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Investigators say they have found evidence of a bird strike on a passenger plane that crashed in South Korea in December, killing 179 people.

The feathers and blood stains on both engines of the Jeju Air plane were from the Baikal teal, a type of migratory duck that flies in large flocks, according to a preliminary investigation report published on Monday.

The inquiry into the crash – the deadliest on South Korean soil – will now focus on the role of the bird strike and a concrete structure at the end of the runway, which the plane crashed into.

The engines of the Boeing 737-800 will be torn down and the concrete structure will be examined further, the report said.

The Jeju Air plane took off from Bangkok in the morning of 29 December and was flying to Muan International Airport in the country’s south-west.

At about 08:57 local time, three minutes after pilots made contact with the airport, the control tower advised the crew to be cautious of “bird activity”.

At 08:59, the pilot reported that the plane had struck a bird and declared a mayday signal.

The pilot then requested permission to land from the opposite direction, during which it belly-landed without its landing gear deployed. It overran the runway and exploded after slamming into the concrete structure, the report said.

Authorities earlier said that flight data and cockpit voice recorders from the plane stopped recording about four minutes before the disaster.

Experts who had flown the same type of aircraft involved in the crash have also questioned the presence of the concrete barriers at the end of the runway – with some suggesting that the casualty toll would have been lower if they had not been there.

The concrete structure holds a navigation system that assists aircraft landings, known as a localiser.

South Korea’s transport ministry had said this system could also be found in other airports in the country and even overseas.

Last week, authorities announced that they will change the concrete barriers used for navigation at seven airports across the country. Seven airports will also have their runway safety areas adapted following a review.

The preliminary report has been submitted to the United Nations’ aviation agency and to the authorities of the United States, France and Thailand.

Four ancient gold artefacts were stolen from a Dutch museum in an overnight raid in the early hours of Saturday morning.

Thieves used explosives to blast their way into the Drents Museum in Assen, which was hosting an exhibition of priceless Romanian jewellery made from gold and silver.

They left with three Dacian spiral bracelets and the exhibit’s central piece – the strikingly decorated Helmet of Cotofenesti, which was crafted almost 2,500 years ago.

Romania’s ministry of culture has promised to take all possible steps to recover the stolen items, which had been loaned to the Dutch museum from Bucharest.

Drents Museum director Harry Tupan said staff were “intensely shocked” by the burglary, which he said was the biggest incident in its 170-year history.

Police were called to the scene after reports of an explosion at 03:45 local time (04:45 GMT) on Saturday.

Officers carried out forensic investigation and reviewed CCTV footage throughout the day.

Police are also investigating a burning vehicle which was found on a nearby road, which they suspect may be linked to the burglary.

“A possible scenario is that the suspects switched to another vehicle in the vicinity of the fire,” a Dutch police statement said.

No arrests have been made, but authorities suspect multiple individuals were involved. Police have called global policing agency Interpol to help with the investigation.

A statement from the museum said four “archaeological masterpieces” were taken, including the Cotofenesti helmet, which dates from around 450 BC, and three ancient Dacian royal bracelets.

All four stolen items are of huge cultural significance to Romania, with the Helmet of Cotofenesti considered a national treasure.

In the late 1990s, 24 bracelets from the same era were dug up by treasure hunters and sold abroad.

The Romanian state worked for years to get them back from collectors in Austria, Germany, France, the UK and the United States.

It began with a short email from a stranger asking for help and it ended six years later with a violent fraudster and rapist being jailed for 12 years – thanks to an incredible group of women and their fight for justice.

It was 2017 and I was working as a newspaper reporter when I got the email from a woman who detailed how she had met a man named Christopher Harkins on Tinder and he had stolen £3,247 from her.

Lisa, who is using a pseudonym because she doesn’t want to be linked to this story forever, explained that Harkins had lovebombed her, suggested they go on holiday together and then, when she transferred the money, went quiet.

It quickly transpired the holiday wasn’t real and Harkins would not refund the cash.

Lisa was afraid Harkins would go on to scam someone else. It didn’t occur to Lisa – or to me – that it was a scam he had already honed with experience.

Lisa had gone to Police Scotland for help and been told the issue was a civil matter.

Frustrated, but determined, now she wanted to protect other people by exposing this man in the press.

We spoke on the phone and she laid out the situation, how he’d overwhelmed her with attention, had been the perfect gentleman. And how things had quickly changed when he decided to push her for money.

Lisa, a smart, impressive, professional woman in her 30s, provided screenshots of WhatsApp conversations and bank account details.

It was clear very quickly that this man was a master manipulator but it wasn’t until I spoke to him on the phone that I realised how skilled he was at the practice.

Tracking him down was the hard part.

Lisa had told Harkins that she had spoken to a journalist and he was, let’s say, unimpressed.

He promised repeatedly to give her the money back if she put a stop to the story – but didn’t actually make a move to return the cash.

When I called him – on the two numbers I had for him – he didn’t reply.

Lisa’s story was credible, and she had hard evidence, but we wanted to speak to Harkins to hear his side.

Suddenly, Lisa was in touch to say Harkins had agreed to return her money. She was to meet him at a chip shop on the south side of Glasgow.

I went with her, waiting outside with a photographer to try to speak to Harkins.

The money was there in an envelope. There was no sign of him though.

We decided to publish the story, having tried all we could to track him down. And then my phone rang. It was Harkins.

Speaking to him was a baffling experience. It was hard to keep him on track.

He would state one thing and then, when challenged, very quickly change his position.

He tried to persuade me that Lisa was threatening him and he was frightened of her.

Harkins had had his chance to have his say – and we published the story.

Within the hour of the article going online I had an email from another woman claiming to have been targeted by Harkins. And then another.

My phone started ringing. I could tell as soon as I picked it up that this would be another Harkins target – he clearly had a type: smart and articulate.

Lisa, who I was updating all the time, was appalled. Neither of us had any idea how prolific he might have been.

Some women wanted to tell their stories publicly while others just wanted an outlet to share what had happened to them.

I heard stories of fraud, of manipulation, of verbal abuse – and worse.

One caller was a man who had known Harkins in his early 20s and warned me to be careful.

He claimed to have known Harkins to be physically violent and wanted me to know what I was dealing with.

We ran a second story in the paper.

This was another woman who had been conned by the holiday scam – this time in England. Harkins, in turned out, had been operating across the country.

She lost £1,600 to the fake holiday con and had also been pressured to take out loans for him, which luckily she didn’t do.

More than 20 women had contacted me by now and I had interviewed several who wanted to go public, hearing dreadful stories of fraud but also physical and sexual violence.

Many had gone to the police only to be told – as Lisa had been – that this was a civil matter.

Then, Police Scotland contacted me. They said that they were going to investigate and could we please stop writing about Harkins so as not to tip him off to how much was known about him.

Not wanting to jeopardise any case, we agreed.

Women I had interviewed were contacted by Police Scotland and several decided to make formal complaints.

They knew it was going to be a long and gruelling process – but they wanted this man taken off the streets.

Months passed and the wait for the women was intensely stressful.

Finally, in December 2019, he was arrested. We all thought this was the beginning of the end and the women relaxed a little.

In early 2020 my phone rang. It was a woman in London.

This woman said that she had stayed with Harkins in a five-star hotel in an upmarket part of the city.

A receptionist at the hotel had taken her aside and told her the man she was with was using a false name, was in fact called Christopher Harkins and she should Google him.

The woman told me she found my articles online and read them, with increasing horror.

I listened with my heart in my mouth as she told me she went back to their room, where Harkins was still asleep, and took his wallet from his bag.

His bank card said Christopher Harkins. She took her belongings and left.

Knowing, at that time, what I knew about Harkins’ other behaviour, which wasn’t in the public domain, I had such an overwhelming feeling of relief that he hadn’t woken up.

He scammed another woman in London, and she went to the Metropolitan Police, who acted quickly.

He was convicted and jailed, which was both a relief to the women in Scotland and a frustration.

The English proceedings meant the impending trial in Scotland would be delayed. Again.

Just before Harkins was imprisoned in England he called my editor to complain that I was orchestrating a campaign against him because I was obsessed with him. That took a bit of explaining.

The delays were intensely stressful to the women involved in the case but they were determined to see it through.

Their bravery and solidarity was incredible to witness.

When the case called at the High Court in Paisley last year I attended every day of court.

Harkins by now was a diminished figure. I’d seen him years before in the High Court in Glasgow and he had been a muscular, imposing man.

Now he was thinner, his court suit too big. He was a man obsessed by appearance and I can only think his baggy shirts and mismatched shoes and trousers caused him stress.

Harkins was found guilty of 19 offences including rape, assault, recording an intimate video without consent, threatening and abusive behaviour and four other sexual offences.

He also admitted defrauding nine women out of more than £214,000.

In July last year Harkins was sentenced to 12 years in prison. As he was handcuffed to be led to the cells, he turned to look at me in the gallery.

“This is because of you,” he said. No. This was because of the women who were brave enough to stand up to him.

If there is anything to be taken from story of Christopher Harkins, it is the determination of these women and the way they held their nerve for years, standing together as a force Harkins that, in the end, could not reckon with.

When the lists of the most successful songs of 2024 in the charts, streaming and social media were revealed recently, they included the expected big hitters and some evergreen classics. But sprinkled among them was a different type of hit song.

A number of tracks that failed to make a big impact when they were first released, mostly in the 2010s, have since bubbled up and become firm favourites.

The rise of these slow-burning sleeper hits in recent years is “one of the most fascinating trends right now”, says Stuart Dredge, head of insight at Music Ally.

Here is our guide to the biggest 2010s sleeper hits.

This one reached the US top 20 but missed the UK top 40. It has snowballed on social media and is now the seventh most-streamed song in Spotify history, spending more than three years in total in its global daily top 50. The California band say the autumnal theme made it an “accidental seasonal hit”, and it has also been adopted as a bisexual anthem.

Champagne Coast didn’t chart originally but British singer Dev Hynes’ seductive “come to my bedroom” refrain was used in TV show Euphoria’s soundtrack in 2019, and then the song blew up on TikTok last summer. It was the most popular old song on the platform in 2024 and sixth overall on Billboard’s end-of-year TikTok chart. It finally reached the UK top 20 in July.

Evergreen is just 87 seconds long and didn’t chart originally, but became the go-to song for “hopecore” videos offering snippets of positivity and optimism on TikTok last year. It spent 35 weeks in the UK top 60 in 2024, and was in the overall end-of-year top 100.

Released on the 13 Reasons Why soundtrack, this track didn’t reach the UK or US top 40s, but Eilish’s delicate duet with Khalid is now her most-streamed song, and 14th on Spotify’s all-time list. It is apparently, among other things, good for sending you to sleep.

I Wanna Be Yours was on the hit AM album but only reached 99 in the UK as a single. However, last year it had more Spotify plays than any other song over a decade old. TikTok users have chosen the melodramatic chorus to soundtrack their romantic declarations.

Hard rock band Disturbed’s brooding but beautiful cover of the Simon and Garfunkel classic has now spent eight months in the UK top 60 in the past year, helped by a dance remix and a TikTok shuffle dance trend.

See You Again didn’t chart at the time but took off on TikTok (where else?), with one snippet turning into a personality quiz (do you sing along with Tyler’s “OK OK OK OK” or guest vocalist Kali Uchis’ “La la la la”?). The song finally reached number 21 in the UK in 2023, and was the 19th most-streamed song on Spotify in the US in 2024.

Songs from all eras have been resurfacing for several years, of course.

Many were hits to start with. Mr Brightside by The Killers (2004) is a fixture, while Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill (1985) and Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Murder on the Dancefloor (2001) shot back up the charts thanks to TV and film soundtracks.

But when it comes to songs that weren’t as big the first time around, the 2010s dominate.

One reason is that people who grew up in those years are introducing their favourite tunes to others, according to Sarah Kloboves from music data analysts Chartmetric.

“This revival is pioneered by these older Gen Z listeners [in their mid-20s]. But when they start to create these trends, you also have the younger Gen Zs and even Gen Alpha [young teens and below] that are hearing these songs for the first time – the release date is interesting because it’s old, but it’s not too old.”

Dredge agrees: “A lot of the influencers on places like TikTok are a few years older, so they are probably using songs from the 2010s that soundtracked their teenage years.”

Taylor Swift’s Cruel Summer (2019) could even be described as a sleeper hit – it wasn’t released as an official single at the time, but eventually reached number one in 2023 and was the fifth-biggest song of 2024 overall on Apple Music.

Others, though, are not such obvious hits. Musically, most sound quite restrained and atmospheric – they’re emotive soundtrack songs rather than upbeat bangers or full-blooded anthems.

“These aren’t songs that were released with the intention of being a pop hit,” Kloboves says.

“Not to bash on pop music or pop stars, but sometimes they all sort of sound the same. But I think a lot of these songs are very different from what you might usually hear in the mainstream,” she says.

“I think that’s why listeners really resonate with them, because they’re slightly unique and different-sounding.”

Eight more sleeper hits:

• Pink + White by Frank Ocean (2016)
• No Role Modelz by J Cole (2014)
• Jocelyn Flores by XXXTentacion (2017)
• All I Want by Kodaline (2012)
• Lovers Rock by TV Girl (2014)
• Space Song by Beach House (2015)
• Apocalypse by Cigarettes After Sex (2017)
• Freaks by Surf Curse (2013)

Many of these songs owe their belated success to TikTok, and tracks that take off “evoke some kind of emotional response” in the listener, the platform’s UK head of music partnerships Toyin Mustapha believes.

“It’s having something that emotionally resonates. That could be a lyric. It could be the way that the instrumental lands.”

And our relationship with music has changed. When packaging songs with clips on social media, fans are choosing them as soundtracks to evocative moments.

“It’s no longer passive listening,” Mustapha adds. “People are really active participants in the culture. And they’re active because they are taking this music and essentially reimagining it in their own way.”

Record labels do try to help back-catalogue songs become sleeper hits, but it normally happens organically thanks to fans, Dredge says.

“One of the things you can see is it’s songs that lend themselves to a feeling or mood. It often is a particular line from the song that is the thing that is picked up on and goes viral,” he says.

“There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it other than they suddenly feel relevant to someone in a way that other people appreciate.”

Sometimes, it’s simply that a great song didn’t get the attention it deserved at the time: “Part of it is just that a brilliant song can connect with people, no matter how long ago it was made.”

President Donald Trump has said he believes the US will gain control of Greenland, after showing renewed interest in acquiring the autonomous Danish territory in recent weeks.

“I think we’re going to have it,” he told reporters on Air Force One on Saturday, adding that the island’s 57,000 residents “want to be with us”.

His comments come after reports that Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen insisted Greenland was not for sale in a fiery phone call with the president last week.

Trump floated the prospect of buying the vast Arctic territory during his first term in 2019, and has said US control of Greenland is an “absolute necessity” for international security.

“I think the people want to be with us,” Trump said when asked about the island in the press room on board the presidential plane.

“I don’t really know what claim Denmark has to it, but it would be a very unfriendly act if they didn’t allow that to happen because it’s for the protection of the free world,” he added.

“I think Greenland we’ll get because it has to do with freedom of the world,” Trump continued.

“It has nothing to do with the United States other than that we’re the one that can provide the freedom. They can’t.”

Despite Trump’s apparent confidence, the prime ministers of Greenland and Denmark have both previously said the island was not for sale.

Greenland’s PM Mute Egede said use of the territory’s land was “Greenland’s business”, though he did express a willingness to work more closely with the US on defence and mining.

Meanwhile, Danish premiere Frederiksen said earlier this month that “Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders”, and only the local population could determine its future.

Frederiksen reasserted her position in a heated 45-minute phone exchange with Trump last week, according to a report in the Financial Times.

The newspaper quoted an anonymous European official as saying the conversation was “horrendous”, and another saying Trump’s interest in acquiring Greenland was is “serious, and potentially very dangerous”.

The Danish prime minister reportedly insisted the island was not for sale, but noted the US’s “big interest” in it.

Greenland lies on the shortest route from North America to Europe, making it strategically important for the US. It is also home to a large American space facility.

In recent years, there has been increased interest in Greenland’s natural resources, including mining for rare earth minerals, uranium and iron.

Though the island has wide-ranging autonomy, it remains part of the kingdom of Demark.

But there is a general consensus in Greenland that it will eventually become independent, which could pave the way for a new kind of relationship with the US.

President Trump’s claim that the people of Greenland “want to be with us” may come as a surprise to some of the island’s residents.

A fishing boat captain in the Kapisillit settlement told the BBC Trump was “welcome to visit” the island, but that “Greenland belongs to Greenlanders”.

And local church elder Kaaleeraq Ringsted said Trump’s language was “not acceptable”, adding “Greenland is not for sale”.

There are several ways Trump could pursue his desire to take over the territory. Asked earlier in January whether he could rule out using military or economic force, Trump said he could not.

His recent comments have sent shockwaves through the Danish political establishment, sparking hastily organised high-level meetings in Copenhagen earlier this month.

A 14-year-old boy has been charged with murder after Leo Ross, 12, was stabbed in Birmingham.

West Midlands Police said Leo suffered fatal knife wounds to the stomach on Tuesday afternoon and was found close to Scribers Lane, Hall Green. He died in hospital at 19:30 GMT that evening.

A member of his family described him as “the most beautiful, kind child” and “the nicest kid you would meet”.

The 14-year-old accused, who cannot be named because of his age, has also been charged with seven other offences, including possession of a bladed weapon, police confirmed.

The other charges include the assault of a woman on 22 October and two charges of assaulting police officers on 26 November.

He is also accused of the serious assault of a woman on 19 January, the serious assault of a woman on 20 January and the assault of a woman on 21 January.

None of these charges involved a knife, police added.

In tribute to Leo, his family described him as “an amazing, kind and loving boy”.

“Not only has Leo’s life been taken, all of our lives have as well,” they said.

“Leo will be truly missed by all of us. He was loved so much by everyone.”

The family thanked the police and everyone involved for “supporting us all through this horrific time”.

He was a pupil at Christ Church C of E Secondary Academy and was a “lively and happy young man” with “many very good friends”, executive head teacher Diane Henson said.

“[He was] just a lovely and bright member of the school community,” she said.

“We’re supporting the children at school and are opening a book of condolence with the family’s permission.”

One of Leo’s classmates described him as kind, helpful and welcoming.

Hana, who was in the same class as him, said: “I think it’s really sad and ridiculous that this has happened.”

Speaking on BBC Radio WM earlier this week, she said: “[He would] just do his work and get on with it and [he was] helpful as well and very welcoming. It’s upsetting that he’s passed away.”

Hana’s mother Saima said his death was “devastating” and called for “something to be done” about knife crime.

“I can’t imagine what the parents are going through,” she added.

Following Leo’s death, the West Midlands police and crime commissioner Simon Foster said youth violence and knife crime were being tackled through “robust policing” and investment in prevention, including education programmes at schools.

“One victim of youth violence and knife crime is one too many,” he said.

The investigation into Leo’s death was continuing police said, and they said they were still appealing for anyone with information.

In the shadow of a vast crucifix, labourers and construction workers in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez are building a small city of their own. A tent city.

On the old fairgrounds, beneath an altar constructed for a mass by Pope Francis in 2016, the Mexican government is preparing for thousands of deportees they expect to arrive from the United States in the coming weeks.

Juarez is one of eight border locations along the 3,000-kilometre-long (1,900 miles) border where Mexico is getting ready for the anticipated influx.

Men in boots and baseball caps climb on top of a vast metal structure to drape over thick white tarpaulin, erecting a rudimentary shelter to temporarily house men and women exactly like themselves.

Casual labourers, domestic workers, kitchen staff and farm hands are all likely to be among those sent south soon, once what President Donald Trump calls “the largest deportation in American history” gets under way.

As well as protection from the elements, the deportees will receive food, medical care, and assistance in obtaining Mexican identity documents, under a deportee-support programme which President Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration calls “Mexico Embraces You”.

“Mexico will do everything necessary to care for its compatriots and will allocate whatever is necessary to receive those who are repatriated,” said the Mexican Interior Minister, Rosa Icela Rodriguez, on the day of Trump’s inauguration.

For her part, President Sheinbaum has stressed her government will first attend to the humanitarian needs of those returning, saying they will qualify for her government’s social programmes and pensions, and will immediately be eligible to work.

She urged Mexicans to “remain calm and keep a cool head” about relations with President Trump and his administration more broadly – from deportations to the threat of tariffs.

“With Mexico, I think we are going very well,” said President Trump in a video address to the World Economic Forum in Davos this week. The two neighbours may yet find a workable solution on immigration which is acceptable to both – President Sheinbaum has said the key is dialogue and keeping the channels of communication open.

Undoubtedly, though, she recognises the potential stress President Trump’s declaration of an emergency at the US border could place on Mexico.

An estimated 5 million undocumented Mexicans currently live in the United States and the prospect of a mass return could quickly saturate and overwhelm border cities like Juarez and Tijuana.

It’s an issue which worries Jose Maria Garcia Lara, the director of the Juventud 2000 migrant shelter in Tijuana. As he shows me around the facility, which is already nearing its capacity, he says there are very few places he can fit more families.

“If we have to, we can maybe put some people in the kitchen or the library,” he says.

There comes a point, though, where there simply isn’t any space left – and donations of food, medical supplies, blankets and hygiene products will be stretched too thin.

“We’re being hit on two fronts. Firstly, the arrival of Mexicans and other migrants who are fleeing violence,” says Mr Garcia.

“But also, we’ll have the mass deportations. We don’t know how many people will come across the border needing our help. Together, these two things could create a huge problem.”

Furthermore, another key part of Mr Trump’s executive orders includes a policy called “Remain in Mexico” under which immigrants awaiting dates to make their asylum cases in a US immigration court would have to stay in Mexico ahead of those appointments.

When “Remain in Mexico” was previously in place, during Trump’s first term and under the presidency of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico, Mexican border towns struggled to cope.

Human rights groups also repeatedly denounced the risks the migrants were being exposed to by being forced to wait in dangerous cities where drug cartel-related crime is rife.

This time around, Sheinbaum has made it clear that Mexico has not agreed to the plan and won’t accept any non-Mexican asylum seekers from the US as they wait for their asylum hearings. Clearly, “Remain in Mexico” only works if Mexico is willing to comply with it. So far, it has drawn a line.

President Trump has deployed around 2,500 troops to the US southern border where they will be tasked with carrying out some of the logistics of his crackdown.

In Tijuana, meanwhile, Mexican soldiers are helping to prepare for the consequences of it. The authorities have readied an events centre called Flamingos with 1,800 beds for the returnees and troops bringing in supplies, setting up a kitchen and showers.

As President Trump was signing executive orders on Monday, a minibus swept through the gates at the Chaparral border crossing between San Diego and Tijuana carrying a handful of deportees.

A few journalists had gathered to try to speak to, ostensibly, the first deportees of the Trump era. It was just a routine deportation, though, one which was probably in the pipeline for weeks and had nothing to do with the documents Trump was signing before a cheering crowd in Washington DC.

Still, symbolically, as the minibus sped past the waiting media towards a government-run shelter, these were the first of many.

Mexico will have its work cut out to receive them, house them and find them a place in a nation some won’t have seen since they left as children.

Nineteen-year-old Liri Albag rushes into her parents’ arms, igniting screams of joy.

“My beauty. You’re a hero. You’re home. That’s it,” her mother says as the three laugh and cry together.

The moment, filmed by the Israeli military, was the first time the family had seen each other in more than 15 months.

Liri was among the first Israelis to be taken hostage in the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack, when the military base on the Gaza border where she was serving was overrun.

She was among four female soldiers to be returned to Israel on Saturday as part of the first phase of a ceasefire agreement with Hamas. Two hundred Palestinian prisoners were released in return.

“The feeling of relief and happiness envelops us after 477 long and unbearable days of nerve-wracking waiting,” her family said in a statement shortly after her return.

Crowds had gathered in Hostages Square in Tel Aviv on Saturday morning, watching a live news feed from Gaza on a large screen as they waited for the group to be brought back to Israel.

Released alongside Liri were soldiers Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa and Naama Levy, all aged 20.

Cheers erupted as the women appeared, flanked by masked gunmen from Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades, for a staged handover in Gaza City’s Palestine Square. They held hands and waved, before being taken away in Red Cross vehicles.

“It’s amazing. They’re amazing. Did you see them stand and smile?” one woman watching the live feed with the crowd in Tel Aviv said.

In the crowd watching in Gaza, one man told the BBC Hamas was returning the hostages in an “honourable way” and declared the moment a victory for the group.

The women were then transferred to the Israeli military and later brought by helicopter to a hospital.

In a press briefing, the director of Beilinson Hospital, Dr Lena Koren Feldman, described the released hostages as being in a “stable condition”, but said they would continue to be given a “comprehensive medical and emotional evaluation”.

They were the second group of hostages to be released under a ceasefire deal, aimed at bringing a permanent end to the war, which began a week ago following months of negotiations.

The four women were taken hostage on 7 October from the Nahal Oz military base, about a kilometre from the Gaza border fence.

They were part of an unarmed all-female unit of observers, known as tatzpitaniyot in Hebrew, whose role was to study live surveillance footage captured by cameras along the high-tech fence and look out for signs of anything suspicious.

Several conscripts from the unit and families of those who were killed have said that they had been warning that an attack was coming in the months before 7 October.

It was clear there was a “balloon that was going to burst”, one told the BBC.

The Israeli military has previously said it is in the midst of a “thorough investigation into the events of 7 October, including those in Nahal Oz, and the circumstances preceding”.

One woman from the unit, Agam Berger, remains in Gaza. In a statement on Saturday, her family said they were “overjoyed and moved” by the return of the four others, while they continued to “eagerly await embracing Agam, God willing, in the coming week”.

Another woman who served in the unit with them, but was not on shift on 7 October, told the BBC: “I have been very emotional… This feels like sisters coming home.”

“God willing, we will all sit together and talk, but of course no pressure. They have to heal first.”

For families of the observers who were killed on 7 October, it was a bittersweet moment.

“This is a very emotional day for us,” said Elad Levy, whose niece Roni served alongside the four women but was killed in the attacks.

“We are very happy to see Karina, Daniella, Liri and Naama coming back home to their families. At the same time, we remember that there are hostages still in Gaza. And for us, we remember Roni who will never come back home.”

Israel had expected female civilian hostage Arbel Yehud to be included in Saturday’s release, and accused Hamas of breaching the terms of the ceasefire to prioritise female civilians. Hamas said Ms Yehud would be released next weekend.

Another female civilian who is yet to be released is Shiri Bibas, who was taken hostage with her husband and two young children, Ariel and Kfir.

“Seeing a concentration camp with my own eyes and listening to a survivor who went through it all, that’s really brought it home. It’s important for young people like me. We’ll soon be able to vote. The far right is gaining more and more support in Germany and we need to learn from the past.”

Xavier is a 17-year-old German student. I met him at a Holocaust education centre in Dachau, in southern Germany, just around the corner from what was once a Nazi concentration camp of the same name. He and his classmates were spending two days there, learning about their country’s Nazi past and debating its relevance in today’s world.

Eighteen-year-old Melike admitted she didn’t know much about the Holocaust before coming to Dachau. Listening to Eva Umlauf, a survivor, talk about what happened, touched her heart, she said.

She wished racism and intolerance were spoken about more frequently. “I wear a headscarf and people are often disapproving. We need to learn more about one another so we can all live well together.”

Miguel warned of growing racism and antisemitism on social media platforms, including jokes about the Holocaust. “We need to prevent that,” his 17-year-old friend Ida chimed in.

“We are the last generation who can meet and listen to people who survived that tragedy. We have to make sure everyone is informed to stop anything like that ever happening again.”

They are earnest and hopeful. Some might say naive.

Here in Europe, 80 years after the end of the Holocaust, societies seem increasingly divided. There’s a rise in support for political parties, often, but not exclusively on the far right and far left, that are quick to point at the Other. The outsider. The unwanted. Be they migrants, Muslims, LGBTQ+ people or Jews.

“I want everyone to live together, Jewish, Catholic, black, white or whatever,” says Eva Umlauf, the Holocaust survivor who made such an impression on the German teens.

She describes the Holocaust as a warning of what can happen when prejudice takes over.

“That’s why I dedicate my time to talking, talking, talking,” she says. Now in her 80s, she was the youngest inmate to be freed from the Nazi extermination camp, Auschwitz, eight decades ago this Monday. She has written a book about her experiences and, alongside working as a child psychiatrist, she speaks often about the death camps and antisemitism, to audiences at home and abroad.

“Death Mills” is the title of a US war department film, shown to German civilians after the war, edited from allied footage captured when liberating the around 300 concentration camps run by the Nazis and their allies between 1933 and 1945.

Skeletal naked people, with shaven heads and hollow eyes, shuffle and stumble past the camera. One man gnaws at a fleshless bone, clearly desperate for food. Piles of dead bodies are strewn in all corners; emaciated faces forever twisted in open-mouthed screams.

While in warehouse after warehouse, you see carefully labelled gold teeth, reading glasses and shoes belonging to murdered men, women and children. And bundles of hair shaved from female inmates, packed and ready for sale for Nazi profit.

The Nazis used concentration and death camps for the slave labour and mass extermination of people deemed “enemies of the Reich” or simply “Untermenschen” (subhumans). These included, amongst others: ethnic Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, people with disabilities, others labelled as homosexuals and the biggest target of all: European Jews.

In total, six million Jews were murdered in what became known as the Holocaust. Numbers have been calculated based on Nazi documents and pre- and post-war demographic data.

The legal term “genocide” was coined and recognised as an international crime, following the world’s realisation of the extent, and grim intent, of Nazi mass murder which continued with fervour even as they were losing the war. It refers to acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

Auschwitz is probably the best-known Nazi camp. Its horrors have come to symbolise the Holocaust as a whole. 1.1 million people were murdered there, among them, a million Jews. Most were poisoned en masse in gas chambers. Their bodies burned in huge crematoria. The ash given to local farmers for use in their fields.

“I was too young to realise much of what was going on at Auschwitz,” Eva told the students. “But what my mind has forgotten, my body remembers.”

The teens listened intently. No-one fidgeted or glanced at their smartphones, as Eva explained she had the number A-26959 tattooed in blue ink on her arm.

Being forcibly tattooed was part of the “process” for every prisoner arriving at Auschwitz who wasn’t immediately gassed to death and instead was selected for forced labour or medical experimentation.

“Why did they choose to tattoo a two-year-old baby?” Eva asks. She says she finds just one answer to that question: that the “superhumans” – the Nazis believed they were creating a superior race – did not think that Jews were human beings.

“We were rats, subhumans, totally dehumanised by this master race. And so it did not matter to them if you were two years old, or 80 years old.”

Recounting the trauma she inherited from her young mother, the loss of every family member from before the Holocaust and the loneliness she felt postwar as a little girl with no grandma to hug her or bake cakes with her, Eva at one point begins to cry silently. Especially when she plays a video of her recently taking part in the annual “March of the Living” at Auschwitz, where survivors walk alongside youngsters from all over Europe, with the mantra “Never Again”.

As they watch her, a number of the teens in Eva’s audience have tears rolling down their cheeks too.

But a short drive away, in the Jewish community centre of Munich, which is guarded by armed police, acting president of the Jewish Community Charlotte Knobloch tells me how worried she is about spiralling modern-day antisemitism.

Born in the early 1930s, Ms Knobloch remembers holding her father’s hand and watching Jewish shop windows smashed and synagogues in flames on Kristallnacht, the Night of the Broken Glass in November 1938, when the Nazi regime carried out mass acts of violence against Jews and their property, while most non-Jewish Germans either cheered or looked the other way.

She says antisemitism never disappeared entirely after the war, but she hadn’t believed things would become as worrying again as they are now. Even in Germany, she says, which historically has done much to confront its Nazi past and to be vigilant against antisemitism.

It’s an assertion supported anecdotally by members of the Jewish community in Germany and elsewhere who say they now fear wearing a Star of David in public and prefer not to have a Jewish newspaper delivered to their homes, for fear of being labelled “a Jew” by their neighbours.

Studies by the Community Security Trust in the UK and the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency tell the same story. The FRA says 96% of Jews interviewed across 13 European countries report experiencing antisemitism in everyday life.

Jewish communities in South America note a significant uptick in antisemitism too, while in Canada, a synagogue was firebombed a few weeks ago and there was a shooting incident at a Jewish school. In the US last summer, Jewish graves were desecrated in the city of Cincinnati.

Former President Joe Biden identified global antisemitism as a foreign policy concern. Academic Deborah Lipstadt, who was his special envoy for monitoring and combating it, highlights antisemitism online – often along with Islamophobia and other forms of discrimination – which she says are manipulated by outside actors like Russia, Iran and China to sow division in society and to further their own goals and messaging.

She also speaks of a global rise in antisemitism following Israel’s military response in Gaza which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians – after the Hamas-led massacre of 1,200 people inside Israel on 7 October 2023.

Prof Lipstadt says Israel’s military actions are often blamed on Jewish people in general. All Jews cannot be held responsible for the decisions of the government of Israel, she says. That is racism.

The Amadeu Antonio Foundation, which collects information on antisemitic incidents in Germany, lists an incident last month where red-lettered graffiti was daubed on a church and the town hall in the town of Langenau, calling both for a boycott of Israel and the gassing of Jews – a reference to the Nazi gas chambers of the Holocaust.

Auschwitz and the Holocaust didn’t begin with poison gas. Their roots were in the othering of Jews that goes back centuries in Europe.

The CEO of the Conference of European Rabbis, Gady Gronich warns the targeting of minorities is now again becoming mainstream. The Muslim community is bearing the brunt right now, he says, also describing himself as shocked at the levels of antisemitism he sees.

He thinks 80 years on from World War Two, some are intentionally choosing to leave the Holocaust and the responsibility to learn from it in the past.

But the past will not be silenced. Near the Polish city of Gdansk, under snow-covered leaves covering the forest floor, you still find the discarded remains of shoes, belonging to victims of the Holocaust.

There are soles so tiny, partially buried under the earth, their murdered owners must have been young children. The stitching on some bits of leather are still plain to see. Millions of shoes were sent here to a leather factory, run by slave labour at what was then Stutthof concentration camp.

The shoes came from all over Nazi-occupied territory. But mainly, it’s believed, from Auschwitz.

“For me, these shoes are screaming. They are shouting: we were alive 80 years ago!” Polish musician Grzegorz Kwiatkowski tells me. He’s a long-time campaigner for the shoes to be salvaged and put on display, alongside others already in the concentration camp museum. The shoes’ message is anti-war and anti-discrimination, says Gregor. And should be heard.

“These shoes belonged to people. You know, they could be our shoes, right? Your shoes, or my shoes, or my wife’s shoes, or my son’s shoes. These shoes are asking for attention, not only to preserve them, but to change ourselves (as human beings) in a moral way. I was pretty sure things would be very different in 2025 to how they are.”

This year’s commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz is seen as particularly significant. It’s possibly the last big anniversary that eyewitnesses and survivors will be alive to tell us what happened – and to ask us: what are we remembering today and which lessons have we already clearly forgotten?

Thousands of displaced Palestinians have been prevented from returning to their homes in the north of the Gaza Strip, after Israel blocked a main road, accusing Hamas of breaching the terms of the ceasefire deal.

The dispute came after Hamas released four Israeli female soldiers – and Israel freed 200 Palestinian prisoners.

But the Israeli government said Gazans would not be allowed to travel north until plans were in place for the release of Israeli civilian Arbel Yehud. Hamas has insisted that she is alive and will be freed next week.

According to the deal, Hamas was to release civilians before soldiers.

On Saturday evening, as crowds gathered along al-Rashid road in central Gaza to return home, gunshots were reportedly fired.

Reuters news agency, citing the Hamas-run health ministry, and Palestinian media reported one person had been killed and some injured.

Four gunshots can be heard in a video reportedly of the incident that was posted online. BBC Verify has authenticated the location of footage, but the BBC has not been able to independently verify reports of a casualty.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said troops in central Gaza had fired shots after “several gatherings of dozens of suspects were identified who posed a threat to the forces”.

“Contrary to reports emerging in recent hours, all of the shooting in the area was carried out for the purpose of distancing and not aimed at harm. We emphasise that as of this stage, no injuries to the suspects are known to have occurred as a result of the shooting.”

Earlier on Saturday, Muhammad Emad Al-Din was one of the thousands waiting to return home to northern Gaza.

“I know my house might be destroyed, but I’ll pitch a tent over its remains. I just want to go back,” he told the BBC over the phone.

“I need to reclaim my work. I am a barber in Gaza, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to repair the damage to my salon and restart my business. I’ve become indebted to so many people, and I can’t afford to buy the simplest things for my children,” he added.

“All I wish for is for this dispute between Hamas and Israel to end and for us to be allowed to move back to our homes in the north. We haven’t seen our loved ones for more than 15 months.”

The Netzarim Corridor is a seven-kilometre (4.3-mile) strip of land controlled by Israel that cuts off north Gaza from the rest of the territory.

Lubna Nassar arrived with her two daughters and son on a donkey cart in the afternoon, hoping to return to her home and reunite with her husband, Sultan, whom she has not seen in 11 months.

“I will stay here, as close as possible to the Israeli checkpoint. For months, my daughters have been waiting for the moment to meet their father. I want to be among the first to return to Gaza,” she said.

Qatari and Egyptian mediators are making progress in their efforts to allow hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to return back to the north.

But Israeli tanks are still blocking the coastal road where people were supposed to walk into the north.

The Israelis have asked the mediators for proof of life from Hamas for Ms Yehud, and it seems that Hamas has given this to the Egyptians.

Four female Israeli soldiers taken hostage by Hamas on 7 October 2023 were released on Saturday as part of the ceasefire agreement which also saw 200 Palestinian prisoners freed.

Meanwhile, many Gazans watch anxiously for any breakthrough that could allow them to return.

For many, the hope of returning outweighs the reality of what awaits them – ruins and destruction.

Yet the dream of reclaiming their lives, rebuilding their homes and reuniting with their families are keeping their spirits alive.

In a powerful personal account, Fergal Keane reflects on living with PTSD, depression and his search for balance in life. What he has discovered along the way is a deeper study of happiness that can apply to those with serious mental health challenges, but also to those simply in need of a lift.

There was a moment, nearly two years ago, when the change inside hit me with force. I was walking with a loved one on the eastern edge of Curragh beach in Ardmore, County Waterford, a place of warm refuge since I was a child. We paused beside a river that flows into Ardmore Bay. I was listening to the different sounds the water made – the swift rush of the river, the surf crashing on the shoreline.

Suddenly there was the sound of air being displaced by dozens of wings. A flock of Brent geese came sweeping over the cliff, riding the wind towards the sky. I felt a lightness inside, and such gratitude that I laughed out loud.

“So, this is how it feels,” I thought.

To borrow and turn around the words of the novelist, Milan Kundera, I felt a wonderful “lightness of being”.

That moment came back to me this week. I was thinking about the Blue Monday phenomenon – the January day that is said to be the saddest of the year.

As anyone who knows clinical depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) will tell you, there are no specific days of the year for sadness. It can be the brightest day, in the loveliest place, and you still feel like your mind is trapped in permafrost.

But Blue Monday did prompt me to reflect on happiness. What is it anyway? What does it mean in my life?

Not long before that day of the beautiful geese, I had come out of an emotional breakdown. It was March 2023, and I felt as if I had gone 12 rounds with a heavyweight prize-fighter. But the person I’d fought was myself. As I had done for decades.

I had experienced several hospitalisations over the decades, stretching back to the early 90s. I fought a relentless battle with shame, fear, anger, denial – all these things that are the opposite of happy. There were grey, terrifying days. Every branch bare, even in deep summer. And nights waking drenched in sweat, waking to obsessive rumination, bad dreams leaking into the dawn.

Add in recovery from alcoholism at the end of the 90s, and I’ve done plenty of research into the dark nights of the soul.

By the time of the 2023 breakdown I had gone past the point of hoping for happiness. In those days I would have settled for a little peace of mind. In 2019, I had stepped back from my job as the BBC’s Africa Editor due to my struggles with PTSD.

Two years later I wrote a book on the subject and made a television documentary for the BBC. Yet, even after all that, I experienced another breakdown.

Professor Bruce Hood, of the University of Bristol, speaks of the human tendency “to blow things out of proportion…[focusing] on our own failings or inadequacies”. He runs ten-week courses at Bristol on the science of happiness and talks about the need to find balance because, as he puts it, “our minds are biased to interpret things very negatively”.

This certainly resonates with me. A caveat, however: Professor Hood’s area is addressing feelings of general low wellbeing, and he’s clear that focusing on the science of happiness will not necessarily be a cure all for someone with a condition such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) .

I have a specific diagnosis. In 2008 doctors first told me I had PTSD based on multiple instances of trauma as a war reporter, but also rooted in the circumstances of childhood in a home broken by alcoholism. Depression and anxiety were both major parts of that condition. As was addiction to alcohol. I escaped also into the exhilarating energy, camaraderie, and sense of purpose that went with reporting conflict.

I would also stress that what works for me as I try to find happiness, may not definitely work for everyone else. There are specific mental health conditions that require equally specific treatments. With PTSD, a combination of therapies helped me greatly, along with the fellowship of others who had similar experiences.

Medication also ameliorated the physical symptoms of anxiety and hypervigilance. A dropped plate, a backfiring car could reduce me to a pale, shaking, sweating wreck in seconds. Likewise, the nightmares which could leave me thrashing in my sleep.

I am privileged. I have had access to the best treatment. There are so many in our society who do not. According to the British Medical Association more than one million people are waiting to access treatment. It’s also important to recognise that there are numerous social, economic and cultural factors that influence our ability to experience happiness.

There is an ongoing study of genetic predisposition to depression and addiction. The World Wellbeing Movement (WWM), a charity promoting wellbeing in business and public policy decision-making, says that one in eight people in Britain live below what it called the Happiness Poverty Line – this is measured using data supplied by the annual reports of the Office for National Statistics, and based on the question – on a scale of 0 to 10: ‘Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?’

The WWM describes the one in eight figure as “staggering” and says there are “worrying issues related to mental health [that] remain unaddressed and underfunded”.

Having expressed my caveats, I hope there are things in my experience, the tools for recovery I have been generously given, that might help people who are struggling with the loneliness of depression or the turmoil of PTSD, or just struggling with the normal pain of life from time to time.

In my experience, the secret to happiness is that… there is no secret. It’s out there in plain sight, all around us, waiting to be found. But it is not ever present. It is not the natural everyday condition of humanity; no more than depression or rage are.

As the American psychotherapist, Whitney Goodman, author of ‘Toxic Positivity: How to embrace every emotion in a happy-obsessed world’ puts it: “Anyone that is fixated on making you feel happy all the time is selling you snake oil in my opinion. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t work… telling people that they just need to be happy, to manifest different thoughts, I think it would have worked by now.”

I spent years sitting in therapists’ chairs, and sometimes looking out the windows of psychiatric wards, hoping for the perfect cure that would fix my head and battered spirit.

For me loneliness was the defining characteristic of my mental health problems. I went deep into myself and found nothing to love or admire. I shut the door.

The answer didn’t arrive in a blinding flash of light. If I could pick one thing that made the greatest difference – after I had been stabilised with treatment – it was, and always will be, work. Not the work that drove me to a near constant state of exhaustion as I chased scoops and prizes so vital to my insecure ego.

Note to all who get their validation from work: the workaholic is the most accepted addict of all. In fact, he and she are celebrated. Why would you want to change when the bosses and society applaud you? Work is the great permissive addiction.

The work I am talking about is very different. Nobody will tell you what a brave, talented person you are for doing the work of real happiness. But you will feel it in the reactions of people you love, the gratitude of waking up without a sense of dread, the awareness of beauty around you. And knowing you will keep your commitments, and live as a person who doesn’t just talk about caring for people but does their best to live that talk.

One night in hospital, in 2023, having been admitted with PTSD, I watched a documentary in which the American psychotherapist, Phil Stutz, spoke of three fundamental truths to be accepted by people struggling with mental health problems: that life can be full of pain, full of change, and that living with these things needs constant work.

I was exhausted from suffering. But I was also willing to do whatever work I could to find peace of mind. The happiness came later.

What did I do? A lot of simple stuff at first.

I wrote a gratitude list every morning. My daily accounting of the good in my life. I read more poetry because it calms me down. I went for long walks with the dog by the River Thames and in Richmond Park. I even started to meditate – a miracle for a man who could rarely sit still for more than five minutes. I went to the movies more. I did simple domestic chores. Not the kitchen cameos of past days, but regularly cleaning, washing, cooking, paying the bills. Wonder of wonders, I could do it!

I made more time for friendship. And for love, of the people who mattered most to me. I listened where before I might only have pontificated. I worked very hard to shut up when someone wanted to express a resentment, instead of letting the childhood habits of defensiveness take over.

I offered to help others who were struggling. Those in recovery from addiction will know the maxim about sobriety: “To keep it you have to give it away.” Likewise, happiness.

The Finnish philosopher, Frank Martela, from Aalta University, suggests acts of kindness as part of the solution.

As it happens Finland is number one on the World Happiness Index. “Connect with others and connect with yourself,” he says.

“Connect with others through social relationships… doing good things to other people, contributing through your work or through small acts of kindness.”

There was a wonderful old friend of mine, Gordon Duncan, an addiction counsellor, who first alerted me to the fact that I had a lot of anger built up inside me, and that this drove my drinking and depression. We clashed a lot in the first weeks that we knew each other, but over time became the closest mates.

When he was dying in hospital, I visited one day, and saw that he had lapsed into a coma. Neither of us were particularly religious, but I whispered in his ear a prayer that was dear to us both:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.

The courage to change the things I can.

And the wisdom to know the difference.

I don’t know if he could hear me. I suspect probably not. But I remembered something he used to say to me when I was heading down into the depths. “You’re stronger than you think, son. Stronger than you think.”

I pass it on to all who are suffering in their minds. For me, I know things can change fast. There are no guarantees. Of happiness or anything else. But I accept that.

The American writer, Raymond Carver, who survived alcoholism to write some of the most beautiful poems about grief, and happiness, left a short poem before he died from cancer, aged just 50. It was his epitaph, and I think it sums up the whole quest for happiness.

And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.

I will wake tomorrow and be glad to open the curtains, and drink coffee and think of those I love who are near and far. And then I will get back to work, the real deep work that goes on every day.

Additional reporting by Harriet Whitehead

Top picture credit: Getty Images

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Sir Paul McCartney has told the BBC proposed changes to copyright law could allow “rip off” technology that might make it impossible for musicians and artists to make a living.

The government is considering an overhaul of the law that would allow AI developers to use creators’ content on the internet to help develop their models, unless the rights holders opt out.

In a rare interview for Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Sir Paul said “when we were kids in Liverpool, we found a job that we loved, but it also paid the bills”, warning the proposals could remove the incentive for writers and artists and result in a “loss of creativity”.

The government said it aimed to deliver legal certainty through a copyright regime that provided creators with “real control” and transparency.

Sir Paul, one of the two surviving members of the Beatles, said: “You get young guys, girls, coming up, and they write a beautiful song, and they don’t own it, and they don’t have anything to do with it. And anyone who wants can just rip it off.”

“The truth is, the money’s going somewhere… Somebody’s getting paid, so why shouldn’t it be the guy who sat down and wrote Yesterday?”

He appealed to the government to think again about its plans, saying: “We’re the people, you’re the government! You’re supposed to protect us. That’s your job.

“So you know, if you’re putting through a bill, make sure you protect the creative thinkers, the creative artists, or you’re not going to have them.”

The government is currently consulting on proposals that would allow AI companies to use material that is available online without respecting copyright if they are using it for text or data mining.

Generative AI programmes mine, or learn, from vast amounts of data like text, images, or music online to generate new content which feels like it has been made by a human.

The proposals would give artists or creators a so called “rights reservation” – the ability to opt out.

But critics of the plan believe it is not possible for an individual writer or artist to notify thousands of different AI service providers that they do not want their content used in that way, or to monitor what has happened to their work across the whole internet.

An alternative proposal for artists to opt in to give their permission for their content to be used will be put forward in the House of Lords by cross bench peer Baroness Kidron this week.

Tom Kiehl, chief executive of music industry body UK Music, said: “Government plans to change copyright law to make it easier for AI firms to use the music of artists, composers and music companies without their permission put the music industry at a huge risk.

“It would be a wild punt against the creative sector that is already contributing over £120bn to the economy and be counterproductive to the government’s own growth ambitions.

“There is no evidence that creatives can effectively ‘opt out’ of their work from being trained by AI systems and so this apparent concession does not provide any reassurance to those that work in music.”

A government spokesperson said that the UK’s music industry was “truly world class” and had produced “some of the most celebrated artists in history”.

“That is why we have launched a consultation to ensure the UK copyright framework offers strong protections for artists with regards to AI,” they said.

“Our aim is to deliver legal certainty through a copyright regime that provides creators with real control, transparency, and helps them licence their content.”

The spokesperson added the government was “keen to hear the views of the music industry on these proposals” and would “only move forward once we are confident that we are delivering clarity, control and transparency for artists and the sector, alongside appropriate access to data for AI innovators”.

In 2023, Sir Paul and fellow Beatle Sir Ringo Starr used AI to extract the vocals from an unfinished demo left by John Lennon to produce a new song, Now and Then.

The song, billed as the Beatles’ final release, drew widespread praise and has been nominated for two Grammys and a Brit award.

Sir Paul recently finished his Got Back tour, which saw the 82-year-old play in France, Spain and Brazil before ending at London’s O2 Arena.

The full interview with Paul McCartney will be on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday 26 January at 09:00 GMT.

Storm Éowyn was “probably the strongest storm” to hit the UK in at least 10 years, the Met Office has said, with wind gusts in excess of 100mph (160km/h).

At the storm’s height, nearly a million properties were without power across the British Isles, while many road and rail links were blocked. A 20-year-old man was killed when a tree fell on his car in Ireland as winds reached a record 114mph.

Parts of Scotland and Northern Ireland suffered widespread property damage, and Network Rail Scotland logged nearly 400 damage incidents.

While the worst of the storm has passed, strong winds are expected to continue into next week.

Although the amber and red warnings the Met Office issued ahead of Éowyn’s arrival have elapsed, several lesser, yellow weather warnings for wind and rain remain in place into Sunday. A full and up-to-date list can be found here.

Parts of England and Wales could receive up to 80mm (3.15in) of rainfall over the weekend.

Met Office forecasters described Éowyn as “pretty exceptional” and the most intense storm for some areas of the UK for 20-30 years.

The man who died on Friday was named as Kacper Dudek. He was killed in County Donegal, which experienced the worst gusts. Irish police are investigating.

BBC Weather’s Helen Willetts said Éowyn had moved into the North Sea by Saturday morning – but severe weather was still possible in many areas.

“The early hours saw wind gusts in Fair Isle, Scotland, to 80mph but the day ahead will see the winds gradually easing,” she said.

Heavy showers, snow and squally winds will move into Northern Ireland on Saturday afternoon, and then into western England and Wales later on, she added.

Gales are also expected to develop around the coasts and over hills.

Tens of thousands of properties remained without power in Northern Ireland and Scotland on Saturday, with electricity operators warning it could take several days to restore electricity to everyone.

Derek Hynes, the managing director of Northern Ireland Electricity, told the BBC the storm caused “devastating levels of damage” to the electricity network.

“We’ve never seen anything like that,” he said.

There were more than 1,800 incidents of fallen trees, branches and other debris blocking roads, according to Northern Ireland’s infrastructure department.

Paul Morrow, group commander at Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service, told BBC Breakfast that what his crews were witnessing was “something we’ve never seen before”.

Northern Irish Education Minister Paul Givan said 100 schools had reported “significant damage to some buildings” and some may not be open on Monday.

Meanwhile, Police Scotland said they have responded to almost 1,900 weather-related incidents across the country.

Celtic’s Scottish Premiership match against Dundee on Saturday was postponed because of damage to the team’s stadium in Glasgow.

Ministers from across government held a Cobra meeting concerning the response to Éowyn, in particular “the urgent work underway to reconnect homes which have lost power”, a government spokesperson said on Saturday.

They added that engineers had been sent to Scotland and Northern Ireland to aid recovery efforts.

In Ireland, 625,000 properties were without power as of Friday evening, with the nation’s grid operator describing the damage to electricity infrastructure as “unprecedented, widespread and extensive”.

Loss of power to treatment plants and pumping stations has also caused water supply to be interrupted in several places, Irish Water said.

ScotRail said work was continuing to repair its network after reporting “extensive damage”. Network Rail Scotland reported around 400 incidents on its tracks, including downed trees and damaged overhead lines.

The East Coast Main Line between Edinburgh and Newcastle was among those to reopen on Saturday, but a ScotRail spokesperson said the “vast majority” of its routes remained closed while inspections and repairs continue.

National Rail said winds and rain would affect some services in northern England and parts of Scotland.

Flights have resumed after cancellations and delays, but airports have warned that Friday’s disruption would have knock-on impact on services over the coming days.

Delays are being reported at London Heathrow, Edinburgh and Newcastle airports.

Edinburgh Airport said it would be operating under “challenging conditions” on Saturday, while Glasgow and Belfast International said passengers should continue to check the latest travel information with their airline before travelling.

CalMac, the main operator of ferries off Scotland’s west coast, said it was still experiencing some disruption, although the majority of ferry crossings in the Irish Sea appeared to be operating normally.

Louise McKillion, from Castlewellan in Northern Ireland, had to seek shelter in a youth hostel with her family after her home lost power.

She has been told it could take up to 10 days for it to be restored.

“Nobody can shower and nobody can have a hot meal – it’s terrible,” Ms McKillion told the BBC.

“You don’t realise the impact that has until you’re actually put into it.”

Mark Jones, who lives in Coldingham in the Scottish Borders, described Éowyn hitting his area as like “an earthquake”.

On Friday morning, he saw his corrugated iron carport being lifted out of the ground and tipped into an area of woodland.

“I didn’t feel seriously alarmed because there was about 30ft between me and the carport and it just lifted up quite steadily and tilted over,” he recalled.

“I just think the word ‘storm’ is too mild for what we have witnessed here. Only a hurricane could do that.”

Liam Downs, an electrician from Cardross on the north side of the Firth of Clyde, said he had been driving along the coast removing trees from the road.

While going to check on a client, he saw “about 10 trees” fall within the space of 10 minutes which “completely blocked us”.

“As we were driving along the coast earlier, waves were coming up onto the road and my van literally went from being in the right lane to being up on the curb,” he said.

Additional reporting by George Wright, Lauren Turner and Kathryn Armstrong