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It’s been four days since Los Angeles became an inferno – and my home became a pile of smouldering embers.

I’m now staying at a friend’s house in La Crescenta, north of the city, after evacuating my condo in the Palisades, 30 miles (48km) away from where the fires first started on Tuesday morning.

I thought we’d be safe here, but with six active fires now burning across the city, nowhere feels safe. So far, LA’s fires have forced more than 179,000 people including myself to evacuate.

Many people I know thought they had found refuge, only to have to flee again.

We’ve had our bags packed by the door, just in case we were ordered to leave for the second time in 48 hours.

On Thursday afternoon, the moment we were dreading happened – we got an emergency evacuation notice.

We panicked, and ran to load the cars again. I checked my car – low on gas – and sent my partner out to find some. He had to drive to four different stations before he found one with any supply.

The alarm, it turned out, was false, a mistake that rattled America’s second-largest city, which was already on edge.

As a climate reporter, I am used to covering extreme weather events. Just a few weeks ago I was interviewing residents who had fled the Malibu fires. Now I’m on the other side of the story.

The Palisades Fire has already been dubbed a historic wildfire. And it will forever be burnished in my memory because it’s the wildfire that burned down my community and my home.

It began on the morning of 7 January. Small flames on the Santa Monica mountain-side that I could see from the Palisades Village. I watched it for a short while, the smoke stretching across the clear blue sky. Locals were taking photos of it.

An hour later, the flames had jumped across the ridgelines and descended down the mountain. I watched as the fire began to engulf homes and smoke billowed across the sky.

I was already extremely concerned about the Santa Ana wind warnings we’d received two days prior – up to 80mph (129km/h) wind gusts were forecast. Those, and the lack of rain we’d had made ideal conditions for a fire to spread quickly and intensely.

I felt how quickly the wind was changing, blowing embers and smoke across the town. And I could see the fire spreading, jumping from spot to spot so that it was soon surrounding the Palisades.

The scene was truly apocalyptic – a bright red Sun cast an orange glow over us, and ash rained down like snow.

I ran back home and started making plans if I needed to evacuate. There didn’t feel much point in leaving right at that moment because the one road out, Sunset Blvd, was gridlocked.

I packed the important stuff first – passports, birth certificates – and then when I felt I had a bit more time, I hosed down the front of the house, hoping the water would keep my condo, one of several terraced buildings in a small development, from succumbing to the fire.

I finally decided to leave when we were told there was a mandatory evacuation order for the entirety of the Palisades. I was also getting more concerned as the fire had spread to the mountains directly in front of my house, and I had heard the winds were only going to get stronger going into the evening.

I never received a message about any evacuations or fire warnings on that first terrible day and nor did my partner. I was informed by neighbours.

I’m lucky I have a press pass and I could approach emergency services to find out what news I could. I’m so grateful that everyone I know managed to get out on time. A lot of us didn’t realise how close the flames were to our homes, due to the lack of communication and information available.

It took a while to get out. There were thousands of cars trying to leave, all desperate to flee the flames. The frustration and fear was palpable.

I thought my home would be safe as it sits on the other side of Sunset Blvd, across from the mountains. I didn’t think the fire would jump the road.

But when I got a text from a neighbour to say she saw Palisades High School on fire as she was evacuating, I knew that the fire was spreading further than anyone could have predicted. I had been watching the news – it was hard to look away – and it has been heartbreaking to see the school in flames, as well as some of our cultural landmarks, such as our local theatre.

Knowing that the wind speeds were only going to pick up as night fell, and it’s much harder to fight a fire in the dark, I realised in that moment that my home might not make it. It was a sobering thought that I might be six months pregnant and homeless.

We arrived in La Crescenta on Tuesday evening. The next morning I received the news from a neighbour that our house had made it through the night. I cried with relief.

When we started to read about looting that was happening in the Palisades, we decided we would go and check on our house, and retrieve some of the irreplaceable belongings we’d left behind – photographs, journals and family jewellery.

We returned on Wednesday afternoon and were allowed to drive in because of my press credentials. When we reached Sunset Blvd, our road, we saw flames and fire engines and in front of our block of condos. My heart sank.

We drove past and saw our entire cluster of condos had been levelled.

We parked the car, and raced around the back. As soon as I saw the scene I doubled up like I’d been hit. Where about 20 condos once stood there was a pile of burning rubble. The firefighters, their faces covered in ash, kept apologising that they couldn’t save our home. I was sobbing and thanking them for doing so much already.

I had to call and tell all of my neighbours that their homes were gone. I could barely get the words out.

Most of my village, I’d say about 90%, has been razed to the ground. It’s all gone. I’m reeling from the shock, from the devastation and from everything my community has lost.

I’m planning to leave the city and stay with friends further north where it’s safe and there’s no smoke. I think it will be a while before I want to come back to LA.

It’s surreal to think there’s literally nothing to go back to. No home, no library, no stores, no kids’ karate dojo, no theatre, no community centre. It’s all just gone. I keep thinking “I should have grabbed more of my stuff before I fled”.

But then I think back to one crystal-clear moment before I fled my house: standing in my bedroom, trying to choose which pair of earrings to take with me – a gold pair of hoops my sisters had gifted me for my 30th, or a pair of handmade abalone shell earrings that a Native American woman had given me after reporting on her community.

I told myself, out loud: “Only take what you need. What do you need?” And I realised in a moment of clarity, whilst I was frantically scanning all of my favourite clothes, shoes, and jewellery, that I really didn’t need any of it.

I grabbed my grandmother’s ring, passports, birth certificates, and left everything else to burn.

Police say two more lynx have been spotted in the same area where a pair of the wild cats were captured on Thursday.

They were seen near Kingussie in the Cairngorms National Park.

Police Scotland have warned members of the public not to approach the animals and said officers were working with specially-trained personnel to capture them.

The force said inquiries suggested that the sighting was connected with the release of the two lynx which were captured on Thursday.

Police have urged people not to visit the area to try and see the cats.

Insp Craig Johnstone said: “Members of the public are asked not to approach the animals for their own safety and the safety of the lynx.

“Officers are working with specially trained personnel to capture them safely and humanely.

“Although it may be tempting to try to find them, take pictures or set up cameras, we are asking people not to travel into the area, particularly in the current winter weather conditions.”

The latest lynx, believed to be larger than the other two cats, were spotted at about 07:10 on Friday.

Experts from Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS), along with police and Cairngorms National Park rangers, are trying to capture the wild cats.

RZSS chief executive David Field said: “Two more lynx have been sighted in the same Cairngorms location where we successfully captured a pair yesterday.

“Further traps are being baited in the area and the hope is that these animals will be safely and humanely captured before being taken to Edinburgh Zoo to join the two captured yesterday in quarantine.”

Police Scotland and Cairngorm National Park Authority Rangers are also in attendance. The public are being asked to steer clear of the area as a build-up of people could disturb the animals and hamper efforts on the ground.

A Cairngorms Mountain Rescue Team drone is being used in the search.

RZSS condemns the illegal release of wild animals in the strongest possible terms.

The two animals trapped earlier this week have been taken into the care of the RZSS. They are now at Edinburgh Zoo.

They have been confirmed as Eurasian lynx but their sex has still to be confirmed.

The RZSS has condemned the illegal release of the animals as “highly irresponsible”.

Experts from the charity worked with police to humanely trap the first two cats, which are now being cared for in quarantine facilities at Highland Wildlife Park before being transferred to Edinburgh Zoo.

Some conservation groups have been campaigning to have the wild cats reintroduced to Scotland.

Those who support the idea include the Mammal Society, which has suggested rogue rewilders could be behind the releases.

The organisation said it would love to see a stable and healthy population of wild lynx thriving in the UK, and that the reintroduction of the species could “redress ecosystem imbalance and restore biodiversity to our depleted landscapes”.

The society said it understood the “frustration” which could lead to illegal releases, but that there were “no shortcuts” to achieving its goal.

“Illegal releases are irresponsible and not the answer,” it said.

The Cairngorms National Park Authority has appealed to the public to stay away from the search area.

There are four lynx species. Eurasian lynx are the largest.

Adults are roughly the size of a Labrador dog.

Lynx died out in Britain 500 to 1,000 years ago, but similar species are still found in continental Europe, Russia and Asia.

In the wild they prey on roe deer, young red deer and also hares and rabbits.

A licence is required under the Dangerous Animals Act to keep lynx.

Local authority Highland Council said no premises in the area had applied for, or were operating under a Dangerous Wild Animal (DWA) licence.

The International Fund for Animal Welfare says lynx are mostly active at night and typically avoid humans.

It does warn that lynx, like other wild animals, could attack in self-defence if cornered.

WWF says attacks on livestock, such as sheep, are “much smaller than perceived”.

It is a landscape of hills, commercial forestry and native woodland on the edge of some of the highest mountains in the Cairngorms.

Insh Marshes, near Kingussie, is an RSPB Scotland reserve where beavers were recently released under licence.

Kingussie and the nearby village of Newtonmore are home to a total of about 1,500 people.

The area has seen heavy snowfall in recent days.

Cairngorms National Park is largest in the UK. It is twice the size of Lake District National Park.

Other animals once native to Scotland have been illegally released before.

They include wild boar and beavers.

The US has announced an increased $25m (£20.4m) reward for information leading to the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on the day he was sworn in for a third six-year term in office.

The inauguration ceremony was overshadowed by recrimination from the international community and Venezuelan opposition leaders.

Rewards have also been offered for information leading to the arrest and or conviction of Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello. A new reward of up to $15m for Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino has also been offered.

The UK also issued sanctions on 15 top Venezuelan officials, including judges, members of the security forces and military officials.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said those sanctioned were responsible for “undermining democracy, the rule of law, and human rights violations”.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy went on to describe Maduro’s regime as “fraudulent”.

Also on Friday, the EU said it was extending “restrictive measures” against Venezuela because of “the lack of progress… leading to the restoration of democracy and the rule of law”. The bloc also sanctioned a further 15 Venezuelan officials.

Canada also imposed fresh sanctions in what Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly called Maduro’s “shameless actions”.

Joly said Canada “will not tolerate the erosion of the democratic process or the repression of citizens seeking to express their rights”.

Maduro and his government have repeatedly denounced many of the allegations made by Western countries and opposition leaders.

The reward from the US cites narcotics and corruption charges dating back to 2020.

In 2020, the US charged Maduro, and other senior officials in the country with “narco-terrorism”.

It accused them of flooding the US with cocaine and using drugs as a weapon to undermine the health of Americans.

Maduro has rejected the accusations. The US also re-imposed oil sanctions last year, after temporarily easing them in the hope Maduro could be incentivised to hold free and fair elections.

The Venezuelan president has blamed an economic collapse in his country on US-led sanctions he calls illegitimate and imperial. His critics blame corruption and economic mismanagement.

On Friday, President Maduro took the oath of office, vowing his third six-year term in office would be a “period of peace”.

“This new presidential term will be the period of peace, prosperity, equality, and the new democracy,” he said.

“I swear by history, I swear by my life, and I will fulfil it,” he added.

The 28 July election results were widely rejected by the international community, including by Brazil and Colombia, some of Venezuela’s left-wing neighbours.

The inauguration itself was a tightly controlled affair. Most accredited Venezuelan media were not allowed inside and foreign journalists were not allowed in the country.

Maduro has a few allies remaining including Iran, China and Russia but is increasingly isolated on the world stage.

The Cuban and Nicaraguan presidents were the only leaders present at the inauguration.

The 62-year-old was declared the winner of last July’s presidential election but the opposition and many countries, including the US, rejected the result and recognised the exiled opposition candidate Edmundo González as the legitimate president-elect.

González fled Venezuela in September and has been living in Spain, but this month he went on a tour of the Americas to rally international support.

The Maduro government has issued an arrest warrant for him, offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to his detention.

It comes as Maduro was declared the winner of July’s presidential election by Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE), which is closely aligned with the government.

Machado, whom González replaced on the ballot after she was barred from running herself, has also been targeted. She went into hiding soon after the disputed elections, and was last seen in public in August before Thursday’s rally.

Additional reporting by Vanessa Silva in Caracas, Venezuela.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“At the moment it’s very hard to say.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“At the moment it’s very hard to say.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Below are images showing the destruction some businesses have suffered.

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

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

Read more about what happened to the school here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The US government has succeeded in temporarily blocking the accused mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks from pleading guilty amid a dispute over the terms of a pre-trial agreement.

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

In a filing with a federal appeals court, the government argued that it and the American people would be irreparably harmed if the pleas were accepted.

A three-judge panel said they needed more time to consider the case and put the proceedings on hold. They stressed that the delay “should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits” of the case.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Those who had travelled to the US naval base of Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to watch Mohammed plead guilty were speaking to journalists when news of the delay was announced.

“The US government failed the 9/11 families again. They had the chance to do the right thing and decided not to,” said Tom Resta, whose brother, sister-in-law and their unborn child were killed in the attacks.

The government had argued that going ahead with the deals would mean it was denied the opportunity to “seek capital punishment against three men charged with a heinous act of mass murder that caused the death of thousands of people and shocked the nation and the world”.

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

In their response, Mohammed’s team said the agreement offered “the first opportunity for genuine closure” in almost a quarter of a century. It said the plea negotiations, which happened over two years, had “directly involved the White House”.

The federal appeals court said its decision on Thursday evening was aimed at giving the judges time to receive a full briefing and hear arguments “on an expedited basis”.

The delay means the matter will now fall to the incoming Trump administration.

The full details of the deals reached with Mohammed and his two co-defendants have not been released.

In a court hearing in Guantanamo on Wednesday, his legal team confirmed that he had agreed to plead guilty to all charges.

If the deals are upheld and the pleas accepted by the court, the next steps would be appointing a military jury, known as a panel, to hear evidence at a sentencing hearing.

This has been described by lawyers in the case as a form of public trial, where survivors and family members of those killed would be given the opportunity to give statements.

Under the agreement, the families would also be able to pose questions to Mohammed, who would be required to “answer their questions fully and truthfully”, lawyers say.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Current and former presidents and vice-presidents gathered at Washington National Cathedral on Thursday for the funeral service of former US President Jimmy Carter, who died at the age of 100 last week.

Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W Bush and Bill Clinton were seated together in the first rows of pews.

Vice-President Kamala Harris, who lost the presidential election to Trump in November, and her predecessors Mike Pence and Al Gore were also among the select group of politicians and members of the public paying their respects to Carter.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – who lost to Trump in the 2016 presidential election – was also seated with her husband.

In his eulogy, Joe Biden repeatedly praised Carter’s “character” and lauded his establishment of a “model post-presidency, by making a powerful difference as a private citizen in America”.

“To make every minute of our time on earth count, that’s the very definition of a good life,” Biden says, encouraging people to study the power of Carter’s example.

The two men had known each other for decades. In his comments, Biden recalled how he was the first senator to endorse Carter’s presidential bid.

Photographers captured Trump and Obama – who have politically clashed for the better part of a decade – smiling and chatting before the service began.

Former and incoming first lady Melania Trump joined her husband for the service but Michelle Obama was not in attendance.

Sources close to former first lady told US media that she had a “scheduling conflict” and was still in Hawaii, where Barack Obama spent much of his childhood and where the Obama family usually spends their Christmas holidays.

Trump and his former vice-president, Mike Pence, shook hands as guests took their seats.

The two men fell out at the end of Trump’s presidency, when Pence presided over the certification of Biden’s presidential win despite pressure from Trump not to do so.

A riotous mob stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 to try and stop the certification, with some calling for Pence’s hanging.

He then ran against Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination and declined to endorse him when he won.

Vice-President-elect JD Vance was also there, as were lawmakers including Georgia Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff and Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders.

The event was also attended by several current and former world leaders and prominent international officials, including Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, the Netherlands’ Princess Mabel of Orange-Nassau and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

At one point, Trudeau appeared to glare at Trump – who was repeatedly referred to him as “Governor Trudeau” in recent weeks and vowed to use “economic force” against Canada.

There was no formality between Trump and Harris, whom he defeated in the 2024 election.

Though seated near each other, the two politicians did not shake hands after entering the church. Trump was spotted staring at Harris as she took her seat.

Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, Harris’s husband, later shook hands with Trump as Harris spoke to Bush.

From the pulpit, speaker after speaker praised Carter’s commitment to public service before and after his time in office.

Steve Ford, son of former president Gerald Ford, read aloud a eulogy his late father wrote about Carter.

The two men had made a pact to speak at each other’s funerals – an oath Carter himself upheld when Ford died in 2007.

“By fate, for a brief season, Jimmy Carter and I were rivals,” President Ford’s eulogy read. But later, “it led to the most enduring of friendships”.

Copenhagen’s gloomy January weather matches the mood among Denmark’s politicians and business leaders.

“We take this situation very, very seriously,” said Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen of Donald Trump’s threats to acquire Greenland – and punish Denmark with high tariffs if it stands in the way.

But, he added, the government had “no ambition whatsoever to escalate some war of words.”

Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen downplayed Trump’s own suggestion that the US might use military force to seize Greenland. “I don’t have the fantasy to imagine that it’ll ever get to that,” she told Danish TV.

And Lars Sandahl Sorensen, CEO of Danish Industry, also said there was “every reason to stay calm… no-one has any interest in a trade war.”

But behind the scenes, hastily organised high-level meetings have been taking place in Copenhagen all week, a reflection of the shock caused by Trump’s remarks.

Greenland PM Mute Egede flew in to meet both the prime minister and King Frederik X on Wednesday.

And on Thursday night, party leaders from across the political spectrum gathered for an extraordinary meeting on the crisis with Mette Frederiksen in Denmark’s parliament.

Faced with what many in Denmark are calling Trump’s “provocation,” Frederiksen has broadly attempted to strike a conciliatory tone, repeatedly referring to the US as “Denmark’s closest partner”.

It was “only natural” that the US was preoccupied by the Arctic and Greenland, she added.

Yet she also said that any decision on Greenland’s future should be up to its people alone: “Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders… and it’s the Greenlanders themselves who have to define their future.”

Her cautious approach is twofold.

On the one hand, Frederiksen is keen to avoid escalating the situation. She’s been burned before, in 2019, when Trump cancelled a trip to Denmark after she said his proposal to buy Greenland was “absurd”.

“Back then he only had one more year in office, then things went back to normal,” veteran political journalist Erik Holstein told the BBC . “But maybe this is the new normal.”

But Frederiksen’s comments also speak to the Danish resolve not to meddle in the internal affairs of Greenland – an autonomous territory with its own parliament and whose population is increasingly leaning towards independence.

“She should’ve been much clearer in rejecting the idea,” said opposition MP Rasmus Jarlov.

“This level of disrespect from the coming US president towards very, very loyal allies and friends is record-setting,” he told the BBC, although he admitted Trump’s forcefulness had “surprised everybody.”

The conservative MP believed Frederiksen’s insistence that “only Greenland… can decide and define Greenland’s future” placed too much pressure on the island’s inhabitants. “It would’ve been prudent and clever to stand behind Greenland and just clearly state that Denmark doesn’t want [a US takeover].”

The Greenland question is a delicate one for Denmark, whose prime minister officially apologised only recently for spearheading a 1950s social experiment which saw Inuit children removed from their families to be re-educated as “model Danes”.

Last week, Greenland’s leader said the territory should free itself from “the shackles of colonialism.”

By doing so he tapped into growing nationalist sentiment, fuelled by interest among Greenland’s younger generations in the indigenous culture and history of the Inuit.

Most commentators now expect a successful independence referendum in the near future. While for many it would be seen as a victory, it could also usher in a new set of problems, as 60% of Greenland’s economy is dependent on Denmark.

An independent Greenland “would need to make choices,” said Karsten Honge. The Social Democrat MP now fears his preferred option of a new Commonwealth-style pact “based on equality and democracy” is unlikely to come about.

Sitting in his parliamentary office decorated with poems and drawings depicting scenes of Inuit life, Honge said Greenland would need to decide “how much it values independence”. It could sever ties with Denmark and turn to the US, Honge said, “but if you treasure independence then that doesn’t make sense.”

Opposition MP Jarlov argues that while there is no point in forcing Greenland to be part of Denmark, “it is very close to being an independent country already”.

Its capital Nuuk is self-governed, but relies on Copenhagen for management of currency, foreign relations and defence – as well as substantial subsidies.

“Greenland today has more independence than Denmark has from the EU,” Jarlov added. “So I hope they think things through.”

As Mette Frederiksen has the awkward task of responding firmly while not offending Greenland or the US, the staunchest rebuttal to Trump’s comments so far has come from outside Denmark.

The principle of the inviolability of borders “applies to every country… no matter whether it’s a very small one or a very powerful one,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz warned, while French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said the EU would not let other nations “attack its sovereign borders”.

Their comments gave away the deep concern within the EU about how to handle the upcoming Trump presidency. “This is not just very serious for Greenland and Denmark – it is serious to the whole world and to Europe as a whole,” MP Karsten Honge said.

“Imagine a world – which we may be facing in just a few weeks – where international agreements don’t exist. That would shake everything up, and Denmark would just be a small part of it.”

The Danish trade sector has similarly been engulfed by deep nervousness after Trump said he would “tariff Denmark at a very high level” if it refused to give up Greenland to the US.

A 2024 Danish Industry study showed that Denmark’s GDP would fall by three points if the US imposed 10% tariffs on imports from the EU to the US as part of a global trade war.

Singling out Danish products from the influx of EU goods would be near-impossible for the US, and would almost certainly result in retaliatory measures from the EU. But trade industry professionals are taking few chances, and in Denmark as elsewhere on the continent huge amounts of resources are being spent internally to plan for potential outcomes of Donald Trump’s second term in the White House.

As his inauguration approaches, Danes are preparing as they can to weather the storm. There is guarded hope that the president-elect could soon shift his focus to grievances towards other EU partners, and that the Greenland question could be temporarily shelved.

But the disquiet brought on by Trump’s refusal to rule out military intervention to seize Greenland remains.

Karsten Honge said Denmark would have suffer whatever decision the US takes.

“They just need to send a small battleship to travel down the Greenland coast and send a polite letter to Denmark,” he said, only partly in jest.

“The last sentence would be: well, Denmark, what you gonna do about it?

“That’s the new reality with regards to Trump.”

Out-of-control wildfires are ripping across parts of Los Angeles, leading to at least five deaths, burning down hundreds of buildings, and prompting evacuation orders for more than 179,000 people across the county.

Despite the efforts of firefighters, the biggest blazes remain totally uncontained – with weather conditions and the underlying impact of climate change expected to continue fanning the flames for days to come.

In Los Angeles County, roughly 179,783 residents are under evacuation order – many of them leaving their homes simply carrying whatever belongings they can. Another 200,000 residents are under evacuation warning, meaning they could be required to leave their homes soon.

Police say at least five people have died, with their bodies found near the Eaton fire – but their cause of death is not yet known.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said he expected the death toll to rise, adding that a more thorough investigation needs to be done in the affected areas which, he said, “look like a bomb was dropped in them”.

Looting and theft has risen in some evacuated neighbourhoods, Sheriff Luna said, leading to 20 arrests.

Like the even larger Palisades fire, the Eaton fire remains totally uncontained.

Meanwhile, the Sunset fire that has been menacing the well-known Hollywood Hills area has started to shrink but is not yet contained. Evacuation orders for the Hollywood Hills West area have been lifted.

Nearly 2,000 structures are known to have been destroyed – including houses and schools, and businesses on the iconic Sunset Boulevard. A fire ecologist has told the BBC that “entire neighbourhoods… have been wiped out”.

Among the celebrities who have lost their homes are Leighton Meester and Adam Brody, who attended the Golden Globes just days ago, and Paris Hilton.

The insurance industry fears this could prove to be one of the costliest wildfire outbreaks in US history, with insured losses expected above $8bn (£6.5bn) due to the high value of properties in the paths of the blazes.

There is a glimmer of hope for firefighters, as the fire weather outlook for southern California has been downgraded from “extremely critical” to “critical”.

But BBC weather forecaster Sarah Keith-Lucas says there is no rain forecast in the area for at least the next week, meaning conditions remain ripe for fire.

Power has been cut to swathes of the city, and traffic jams have built up. Adding to the disruption, a number of schools and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have been forced to close.

A political row about the city’s preparedness has erupted after it emerged that some firefighters’ hoses have run dry – an issue seized upon by US President-elect Donald Trump.

There are at least five fires raging in the wider area, according to California fire officials early on Thursday:

• Palisades: The first fire to erupt on Tuesday and the biggest fire in the region, which could become the most destructive fire in state history. It has scorched a sizable part of land, covering more than 17,200 acres, including the upscale Pacific Palisades neighbourhood
• Eaton: It has struck the northern part of Los Angeles, blazing through cities such as Altadena. It’s the second biggest fire in the area, burning around 10,600 acres
• Hurst: Located just north of San Fernando, it began burning on Tuesday night and has grown to 855 acres, though firefighters have had some successlimited in containing it
• Lidia: It broke out on Wednesday afternoon in the mountainous Acton area north of Los Angeles and grew to cover almost 350 acres. Authorities say it has been 40% contained
• Sunset: It broke out Wednesday evening in Hollywood Hills, growing to about 20 acres in less than an hour. It covered around 43 acres but is now starting to shrink

The earlier Woodley and Olivas fires have now been contained, according to local fire authorities.

Officials have pointed to high winds and drought in the area, which has made vegetation very dry and easy to burn.

For the moment, officials have said the cause of the fires remains unknown and continues to be under investigation.

The probable impact of climate change has also been cited – although the exact circumstances remain unclear.

Some 95% of wildfires in the area are started by humans, according to David Acuna, a battalion chief at the Californian Fire Service, although officials are yet to state how they think the current fires started.

An important factor that has been cited in the spread of the blazes is the Santa Ana winds, which blow from inland towards the coast. With speeds of more than 60mph (97 km/h), these are believed to have fanned the flames.

Although strong winds and lack of rain are driving the blazes, experts say climate change is altering the background conditions and increasing the likelihood of such fires.

US government research is unequivocal in linking climate change to larger and more severe wildfires in the western United States.

“Climate change, including increased heat, extended drought, and a thirsty atmosphere, has been a key driver in increasing the risk and extent of wildfires in the western United States,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says.

And following a very warm summer and lack of rain in recent months, California is particularly vulnerable.

Fire season in southern California is generally thought to stretch from May to October – but the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, has pointed out earlier that blazes had become a perennial issue. “There’s no fire season,” he said. “It’s fire year.”

Speaking to the BBC, Mr Acuna said the Palisades Fire represented only the third occasion in the past 30 years that a major fire had broken out in January.