Emma Barnett

We searched in security branches. We were told they are in state security, but not sure. Somebody told me that some girls were sent from detention centers to Lahn al-Hayat orphanage, but they denied having them.

Our Los Angeles correspondent Emma Vardy has been following the trial.

They had this falling out, this dispute, yards away from the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And it was partly caught on CCTV. You could see ASAP Rocky pulling out a gun. But he always claimed that this gun wasn't real. It was a prop gun that he said he just carried for security. But his friend or former friend A$AP Relly said that he had shots fired at him and that they grazed his knuckles.

So the jury had to decide who was telling the truth. Now, this was a celebrity trial. And like a lot of these types of celebrity court cases, the focus was very much on the characters involved. Because, of course, A$AP Rocky's partner, Das ist ein musikalischer Megastar. Rihanna, die Sängerin, kam auf viele Tage zur Stimme, um ihren Partner zu unterstützen.

Und auf einer dieser Tage brachte sie ihre zwei Kinder, einen und einen zweijährigen. Das hat natürlich Headlines gemacht, aber es gab eine Verletzung für ihre Familie, weil der Rapper A$AP Rocky, wenn er verurteilt wurde, hätte er mehr als 20 Jahre im Gefängnis verbracht. Aber die Jury fand ihn nicht verurteilt, also ist er ein freier Mann.

Ja, das ist eine gute Frage. Ich meine, der Rap-Welt ist kein Auferstandener von Feuds und Fallouts. Und es ist eine Art Kultur von Ehren und Respekt. Und wenn das falsch geht, kann es wirklich, wirklich schlecht gehen. Es wurde gesagt, dass A$AP Rocky seine Karriere wirklich aufgenommen hat.

Er war argumentierlich der größte Famous aus den beiden von ihnen und der größte Famous aus dem Hip-Hop-Kollektiv, von dem sie Teil waren. Perhaps some jealousy, there were some arguments over money, it was alleged as well. So just the old things that really lead to friendships breaking down, especially when there's fame and money involved.

So something that probably could have been a storm in a teacup potentially was life-changing for these two men and created this big courtroom drama that of course lots of people followed because the celebrities were in court.

If I look at accountability, people have been arrested, in total I believe eight people, working where they were staying. The Lao government say it's conducting investigations to find causes of the incidents and will bring perpetrators to justice. What is your view of that process and how much confidence do you have?

Have you had any contact from the Lao authorities? Have you had any support in your mission to try and raise awareness or any feedback on that front?

I'm sure you've gone over this a million times in your mind. There's very little that your girls, your daughters could have done differently. You know, they're in a bar, they're having a great time, we imagine.

I've done it. I'm sure you've done it.

Gosh, I didn't realise that you had that connection, that you travelled together as the dads and your daughters had followed suit. Well, I'm sure you're both trying to hold each other up.

And what would you say, Rory, to the question? Are they any good?

Is there any sadness about making this?

Ich meine, Schmerz ist vielleicht nicht das Wort, aber ich bin beeindruckt, dass du sie nicht siehst. Es ist eine interessante Tension, dass du Content machst, das du nicht siehst.

Jen, for you, what are people telling you about why they're turning to these dramas?

Talking then about what Donald Trump's going to be doing, you know, far beyond the Biden administration. What is the latest that we know about his crackdown on the border?

Have Americans' lives improved under Joe Biden?

Do you think the Biden camp, including First Lady Jill Biden in this, have accepted that he needed to drop out of the race? Because I'm just looking at this farewell interview in The Washington Post with Jill Biden taking a dig at the Democratic Party for pressing him to drop out, saying, let's just say I was disappointed with how it unfolded.

As someone who has interviewed him and been in and around his circle, is he OK, Evan, mentally, with his faculties?

How do you think history will judge Joe Biden?

Well, just a reminder, Mohamed Al-Fayed was accused of racism and sexual misconduct by Vanity Fair back in 1995, an allegation he vehemently denied. He subsequently sued the magazine for libel. The case was eventually settled out of court.

Now, I've been speaking to a former security guard who we're calling Henry, and over the course of two interviews, he told me that many black members of staff at Harrods would leave the shop floor before Mohamed Al-Fayed's daily tours of the store.

Along with those members of staff, Henry also described others who didn't fit a certain look, leaving the building via an underground passageway which connected the main store with to an office across the road. He said they would then file back in once Mohammed Al-Fayed had gone.

I asked him how it would work when Al-Fayed was about to arrive on the shop floor and Henry's words are spoken by an actor.

Who would stay? What you say the world finds attractive? What kind of woman would be allowed to stay behind?

Well, Henry told us he was never close enough to Al-Fayed when he was walking around the shop floor to see how he interacted with the women who were allowed to stay. I asked him for further clarification about why he thought some people left the shop floor before Mohammed Al-Fayed toured the store.

Henry also clarified that some non-white door guards did stay on the door. We've actually spoken to three women who worked at Harrods in various roles who've helped corroborate Henry's claims. One of the women, Anna, said that while she was hiring for jobs, she was told not to hire anyone who was black. because the customers wouldn't like it.

Another said those hidden would also include people who were overweight.

And is that the only answer, do you think, in a hotter world?

A series of heavy Israeli airstrikes have hit the Gaza Strip as pressure builds on both sides taking part in the ceasefire negotiations in the Qatari capital Doha. In one attack at dawn, civil defence officials reported that around a dozen displaced people were killed when a building in Gaza City was hit by an Israeli strike. Ahmed Ayan lives nearby.

The Israeli military has said that in the past week it had struck more than 40 Hamas gathering points and command centres throughout the Gaza Strip, but hasn't commented directly on the latest strikes. Hamas has published a video of one of the hostages taken during its attack on the 7th of October 2023. It shows Liri Albag, who's 19. She had been serving in the Israeli military.

In a still image which was released from the video by a group representing the families of the Israeli hostages, she is seen holding her head in her hands. In a statement, Lira Al-Bagh's parents said the video had torn their hearts to pieces and they appealed to the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make decisions as if your own children were there.

In a call to Lira Al-Bagh's parents, the Israeli President Isaac Herzog said his country's delegation must remain at the negotiating table until all 100 hostages were returned home. The hostage families group believe there is pressure on both sides to reach an agreement ahead of President Trump's inauguration this month.

The incoming president has warned they would be held to pay if a deal wasn't concluded by the time he takes office.

So just under 100 years ago, the University of Nottingham invited Albert Einstein to come and tell everybody in the physics department all about his new theories of general relativity, which are the idea of how space-time works, how the universe works. He was friends with one of the heads of department here. And so on the evening, he was due to give a lecture

He did turn up late, which is very Einstein. But he ended up getting distracted by Isaac Newton's house in Lincolnshire on the way. But he did turn up. And what he did was he spoke in German about all of these theories, all of these mathematical equations. And as he was doing so, we had one of the physicists actually translating from German to English.

and also he was transcribing the mathematical equations on a blackboard. It's one of very few blackboards in existence and the only signed one that we know of at all. There's one more in the UK at the University of Oxford. There were two but somebody unfortunately cleaned one of them so this is a very very rare item and it's got a wonderful signature and a date right at the bottom of it.

You can look at it and you can see all of the text you can You can identify the equations that describe a black hole. You can see his signature.

I think it is serious. This statement today has talked about using all military and civilian means of pressure. So it does seem like he is trying to give the impression that the Israeli military now is prepared to use any means possible in order to return the hostages from Gaza. So we've seen in the past days the ground forces start to return hostages.

Slowly and only in limited campaigns, but starting to return to parts of the Gaza Strip where previously they had withdrawn from at the beginning of the ceasefire deal.

We understand that there isn't, from Israeli commentators, such a great deal of support for that. There are those on the right in Israel, including the settlement movement, those who often are settling in the West Bank or who previously indeed settled in Gaza until those settlements were deconstructed around 20 years ago.

There is a desire by some to reoccupy Gaza, and that's why we saw when President Trump said put forward his plan to turn the Gaza Strip into the Riviera of the Middle East and this kind of playground for international leisure. There were some inside the Israeli government and indeed the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came out in favour of it.

saying that this was a plan that they wanted to pursue. However, opinion polls suggest that the majority don't favour that, and neither does the Israeli military. Military figures, security officials in it, see a myriad of problems and complexities in terms of administrating Gaza day-to-day, directing traffic, being responsible for the reconstruction of Gaza in whatever form it might take.

So there are different views, even within the government and the security establishment.

I mean, Hamas has said in the past few days that they are prepared to return to the negotiating table, that they are in fact still there and that they continue to study the different proposals put forward, not only by Hamas, the US but other mediators including Egypt.

Obviously Israel's increased pressure in the past few days is intense in a military sense but also on the civilian population where now for over two weeks there's been no aid entering the Gaza Strip, no food going in there. So the pressure is intense on Hamas, but still the crux of this comes down to the fact that Israel, for their part, want to renegotiate the original ceasefire deal.

So they want to try and extract further hostages from the Gaza Strip, but they don't want to commit to a permanent cessation of the war and discussing the next day after of the war and what kind of administration might be there. Whereas Hamas, on their part, are trying to do exactly that. They want to use the remaining hostages to try and get in return some sort of win for their part.

It's burning on both sides of us, up the hill and down into the valley too. There's helicopters flying just above us, just dropping water now. trying to keep those flames at bay. But right here, there's this real sense of urgency because down that way there's a huge NASA facility that the flames have been moving towards. So they're trying really hard to protect that.

And as well as trying to put these fires out with water, And with fire retardant, what they're doing now, they're actually trying to clear lots of this dry vegetation, just trying to saw it down so that the fire has less to rip through. This is normally a beautiful area. I've been hiking to amazing waterfalls up in these hills, but right now it looks so different.

Known as Hollywood's biggest party, there was no shortage of A-listers out to dazzle on the red carpet as awards season got underway. Baby Reindeer, the British drama about stalking and sexual abuse, picked up two awards in the television category. Its creator, Richard Gad, called for more of life's darker tales to make it onto screen.

But it was the Japanese drama Shogun that won the most TV awards of the night. One of the big winners of the film categories was the unusual musical about a Mexican drug lord in transition...

No, I'm not English. Why? No, because you are pretty. Emilia Perez winning four prizes. The film's transgender star, Carla Sofia Gascon, accepted the award for best musical or comedy.

You. Come with me. Of course. Not you. You. Audiences have been flocking to Wicked after its popularity as a stage show, but it only won one of its nominated categories for box office achievement.

The Brutalist won the top drama prize as well as Best Director and the Best Actor award for Adrian Brody.

And one of the biggest cheers of the night was for Demi Moore. Demi Moore. who after 45 years in the industry won her first ever major award with Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy for her role in The Substance, a satirical horror about ageing and Hollywood's beauty standards.

Hollywood's big hitters, including Angelina Jolie, Nicole Kidman and Kate Winslet, were vying for Best Actress in a Musical Comedy, but the top prize went to Brazilian star Fernanda Torres for the film I'm Still Here. This is a film that helps us to think how to survive in tough times like this. A night of some surprises provided plenty to celebrate and debate at the after parties.

And at the same time, in this period, you become a mother. That does something to you, of course, as well.

Dream Count tells a story of four women's lives interconnected, and you go into great detail about their stories and then some of those themes. But just to stay with this for a moment, it's also very visceral at times about women's health.

In 2014, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie published an essay of her popular TED Talk that was her take on feminism that was then sampled by Beyoncé.

Where are we with feminism now, do you think?

A Wizard of Oz themed opening from the stars of Wicked got the show underway. The film won two awards for both production design and costume design.

Oh, Anora. But taking five of the six awards it was nominated for was Anora, an independent film about a prostitute who marries a rich Russian playboy.

Sean Bakers! Its creator, Sean Baker, made history, winning four Oscars on one movie, taking Best Picture, Director, Editing and Screenplay. In one of his acceptance speeches, he urged the public to see movies on the big screen. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Mikey Madison. Star of Enora, Mikey Madison was named Best Actress for her portrayal of a feisty sex worker.

22 years after his first Oscar win in The Pianist, Adrian Brody picked up another Best Actor award for his role as a Holocaust survivor remaking his life in America in the three-and-a-half-hour epic The Brutalist. He then gave a more than five-minute-long acceptance speech.

Emilia Perez had been a frontrunner until controversy over its star actor's social media posts. But Zoe Saldana did win Best Supporting Actress and highlighted her heritage.

The British screenwriter Peter Strawn accepted the award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Conclave.

the only prize for the papal thriller which had eight nominations. Emma Vardy reporting.

In the last couple of hours, the county sheriff's office for Santa Fe have said that, in fact, they had been into the property, they'd carried out a search and that the testing had been done by emergency services and that there was no evidence of carbon monoxide or any sort of gas leak.

And that was initially what people thought this was pointing towards because Gene Hackman's daughter had spoken to one news outlet saying that's what the family thought was the cause of death. What the sheriff's office now is saying seems to contradict that. So investigations are still very much ongoing to find out what happened here.

But they have said that the couple were found in different rooms. One of the dogs, the dog that was dead, was found in a closet. The other two dogs were found alive and that they are now treating this as suspicious.

How is an extra runway no tension?

I don't follow that.

You don't expect emissions to go up with an extra runway, right?