Shortly after midnight on 20 January 2023, says Ravi Somaiya in Bungalow, Mohammad Farooq parked outside St James’s hospital in Leeds and texted a senior nurse to say he would soon detonate a bomb in one of the wards. He wanted to force a hospital evacuation and set off a real explosive at the entrance as people left. But staff only conducted an internal evacuation of the ward, leaving Mohammad increasingly frustrated out front. Nathan Newby, a patient who was having a drink outside, spotted him looking upset and struck up conversation. When he noticed that Mohammad kept eyeing up his rucksack, he asked him what was inside. “It’s just a bomb,” Mohammad replied.

Nathan asked a series of questions: what the range was; how he was planning to detonate it; and so on. “My beer’s on that bench,” he said, pointing at an area away from the hospital entrance. “Come and sit next to me, and bring that with you.” For two hours, Nathan sat with Mohammad, listening to his story and occasionally interjecting to ask questions or offer shared experience. “It’s something stupid that you’re doing,” he eventually said, and told Mohammad he had two options: set the device off and ruin his family’s life, or walk away. After a pause, Mohammad asked Nathan to phone 999. “You’re doing the right thing mate,” Nathan replied as the call connected. He went on reassuring Mohammad as he explained to the operator that a man with a bomb was stood in front of him. At 4:45am, after the pair had hugged, armed police officers arrested Mohammad. He was given a 37-year prison sentence in March this year. The judge described Nathan, who has never spoken publicly about the incident, as an “extraordinary, ordinary man whose decency and kindness on 20 January 2023 prevented an atrocity”.

Reuters has put together a selection of its top aerial and drone photos from around the world this year, including images of members of the clergy attending Pope Francis’s funeral Mass; Bosnia and Herzegovina’s annual waterfall jumping contest; a car speeding through the Saudi Arabian desert in the Dakar rally; Croatian boats facing off in a traditional tug-of-war event; a new section of border wall in Arizona’s San Rafael Valley; and a paddleboarding festival in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Click here to see the rest.

The spectacle of white people wearing blackface is rightly considered “grotesque” today, says The Times. But many people probably don’t realise just how much of a cultural phenomenon it used to be. At its peak in the 1960s and 1970s, The Black and White Minstrel Show – starring three blacked-up male singers – had the BBC’s prime-time Saturday night slot and attracted an audience of 16 million viewers. The programme was sold to more than 30 countries and spawned a West End stage show that ran for more than 6,500 performances. The trio’s first three albums went to No 1 in the UK charts, and at one point in 1962 they held first, second and fourth places simultaneously in the Top 10 LP rankings.

At first, public objections to the show were muted. When, in 1967, the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination delivered a petition to the BBC saying the “hideous” impersonations “amounted to racism”, the corporation was unmoved. Band member John Boulter, who has died aged 94, only became aware that some people considered his make-up offensive during rehearsals for the 1968 Royal Variety Performance, when Diana Ross refused to sing in front of the group and “gave a black power salute as they were ushered out”. Within a few years, a backlash was in full swing. The BBC tried various revamps to sanitise the show – one involving a young Lenny Henry – but it was impossible to eradicate the programme’s central flaw without “negating its entire raison d’être”. The ratings went into freefall, and the show was “belatedly” taken off air in 1978.