing.”

Graphics by Erwan Rivault

The Trump administration has scrubbed references to LGBT health, and data from vaccines, from federal websites including top public health agencies.

The move follows a Wednesday memo instructing agencies to end all “programs that use taxpayer money to promote gender ideology” and disable related information from websites by Friday afternoon.

Trump has already issued executive orders that banned diversity, equity and inclusion in the government, as well as one that recognised two sexes, male and female.

Asked by reporters on Friday if websites would be shut down to remove diversity-related content, he said: “If they want to scrub the websites, that’s OK with me.”

Leading public health agencies appear to have culled webpages devoted to gender, sexually transmitted diseases, and LGBT health on Saturday morning.

Several web pages for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now display error messages.

CDC webpages that previously contained such data on youth, transgender and LGBT health contained “page not found” messages on Saturday morning.

The CDC serves as a critical repository for official government health data and research.

The national Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) seems to have disappeared from its landing pages. The ongoing study focused on topics such as nutrition, mental health, physical activity, and sexual activity for high school students.

The tool used to explore the data is now offline.

A version of the page, captured by the internet archive the WayBack Machine, shows the website was live as recently as mid-January.

The archived pages show that one aspect of study included children who “felt that they were ever treated badly or unfairly because they are or people think they are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning”.

Another page dedicated to “Supporting LGBTQ+ Youth” was also not available on Saturday morning, though the page is archived by the WayBack Machine.

A page that collated data related to “Health Disparities Among LGBTQ Youth” also appears to be gone.

“Stigma, discrimination, and other factors put them at increased risk for negative health and life outcomes,” an archived version of the page states.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the umbrella agency that oversees the Centers for Disease Control and other US public health agencies, also took down pages relating to diversity and inclusion.

A key page from the agency’s Office of Civil Rights no longer appears to contain any information. The website for the office remains, but a reader who wishes to click on the “civil rights” page of the site will see nothing but an error message.

On Wednesday, the Office of Personnel Management sent a memo to agencies directing them to comply with an executive order dedicated to “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government (Defending Women)”.

It instructed they should take down “all outward facing media (websites, social media accounts, etc.) that inculcate or promote gender ideology”.

The memo also instructed staff to “review agency email systems such as Outlook and turn off features that prompt users for their pronouns”.

DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programmes aim to promote participation in workplaces by people from a range of backgrounds.

Their backers say they address historical or ongoing discrimination and underrepresentation of certain groups, including racial minorities, but critics argue such programmes can themselves be discriminatory.

Earlier this week, a supplementary grant from the National Institutes of Health that helped research institutions to hire staff from diverse backgrounds abruptly expired on 24 January, 2025, long before it was set to close.

The CDC did not respond to BBC’s request for comment about the grant’s early expiration. A few days later, the link to the grant’s information page led to an error message with a frowning emoji.

An employee at the Department of Health and Human Services had previously told the BBC he feared programmes such as this grant would get the axe due to Trump’s executive orders.

“Getting rid of that may hold a lot of weight in impacting the future of the scientific workforce,” the employee said of the grant’s elimination. “But it might be years or decades before we know how that will negatively impact science.”

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has fired a group of prosecutors assigned to investigate the US Capitol riot, and also demanded the names of FBI agents involved in those same inquiries, according to CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.

Donald Trump says he ordered military air strikes on a senior attack planner and others from the Islamic State (IS) group in Somalia.

“These killers, who we found hiding in caves, threatened the United States and our Allies,” Trump posted on social media.

“The strikes destroyed the caves they live in, and killed many terrorists without, in any way, harming civilians.”

In a post on X, the office of the president of Somalia said they had been informed of the US strike targeting senior IS leadership in the northern part of the country.

The BBC could not independently verify reports of casualties.

Trump did not name any of the people targeted in strikes.

The president ended the post with: “The message to ISIS and all others who would attack Americans is that “WE WILL FIND YOU, AND WE WILL KILL YOU!”

In a post on X, the office of the president of Somalia said that President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud “acknowledges the unwavering support of the United States in the fight against international terrorism and welcomes the continued commitment under the decisive leadership of President Donald Trump”.

The post also said the latest operation “reinforces the strong security partnership between Somalia and the United States in combating extremist threats”.

In a statement, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said “our initial assessment is that multiple operatives were killed in the airstrikes and no civilians were harmed”.

Hegseth said the strikes “further degrade” the ability of IS “to plot and conduct terrorist attacks” and “sends a clear signal that the United States always stands ready to find and eliminate terrorists”.

He said the strikes were carried out in the Golis mountains, in northern Somalia.

Trump also took a swipe at the former administration, stating the US military had targeted this particular IS planner for years, but accused Joe Biden “and his cronies” of not acting quickly enough “to get the job done. I did!”

US forces killed IS leader, Bilal al-Sudani, and 10 of his operatives in a remote mountainous cave in northern Somalia in 2023, in an operation ordered by Biden.

IS rose to international prominence in the 2010s, particularly in Syria and Iraq, but now its presence is mainly restricted to parts of Africa.

The Somali branch of IS was formed in 2015 by a group of defectors from the al-Qaeda affiliated al-Shabab group – the largest jihadist group in Somalia.

IS in Somalia is notorious for extorting locals and mainly carries out small-scale, sporadic attacks, according to the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The high fashion industry has always been synonymous with thinness, but for a brief moment in the 2010s, the body positivity movement was at the forefront.

It promised a revolution of accepting bodies of all shapes and sizes, welcomed curves and advocated for inclusion, particularly on the runway.

But 10 years on, industry insiders tell us things have shifted. Was body positivity a flash-in-the-pan trend? And with help with weight loss medication such as Ozempic, is skinny back for good?

We speak to designers, casting agents and models at Paris Fashion Week to investigate what is happening.

The body positivity movement finds its origins in the hazy days of the 1960s and was helped by icons like Marilyn Monroe who broadened Hollywood’s rigid beauty standard.

It was brought to the forefront again in the 2010s, when Instagram was launched and influencers began to highlight fashion and beauty outside of the glossy magazines and runways.

Helping this was the celebrity Kardashian family, whose curves triggered BBLs (Brazilian butt lift surgery) around the world.

Enrika, a 28-year-old plus-sized model, said: “When the body positivity movement emerged, it felt incredibly empowering and liberating.”

“It felt like an act of rebellion – what had always been criticised was now being appreciated. It was as if we had finally had enough of being judged.”

Plus-size models were being booked for big brands, including Rihanna’s highly coveted lingerie label, ‘Savage x Fenty’ which launched in 2018.

The brand, valued at $1bn, became known for its runway extravaganzas, reminiscent of a modern alternative to the iconic Victoria’s Secret shows, but this time with every body type on display.

Felicity Hayward, a 36-year-old plus-sized model, reflects on being scouted in 2011.

“When I got that call from my first modelling agency Storm – who discovered Kate Moss – I thought I was being punk’d,” she said.

“Before the 2010s, attitudes around bigger bodies weren’t positive and I never thought being a plus-size model was a possibility.

“Seeing that narrative change over the last decade and a half has been life changing both emotionally, physically and financially.”

But then around 2020, progress started to slow. And come the Autumn/Winter of 2024, of the 8,800 looks across 230 shows, just 0.8 per cent were on plus-size models, Vogue reports

At the same time, a new weight loss drug used to treat diabetes came onto the market and skyrocketed in popularity. Semaglutide, also known as Ozempic, Mounjaro and Wegovy, curbs the appetite of users, and was approved by the NHS for weight loss in 2023.

Celebrities including Elon Musk started crediting the drug for their newly slim frame and it was only a matter of time before that trickled down to consumers.

As Ozempic and its counterparts become more commercially available for aesthetic purposes, industry insiders claim it has affected the body positivity movement.

A former model, Moya, said: “We’ve seen how quickly the narrative shifted, with celebrities and influencers using surgeries or medication like Ozempic to chase what’s considered ‘in Vogue’.”

Another model, Jenny, said: “When I realised skinny was back, it was positive because I was going to get more jobs.

“But I’ve realised it means now I have to keep up. Now I have to be the skinniest.”

Even the editorial director of British Vogue said that the fashion industry “should be concerned” by a recent trend back to using more skinny models

Chioma Nnadi told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I do think maybe perhaps Ozempic has something to do with it.”

“We’re in this moment where we’re seeing the pendulum sort of swing back to skinny being ‘in’ and often these things are treated like a trend and we don’t want them to be.”

Then Berlin brand, Namilia, went viral for an “I love Ozempic” T-shirt on their Fashion Week runway.

“The ‘I love Ozempic’ tee really hit a nerve,” laughed Nan Li, the brand’s creative director who claims the T-shirt was satire.

“With the rise of Ozempic, so many people are using it. Over the last few years, celebrities just lost weight and didn’t talk about it.”

Fast-forward to January, when Men’s AW25 Fashion Week lands in Paris and audiences get a litmus test in real-time of exactly where brands stand.

Aside from a selection of designers, including Rick Owens, LGN and Charles Jeffrey LOVERBOY, I can count on two hands how many plus-sized models I saw at a week of shows.

Nan Li said: “Paris celebrates elitism, and elitism means skinny and white.”

“There’s a handful of plus-sized models [at the shows] but they’re not really plus – they’re normal-sized. They are cast in every show to make the brand appear body positive.”

Amidst the hustle and bustle of fashion week, Shaun Beyen, casting director for iconic French brand Fursac, told the BBC: “The only motivation for a brand is to sell clothes – that’s it. I don’t think we need to lie about this.

“Brands adopted body positivity in the 2010s because in part they saw it as a commercial opportunity, and when they saw it was no longer performing as they would hope in 2020, they hopped off.”

Beyen added: “Full transparency – I don’t really want to see clothes on someone like me. I want to see it on somebody I aspire to look like.”

Gauthier Borsarello, Fursac’s creative director, laughed in agreement and said: “I hate my body. I don’t want to see clothes on people like me.”

On the other hand, designers like Charles Jeffrey believe brands have a moral imperative to cast inclusively. “Body positivity was never a trend for me,” he said. “It was an opportunity to start being responsible.”

Body positivity is knitted into the very fabric of Charles’ brand, which takes inspiration from the queer nightlife scene. This is readily apparent throughout his Paris Fashion Week show.

The designer explained: “The people in my shows are people I was clubbing with. It was never about models, it was my friends and their different body shapes. It was about the community I surrounded myself with.”

It seem the reality is that designers like Charles are the exception to the rule. As much as activists resist it, industry insiders confirm that body positivity is behind us.

Daniel Mitchell-Jones, co-founder of modelling agency Chapter Management, said: “Yes, things have shifted. In 2020 and 2021, we saw so much more diversity and inclusion on the runways – but body-wise, that’s taken a backseat now.”

Daniel said when he sends his curve models to castings, they’re always pushed, but is often told the brand isn’t interested this season.

Plus-size model Enrika told the BBC that not only are plus-sized models being booked less, their agents are actively struggling to secure work for them.

She explained: “It’s not unusual to see campaigns featuring four sample-size models and only one plus-size model. This can make you feel like you’re just a token.”

Enrika said these brands sometimes often use tactics in campaigns to virtue-signal being inclusive – such as highlighting stretch marks on plus-sized models, whilst airbrushing them on others.

She said: “It sends the message that ‘We don’t actually think you look as good as the slim models in our skirt. But we accept you because we are such kind-hearted good people, so please give us your hard-earned money’, it’s nasty work and I don’t support it.”

If you want change, change your buying habits. At least, that’s what Shaun Beyen, believes: “Everything is consumer-driven”.

“It’s this kind of vicious circle. Every fashion house gives their version of what they know the customer wants, it’s their interpretation and it’s up to the consumer.”

Gauthier Borsarello said: “There’s a famous French saying: ‘If people stop producing, people will stop buying.’ But the inverse is true. If people stop buying, we stop producing.

“No-one is forcing you to do anything. It’s an education of the customer: In a polite way – educate yourself.”

And the one benefit of bodies as trends is that the pendulum will eventually swing back. Beyen said: “Nothing is ever gone, especially not in fashion.”

Three Israeli hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza were released from captivity on Saturday, in exchange for 183 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

Yarden Bibas, 34, Ofer Kalderon, 53, and Keith Siegel, 65, were handed over to the Red Cross – the latest hostages to be released as part of a ceasefire deal struck last month.

Palestinian prisoners were taken in buses to Gaza and the West Bank, many of them coming from the nearby Ofer prison.

The tone of the exchange sat in stark contrast to Thursday’s chaotic handover, during which surging crowds pressed in on hostages, eliciting concern for their safety and prompting Israel to delay that day’s release of Palestinian prisoners.

Saturday’s release was more orderly, but retained the presentational elements that sought to project that Hamas remains the governing force in Gaza.

Lines of armed fighters kept crowds at bay, while the men who were released were flanked by more armed and masked fighters. A banner behind them bore the images of killed Hamas leaders.

Officials from the Red Cross signed certificates of release for Mr Kalderon and Mr Bibas, who were then made to hold them as they waved to the crowd in Khan Younis.

As Mr Siegel, a US-Israeli dual national, appeared on stage in Gaza City, a crowd gathered in Hostages Square in Tel Aviv erupted into cheers, some chanting: “He’s a hero, he’s a hero.” One woman described feeling “pure happiness”.

Mr Siegel’s wife, Adrienne, said “there’s no one happier than me” as she was filmed getting into a car to go and meet her husband.

The family of French-Israeli Mr Kalderon said in a statement that they were “overwhelmed with joy, relief, and emotion after 484 long and difficult days of unbearable waiting”.

They added that he “endured months in a nightmare”, holding onto the “hope of embracing his children again”.

But others, like Liz Domsky, had mixed feelings. “They all need to come home,” she said while watching the proceedings from Hostages Square.

Mr Siegel’s niece, Tal Wax, told the BBC: “We’re all very, very excited to have Keith back home but very worried to see the state that he came back to us in. Although we can see that he is able to walk and talk, we see that he has lost a lot of weight.”

She added: “Obviously our family are very excited for Keith but it’s still a very bitter moment. [The other families] have to have this moment just like us.”

There was a similar complexity of emotion in Israel over the release of Mr Bibas, whose wife, Shiri, and two young sons, Ariel and Kfir, were also kidnapped during the 7 October 2023 attack by Hamas.

Hamas claimed that they had been killed by an Israeli air strike early on in the ensuing war – but they were then named in a list of hostages it said in January it was willing to free.

Holding up an image of Kfir, who was just nine months old when he was taken, Andrea Wittenberg remarked: “They are children. They should be at home. It is impossible for them to be in Gaza.”

She added: “I don’t want to give up.”

Israeli President Isaac Herzog described Mr Bibas’s return as “simply heartbreaking”, saying his country remained “deeply concerned” about their fate. “As an entire nation we hold them in our hearts,” he wrote.

Herzog added that each released hostage “deserves the time to rehabilitate and rebuild their lives, and every one of the hostages deserves to come home soon”.

In Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, buses of freed Palestinian prisoners were met by large and jubilant crowds.

“Today we were born again…we left the narrowness of the graves to the spaciousness of the world,” Nasrallah Muammar, who was released after 17 years in prison, said in his first statement, according to Palestinian media.

“I feel joy despite the journey of pain and hardship that we lived,” Ali Al-Barghouti, who was serving two life sentences, told Reuters.

A majority of the prisoners were held on what Israel calls “administrative detention” – what critics say is imprisonment without charge. Some had been found guilty of serious crimes.

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Association said 54 had received long sentences and 18 were serving life in prison.

Saturday’s hostage release was more organised than the one on Thursday, when two Israelis and five Thai nationals were led through cheering crowds, who at times had to be pushed out of the way.

Efrat Machikawa, the niece of 80-year-old Gadi Moses, among those released, said her uncle thought it was the “end of his life” as the crowd surrounded him, and praised the “brave” Red Cross workers who had facilitated his release.

Described as “shocking scenes” by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel demanded – and received assurances – that they would not be repeated.

International Committee of the Red Cross President Mirjana Spoljaric had urged that security around the handovers be improved and they “take place in a safe and dignified manner”.

According to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, nearly 47,500 people have been killed in the territory since Israel invaded in the wake of the 7 October 2023 attack, in which around 1,200 Israelis were killed and 251 taken hostage.

A ceasefire and hostage release agreement between Israel and Hamas began on 19 January, with the first stage to see 33 hostages and 1,900 prisoners released, as well as hundreds of lorries carrying humanitarian aid being allowed into Gaza each day.

The Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt – a key humanitarian corridor – was also reopened on Saturday, after eight months of being closed.

The Gaza health ministry said 50 patients had left via the crossing to access medical care in Egypt.

Hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have also been allowed to return to their homes in northern Gaza this week.

But Ashraf al-Dous, among them, said that some, including his father, have gone back to the south after seeing the scale of the destruction caused by Israeli air strikes.

“It’s really a mess,” he said. “The situation is catastrophic.”

Most of the floors in his apartment building in northern Gaza City have been destroyed, he said. “I didn’t expect the situation to be like this – it’s too much.”

Additional reporting by Mallory Moench

Family, friends and fans have turned out for the funeral of singer Linda Nolan.

A memorial for the Dublin-born star was held at St Paul’s Church, Blackpool, where she also married her husband Brian Hudson. The couple were married for 26 years before his death in 2007.

Along with her sisters, she was part of pop group The Nolans, known for their hit I’m in the Mood for Dancing, and died on 15 January aged 65, two decades after she was first diagnosed with cancer.

In a eulogy, her sister Denise Nolan-Anderson said “she would have loved all the fuss today”.

Entertainers including Shane Richie and Paul Elliott, the comedian better known as Paul Chuckle, were among those who attended.

Elliott said of the singer: “She was just a fun, bubbly person. The world’s a darker place without her.”

He said they had performed together in pantomimes and at charity functions, and they last met for lunch in 2024.

“She was just a wonderful person, we always got on well,” he added.

Members of the public applauded as the hearse, carrying a pink glittery coffin, arrived at the church for the service at 10:30 GMT.

Her sisters Anne, Maureen, Coleen and Denise walked with other family members, who wore black but some had pink ribbons pinned to their outfits or carried pink handbags.

They lined the path as the coffin, topped with flowers, was carried into the church while The Faith Hill song There You’ll Be was played.

Denise Nolan-Anderson’s eulogy said: “She really loved going to premieres and opening nights, having her beautiful hair and make-up done, and always was the life and soul of any big occasion.”

She said the singer had so many friends “who adored her”.

Describing her sister’s cancer diagnosis, she told the church: “She said the hair loss was the worst thing for her.”

She said the diagnosis, along with losing her husband Brian and sister Bernie, could have “destroyed” a lesser person.

Nolan-Anderson added: “Not Linda, instead she chose to help raise millions for cancer research.”

She said her sister showed “courage in the face of adversity”.

“It’s time to rest now Linda. The battle is over. You are free,” she said.

A recording of Linda singing When It’s Over was played after the eulogy.

Stars including comedian Tommy Cannon and singer Lisa Maffia also arrived for the service, where a framed photo of Nolan was placed on an easel outside the church.

Charlotte Dawson, daughter of comedian Les Dawson, Lee Brennan from boyband 911 and Coronation Street actress Jodie Prenger were also among the mourners.

Nolan’s sister Anne had earlier posted on social media that Linda would be “thrilled” if her friends and fans came to say their goodbyes.

The Instagram message called Nolan a “beloved sister, friend and entertainer” along with a “symbol of hope, humour and resilience”.

Mourners signed a book of condolence outside, with fans who gathered to pay their respects in the cold weather kept warm with cups of tea handed out by a resident.

Nolan, who rose to fame in family group The Nolans with sisters Coleen, Maureen, Bernie, Denise and Anne, had long been a campaigner and fundraiser for cancer awareness, having been diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005.

She was given the all-clear in 2011, but in 2017 was diagnosed with secondary breast cancer, which later spread.

The singer was admitted to Blackpool Victoria Hospital with double pneumonia in January, before going into a coma, her manager Dermot McNamara said.

She died “with her loving siblings by her bedside”, he added.

Nolan appeared on Celebrity Big Brother and her musical theatre career included Blood Brothers, Pump Boys And Dinettes and Prisoner Cell Block H – The Musical, with Paul O’Grady.

The body of a second woman has been found near where two missing sisters were last seen in Aberdeen.

Henrietta and Eliza Huszti – both 32 and from a set of triplets – were last seen near the River Dee on 7 January.

Officers found the second body in an area of the river near to the Victoria Bridge at about 21:05 on Friday. The first body had been found near Queen Elizabeth Bridge at about 07:55.

Police Scotland said the Huszti family had been informed. Inquires are ongoing but there are no apparent suspicious circumstances.

Supt David Howieson said: “Our thoughts remain with the Huszti family and we are keeping them fully updated following these recoveries.

“We know how much of an impact this has had in Aberdeen and much further afield and I would like to thank everyone who has assisted with our investigation.”

The disappearance of the two sisters – originally from Hungary – sparked a major search operation.

Both women were last seen on Market Street at the Victoria Bridge over the River Dee at about 02:12 on 7 January.

Earlier this week, Police Scotland said searches of the river and the harbour area had ended.

But the force said inquiries would be ongoing and coastal areas north and south of the city would continue to be searched.

Detectives previously revealed the sisters visited the Victoria Bridge the day before they disappeared.

They also texted their landlady from the bridge area in the early hours of 7 January to say they would not return to their flat.

The Victoria Bridge and Queen Elizabeth Bridge are about half a mile apart on the River Dee.

Officers have been treating the search as a missing persons inquiry and not a criminal investigation.

The sisters, who moved to Scotland 10 years ago, had not told relatives they planned to imminently move out of their rented Aberdeen flat.

They had been saving up to buy a property but their brother Jozsef told BBC News earlier this month it was “strange” the family did not know they had decided to end their tenancy.

He said: “They wrote a message to their landlady that they wanted to immediately end their tenancy agreement. We didn’t have any information about that.

“So that’s the strange thing, that the girls didn’t tell us anything about that.

“They never mentioned any such plan.”

President Donald Trump has caused controversy after suggesting that diversity programmes supported by his predecessors played a role in Wednesday’s mid-air collision between a passenger jet and helicopter in Washington DC.

In a news conference on Thursday, Trump said that under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden candidates with “severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities” could be hired as air traffic controllers (ATCs). He suggested, without offering any evidence, that this could be to blame for the crash.

When challenged by reporters about why he thought this, he responded: “Because I have common sense.”

The investigation into the cause of the crash – which officials say killed 67 people – is continuing. The president has also blamed the helicopter’s flight path for the collision.

Some aviation experts said that while there had been diversity recruitment schemes within the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), ATC candidates still had to pass rigorous medical and psychological tests.

BBC Verify has looked into the facts behind the president’s claims.

President Trump said a “diversity push” by the FAA – the US government agency in charge of civil aviation – had focused “on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities”.

He added: “They can be air traffic controllers.”

The president appeared to be referring to diversity and inclusion policies established during the Obama administration. They included “targeted disabilities that the federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring”.

Details were available on the FAA website until December. BBC Verify found an archived version of the page.

It listed a number of “targeted disabilities”: “Hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism”.

The FAA employs around 45,000 people, of which ATC staff number about 14,000.

A new programme was established in 2019, during Trump’s first term in office, seeking to give people with disabilities a pathway to work in air traffic operations.

An FAA press release at the time said the aim was to “help prepare people with disabilities for careers in air traffic operations” and that up to 20 people would train for up to one year at a number of air traffic control centres.

It also emphasised that “candidates in this program will receive the same rigorous consideration in terms of aptitude, medical and security qualifications as those individuals considered for a standard public opening for air traffic controller jobs”.

One of the first three graduates of the program became an air traffic control trainee in August 2021, the FAA said in a blogpost.

Candidates seeking to become ATCs have to go through years of training, as well as physical and mental tests. The FAA says they are screened during the recruitment process for psychological issues.

Randy Babbitt – a former head of the FAA – told the NewsNation network: “They have very, very high standards to be an air traffic controller. Diversity has nothing to do with it.”

BBC Verify has asked the FAA if it has hired any air traffic controllers with severe intellectual or psychiatric disabilities since 2013, but is yet to hear back.

When talking about standards in the aviation agency under the Obama administration, Trump said: “They actually came out with a directive, too white.”

In 2011 Obama did introduce an initiative to make the FAA a “more diverse and inclusive workplace” – although this didn’t label the agency “too white”.

The Obama administration also added a “biographical questionnaire” to the air traffic control recruitment process as part of efforts to hire more diverse candidates.

This came after several reviews had found equal opportunity issues with the FAA’s hiring process.

In 2019, a legal firm filed a lawsuit against the FAA because of this questionnaire on behalf of more than 2,500 aspiring air traffic controllers.

According to the firm, the questionnaire awarded higher points to candidates for selecting certain answers to multiple choice questions about their socio-economic background.

On one question about job history, it claimed, an applicant would be awarded the highest points available if they indicated that they had not been employed in the last three years.

BBC Verify has not been able to independently verify the marking system for the questionnaire.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit argue that they were discriminated against by the FAA because they did not fit its “preferred ethnic profile as determined in the biographical questionnaire”.

The FAA and the Department of Transportation are contesting the lawsuit.

The questionnaire was removed for air traffic controllers in 2018 under Trump.

In 2024, it was removed for wider FAA hiring, after Republicans in Congress introduced a provision to scrap the biographical questionnaire into a funding bill, which was signed by then-President Biden.

The diversity of the FAA workforce, on some measures, has gradually increased in recent years, according to the agency’s Office of Civil Rights.

In 2016, under Obama, white men made up 59% of the workforce and people with targeted disabilities made up 0.7%.

In 2020, the final year of Trump’s first term, 57% were white men and 1% of the workforce had targeted disabilities.

In 2023, those figures stood at 55% and 2%.

Pilot Mike Slack was in the cockpit during a descent into Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport nearly two decades ago when he noticed something on the runway.

Mr Slack, a licensed pilot and now aviation attorney, was sitting in the right pilot seat as his plane prepared to land on Runway 33 – the same runway the doomed American Airlines flight approached when it collided mid-air with a helicopter this week.

A departing Cessna citation plane was pulling onto the runway to take off. His aircraft quickly aborted the landing, climbed back into the sky and began circling the airport to try again – a flight manoeuvre called a sudden go-around.

“That was one of those moments you go, ‘Man that was close and that was tight,’” he told the BBC.

While near-misses at the airport and across the country are far from the norm, and fatal collisions are even rarer, Wednesday’s crash, in which 67 people died, has renewed calls to re-evaluate safety protocols and shone a spotlight on air traffic at Reagan National airport.

“When something like this happens, typically it’s something that’s slipped past many safeguards,” said retired air-traffic controller Ron Bazman, whose son, wife and brother have also all worked as controllers. “Rarely is it a smoking gun.”

The cause of the collision is still being determined, but media and the White House have zeroed in on actions taken by the helicopter and on air traffic control staffing on the night of the crash as they speculate on what went wrong. It is the worst mid-air collision in America since the 1980s.

MIT aeronautics professor R. John Hansman said that it’s important to take stock of safety concerns, but also to recognise that the American aviation system is one of the safest in the world.

“This was terrible,” he said, noting there hasn’t been a major commercial plane crash since 2009. “But it isn’t like the system is falling apart.”

Since his comments, a small medical transport plane crashed into buildings in Philadelphia on Friday evening, just two days after the Washington crash. The jet was carrying four crew members, a child patient and the patient’s escort, Jet Rescue Air Ambulance said in a statement.

The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are investigating the crash. In a statement, President Donald Trump said: “So sad to see the plane go down in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. More innocent souls lost.”

An American Airlines flight that had departed from Wichita, Kansas, was coming in for a landing when it collided with a Sikorsky H-60 Black Hawk helicopter on Wednesday evening. The army helicopter had taken off from Fort Belvoir, close by in Virginia, on a training mission.

Recordings of air traffic control conversations published online suggest that a controller warned the helicopter about the jet in the seconds before the collision. The helicopter pilot appeared to confirm they were aware of the plane, but moments later the two aircraft collided.

Located in Virginia at the heart of the capital area, the airport has become exceptionally popular with travellers, but it faces numerous logistical challenges, such as congestion in the air space and shorter runways.

With nearly 400 flights daily and around 22,000 commercial flights per year, it provides direct service to 98 destinations in the US and Canada and is a feeder airport to international hubs in areas like Philadelphia, Charlotte, Atlanta and New York.

Several pilots the BBC spoke with said that flying in and out of the small airport on the edge of the US capital can be a nail-biting experience.

“There are times when we are watching planes land and we find ourselves saying ‘whoa that is close’,” said pilot Mo Khimji, noting that strong crosswinds can push a plane into restricted airspace “by a whisker” if the pilot is not careful.

Multiple types of aircraft share the airspace, from Air Force One carrying the president to commercial flights and military helicopters. And at night, city lights reflect off the Potomac River, making visibility and spotting other aircraft even tougher.

It is also smaller than other airports, such as nearby Dulles International Airport, with Mr Slack calling it a postage stamp.

“It’s a challenging arrival, challenging approach. You’ve got traffic all around you – above, below and to each side,” he said.

Mr Slack’s experience of a near-miss is not an isolated incident. Just 24 hours before the deadly collision, a military helicopter came too close to a different regional jet, which then performed a sudden go-around, according to a list of incidents and accidents from the FAA.

After several national incidents in 2023, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered a safety review warning that “one close call is one too many”.

The review raised alarms.

“Inadequate, inconsistent funding”, as well as staffing shortages, had led to an “erosion” of safety standards that made “the current level of safety unsustainable”, it found.

Chronic air traffic control staffing shortages impact the FAA’s ability to maintain safety standards, the 2023 safety review found.

Last year, the agency barely exceeded its hiring target of 1,800 controllers – by 11. But the 2023 review found those very targets were insufficient to “adequately satisfy system needs”.

Prof Hansman said staffing issues have been a “perpetual” concern, as waves of employees have retired. Mr Bazman, the retired air traffic controller, said Covid made a lot of staffing issues worse.

“It’s a domino effect, it really is,” he said.

Training for the highly specialised job of safely guiding aircraft, often full of people, into the air and onto the ground can take as long as three years.

When staff is short, available workers are put into the most critical positions and some roles go unfilled.

Prof Hansman cautioned against blaming the controller shortage for the recent collision, saying: “There is no indication that there was a controller incompetency issue.”

With the budget for the FAA determined by Congress – and the leader of the FAA appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate – the organisation can sometimes fall prey to the ups and downs of Capitol Hill, the safety review found.

The chronic controller shortage was made worse when a 35-day US government shutdown that started in 2018 put a pause on hiring.

Political pressure has also impacted Reagan, specifically.

Last year, US lawmakers tried to add landing spots there through the FAA’s budget reauthorisation just two weeks after a near-miss at the airport – a move Virginia Senator Tim Kaine opposed.

“We should not be jamming more flights onto the busiest runway in the United States,” Kaine told fellow lawmakers.

Then, there is the steady rotation of people at the top, in the role of FAA administrator. In three years, the agency has had just as many administrators.

When the American Airlines jet and helicopter collided on Wednesday, there was, in fact, no FAA administrator.

The Biden-appointee Michael Whitaker had resigned in December, just one year into his five-year term. Media reported the early departure was spurred by an adviser to President Donald Trump, Elon Musk, who had called for Whitaker’s resignation after the FAA proposed fining his rocket company SpaceX $600,000 for alleged launch violations.

While Trump has named an acting administrator in the wake of the crash, the permanent administrator will need to go through a congressional approval process.

Prof Hansman said the rotating door of administrators makes it harder to make substantive changes or improvements.

“It keeps keeping on, it keeps operating the way it has,” he said.

But after Wednesday’s crash, change should be expected, Todd Inman, of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), told media Friday evening.

“Our job is to find the facts. More importantly, our job is the make sure this tragedy doesn’t happen again – regardless of what anyone may be saying,” he said.

“We will be advocating for years for changes that need to be made.”

Women who were once members of a secretive Christian sect in the United States have told the BBC they were coerced by the church into giving up their children for adoption.

Hundreds of adoptions could have taken place between the 1950s and 1990s, say former members.

Some of the children who were adopted within the church have told us they were then subjected to abuse and neglect in their adoptive families.

The claims follow a BBC investigation last year into allegations of child sexual abuse spanning decades within the church, which is believed to have up to 100,000 members worldwide and is often referred to as The Truth or the Two by Twos. The FBI has since launched an investigation.

Warning: this story contains details some may find distressing.

Four women – who were all unmarried at the time – have told us they were given no option but to give up their babies. Three of them feared being cast out of the church and sent to hell if they refused.

One says she was pressured into giving her baby to a married couple in the church after she was raped in 1988, age 17.

“My fear of going to hell was so great that it forced me to make up my mind to give up the baby to this couple in the church,” she told the BBC.

Another says she wasn’t allowed to see her baby daughter before the child was taken away forever.

The BBC has also spoken to six people given up for adoption as babies between the 1960s and 1980s. One woman says she was physically and emotionally abused in her first adoptive family in the church, and sexually abused in the second.

The adopted children – born all over the US – are referred to within the church as “Baldwin Babies” because the adoptions were overseen by Wally Baldwin, a doctor from the sect who died in 2004.

Some of the women would stay at his home in Oregon during pregnancy, according to a minister who used to work with Dr Baldwin.

The exact number of Baldwin Babies is unclear. The BBC has spoken to the late doctor’s adopted son, Gary Baldwin, who said the original records were no longer available but he believed the number to be “less than 200”.

He said that “inevitably” mistakes were made by his father’s vetting system but that his intentions were good. Others we spoke to also said they remembered Dr Baldwin fondly.

Because The Truth has no official leader, the BBC instead contacted six of its most senior current officials – known as “overseers” – for comment. We received one response. The overseer told us any adoptions he was aware of had been done “through legal channels” and he had “heard some beautiful stories”.

One woman who was adopted recalled seeing hundreds of photos in an album Dr Baldwin would keep of the children whose adoptions he had organised in The Truth.

Another man who was adopted told us he had personally connected with more than 100 Baldwin babies and mothers.

The church, founded in Ireland by a Scottish evangelist in 1897, is built around ministers – known as workers – spreading New Testament teachings through word-of-mouth.

Most of the mothers the BBC spoke to believe the workers – and The Truth as an institution – should shoulder most of the responsibility for the trauma caused by the adoptions.

“Somewhere the church got off track and it became a fear-based cult and I was forced to make a choice,” says Melanie Williams, 62, who gave up her baby for adoption in January 1981.

At 18, Melanie became pregnant after falling “madly in love” with a boy from her school.

Not only were the pair unmarried, but the father was not a member of The Truth and refused to become one. This meant Melanie had committed a “terrible sin” in the eyes of local workers.

The workers and her family decided that she could only continue to attend church meetings if she gave her baby to another family in the sect.

“If I keep this baby, I’m going to go to hell. If I keep the baby, I can’t go home,” Melanie recalls thinking.

She gave birth in a Catholic hospital in Oklahoma, where she was discreetly put in a room on her own.

She remembers being shouted at by a doctor when she began to cry during labour.

Melanie’s baby was whisked away before it made a sound and she says she didn’t know whether she’d had a girl or a boy.

The new mother was left wondering if her child might be dead.

When she eventually found out the baby was alive, she told a nurse she was wavering on whether to go through with the adoption and wanted to hold her baby.

“You can’t ever hold your baby,” came the reply.

Years later, Melanie managed to track her daughter down – but she didn’t want to meet.

Deb Adadjo, 54, was also unsure about giving up her baby, but felt too much pressure at the time to refuse the workers, who threatened to ban her from church meetings – which in The Truth meant you not only got thrown out of the church, but also ended up in hell.

She became pregnant after being raped in 1988.

Recalling holding her newborn, she says – “I can still feel her against my chest right now.”

“In our last moments together, I remember just cuddling with her and telling her that I loved her and that I was sorry, over and over again,” she adds.

“I had to let her go, I had no options.”

Deb later met her daughter, but they are no longer in regular contact.

Sherlene Eicher, 63, from Iowa, says she never stopped thinking about the daughter she felt her parents pressured her to give up in 1982.

She briefly got to hold and feed her newborn before they were separated.

Sherlene would hold a private birthday celebration for her daughter every year.

“When her birthday would come around I would get her a birthday card and a couple times I made a cake,” she says.

“I would journal a lot too – wondering where she was, what she was like, what she might be going through at the age she was.”

Then in 2004, Sherlene’s daughter got in touch by email and they met. They are close to this day.

“When we finally met, we just hugged and hugged and hugged,” says Sherlene.

“We talk for like two or three hours on the phone – she’s a pretty incredible woman.”

Those interviewed said the adoption system involved very little vetting and this set-up the potential for abusive situations. They said when a baby was on the way, Dr Baldwin would contact workers for referrals, and they would recommend a family in the sect to place the child with.

Of the six Baldwin Babies who spoke to the BBC, two faced sexual, physical and emotional abuse in their adoptive families, while one said she had been subjected to emotional abuse by her adoptive father.

One woman said she was removed from her first adoptive home by social services because of extreme physical abuse and was placed in the home of a church “elder” – a person of seniority who holds meetings in their own home – and his wife. She said the couple started sexually abusing her within weeks, when she was 15.

• If you are affected by any of the issues in this story, visit the BBC Action Line

Another woman said she was beaten by her adoptive parents on a daily basis and sexually abused by an uncle in her adoptive family when she was five.

Since reports of widespread child sexual abuse started spreading within the church two years ago, former and current members have started connecting in Facebook groups, including Baldwin mothers and babies.

“The moms – I know how they feel and I have so much empathy for them. I cry for their stories when they write them. But for myself I have cried all the tears I can cry,” says Deb.

“It has been like finding my tribe,” says Melanie. “I’m not alone any more.”

“Our moms were afraid to hug us, our dads were ashamed of us, and the church would only accept us if we made the ultimate sacrifice.”

“And all these years later, we are all going to be OK.”

A British-Israeli woman who was held hostage by Hamas in Gaza for 15 months says she was detained for some time at United Nations facilities.

During a phone call with UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, Emily Damari – who was released earlier this month – said she was held at sites belonging to the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa).

She also said she was denied medical treatment during her captivity, despite being shot in the hand and leg.

In a statement, Unrwa said claims that hostages had been held on UN premises were “very serious” and that it had repeatedly called for independent investigations into claims Palestinian armed groups, including Hamas, were misusing the facilities.

Israel has repeatedly accused personnel from Unrwa of being involved in the 7 October attacks and said that its buildings in Gaza were used by Hamas. The Israeli government plans to ban the organisation from operating.

During the call with Downing Street, Ms Damari said that while being held at an Unrwa facility, her captors only provided her with an out-of-date bottle of iodine to treat gunshot wounds in her leg and her left hand, on which she lost two fingers.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s PM programme, Unrwa’s director of communications Juliette Touma was asked about Ms Damari’s claims. She said: “For many, many months we did not have access to several of our facilities.

“So the vast majority of our buildings were turned into shelters when the war started.

“At some point we had a million people in those shelters.”

A Downing Street spokesperson said they “welcome the fact that Unrwa have said there should be an investigation into the use of their facilities”.

Ms Damari, now 28, also used the call with Sir Keir to thank people in the UK who campaigned for her release.

A ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas will see the gradual release of hostages being held in Gaza, in exchange for Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons.

Three more hostages are set to be released on Saturday, while 183 Palestinian prisoners are expected to be freed.

Some 251 hostages were taken by Hamas when it attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, killing about 1,200 people.

The attack triggered a war which has devastated Gaza. Israel’s 15-month military offensive killed 47,460 Palestinians in the territory, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

A hiss and puff of compressed air shapes the smooth leather, bringing to life an all-American cowboy boot in a factory on China’s eastern coast.

Then comes another one as the assembly line continues, the sounds of sewing, stitching, cutting and soldering echoing off the high ceilings.

“We used to sell around a million pairs of boots a year,” says the 45-year-old sales manager, Mr Peng, who did not wish to reveal his first name.

That is, until Donald Trump came along.

A slew of tariffs in his first presidential term triggered a trade war between the world’s two largest economies. Six years on, Chinese businesses are bracing themselves for a sequel now that he is back in the White House.

“What direction should we take in the future?” Mr Peng asks, uncertain of what Trump 2.0 means for him, his colleagues – and China.

For Western markets that are increasingly wary of Beijing’s ambitions, trade has become a powerful bargaining chip – especially as a sluggish Chinese economy relies ever more on exports. Trump returned on a campaign promise that included crushing tariffs against Chinese-made goods, and has since threatened a 10% levy that is expected to take effect on 1 February.

He has also ordered a review of US-China trade – which buys Beijing time and Washington, negotiating room. And for now, harsher rhetoric (and higher tariffs) seem to be directed against US allies such as Canada and Mexico.

Trump may have pressed pause on the looming battle with Beijing. But many believe it’s still coming. It’s hard to find an exact figure on how many businesses are fleeing China, but major firms such as Nike, Adidas and Puma have already relocated to Vietnam. Chinese businesses too have been moving, reshaping supply chains, although Beijing remains a key player.

Mr Peng says his boss, who owns the factory, has considered moving production to South East Asia, along with many of their competitors.

It would save the firm, but they would lose their workforce. Most of the staff are from the nearby city of Nantong and have worked here for more than 20 years.

Mr Peng, whose wife died when their son was young, says the factory has been his family: “Our boss is determined not to abandon these employees.”

He is aware of the geopolitics at play, but he says he and his workers are just trying to make a living. They are still reeling from the impact of 2019, when a fourth round of Trump tariffs – 15% – hit Chinese-made consumer goods, such as clothes and shoes.

Orders have since dwindled and staff numbers, once more than 500, have dropped to just over 200. The evidence is in the empty work stations, as Mr Peng shows us around.

All around him, workers are cutting the leather into the right shape to hand it to the machinist. They have to be precise because mistakes will ruin the expensive leather, most of which has been imported from the US.

The factory is trying to keep costs low as some of their American buyers are already considering moving business away from China and the threat of tariffs.

But that would mean losing skilled workers: it can take up to a week to make one pair of boots, from flattening the leather to giving the finished boots a final polish and packing them for export.

This is what turned China into the world’s top manufacturer – labour-intensive production which is also cheap when it’s scaled up and supported by an unrivalled supply chain. And this has been years in the making.

“It was once a constant cycle of inspecting goods and shipping them out – I felt fulfilled,” says Mr Peng, who has worked here since 2015. “But orders have decreased, which makes me feel quite lost and anxious.”

Once crafted to conquer the Wild West, these cowboy boots have been made here for more than a decade. And this is a familiar story in the south of Jiangsu province, a manfucaturing hub along the Yangtze River that produces just about everything, from textiles to electric vehicles.

These are among the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods that China ships to the United States every year – a number that steadily ballooned as Washington became its biggest trading partner.

That status slipped under Trump. But it was not restored under his successor Joe Biden, who kept most Trump-era tariffs in place, as ties with Beijing frayed.

In fact, the European Union too has imposed tariffs on electric vehicle imports, accusing China of making too much, often with the support of state subsidies. Trump has echoed this – that China’s “unfair” trade practices disadvantage foreign comeptitors.

Beijing sees such rhetoric as Western attempts to stifle its growth, and it has repeatedly warned Washington that there will be no winners in a trade war. But it has also said it’s ready to talk and “properly handle differences”.

And President Trump, who has described tariffs as his “one big power” over China, certainly wants to talk.

It’s unclear as yet what he might want in return. During Trump’s honeymoon period with China in his first term he came to Beijing to ask for Xi’s help in meeting North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un. This time it is believed he might need Xi’s support to make a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine. He recently said that China had “a great deal of power over that situation”.

The threat of a 10% tariff is driven by the belief that China is “sending fentanyl to Mexico and Canada”. So he could demand that it do more to end that flow.

Or, given he welcomed a bidding war over TikTok, he may want to negotiate its ownership – or the prized technology that powers the app – because Beijing would need to agree to any such sale.

Whatever the deal may be, it could help reset US-China ties. However, the absence of one could abruptly end the chance of a second honeymoon, setting up Trump and Xi for a far more confrontational relationship.

Already business sentiment is nervous: an annual survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in China showed just over half of them were concerned about the US-China relationship deteriorating further.

Trump’s seemingly softer stance on China offers offers some relief. But his hope is still that the threat of tariffs will help drive buyers away from China and move manufacturing back to the US.

Some Chinese businesses are indeed on the move – but not to America.

An hour outside Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh, businessman Huang Zhaodong has built a new factory to cater to a flood of orders from US giants Walmart and Costco.

This is his second factory in Cambodia, and together they produce half a million garments a month, from shirts to underwear. Hangers carrying cotton trousers roll past us on an automated line, moving from one station to the next as the elastic waist is inserted and hemlines are finished.

Now, when prospective US customers lob the first question, which he has come to expect – where is he based – Mr Huang has the right answer. Not in China.

“In the case of some Chinese firms, their customers have told them: ‘If you don’t move production overseas, I’ll cancel your orders’.”

The tariffs raise tough choices for suppliers and retailers, but it’s not always clear who will bear the brunt of the cost. Sometimes it will be the customer, Mr Huang says.

“Take Walmart as an example. I sell them clothes at $5, but they usually mark it up 3.5 times. If the cost increases due to higher tariffs, the price I sell to them might rise to $6. If they mark it up by 3.5 times, the retail price would increase.”

But usually, he says, it is the supplier. If his production line was in China, he estimates an extra 10% tariff could take an extra $800,000 (£644,000) from his earnings.

“That’s more than what I make as profit. It’s huge and we can’t afford it. If you’re making clothes in China under such tariff conditions, it’s unsustainable,” he says.

Current US tariffs on Chinese goods vary from 100% on electric vehicles to 25% on steel and aluminium. Until now, several top-selling items have been exempt, including electronics, such as TVs and iPhones.

But the 10% blanket tariff Trump is proposing could affect the price of everything that is made in China and exported to the US. That applies to a lot of things – from toys and tea cups to laptops.

Mr Huang says this would encourage more factories to move elsewhere. Several new workshops have sprung up around him and Chinese companies from textile production heartlands such as Shandong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Guangdong are moving in to make winter jackets and woollen clothing.

Around 90% of clothing factories in Cambodia are now Chinese-run or Chinese-owned, according to a report by insight and analysis group Research and Markets.

Half of the country’s foreign investment flows from China. Seventy percent of roads and bridges were built using loans Beijing dispensed, according to Chinese state media.

Many of the signs on restaurants and shops are in Chinese as well as Khmer, the local language. There’s even a ring road named Xi Jinping Boulevard in honour of the Chinese president.

Cambodia is not a lone recipient. China has invested heavily in different parts of the world under President Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative – a trade and infrastructure project that also increases Beijing’s influence.

That means China has choices.

Chinese state media claims that more than half of China’s imports and exports now come from Belt and Road countries, most of them in South East Asia.

This has not happened overnight, says Kenny Yao from AlixPartners, who advises Chinese firms on how to deal with tariffs.

During Trump’s first term, many Chinese firms doubted his tariff threat, he told the BBC. Now they ask if he will follow the supply chain and slap tariffs on other countries.

Just in case he does, Mr Yao says, it would be wise for Chinese businesses to look further afield: “For example, Africa or Latin America. This is more difficult, but it is good to look at areas you have not explored before.”

As America pledges to look after itself first, Beijing is doing its best to appear a stable business partner, and there is some evidence it is working.

China has edged past the US to become the prevailing choice for countries in South East Asia, according to a survey by the Iseas Yusof-Ishak think tank in Singapore.

Even though production has moved abroad, money still flows to China – 60% of the materials being made into clothes at Mr Huang’s factories in Phnom Penh come from China.

And exports are thriving, with Beijing investing more heavily in high-end manufacturing, from solar panels to artificial intelligence. Last year’s trade surplus with the world – on the back of a nearly 6% year-on-year jump in exports – was a record $992bn.

Still, Chinese businesses – in Jiangsu and Phnom Penh – are preparing themselves for an uncertain spell, if not a turbulent one.

Mr Peng hopes the US and China can have an “amicable and calm” discussion to keep the tariffs “within a reasonable range” and avoid a trade war.

“Americans still need to purchase these products,” he said, before driving off to meet new customers.

A senior aide to Prince Andrew privately admitted to an alleged Chinese spy that the duke’s BBC Newsnight interview had been “ill advised”, court documents show.

Files reveal how the prince’s aide Dominic Hampshire thanked Yang Tengbo for standing by the embattled duke in the months after he sought to explain on TV his friendship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Last month a court rejected Mr Yang’s appeal against being banned from the UK, after an intelligence assessment that he could be secretly working for the Chinese state. Mr Yang has denied all wrongdoing.

It comes after separate court documents revealed the prince appeared to have been in touch with Epstein for longer than he had previously admitted.

An email from a “member of the British Royal Family”, believed to be Prince Andrew, was sent to Epstein in February 2011, court documents showed on Friday. In 2019, the duke had told Newsnight that he had not seen or spoken to Epstein since December 2010.

In the case related to Mr Yang, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac) previously said he had won an “unusual degree of trust” from the royal.

Mr Yang came to study in UK in 2002 and later set up a series of China-related travel and business consultancy firms.

He met the Duke of York in 2014 and later took on a role in the China-based version of Prince Andrew’s “Pitch@Palace” events, in which entrepreneurs sell their ideas to investors.

Documents disclosed to the BBC and other media outlets from the Siac case now show that friendship deepened in the wake of the November 2019 Newsnight interview, in which the duke was questioned over his relationship with Epstein, and denied assaulting Virginia Giuffre.

Mr Yang told the court “everything changed” after the interview, with international partners withdrawing or distancing themselves from Pitch@Palace.

He said he agreed to continue to support the events “at significant risk for me and my business reputationally” due to his admiration and respect for the duke, and a level of “loyalty and commitment” he felt.

Writing in March 2020, Prince Andrew’s senior aide Dominic Hampshire told Mr Yang how much his “principal” appreciated the fact that he had stood by him.

“We have dealt with the aftermath of a hugely ill-advised and unsuccessful television interview,” wrote Mr Hampshire on official Buckingham Palace notepaper.

“We have wisely navigated our way around former Private Secretaries and we have found a way to carefully remove those people who we don’t completely trust.”

Mr Hampshire added that “in what originally seemed like a lost cause” Mr Yang had “somehow to not only salvage but maintain and then incredibly, enhance the reputation of my principal in China”.

He continued: “Under your guidance, we found a way to get the relevant people unnoticed in and out of the house of Windsor.

“We orchestrated a very powerful verbal message of support to China at a Chinese New Year’s dinner and between the three of us, we have written, amended and then always agreed a number of letters at the highest level possible.”

Court documents from the Mr Yang case show Mr Hampshire said that since the Newsnight interview “numerous people” had shunned the prince because they had been “simply not true to their word or they are ‘red carpet chasers’.”

“I could list several high-profile and well-known names who are no longer around us and there are a very small number left – you remain as one of those and you continue to show total support and loyalty.”

He also sought to underline how close Mr Yang was to the duke because he had been invited to his 60th birthday dinner that year.

“This was strictly his and his family’s personal life that very, very few people have the privilege to ever be part of,” Mr Hampshire wrote.

He said a “solid and unbreakable base” had been formed “with all the respective parts in place for an extremely powerful (perhaps unparalleled) entity at the highest level possible”.

Police found the letter on Mr Yang’s phone when it was examined under counter-espionage powers.

A second letter from Mr Hampshire, sent in October 2020, confirmed to the businessman that he was authorised to represent Prince Andrew in China in relation to the Eurasia Fund, a financial initiative.

The aide stressed in the letter that any deals involving the duke must comply with British law and best practices.

But other material found on the phone led then Home Secretary Suella Braverman to ban Mr Yang from the UK in 2023. The police and MI5 suspected Mr Yang might be part of a Chinese Communist Party “elite capture” operation to exert influence on the prince.

Security experts say “elite capture” is a well-documented tactic used by the Chinese state to exert influence on people at the top of British life such as politicians, academics and business leaders.

Mr Yang continues to deny wrongdoing and is seeking to appeal his UK ban.

The court papers disclosed on Friday revealed that Mr Yang said all his meetings with the duke had occurred with the knowledge of Buckingham Palace – and all he had wanted to do was improve relations between the UK and China.

Mr Yang said that while he had once been a member of the Chinese Communist Party he had never been directed to interfere in British interests.

In a statement issued as the documents were released, he said: “I reiterate that the allegations against me are entirely unfounded.

“I am unable to know all the allegations and evidence against me. I have followed that process in good faith and provided full disclosure of all my business and personal affairs.”

Mr Yang said that the UK’s position on China was “inconsistent and erratic” and he had been the victim of a “media circus”.

In the Newsnight interview, the prince said he had not seen or spoken to Epstein since December 2010, when he visited the financier’s home in New York. The duke said this meeting was to end their relationship.

However, documents from a separate court case released on Friday suggested they were in touch via email in February 2011.

The case involves the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and banker Jes Staley, who was banned from senior positions after he mischaracterised his relationship with Epstein.

Staley is appealing against the FCA, but the financial watchdog’s evidence about Staley’s contact with Epstein also contains emails relating to a “member of the British Royal Family”, showing what seem to be friendly and familiar exchanges.

According to the court documents, on 27 February 2011, Epstein emailed: “jes staley will be in London on next tue afternoon, if you have time,” in messages first reported by business news agency Bloomberg.

There was a reply from the “member of the British Royal Family” with a question: “Jes is coming on 1st March or next week?”

The court documents said there was a “discussion of press articles” and then the message: “Keep in close touch and we’ll play some more soon!!!!”

Prince Andrew is believed to have first met Epstein in 1999, with the financier attending parties on royal estates between 2000 and 2006.

In 2008, Epstein was convicted in the US for procuring a minor for prostitution and was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

In July 2019, Epstein was arrested on charges of the sex trafficking of minors. He died in prison in August 2019 while awaiting trial.

In November that year, Prince Andrew was interviewed by Newsnight and in the subsequent fallout stepped down from royal duties.

This has been another bad day for Prince Andrew.

With some spectacular understatement, his close aide has been revealed as telling an alleged Chinese spy that the prince’s appearance on Newsnight had been “unsuccessful”.

That could sum up much of the following years, as he’s become an increasingly isolated figure, no longer a working royal.

The King, his brother, has cut him off financially, and there has been such pressure on him to move out of his Windsor mansion that it has been called the Siege of Royal Lodge.

The latest claims about his links to Jeffrey Epstein and his Chinese business connections will add to questions about his judgement.

Buckingham Palace will once again be alarmed by details such as the claim to the alleged spy that they had “found a way to get the relevant people unnoticed in and out the house in Windsor”.

The Duke of York’s office has been contacted for comment.

Additional reporting by Ian Aikman