Torres del Paine National Park in Patagonia Chile is an incredible region with raw beauty at every turn with ice fields, glacial lakes, unique wildlife, and extreme mountains. We were lucky enough to spend four days here at EcoCamp and experience a sampling of all the park has to offer in 2012 and again in 2025!
Understanding the Park
To get a grasp on Torres del Paine National Park, our guides gave us a driving overview, pointing out the various peaks, available hikes, lakes and animals. The terrain had us spellbound and to add to the magic, fall turned the grasses along the lakes a beautiful mix of autumn colors.
Guancos Abound
Guancos are one of the few mammals ready to handle the extreme climate of Patagonia Chile and they thrive here in abundance. Perhaps it’s because they know they are a protected species and irresistibly adorable, but they weren’t at all bashful. This one even batted her eyelashes at me.
The Torres Call
Run-off from the numerous glaciers that crown Torres del Paine cut through the landscape in snake-like fashion. The three sharp thin peaks jutting out in the distance are the “towers” that give the park their name and the place we would be hiking in days to come.
Day 2: Cruising the Park
Day 2 had us on a wild and bumpy boat ride toward the park’s second biggest attraction: Glacier Grey. En route, the amazing Almirante Nieto peaks were calling us to climb them.
Sailing Grey Lake
Lucky for us, our EcoCamp guide Paulo was good friends with the boat captain, so he got us VIP access to the control room. After chatting it up in en Español for a while, the captain insisted that Anne take the wheel. With the feel of the strong winds and a glimpse of the upcoming icebergs, Anne quickly handed back the reigns.
Glacier Grey
The face of Glacier Grey is split in the middle with a large black island (which about a century ago was fully engulfed by the glacier). This view is of the right side– the “daintier” section of the glacier.
Blue Ice
The blue hues of the glacier were so intense they looked surreal.
A Toast to Glaciers
For the sunset sail home, we enjoyed pisco sours and whiskey on the rocks (the “rocks” are icebergs, of course). In the distance you can see the island splitting the glacier in half.
Mount Almirante Nieto
On our return back to the mainland we marveled at these amazing cloud formations hovering around the mountains. Later we realized this was no freak instance, the lenticular clouds are the norm in this extreme climate and the skies of gusty Torres del Paine never cease to amaze.
Lenticular Clouds
We had a hard time agreeing if this was a space-ship, a hen on a bed of straw, or just another crazy wind-whipped creation from Torres del Paine. Huge thanks to David Carillet who shared some knowledge in the comments below “They’re known as lenticular clouds, which normally form at very high elevations and have been mistaken for UFOs at times”
Day 3: Hiking the Mirador Trail
The Mirador Trail to the base of the Torres is the park’s most famous day-hike and the finale of the 4-day W Trek. It’s also hardest section at 12.5 miles and 3,000-foot elevation gain. Hiking up the Ascencio Valley, past the glacial rivers, and into the icy boulder fields, we felt the burn but pressed on!
To see the namesake Torres reflect back in the glacial lake is simply magnificent. The vista literally takes your breath away as you stare at the raw cliffs, lakes, snow peaks, and massive boulders. Fourteen years later, we never forgot the beauty of this hike and it inspired us to hike the entirety of the W trek this year!
Torres del Paine Worth Coming Back!
See our TikTok video below for our 2025 hike to the Mirador and our Facebook gallery for the full 4-day W trek!
A massive global study has turned up some grim news: that nearly 87% of us are not routinely getting quality sleep and meeting physical activity levels needed for our long-term health. Now, scientists have discovered that one is more influential than the other.
In an effort to understand more about the biodirectional relationship between sleep and exercise, Flinders University researchers pooled worldwide health data from 70,963 users of two consumer-available health devices – an under-mattress sleep sensor and wrist-worn health tracker – between January 2020 and September 2023. Rather than gather a snapshot, the roughly 3.5 years allowed scientists to spot patterns as well as day-to-day information.
What they found was that, overall, just 12.9% of the cohort routinely achieved both quality sleep of seven-to-nine hours and the recommended daily 8,000 steps or more. What’s more, almost 17% of participants routinely got both less than seven hours of sleep a night and managed fewer than 5,000 steps a day.
But perhaps the most interesting aspect – since being time-poor and underslept probably won’t come as a shock to anyone, especially at this time of year – was just how the two activities interact with each other. The 12.9% who were both good sleepers and movers showed a marked improvement in physical activity the day following quality shut-eye. Essentially, their daily movement dropped off after nights where they achieved fewer hours asleep – even though, on average over the 3.5 years, they still fit into the “seven-to-nine hours a night” bracket.
The findings suggest that when it comes to setting sleep and physical activity recommendations, they should be considered as two sides of the same coin rather than independent of each other. And, to date, there’s a lot more data on the type of exercise to do, in order to sleep better. The researchers argue that more of an emphasis needs to be put on prioritizing sleep to set a good foundation for then being more active the next day.
“We found that getting a good night’s sleep – especially high-quality sleep – sets you up for a more active day,” said lead author Josh Fitton, a PhD candidate at Flinders University. “People who slept well tended to move more the following day, but doing extra steps didn’t really improve sleep that night. This highlights the importance of sleep if we want to boost physical activity.”
And, according to the data, more sleep didn’t mean increased physical activity – there was a threshold where anything beyond seven hours seemed to have little impact on movement.
“Our data showed that sleeping around six to seven hours per night was linked to the highest step counts the next day,” said Fitton. “But that doesn’t mean you should cut back on sleep because quality is just as important. People who slept more efficiently, meaning they spent less time tossing and turning, were consistently more active.”
The study also highlights how, for the majority of people, it’s a challenge to lock in both enough sleep and steps for our wellbeing – something that 87.1% were unable to achieve on average.
“Our findings call into question the real-world compatibility of prominent health recommendations and highlight how difficult it is for most people to have an active lifestyle and sleep well at the same time,” Fitton added. “Only a tiny fraction of people can achieve both recommended sleep and activity levels every day so we really need to think about how these guidelines work together and what we can do to support people to meet them in ways that fit real life.”
While getting better-quality shut-eye is often easier said than done, the researchers suggest that we need to reframe the act of sleep as just those hours between living our lives and appreciate its important role in our health.
“Prioritizing sleep could be the most effective way to boost your energy, motivation and capacity for movement,” said senior author Danny Eckert, a professor at Flinders University. “Simple changes like reducing screen time before bed, keeping a consistent bedtime, and creating a calm sleep environment can make a big difference.
“Our research shows that sleep is not just a passive state, it’s an active contributor to your ability to live a healthy, active life.” he added.
Supporting this research is another new study from scientists at the University of Michigan, who found that dopamine neurons are particularly active during nonrapid eye movement (NREM) sleep – which supports our reward and motivation brain signals when we’re awake.
They found that this dopamine spike is synchronized with memory-boosting sleep spindles, helping to strengthen motor memories and improve motor skills. This challenges traditional thought that these dopamine neurons only serve this role when we’re fully conscious.
“As alterations in dopamine signaling are associated with neurodegenerative diseases that also involve motor deficits and sleep disturbances, understanding these links could pave the way for improved therapeutics and advancements in human health,” said the Science Advances study co-author Ada Eban-Rothschild, an associate professor at the University of Michigan. “The findings highlight that sleep is an active biological period during which key neural circuits strengthen the skills and patterns we rely on every day.”
The donor’s sperm was used in clinics across Europe (stock image)
A sperm donor who unknowingly harboured a genetic mutation that dramatically raises the risk of cancer has fathered at least 197 children across Europe, a major investigation has revealed.
Some children have already died and only a minority who inherit the mutation will escape cancer in their lifetimes.
The sperm was not sold to UK clinics, but the BBC can confirm a “very small” number of British families, who have been informed, used the donor’s sperm while having fertility treatment in Denmark.
Denmark’s European Sperm Bank, which sold the sperm, said families affected had their “deepest sympathy” and admitted the sperm was used to make too many babies in some countries.
Getty Images
Up to 20% of the donor’s sperm contains the dangerous mutation that increases the risk of cancer (stock image)
The investigation has been conducted by 14 public service broadcasters, including the BBC, as part of the European Broadcasting Union’s Investigative Journalism Network.
The sperm came from an anonymous man who was paid to donate as a student, starting in 2005. His sperm was then used by women for around 17 years.
He is healthy and passed the donor screening checks. However, the DNA in some of his cells mutated before he was born.
It damaged the TP53 gene – which has the crucial role of preventing the body’s cells turning cancerous.
Most of the donor’s body does not contain the dangerous form of TP53, but up to 20% of his sperm do.
However, any children made from affected sperm will have the mutation in every cell of their body.
This is known as Li Fraumeni syndrome and comes with an up to 90% chance of developing cancer, particularly during childhood as well as breast cancer later in life.
“It is a dreadful diagnosis,” Prof Clare Turnbull, a cancer geneticist at the Institute of Cancer Research in London, told the BBC. “It’s a very challenging diagnosis to land on a family, there is a lifelong burden of living with that risk, it’s clearly devastating.”
MRI scans of the body and the brain are needed every year, as well as abdominal ultrasounds, to try to spot tumours. Women often choose to have their breasts removed to lower their risk of cancer.
The European Sperm Bank said the “donor himself and his family members are not ill” and such a mutation is “not detected preventatively by genetic screening”. They said they “immediately blocked” the donor once the problem with his sperm was discovered.
Children have died
Doctors who were seeing children with cancer linked to sperm donation raised concerns at the European Society of Human Genetics this year.
They reported they had found 23 with the variant out of 67 children known at the time. Ten had already been diagnosed with cancer.
Through Freedom of Information requests and interviews with doctors and patients we can reveal substantially more children were born to the donor.
The figure is at least 197 children, but that may not be the final number as data has not been obtained from all countries.
It is also unknown how many of these children inherited the dangerous variant.
Dr Kasper has been helping some of the families affected
Dr Edwige Kasper, a cancer geneticist at Rouen University Hospital, in France, who presented the initial data, told the investigation: “We have many children that have already developed a cancer.
“We have some children that have developed already two different cancers and some of them have already died at a very early age.”
Céline, not her real name, is a single-mother in France whose child was conceived with the donor’s sperm 14 years ago and has the mutation.
She got a call from the fertility clinic she used in Belgium urging her to get her daughter screened.
She says she has “absolutely no hard feelings” towards the donor but says it was unacceptable she was given sperm that “wasn’t clean, that wasn’t safe, that carried a risk”.
And she knows cancer will be looming over them for the rest of their lives.
“We don’t know when, we don’t know which one, and we don’t know how many,” she says.
“I understand that there’s a high chance it’s going to happen and when it does, we’ll fight and if there are several, we’ll fight several times.”
The donor’s sperm was used by 67 fertility clinics in 14 countries.
The sperm was not sold to UK clinics.
However, as a result of this investigation the authorities in Denmark notified the UK’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) on Tuesday that British women had travelled to the country to receive fertility treatment using the donor’s sperm.
Those women have been informed.
Peter Thompson, the chief executive of the HFEA, said a “very small number” of women were affected and “they have been told about the donor by the Danish clinic at which they were treated”.
We do not know if any British women had treatment in other countries where the donor’s sperm was distributed.
Concerned parents are advised to contact the clinic they used and the fertility authority in that country.
The BBC is choosing not to release the donor’s identification number because he donated in good faith and the known cases in the UK have been contacted.
There is no law on how many times a donor’s sperm can be used worldwide. However, individual countries do set their own limits.
The European Sperm Bank accepted these limits had “unfortunately” been breached in some countries and it was “in dialogue with the authorities in Denmark and Belgium”.
In Belgium, a single sperm donor is only supposed to be used by six families. Instead 38 different women produced 53 children to the donor.
The UK limit is 10 families per donor.
‘You can’t screen for everything’
Prof Allan Pacey, who used to run the Sheffield Sperm Bank and is now the deputy vice president of the Faculty of Biology Medicine and Health at the University of Manchester, said countries had become dependent on big international sperm banks and half the UK’s sperm was now imported.
He told the BBC: “We have to import from big international sperm banks who are also selling it to other countries, because that’s how they make their money, and that is where the problem begins, because there’s no international law about how often you can use the sperm.”
He said the case was “awful” for everybody involved, but it would be impossible to make sperm completely safe.
“You can’t screen for everything, we only accept 1% or 2% of all men that apply to be a sperm donor in the current screening arrangement so if we make it even tighter, we wouldn’t have any sperm donors – that’s where the balance lies.”
This case, alongside that of a man who was ordered to stop after fathering 550 children through sperm donation, has again raised questions over whether there should be tougher limits.
The European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology has recently suggested a limit of 50 families per donor.
However, it said this would not reduce the risk of inheriting rare genetic diseases.
Rather, it would be better for the wellbeing of children who discover they are one of hundreds of half-siblings.
“More needs to be done to reduce the number of families that are born globally from the same donors,” said Sarah Norcross, the director of the Progress Educational Trust, an independent charity for people affected by infertility and genetic conditions.
“We don’t fully understand what the social and psychological implications will be of having these hundreds of half siblings. It can potentially be traumatic,” she told BBC News.
The European Sperm Bank said: “It is important, especially in light of this case, to remember that thousands of women and couples do not have the opportunity to have a child without the help of donor sperm.
“It is generally safer to have a child with the help of donor sperm if the sperm donors are screened according to medical guidelines.”
What if you are considering using a sperm donor?
Sarah Norcross said these cases were “vanishingly rare” when you consider the number of children born to a sperm donor.
All of the experts we spoke to said using a licensed clinic meant the sperm would be screened for more diseases than most fathers-to-be are.
Prof Pacey said he would ask “is this a UK donor or is this a donor from somewhere else?”
“If it’s a donor from somewhere else I think it’s legitimate to ask questions about has that donor been used before? Or how many times will this donor be used?”
If you or someone you know has been affected by the issues raised, details of help and support are available at BBC Action Line.
There’s a lot of noise coming from the MENA region’s music business.
The Middle East and North Africa was the fastest-growing recorded music region globally in 2024, jumping 22.8% YoY, according to data published by the IFPI in March. Streaming in the MENA region accounted for 99.5% of total revenues.
Saudi Arabia, one of the region’s key players, is a high-potential market with a young, highly connected and digitally savvy population, and its local music business is becoming increasingly visible on the world stage.
That has been driven in part by major music company partnerships and investments, as well as large-scale events such as this past weekend’s XP Music Futures conference and the upcoming Soundstorm Festival, which will feature superstars including Post Malone, Calvin Harris, and Cardi B performing in Riyadh.
Both events, XP Music Futures and SoundStorm, are organized by entertainment company MDLBEAST.
XP Music Futures 2025
MDLBEAST confirmed that the MENA-focused XP wrapped in Riyadh this past weekend (December 4-6) with its largest programming slate to date: 101 sessions, 20 workshops, and 284 speakers from 39 nations. The conference’s NITE program featured 203 artists across 113 acts representing 38 countries.
According to Mazen Khamis, Executive Director of Marketing, Commercial, and Products at MDLBEAST, the conference has evolved significantly since its inception.
“In the beginning, XP attracted mostly regional talent and industry insiders,” he explains. “Today, we’re seeing global labels, tech founders, festival operators, policymakers, managers, and creators from all over the world. It reflects how quickly the MENA music ecosystem is developing, and how much confidence international players now have in the Saudi market.”
The conference maintained its dual-format structure, pairing daytime industry programming with nighttime showcases. Khamis describes this approach as essential to XP’s value proposition: “I always say that XP is a full journey: you think during the day and you feel at night,” he says.
“The DAY program is where deals, ideas, and strategies are shaped. The NITE program is where people see the culture in action, where discovery happens. From a business point of view, both sides are equally important. Investors want to understand the market but also feel the audience. Artists want access to industry but also want to perform.”
“In the beginning, XP attracted mostly regional talent and industry insiders. Today, we’re seeing global labels, tech founders, festival operators, policymakers, managers, and creators from all over the world.”
Mazen Khamis, MDLBEAST
This year’s edition restructured the program to “prioritize networking and meaningful interactions” integrating initiatives like HUNNA, Hearful, and XPERFORM directly into the main “flow” of the event. “One major lesson is that XP works best when people can connect easily,” Khamis notes. “We learned a lot about movement, scheduling, and how DAY and NITE interact with each other. Reducing friction across the site played a huge role in our design choices this year.”
XP’s talent development programs saw Jafar Amin win the fourth season of vocal talent competition XPERFORM, while Radish.world took the fifth edition of the Storm Shaker DJ competition. Both winners secured performance slots at Soundstorm 2025, scheduled for this coming weekend, December 11-13.
Each of these programs fills a specific gap in the ecosystem, according to Khamis. “HUNNA empowers female creatives and leaders. Sound Futures supports startups and music-tech innovation. XPERFORM helps emerging artists build real careers beyond the event. The impact doesn’t stop when XP ends, these programs build momentum for the entire year.”
India as Focus Country
This year’s XP marked several notable developments, with India serving as the focus country. Programming included sessions on Indian music’s global expansion and partnerships with Indian brands.
“India and the Middle East have always had strong cultural connections, and both markets are growing fast with young, engaged audiences,” explains Khamis. “We’re already seeing natural collaborations between the two regions, so spotlighting India allows us to build a more structured bridge through co-writing, co-producing, touring, and investment. It’s a relationship that feels both natural and full of potential.”
Sessions at the wider conference covered topics including music’s role in sporting identity — following Soundstorm’s collaboration with Inter Milan FC — and how music events shape destination development across the region.
Khamis emphasizes that XP’s role extends beyond simply hosting panels and showcases. “XP brings everyone into the same room, creators, startups, investors, executives, policymakers. When that happens, opportunities start to form naturally. Programs like Sound Futures give investors direct access to music-tech innovation, while XPERFORM spotlights talent that’s ready for development. By showing the full ecosystem in one place, XP makes it easier for global players to understand where the opportunities are and how to get involved.”
What sets XP apart from other global music conferences, according to Khamis, is its regional specificity. “XP is built for this region, not copied from anywhere else. It reflects the ambition, identity, and energy of the Middle East while being completely connected to global industry standards.
“What sets it apart is the blend of conference, culture, festival, and innovation. And because XP connects directly to Soundstorm as both events are just one week apart, it creates something most conferences don’t have: immediate access to one of the world’s most exciting music audiences.”
Soundstorm 2025
MDLBEAST also organises a separate music festival called Soundstorm, which is scheduled for this coming weekend, December 11-13.
For this years’s event, Khamis and his team have undertaken a complete redesign of the festival’s layout. The size of the event is something to behold. Last year’s festival drew 450,000 people over the three-day period.
“This year, we pushed Soundstorm into its biggest evolution yet,” Khamis explains. “We rebuilt the entire festival as a City of Beats, a place you can actually navigate like a mini city with its own districts and personality. We now have 14 stages across four districts, all connected through Downtown, which acts as the heart of the whole experience.”
The new structure features 14 stages organized across four distinct districts, East, West, North, and South, connected by a central Downtown area. At the center sits Downtown, described as “a dynamic playground for food, fashion, and culture” and the main meeting point for social moments. “From there, fans can move naturally into the East, West, North, or South districts depending on what sound and energy they want,” says Khamis.
“Soundstorm has always been a festival of a huge scale. And that’s definitely something we want to keep but we felt the need to make it feel more intimate and bring things closer together, that’s how the idea of turning it into a small city came about. Our focus was simple: smoother movement, clearer navigation, and a festival that truly feels like a cultural city.”
“Soundstorm has always been a festival of a huge scale.”
Mazen Khamis, MDLBEAST
East forms the festival’s “largest and most high-impact zone” anchored by the Big Beast mainstage, built, according to MDLBEAST, for “global superstars and peak-energy performances”. The 6AG stage, meanwhile, “champions regional talent” with a focus on Saudi and Middle Eastern artists.
The North section of the site features stages including Park, which “brings band-led energy”, while Mixtape serves as the festival’s home of hip-hop and R&B. The Brass stage adds “groove-forward sets with live instrumental character”, and Yard spotlights indie, alternative, and emerging artists.
West becomes Soundstorm’s “dance and techno” district, with stages including Tunnel, Port, Plexi, Silk, Log, and Greenhouse “each bring their own corner of the electronic spectrum,” according to Soundstorm, “from EDM and progressive techno to house, disco, and harder techno”.
The South side of the site focuses on “ambient, slower, more atmospheric sounds” and includes Neon, a glowing 360-degree tent, and Roog, an “intimate space for deeper, slower-building electronic sets”.
The festival will host over 200 performers across the three days, with a superstar lineup that features Cardi B, Metro Boomin, Pitbull, Tyla, Benson Boone, Lil Yachty, and more global acts, alongside hundreds of regional and international electronic, hip-hop, and pop artists. The lineup reflects the festival’s positioning as one of the region’s largest music events, blending chart-topping global artists with emerging talent.
The transformation presented significant operational challenges. “When you redesign a festival of this size, you’re balancing creativity with massive operations,” Khamis notes. “Turning Soundstorm into a 14-stage city required a new approach to crowd flow, transportation, staging, and technology.”
One of his biggest priorities was ensuring the festival remains navigable despite its growth. “Even as the festival grows, it still feels clear and easy for people to move around,” he says. “Bringing in improved tech — like upgrades to our ticketing and navigation systems through NOFOMO, added another layer of complexity. But these challenges push us to innovate, and that’s what makes Soundstorm what it is.”
When asked about MDLBEAST’s trajectory, Khamis sees continued expansion.
“MDLBEAST has grown from a single festival into a multi-vertical entertainment company. My work has focused on expanding our commercial footprint, shaping new products, and building partnerships.”
Looking ahead, he envisions MDLBEAST “becoming a global cultural powerhouse, exporting Saudi creativity, expanding our product ecosystem, and building stronger connections between music, technology, and culture. Everything we’re doing is aligned with Vision 2030 and the long-term development of the creative economy.”
Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said Russian, Chinese planes entered its air defence zone during the joint exercise.
South Korea and Japan separately scrambled fighter jets after Russian and Chinese military aircraft conducted a joint air patrol near both countries.
Seven Russian and two Chinese aircraft entered South Korea’s Air Defence Identification Zone (KADIZ) at approximately 10am local time (01:00 GMT) on Tuesday, according to the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Seoul.
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The planes, which included fighter jets and bombers, were spotted before they entered the KADIZ – which is not territorial airspace but where planes are expected to identify themselves – and South Korea deployed “fighter jets to take tactical measures in preparation for any contingencies”, according to reports.
The Russian and Chinese planes flew in and out of the South Korean air defence zone for an hour before leaving, the military said, according to South Korea’s official Yonhap news agency.
Japan separately deployed military aircraft to “strictly implement” air defence measures “against potential airspace violations”, following the reported joint patrol of Russia and China, Japanese Minister of Defence Shinjiro Koizumi said.
In a statement posted on social media late on Tuesday, Koizumi said two Russian “nuclear-capable Tu-95 bombers” flew from the Sea of Japan to the Tsushima Strait, and met with two Chinese jets “capable of carrying long-range missiles”.
At least eight other Chinese J-16 fighter jets and a Russian A-50 aircraft also accompanied the bombers as they conducted a joint flight “around” Japan, travelling between Okinawa’s main island and Miyako Island, Koizumi said.
“The repeated joint flights of bombers by both countries signify an expansion and intensification of activities around our country, while clearly intending to demonstrate force against our nation, posing a serious concern for our national security,” he added.
Koizumi’s statement comes just days after he accused Chinese fighter jets on Sunday of directing their fire-control radar at Japanese aircraft in two separate incidents over international waters near Okinawa.
On Monday, Japan’s Ministry of Defence said that it had monitored the movements of the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning and accompanying support vessels near Okinawa since Friday, adding that dozens of takeoffs and landings from Chinese aircraft on the carrier were monitored.
Japan said it was the “first time” that fighter jet operations on a Chinese aircraft carrier had been confirmed in waters between Okinawa’s main island and Minami-Daitojima island to the southeast.
Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning sails through the Miyako Strait near Okinawa on its way to the Pacific in this handout photo taken by Japan Self-Defence Forces and released by the Joint Staff Office of the Defence Ministry of Japan on April 4, 2021 [Joint Staff Office of the Defence Ministry of Japan via Reuters]
China’s Ministry of National Defence said on Tuesday that it had organised the joint air drills with Russia’s military according to “annual cooperation plans”.
The air drills took place above the East China Sea and western Pacific Ocean, the ministry said, calling the exercises the “10th joint strategic air patrol” with Russia.
Moscow also confirmed the joint exercise with Beijing, saying that it had lasted eight hours and that some foreign fighter jets followed the Russian and Chinese aircraft.
“At certain stages of the route, the strategic bombers were followed by fighter jets from foreign states,” the Russian Defence Ministry said.
Since 2019, China and Russia have regularly flown military aircraft near South Korean and Japanese airspace without prior notice, citing joint military exercises.
In November 2024, Seoul scrambled jets as five Chinese and six Russian military planes flew through its air defence zone. In 2022, Japan also deployed jets after warplanes from Russia and China neared its airspace.
China and Russia have expanded military and defence ties since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly four years ago. Both countries are also allies of North Korea, which is seen as an adversary in both South Korea and Japan.
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Godwin AsedibaBBC News Komla Dumor Award winner, Eastern Province, Sierra Leone
Andre Lombard / BBC
Namina Jenneh is mourning her 17-year-old son who died while mining for gold
There is a sense of disbelief in this Sierra Leonean village as people weep in front of the bodies of two teenage boys wrapped in white cloth.
The day before, 16-year-old Mohamed Bangura and 17-year-old Yayah Jenneh left their homes in Nyimbadu, in the country’s Eastern Province, hoping to earn a little extra money for their families.
They had gone in search of gold but never returned. The makeshift pit they were digging in collapsed on them.
This was the third fatal mine accident, leaving a total of at least five children dead, in the last four years in this region.
Mohamed and Yayah were part of a phenomenon that has seen a growing number of children missing school in parts of Sierra Leone to mine the precious metal in potentially lethal pits, according to headteachers and community activists.
The Eastern Province has historically been known for diamond mining. But in recent years informal – or artisanal – gold mining has expanded as the diamond reserves have been depleted.
David Wilkins / BBC
People dig up the rich earther wherever they think they might be able to find gold
Mining sites pop up wherever local people find deposits in this land laden with riches – on farmland, in former graveyards and along riverbeds.
There are few formal mining companies operating here, but in the areas which are not considered profitable, the landscape is dotted with these unregulated pits that can be as deep as 4m (13 feet).
Similar – and equally dangerous – mines can be found in many African countries and there are often reports of deadly collapses.
Most families in Nyimbadu rely on small-scale farming and petty trading for a living. Alternative employment is scarce so the opportunity to earn some extra cash is very attractive.
But the community in the village gathered at the local funeral home know the work also comes at a price, with the loss of two young lives full of promise.
Yayah’s mother, Namina Jenneh, is a widow and had been relying on her young son to help provide for her other five children.
As someone who worked in the pits herself, she acknowledges that she introduced Yayah to mining but says: “He didn’t tell me he was going to that site – if I had known I would have stopped him.”
When she heard about the collapse, she says she begged someone to “call the excavator driver.
“When he arrived, he cleared the debris that had buried the children.”
But it was too late to save them.
Namina Jenneh
Yayah Jenneh was mining in order to help his mother support his five siblings
Ms Jenneh speaks with deep pain. On a mobile phone with a cracked screen, she scrolls through pictures of her son, a boy with bright eyes who supported her.
Sahr Ansumana, a local child protection activist, takes me to the collapsed pit.
“If you ask some parents, they’ll tell you there’s no other alternative. They are poor, they are widows, they are single parents,” he says.
“They have to take care of the kids. They themselves encourage the kids to go and mine. We are struggling and need help. It’s worrying and getting out of hand.”
But the warning goes unheeded – the loss of Yayah and Mohamed has not emptied the pits.
The day after their funerals, miners including children are back at work, their hands sifting sand by the river or inspecting the earth manually excavated in search of the glimmer of gold.
David Wilkins / BBC
Komba Sesay would like to become a lawyer but is missing school in order to mine
At one site I meet 17-year-old Komba Sesay who wants to be a lawyer, but he spends daylight hours here to support his mother.
“There is no money,” he says. “That is what we are trying to find. I am working so I can register and sit my [high school] exams. I want to return to school. I’m not happy here.”
Komba’s earnings are meagre. In most weeks he earns about $3.50 (£2.65) – less than half the country’s minimum wage. But he perseveres in the hope of striking it rich. On some, very rare, good days he has found enough ore to earn him $35.
Of course, he knows the work is risky. Komba has friends who have been injured in pit collapses. But he feels that mining is the only way he can earn some money.
David Wilkins / BBC
The dangerous work sees people digging with minimal tools in order to find some gold
And it is not only pupils who are leaving schools.
Roosevelt Bundo, the headteacher of Gbogboafeh Aladura Junior Secondary School in Nyimbadu says “teachers also leave classes to go to the mining sites, they mine together with the students”.
Their government pay cannot compete with what they may be able to earn from gold mining.
There are also wider signs of change around the mining hubs. What were once small camps have swelled into towns in the last two years.
The government says it is addressing the issue.
Information Minister Chernor Bah tells the BBC that the government remains committed to education but adds that the state recognises the many challenges people face.
“We spend about 8.9% of our GDP, the highest of any other country in this sub-region, on education,” he says, adding that funds go to teachers, school-feeding programmes and subsidies intended to keep children in the classroom.
But on the ground, reality bites. Immediate survival often wins over policy.
Charities and local activists try to remove children from the pits and place them back into school, but without reliable alternatives for income, the pits are too attractive.
Back in Nyimbado, the families of the two dead boys appear exhausted and hollowed out.
The loss is not just of two young lives. It is the steady erosion of possibility for a generation.
“We need help,” the activist Mr Ansumana says. “Not prayers. Not promises. Help.”
Hey guys, I’m going to be giving myself an at-home facial. My name is Dimi. I’m a 15-year-old entrepreneur. One day, my book will be over here. I think when I heard about it I was a bit disappointed. Social media is one of the tool to grow my business. Personally, I feel like we’re about to be silenced. Makeup, skincare. I’ve started getting into, like, the controversial opinions. I believe abortion should be legal. It honestly blew up pretty fast. Like, it got a few thousand [followers], and it was just, like, so exciting to me. Like, oh my God. Like, there’s heaps of these people that care about me. It does give you a confidence boost. Here you go, brother. Oh wow, thank you, thank you. I use social media to share my daily routines. For me, doing the content is part of doing the business. I want to be a businessman. I don’t think I would be able to express myself. Like, I love to show my creativity, and you can literally find anyone that’s in the same boat as you on there. It would would allow me to, like, communicate with other people and empower people and understand that they’re not alone. It’ll be longer before I can have a chance to publicly share things about my book or about my advocacy. It says 16, and that’s what I have in my bio. I’m just trying to see what I can do. Worst comes to worst, I would just have to wait till I’m 16, and then I’ll start a new account and hopefully I can build that back up again, which would be really hard and sad.
Mark Zandi is worried that the labor market no longer has a buffer.
So many Americans are “already living on the financial edge,” the chief economist for Moody’s Analytics told Fortune. If they start to pull back, that’s “fodder for a recession.”
The stark assessment comes as hiring has stalled, unemployment is rising – especially for the most vulnerable workers – and layoff announcements are piling up. To Zandi, the next stage is already visible: “If we actually do see layoffs pick up,” he told Fortune, “then it certainly would be a jobs recession.”
Zandi reached that assessment before the government released its long-delayed JOLTS report Tuesday, but the official numbers largely confirm the pullback he has been tracking through private data. Since the summer, job openings have risen by only a few hundred thousand and remain far below the highs seen in the frenzy of the pandemic. Layoffs upticked slightly, while quit rates fell, a sign that workers are increasingly hesitant to leave their current positions. Hiring, meanwhile, has held at 3.2%, a level consistent with employers who are not actively slashing staff but are no longer expanding their workforces either: a “low hire, low fire” market.
If the cooling in the official data looks slow, the private indicators tell a sharper story. ADP’s November report found that private employers cut 32,000 jobs, the steepest decline in more than two years. Nearly all of those losses came from small businesses, which eliminated 120,000 positions. Larger employers moved in the opposite direction and kept hiring.
For Zandi, the pattern is not random. He sees it as the continuation of a break that appeared earlier in the year, when the administration escalated reciprocal tariffs.
“If you look at when job growth really came to a standstill, it is back soon after Liberation Day,” he said.
Because these firms often lack the financial cushions that larger corporations can draw upon, payroll becomes the most immediate and often the only mechanism through which they can respond to rising input costs. The result, Zandi argues, is a labor market in which the earliest fractures appear among precisely the kinds of employers most sensitive to policy and price shifts. Those fractures then begin to ripple outward, first through hiring freezes and only later, if conditions worsen, through broader layoffs.
Layoffs are coming, Zandi warns
So for Zandi, if ADP offers a snapshot of the present, the announcement data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas hints at what may lie ahead. Employers have announced 1.1 million layoffs this year, a figure surpassed only during the pandemic shock of 2020 and the depths of the Great Recession. These announcements are global and not all will materialize as U.S. cuts, Zandi advised, yet he considers their scale meaningful because they reflect decisions made months in advance of actual separations.
“That would suggest that there are layoffs coming,” he said. “They seemingly have not occurred yet.” The disconnect between rising layoff announcements and historically low unemployment-insurance claims feels increasingly “incongruous” to him, and he suspects one reason may be that early cuts are falling on higher-income workers who receive severance or wait longer before filing for benefits, obscuring the first phase of the weakening.
Pressure is also building in pockets of the labor market that are typically harbingers of broader stress. Unemployment has risen for young workers and for Black workers, both groups that tend to see deterioration earlier in the cycle, Zandi said. Industries that rely heavily on foreign-born labor—including construction, logistics and agriculture—are grappling with a tighter supply of workers due to deportations, placing additional strain on small firms.
Meanwhile, early research on AI adoption suggests that entry-level hiring in technology and information services is already being reshaped, a development Zandi believes may be understated in traditional data sets but is nonetheless starting to influence the distribution of job opportunities. All of these dynamics contribute to what he sees as a labor market that is weakening in slow but structurally significant ways.
What has kept the labor market from slipping into outright contraction is the continued strength of spending among higher-income households, even as borrowing costs remain elevated and prices have yet to fully ease. That persistence, despite rising layoff announcements and weakening hiring, reflects how insulated wealthier consumers remain after a year of strong equity gains fueled in part by the AI boom. It is also the clearest sign that the “K-shaped economy” has not dissipated but deepened, with affluent households buoyed by financial markets while lower- and middle-income workers face mounting strain
Zandi regards this spending as one of the last buffers preventing the slowdown from becoming self-reinforcing. Lower- and middle-income households remain stretched, however, and he warns that any further erosion in hiring could push them to retrench. Because these households account for a large share of day-to-day consumer activity, even a modest pullback could turn the current pattern of weak hiring into a contraction.
A pivotal moment for the Federal Reserve
The Federal Reserve is debating over an interest rate cut Monday and Tuesday into precisely this environment, a choice that reflects the central bank’s growing concern that the labor market could deteriorate more quickly in early 2026 if not supported now.
The chances of the Fed delivering its third interest rate cut of the year tomorrow are 90%, according to the CME FedWatch Fed funds futures index. Economists expect the Fed to deliver a kind of hawkish cut, a move that acknowledges the weakness in hiring but refrains from promising a sustained cutting cycle.
That’s because the tension inside the committee is unusually pronounced. Bank of America economist Aditya Bhave wrote in a research note that Powell is confronting “the most divided committee in recent memory.” Some officials believe unemployment risks are rising and see a compelling case for further accommodation. Others remain convinced that the economy retains enough underlying strength that aggressive easing would be premature and potentially inflationary.
For the Fed, the challenge is to articulate a strategy that acknowledges the unmistakable weakening Zandi has been warning about without assuming that the slowdown has already reached a stage requiring an aggressive response.
For Zandi, the concern is more immediate: that the softening now visible in small-business payrolls, layoff announcements and early demographic stress will eventually coalesce into the layoffs he believes are coming.
“If we’re not in a jobs recession, we’re close,” Zandi said.
