The US State Department has issued a halt to nearly all existing foreign assistance and paused new aid, according to an internal memo sent to officials and US embassies abroad.

The leaked notice follows President Trump’s executive order issued on Monday for a 90-day pause in foreign development assistance pending a review of efficiencies and consistency with his foreign policy.

The United States is the world’s biggest international aid donor spending $68bn in 2023 according to government figures. The State Department notice appears to affect everything from development assistance to military aid.

It makes exceptions only for emergency food aid and for military funding for Israel and Egypt. The leaked memo’s contents have been confirmed by the BBC.

“No new funds shall be obligated for new awards or extensions of existing awards until each proposed new award or extension has been reviewed and approved,” says the memo to staff.

It adds that US officials “shall immediately issue stop-work orders, consistent with the terms of the relevant award, until such time as the secretary shall determine, following a review.”

It also orders a wide scale review of all foreign assistance to be completed within 85 days to ensure the aid adheres to President Trump’s foreign policy goals.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio – the US’s top diplomat – has previously stated that all US spending abroad should take place only if it makes America “stronger”, “safer” or “more prosperous”.

One former senior State Department official told the BBC the notice meant a “potentially huge” impact on foreign aid programmes funded by the US.

“One can imagine, for example, the humanitarian de-mining programmes around the world suddenly being told stop work. That’s a pretty big deal,” said Josh Paul, who oversaw Congressional relations on weapons transfers at the State Department until late 2023.

Dave Harden, a former US Agency of International Aid (USAID) mission director in the Middle East, told the BBC the move was “very significant”, saying it could see humanitarian and development programmes funded by the US around the world being immediately suspended, while the review is carried out.

He said it could affect a wide range of critical development projects including water, sanitation and shelter.

“The employees of the implementing partner or the [non-governmental organisation] would be able to be paid, but actual assistance, I think, needs to be halted,” said Mr Harden.

“I have gone through [assistance suspensions] many times when I was the West Bank and Gaza mission director, but that was specific to that account. This is global,” he said.

“Not only does it pause assistance, but it puts a ‘stop work’ order in existing contracts that are already funded and underway. It’s extremely broad,” he added.

The AFP news agency reported the funding freeze could also potentially affect Ukraine, which received billions of dollars in weapons under Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden.

Rubio’s memo, justifying the freeze, said it was impossible for the new administration to assess whether existing foreign aid commitments “are not duplicated, are effective and are consistent with President Trump’s foreign policy”.

Rubio has issued a waiver for emergency food assistance, according to the memo.

This comes amid a surge of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip after a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas began, and several other hunger crises around the world, including Sudan.

The memo also said waivers have so far been approved by Rubio for “foreign military financing for Israel and Egypt and administrative expenses, including salaries, necessary to administer foreign military financing”.

The State Department has been approached for comment.

There are times in history when countries are gripped by election fever.

January 2025 in Belarus is not one of them.

Drive around Minsk and you’ll see no big billboards promoting the portraits of candidates.

There is little campaigning.

The grey skies and sleet of a Belarusian winter add to an overriding sense of inactivity.

And inevitability.

The outcome of the 2025 presidential election is not in doubt. Alexander Lukashenko, once dubbed “Europe’s last dictator,” who has ruled Belarus with an iron fist for more than 30 years, will be declared the winner and secure a seventh term in office.

His supporters call it an exercise in “Belarusian democracy”. His opponents reject the process as “a farce”.

Even Mr Lukashenko himself claims to lack interest in the process.

“I’m not following the election campaign. I’ve got no time,” the Belarusian leader told workers at the Minsk Automobile Plant this week.

The workers presented him with a gift: an axe for chopping wood.

“I’ll try it out before the election,” promised Mr Lukashenko, to rapturous applause.

Four-and-a-half years ago, at a different enterprise, the leader of Belarus received a much cooler reception.

One week after the 2020 presidential election, Alexander Lukashenko visited the Minsk Wheels Tractor Plant. Leaked video showed him being jeered and heckled by workers. They shouted ‘”Go away! Go away!”.

In 2020 the official election result – of 80% for Mr Lukashenko – had sparked anger and huge protests across the country. Belarusians poured onto the streets to accuse their leader of stealing their votes and the election.

In the brutal police crackdown that followed, thousands of anti-government protesters and critics were arrested. Eventually the wave of repression extinguished the protests and, with help from Russia, Mr Lukashenko clung to power.

The UK, the European Union and the United States refuse to recognise him as the legitimate president of Belarus.

Alexander Lukashenko’s staunchest opponents (and potential rivals) are either in prison or have been forced into exile.

That is why this week the European Parliament passed a resolution calling on the EU to reject the upcoming presidential election as “a sham” and pointing out that the election campaign has been taking place “in an environment of severe repression which fails to meet even the minimum standards for democratic elections”.

I remember interviewing Alexander Lukashenko last October, on the day the date of the presidential election was announced.

“How can these elections be free and democratic if the leaders of the opposition are in prison or abroad?” I asked.

“Do you actually know who the leaders of the opposition are?” Mr Lukashenko hit back.

“An opposition is a group of people who should serve the interests, at the very least, of a small number of people in the country. Where are these leaders you speak of? Wake up!”

Alexander Lukashenko is not the sole candidate. There are four others. But they seem more like spoilers, than serious challengers.

I drive four hours from Minsk to meet one of them. Sergei Syrankov is the leader of the Communist Party of Belarus. In the town of Vitebsk I sit in on one of his campaign events. In a large hall Mr Syrankov addresses a small audience, flanked by his party’s emblem, the hammer and sickle.

His campaign slogan is unusual to say the least: “Not instead of, but together with Lukashenko!”

He is a presidential candidate who openly backs his opponent.

“There is no alternative to Alexander Lukashenko as the leader of our country,” Mr Syrankov tells me. “So, we are taking part in the election with the president’s team.”

“Why do you think there is no alternative?” I ask.

“Because Lukashenko is a man of the people, a man of the soil, who has done everything to make sure we don’t have the kind of chaos they have in Ukraine.”

“You’re fighting for power yourself, but you support another candidate. That is…unusual,” I suggest.

“I am certain that Alexander Lukashenko will win a thumping victory. But even if he wins and I don’t, the Communists will be the winners,” responds Mr Syrankov.

“The main Communist in our country is our head of state. Lukashenko still has his old membership card from the days of the Soviet Communist Party.”

Also on the ballot is Oleg Gaidukevich, leader of the right-wing Liberal-Democratic Party of Belarus. He, too, isn’t running to win.

“If anyone dares to suggest the outcome of the election isn’t known, he’s a liar,” Mr Gaidukevich tells me.

“It’s obvious that Lukashenko will win. He has a massive rating….We’re going to battle to strengthen our positions and prepare for the next election.”

Mr Lukashenko’s critics reject the assertion that his popularity is “massive”. But there is no doubt he does have support.

On the edge of Vitebsk is the little town of Oktyabrskaya. Talking to people there I detect concern that a change of leader may spark instability.

“I want a stable salary, stability in the country,” welder Sergei tells me. “Other candidates make promises, but might not keep them. I want to keep what I’ve got.”

“The situation today is very tense,” says Zenaida. “Maybe there are other people worthy of power. But by the time a younger leader gets his feet under the desk, makes those important connections with with other countries, and with his own people that will take a long time.

“God forbid we should end up like Ukraine.”

In Belarus today there is fear of instability, fear of the unknown, and fear of the government. All work in Alexander Lukashenko’s favour.

World leaders, the bosses of the world’s biggest companies and a sprinkling of celebrities gathered in the small Swiss mountain town of Davos for the annual World Economic Forum this week.

On the other side of the Atlantic, President Donald Trump was starting his political comeback as the new US president.

“Nothing will stand in our way”, he declared, as he vowed to end America’s “decline”.

Towards the end of the gathering, President Trump was beamed in straight from the White House webcam to deliver his message of world domination directly to the global elite.

While he charmed, almost seduced the audience with a credible picture of a booming US economy about to scale new technological heights, he simultaneously menaced with threats of tariffs to those who did not choose to shift their factories into the US.

Trillions of dollars of tariffs for the US Treasury for those businesses exporting into the US market from foreign factories.

“Your prerogative” he said, with a smile not out of place in a Godfather movie. And then for one of his own, the Bank of America chief Brian Moynihan, a remarkable public lashing accusing the lending giant of “debanking” many of his conservative supporters.

He awkwardly mumbled about sponsoring the World Cup.

In this first week of his second term, most people at Davos were nodding along, as they cannot think what else to do, just yet.

Two worlds colliding, as the ‘America First’ President was beamed in like a 30-foot interplanetary emperor, into the beating heart of the rules-based international economic order.

It is one thing suggesting that trade deficits are a problem with your domestic electorate. It is quite another to suggest at an internationalist forum that a G7 ally, Canada, become a state of your nation, eliciting gasps in the audience, and not just from Canadians.

The address was, by design, charming and offensive. There was carrot and stick for the rest of the world.

As delegates absorbed the mix of threats, invites and on occasion, praise, many appeared to be trying to decide just how much Trump might damage the global trading system, whilst assessing just how far ahead his America is getting in this tech driven AI boom.

Davos has been for this first week the alternative pole of the Trump second term.

There was a coherence to his agenda to use every means to drive down energy prices including by pressurising the Saudis on oil.

This he said would not just help to lower inflation, but also drain Russia’s war coffers of oil dollars to help end the Ukraine war, by economic means. The ceasefire in the Middle East has already bought Trump some geopolitical credibility in these circles.

Christine Lagarde, David Miliband, and John Kerry shuffled into the hall. Various bank chiefs assembled on stage to praise and then lightly question the President.

The bottom line was this: Is president Trump serious about what sounded like campaign trail threats to the world economic system? The answer will reverberate for the next four years and beyond.

The answer sounded like a most definitely, yes. However, this does not mean it is going to work.

Some leading US CEOs told me that they were preparing for tit-for-tat retaliatory tariffs to be applied to their exports. Their assumption was that the President’s love of a rising stock market would restrict his deployment of tariffs.

But no one really knows. In any event, much is up for grabs. He has already withdrawn from the World Health Organisation.

In the promenades the whisper was of his Project 2025 allies suggesting US withdrawal from the IMF and the World Bank too.

The rest of the world does have some counter leverage, once it decides to get back up after the Trump whirlwind.

The Canadians are now briefing on their retaliatory tariffs. In conversations with both the British business secretary and EU trade minister, Jonathan Reynolds and European Union trade chief, Maros Sefcovic, I detected a desire for calm dialogue.

Both are making similar arguments to try to dissuade Trump from wider tariffs.

Mr Reynolds told me that as the US does not have a goods trade deficit with the UK, there is no need for tariffs.

Mr Sefcovic said that the US should really think about its services surplus too.

But do they not consider the threats to G7 and Nato allies Canada and Denmark (over Greenland) to be straightforwardly unacceptable and as absurd as France claiming back Louisiana? Sefcovic did not want to whip anything up.

Diplomats are making lists of US goods that Europe can now purchase to demonstrate “wins” for President Trump, from arms to gas to the magnets in wind turbines.

It might make some sense for the rest of the G7 to work in unison on retaliation against the tariffs, in order to concentrate the minds of Congress, and the competing factions inside the court of Trump.

There is no sign of that happening.

The US tech supremacy story epitomised by the broligarchy – including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg, Apple leader Tim Cook, and Google chief Sundar Pichar – had top seats at the inauguration this week.

While the US is streets ahead of Europe, its standing against China is more uncertain.

One of the talks of Davos was DeepSeek’s high performing, much cheaper AI model, made in China. The prediction that the tech bros would be tearing strips out of each other in the court of Trump began to come true within hours, rather than months.

Meanwhile, while most, though not all, here in Davos sounded rather seduced by Trump’s tech-fuelled optimism, some in Europe also see a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to attract top researchers who may be rather less than enamoured with the direction of US politics. It was openly suggested by the European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde.

Others sought solace in the fact that Europe no longer has to face Biden’s massive green subsidies, creating a more level playing field again for Europe.

President Trump is changing the terms of world trade. The response of the rest of the world to this is as important as what the Trump administration itself decides.

Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s nominee for US defence secretary, was confirmed by the Senate late on Friday night, after facing misconduct allegations that nearly derailed his confirmation.

Vice-President JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote in Hegseth’s favour, after three Republican senators – including former Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell – voted against him.

During Hegseth’s confirmation hearing, he faced multiple questions about an allegation of sexual assault, which he has denied, as well as infidelity and drinking.

The former combat veteran and one-time Fox News television host will oversee a department of some three million employees and a $849bn (£695bn) budget.

Four Republicans would have needed to join the 47 Democratic and independent senators who voted against Hegseth for his nomination to be defeated.

McConnell’s surprise vote left the Senate in a 50-50 deadlock before Vance arrived to cast the tie-breaker.

Explaining his vote, McConnell issued a bruising statement saying Hegseth was unprepared to lead a vast department of three million people while managing a huge budget and co-ordinating with global allies.

The role of defence secretary is “a daily test with staggering consequences for the security of the American people”, McConnell said. “Mr. Hegseth has failed, as yet, to demonstrate that he will pass this test.”

In confirming Hegseth, Vance becomes only the second vice-president in US history to break a tie to confirm a cabinet nominee. Trump’s previous vice-president, Mike Pence, became the first when he cast the deciding vote to confirm Betsy DeVos as education secretary in 2017.

“Warfighting, lethality, meritocracy, standards, and readiness. That’s it. That is my job,” Hegseth said during the confirmation hearing earlier this month.

Democratic senators questioned Hegseth, a military veteran, about his qualifications to lead one of the nation’s largest agencies.

But many Republicans, including Trump, have maintained their support for Hegseth.

Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker, who is chair of the Senate’s armed services committee, defended Hegseth during the hearing and voted in favour of his confirmation.

He said: “Pete Hegseth is ready to put forward the program of President Donald Trump, and he has satisfied me that he will be a change agent in the Department of Defense and that he’s the person we need.

“He’s the president’s choice, and we owe it to this commander in chief to put him in this position, unless he’s not qualified for the office.”

Hegseth, 44, a veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, later worked at Fox. He has little of the traditional experience expected for a national security cabinet position – a role typically filled by senior civil servants, experienced politicians, generals and high-level executives.

Hegseth also was asked during the hearing, particularly by female senators, about his previous comments that women should not serve in combat roles. He responded that his concern was not women serving in combat, but in maintaining a certain standard in the US military.

His confirmation process was overshadowed by allegations of misconduct. He was accused of sexually assaulting an unnamed women in 2017 in a Monterey, California, hotel room. He has denied the accusation repeatedly.

The newly confirmed defence secretary also faced allegations of excessive drinking, including at work events, and infidelity in his previous two marriages.

“I am not a perfect person, but redemption is real,” he said during the hearing.

Earlier this week, he was accused of alcohol and spousal abuse in a sworn affidavit given to a congressional committee by his former sister-in-law. Hegseth’s lawyer denied the allegations.

For Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican who voted against confirmation on Friday, past allegations helped swayed their vote.

In a statement released days before the vote, she said his past behaviour, “demonstrates a lack of judgment that is unbecoming of someone who would lead our armed forces”.

Meanwhile, Maine Senator Susan Collins, another Republican who voted against Hegseth, said she was “concerned that he does not have the experience and perspective necessary to succeed in the job”.

If President Donald Trump was polarising on the campaign trail, his first week back in office was no different.

He was officially sworn in as the 47th president of the United States on Monday before signing hundreds of executive actions, reversing policies from President Joe Biden’s administration and following through on many of the promises he made on the campaign trail.

We spoke to 10 Americans across the political spectrum about how they felt about the week.

Here are their big takeaways.

Kyle Plessa, 39, an independent who voted for Trump: “I felt like I was watching like WWE, professional wrestling. Just the boisterousness, the showmanship, the playing for the cameras. You can tell that the entertainment is a big part of Donald Trump’s credo as opposed to whether you had Barack Obama or Joe Biden inaugurated.”

Greg Bruno, 67, a Republican who voted for Trump: “I think Trump proved he’s a man of the people when he threw those pens into the audience after signing the executive orders in front of 20,000 people. It just showed you who he really is working for.”

Richard Weil, 74, an independent who voted for Kamala Harris: “[His inaugural address] was not quite as dark as his first speech [in 2017], but it was certainly bitter. There was nothing in there that said good things about America.”

Angela Ramos, 37, an independent who voted for Harris: “I found a lot of Trump’s speech to be disingenuous, because he mentioned specific things like justice, honour, integrity, trustworthiness, but these are not qualities that I think are reflected in his policy or his behaviour… I watched it out of a sense of civic duty.”

Larry Kees, 47, a Republican who voted for Trump: “I was happy [with the executive orders]. There were so many of them. I couldn’t keep track. Obviously he’s not a regular politician – with most politicians, you’ll hear one thing and they’ll do another.”

Tony Flecklin, 69, a Republican who voted for Trump: “You can expect behaviour from him that’s going to be unlike what you normally run into. But in general, his policies in terms of border protection, economic sufficiency, oil and gas, I am wholeheartedly in favour of.”

Greg Bruno, a Republican: “This is why he was elected. Many of these orders involve issues that the American public wants to see done. Those are promises that were made in the campaign and he’s fulfilling them.”

Carlyn Jorgensen, 40, an independent who voted for Harris: “I haven’t liked the fact that the front row was essentially CEOs – that you had Elon Musk and [Jeff] Bezos in the front row. That, to me, just felt like – are we heading towards an oligarchy at this point?”

Angela Ramos, an independent: “Most deeply concerning to me are the departure from the Paris Climate Accords and the World Health Organization, simply because our actions have really deep consequences, not just for us within the US, but for the entire world.”

David Lieck, 58, a Democrat who voted for Harris: “I felt like he’s essentially pandering to his base in the action he took with respect to the pardons and the commuting of the sentences of the January 6 rioters. I felt that was vindictive and sending the wrong message to the American people.”

Greg Bruno, a Republican: “He came into his first presidency under attack… you put a person in a defensive crouch when you’re under attack like that. This presidency doesn’t have that element. So not only is he coming in not under attack, but he’s coming in as a highly experienced person in how to wield the power of the presidency.”

Shantonu Mazumdar, 58, a Democrat who voted for Harris: “I think he’s gotten a little bit harder, more hard line, it feels like. He’s, I think, emboldened a little bit by his constituents and the people who have supported him. I think he’s been given a little bit more… freedom to be further to the right than he was before.”

Richard Weil, an independent: “I think he’s more focused. I think he’s angrier, he’s more revengeful… but I think he’s turning into a bitter old man. I do think he has changed and I think he’s changed for the worse.”

Tony Flecklin, a Republican: “I’m happy that he’s following through with what his promises were. Sometimes his methods are a little draconian. That’s just the nature of Donald J. Trump. He’s not going to be wimpy about the way he approaches things.”

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It doesn’t matter how much you prepare for it. It still takes you by surprise. As the great-granddaughter of a woman who was murdered in Auschwitz, I am meeting the granddaughter of a man who drove Jews to their death. I’m lost for words.

I never got to meet my grandfather Ludvig, who survived the Holocaust, or his mother Rachel. They were put onto a cattle cart to the Auschwitz death camp in 1944. Ludvig, who was about 15 at the time, was separated from his mother and sent to another concentration camp. But Rachel was tortured, gassed and murdered.

I grew up hearing so many stories about them, and spending time with other Holocaust survivors in my family in Australia. They were at the forefront of my mind when I found myself in Germany interviewing Cornelia Stieler.

Cornelia’s grandfather was the main breadwinner in a household with very little income. He originally worked as a coal miner, but after a near-fatal accident which left him trapped under coal for two days, he decided to do something else. Things turned around when he eventually got a job at Deutsche Reichsbahn as a train driver. Cornelia’s mother used to speak of that achievement with pride, saying getting the job was “the chance of a lifetime”.

At first, he was transporting goods for the war effort. But it soon turned into something more sinister. “I believe that my grandfather served as a train driver, commuting between the death camps. He stayed in Liegnitz, now Legnica, in a boarding school, so there was a certain separation from the family and between the death camps.”

Cornelia says that when her grandfather first started the job, he didn’t know what it would become. “I think my grandfather saw a lot of horrible things and didn’t know how to get out of this work, didn’t know how to deal with it.”

After training as a family therapist, she delved into her past and tried to understand him better. She tells me she started asking: “At what point was he a perpetrator? Was he an accessory to perpetrators? When could he have left?”

At this point, my mouth is dry. My heart is racing. Listening to all of this feels like an out-of-body experience. All I can think about is how her grandfather drove trains into Auschwitz, and that’s how my grandfather and great-grandmother ended up there. I’m thinking about all my other relatives – cousins that I know existed but know nothing about – who were murdered in Auschwitz too.

“If I were any younger, I think I’d feel a strong hate towards you,” I tell her, fighting back tears. “But I don’t because saying all of those things must have been really difficult to admit.”

“Give me your hand,” Cornelia says, also welling up. “It’s important. Your tears, and my touch, are touching me… My grandfather was a train driver in Auschwitz. What can I say? Nothing.

“I can’t apologise, it’s not possible,” she adds, implying the crime is too grave. “My grandfather felt very, very guilty, and he died with his guilt.” Cornelia thanks me for my openness and says there’s a need to fully uncover the history.

Then she says something you might not expect – that some Germans from Schönwald, where her family came from, had reacted angrily to her research. The now Polish town renamed Bojków, some 100km from Kraków, hasn’t come to terms with its Nazi past.

Cornelia explains that originally, the town was against the ideology of the Nazi Party, but over time, became consumed by it. Hitler saw Schönwald as a model village – an Aryan village in a land of Slavs. He was hoping that a “fifth column” of ethnic Germans there would become a useful aid in the military.

It was the site of the Gleiwitz incident – a false flag incident staged by Nazi Germany in 1939 to justify the invasion of Poland, one of the triggers of World War Two. And in 1945, towards the end of the war, it was the first German village to be attacked by advancing Soviet forces.

But just before that, it was the scene of one of the Nazis’ so-called death marches.

As Soviets approached Auschwitz, Hitler’s elite guard, the SS, forced around 60,000 prisoners there – mostly Jews – to move further west. Between 19 and 21 January 1945, one of those marches passed through Schönwald. In below freezing temperatures, the prisoners were dressed only in their thin striped uniforms with just wooden shoes on their feet. Those who collapsed from starvation and exhaustion were shot.

Those who survived were put onto open cattle cart trains heading further west, usually to other concentration camps, like Buchenwald. The Nazis wanted to hold onto their slave labour – even at this point, some still believed in an ultimate triumph of the Third Reich.

A local history and religion teacher, Krzysztof Kruszynski, takes me to the main street where the death march passed. People wait to catch their bus outside the main church on Rolnikow Street – known as Bauer-Strasse in German times. He points to ground, and tells me these are the original cobble stones that the prisoners had to walk on.

“It is a silent witness of the death march,” he says. “But the stone cannot talk.”

This history has been buried until now – partly because Germans from Schönwald were forced to flee after the Soviet attack that came soon after and Poles resettled the village. One German-Polish woman in her 80s, Ruta Kassubek, told me how drunk Soviet soldiers had stormed her family home and murdered her father. But there’s another reason: an active suppression of the past.

It didn’t surprise me that some Germans had responded negatively to Cornelia’s research. Germany prides itself on its , or culture of remembrance: mandatory Holocaust education, museums, memorials. But many see that as the job of state and government. And while they’re happy enough to face the past in the abstract, it’s harder to deal with their own family history, says Benjamin Fischer, a former Jewish student leader and political consultant. He calls it the “deindividualisation of history”.

A study by Bielefeld University found that a third of Germans believed their family members helped save Jews during the Holocaust. That’s “ridiculous”, says Benjamin, and “statistically impossible”.

On the ground in Bojków, 80 years after the death march, things are changing. Last week, a delegation of Germans, Jews and Poles, including local authorities, schools and emergency services unveiled a new memorial commemorating those who died in the town’s death march.

Cornelia and Krzysztof were there. For Cornelia the history is deeply personal. She is convinced that studying and remembering it is key to understanding how society could change so rapidly. And I’m grateful for it. Their work and passion gives me hope in a world of rising antisemitism – as I try to keep the memory of how my family came to be murdered alive.

The people of Schönwald believed their town lay at the pinnacle of high culture and spirituality. But then it “folded into immorality”, Cornelia says. “This is a development that we need to understand… They weren’t solely good or evil. People can go into jobs with good intentions but very quickly, [find themselves] on the wrong side.

“We can’t change the past. We can’t turn back time. But it’s important to talk about this, to remind people of what happened, to remind people of what humans can do to one another.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jimmy Donaldson – aka MrBeast – was jubilant as he told his tens of millions of TikTok followers about his bid to buy the platform.

“I might become you guys’ new CEO! I’m super excited!” Donaldson said from a private jet. He then proceeded to promise $10,000 to five random new followers.

The internet creator’s post has been viewed more than 73 million times since Monday. Donaldson said he could not share details about his bid, but promised: “Just know, it’s gonna be crazy.”

Donaldson is one of multiple suitors who have expressed interest in purchasing TikTok, the wildly popular social media platform that’s become the subject of a fast-moving political drama in the United States.

Last year, then-President Joe Biden signed a law that gave TikTok’s China-based parent company ByteDance until 19 January to sell the platform or face a ban in the United States.

The legislation addressed concerns about TikTok’s links to the Chinese government and worries about the app being a national security risk.

President Donald Trump has floated the possibility of a joint venture.

“I would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position,” he said in a Truth Social post on Sunday. “By doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to [stay up].”

Trump has since signed an executive order that allows the app to stay operational for another 75 days.

Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that China was considering a TikTok sale to Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a close ally of President Trump, who already owns the social media platform X.

Musk himself wrote on X this week that while he has long been against a TikTok ban, “the current situation where TikTok is allowed to operate in America, but X is not allowed to operate in China is unbalanced. Something needs to change”.

At a news conference Tuesday, Trump was asked by a reporter if he would be open to Musk buying the platform.

“I would be if he wanted to buy it, yes,” the president replied.

“I’d like Larry to buy it, too,” Trump added, referring to Oracle chairman Larry Ellison, a long-time Trump supporter who was on stage with him for a separate announcement.

Oracle is one of TikTok’s main server providers, managing many of the data centres where billions of the platform’s videos are stored.

Last year, Oracle warned that a TikTok ban could hurt its business. The cloud computing giant was also a leading contender to buy the social media platform in 2020, back when Trump was trying to ban it.

Billionaire investor Frank McCourt has also expressed interest in TikTok, and has been doing media interviews about the prospect for several months.

McCourt has said he wants TikTok to run on technology overseen by the Project Liberty Institute, which he founded. He has been critical of data collection practices of social media companies.

Project Liberty is bidding for TikTok without its proprietary algorithm. McCourt told CNBC this week that Project Liberty is “not interested in the algorithm or the Chinese technology” even as he acknowledged that the platform is “worth less” without it.

Ultimately, President Trump is likely to have a major role in selecting a US buyer of TikTok.

“It’s going to be a winner that’s likely to be politically sympathetic to President Donald Trump,” said Anupam Chander, a law professor at Georgetown University.

Prof Chander said the 50-50 joint ownership model does not comport with the law’s requirements, which might prompt Trump to pressure Congress into revising the law.

For now, the platform’s future remains in limbo.

Prof Chander said the Biden administration made an “unforced error” by allowing the law to give the president outsized control over who owns TikTok.

“It was a terrible idea to put the future of a massive information platform into this political maelstrom,” Prof Chander said.

President Donald Trump travelled to California on Friday to survey the destruction from deadly wildfires that devastated several communities in the Los Angeles area earlier this month.

The visit, coming at the end of Trump’s first week back in office, took place as he continued to denounce the state emergency response being led by Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom – one of Trump’s fiercest critics – and worries the president might withhold aid over policies in the liberal state.

Despite the political rivalry, Newsom greeted Trump on the tarmac as he emerged from Air Force One, arriving from North Carolina where he toured damage from Hurricane Helene, which rocked the western part of the state in September.

Trump’s visit came as new fires ignited in southern California, and local officials continue to contend with dry and windy weather conditions that favour fire growth.

Speaking to reporters after shaking hands with Newsom, Trump said: “I appreciate the governor coming out and meeting me”.

“We want to get it fixed,” he continued, telling Newsom that aftermath looks “like you got hit by a bomb”.

Newsom, who Trump has nicknamed “Newscum”, then thanked Trump for coming to visit, telling him: “We’re going to need your support, we’re going to need your help”.

“You were there for us during Covid, I don’t forget that, and I have all the expectations that we’ll be able to work together to get this speedy recovery,” Newsom continued.

Trump then toured the ruins of Pacific Palisades neighbourhood with his wife Melania, and then attended a roundtable discussion with local leaders, including LA Mayor Karen Bass. He vowed to sign an executive order that would pump water from northern parts of the state to the south.

He quarrelled briefly with Mayor Bass after she said that residents must be patient – because clean-up crews need time to clear “hazardous waste” such as toxic ash from things like lead, polyaromatic hydrocarbons and asbestos – before they can return to their homes.

“What’s hazardous waste? I mean, you’re going to have to define that,” Trump remarked, adding: “I just think you have to allow the people to go on their site and start the process tonight.”

New blazes – named Laguna, Sepulveda, Gibbel, Gilman and Border 2 – flared up on Thursday in the counties of Los Angeles, San Diego, Ventura and Riverside – all in southern California.

Firefighters have made progress in bringing the 10,000-acre Hughes Fire in Los Angeles under control, containing it by 79% since it broke out on Wednesday, forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate.

Fires have devastated the US state over the last few weeks, with the Palisades and Eaton fires scorching a combined total of more than 37,000 acres and killing at least 28 people. Multiple neighbourhoods have been levelled, leaving more than 10,000 homes and businesses in ashes.

“Unfortunately, it’s a very sad period, but what makes you feel good is I met so many of the homeowners, and every one of them, a lot of them, and every one of them said to me, they want to rebuild,” Mr Trump said after flying over by helicopter and touring the ruins on foot.

“The federal government is standing behind you 100%,” he told local leaders.

Governor Newsom on Thursday announced a $2.5bn (£2bn) state-level aid package to deal with the fire damage.

Trump has been critical of the response to the California fires, threatening to withhold federal assistance unless the state does not change its water laws and implement laws requiring an ID to vote in elections.

“After that, I will be the greatest president that California has ever seen,” Trump said earlier.

California does not usually require ID to vote but does to register to vote.

Newsom’s office said in a statement on social media that: “Conditioning aid for American citizens is wrong”.

Brian Rice, the president of the California Professional Firefighters, told the BBC that he hopes Trump does not deny the state federal aid.

“The most important focus we have is getting federal aid into California, into these communities where people have lost their lives, their homes,” he said.

The city is set to host both the 2028 Summer Olympics and Fifa World Cup matches in 2026 – two global events that will thrust the Los Angeles region into the spotlight.

Trump has also been critical of the work done by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) – which is tasked with responding to such disasters – under the Biden administration.

He has suggested getting rid of the agency and letting US states manage disasters in their jurisdictions.

“Fema is a very expensive, in my opinion, mostly failed situation,” Trump told local leaders. “Each state should take care of their problem and get money from the federal government. It would be so much better.”

He made similar remarks during a visit to North Carolina, where at least 104 people were killed in a hurricane, claiming that “Fema was not doing their jobs” in that state.

He noted that some residents still don’t have power or hot water and it was “totally unacceptable”.

Asked by the BBC whether he would withhold federal aid to California, but not North Carolina, Trump said that the situations in the two states are different.

His response came after he touted the “big numbers” North Carolina had given him when he carried the state in the 2024 presidential election. He later noted that he had won the state in every general election and Republican primary contest in which he had been on the ballot.

Meanwhile, California has consistently voted against Trump in the past three presidential elections by substantial margins.

Los Angeles is under an elevated fire risk area today with brisk winds, according to BBC Weather.

Rain is expected over the weekend in the county, as well as snow up in the mountains of southern California.

However, while this will aid firefighting efforts, there are concerns that it could also cause flooding and dislodge debris from the fires, creating mudslides.

Specialist crews have been working to try and secure burned areas, while sandbags and other flood prevention supplies have been handed out to locals so that they can protect their properties.

Twenty-three people died in 2018 when mudslides hit the California town of Montecito, one of the areas that had recently been affected by the Thomas Fire.

Dutch authorities say one of Europe’s most-wanted fugitives has been living in Sierra Leone for about six months.

Jos Leijdekkers, 33, was sentenced in absentia to 24 years in prison on 25 June last year by a Rotterdam court for smuggling more than seven tonnes of cocaine.

Dutch prosecutor Wim de Bruin said the fugitive’s return to the Netherlands was of “the highest priority”.

“We are doing everything we can in that regard but we cannot comment any further because of the ongoing investigation,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Dutch Public Prosecution Service (OM) said Leijdekkers has been living in Sierra Leone for about six months.

They said he is known by the nickname Bolle Jos and that until recently he was suspected to be living in Turkey.

Sierra Leonean authorities have not commented on the claims.

Reuters news agency has reported that Leijdekkers was spotted in Sierra Leone in January when the President of Sierra Leone’s wife posted a video on social media of a church service she was attending with her husband.

According to Reuters, Leijdekkers can be seen in the video. The BBC has not been able to verify the footage.

Dutch police have described Leijdekkers as “one of the key players in international cocaine trafficking”.

A $210,000 (£168,000) reward is being offered for tip-offs that lead to his arrest. This is reportedly the highest amount ever offered for a Dutch fugitive.

Leijdekkers is listed as one of the most-wanted fugitives by Europol, the EU’s law enforcement agency.

West Africa is a major transit point for the trafficking of cocaine from Latin America.

On 17 January, Sierra Leone recalled its ambassador from neighbouring Guinea after seven suitcases containing suspected cocaine were found in an embassy vehicle.

Guinean authorities impounded a vehicle belonging to Sierra Leone’s embassy and detained its occupants on suspicion of possessing “substances suspected to be cocaine”, Sierra Leone’s Foreign Minister Alhaji Musa Timothy Kabba said.

“In light of this serious development, the government has urgently recalled Sierra Leone’s ambassador to Guinea, Ambassador Mr Alimamy Bangura, to Freetown to provide a full account of the incident,” he added.

The recalled envoy was not in the car and is not under arrest, the minister said.

“It has not been proven that the ambassador is involved in this trafficking,” he added.

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

At the storm’s height, nearly a million properties were without power across the British Isles, while many road and rail links were blocked. A 20-year-old man was killed when a tree fell on his car in Ireland as winds reached a record 114mph (183 km/h).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

While tens of thousands had been reconnected by Saturday morning, engineers said it could take a “significant number of days” for the grid to be fully repaired.

Loss of power to treatment plants and pumping stations has also caused water supply to be interrupted in several places, Irish Water said. As of Friday evening, it estimated 138,000 people were without water.

More than 77,000 properties were without power across the UK as of Saturday afternoon, according to tracker Power Outage – the vast majority being in Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland Electricity said it could take up to 10 days before all were back on the grid.

The infrastructure department said there were more than 1,800 incidents of fallen trees, branches and other debris blocking roads.

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

Northern Irish Education Minister Paul Givan said 60 schools had reported “significant damage to some buildings” and some may not be open on Monday.

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

ScotRail said engineers worked through the night on Friday to clear trees and other debris from tracks. It reported “extensive damage” to overhead lines.

The East Coast Main Line reopened early on Saturday between Edinburgh and Newcastle after fallen trees were cleared, Network Rail Scotland said.

Edinburgh Airport said it would be operating under “challenging conditions” on Saturday, and that the disruption on Friday would have knock-on impact on services over the coming days.

Glasgow and Belfast International said passengers should continue to check the latest travel information with their airline before travelling.

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

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

Passengers on Avanti West Coast are advised not to travel north of Preston.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The British Museum has been partially closed to visitors after a former employee allegedly shut down some of its IT network.

The museum alleged that the contractor entered the building and accessed the systems before being arrested.

It led to some galleries being closed on Friday, the museum added, along with temporary exhibitions that remain closed.

The Metropolitan Police confirmed that a man had been arrested at the museum and bailed pending further inquiries.

The museum said capacity was limited for this weekend, with members and those who already hold tickets given priority.

A British Museum spokesman told the BBC: “An IT contractor who was dismissed last week trespassed into the museum and shut down several of our systems.

“Police attended and he was arrested at the scene.

“We are working hard to get the museum back to being fully operational but with regret our temporary exhibitions have been closed today and will remain so over the weekend – ticket holders have been alerted and refunds offered.”

Customers who already hold tickets for this weekend have been contacted ahead of their visit.

A Met Police spokesman said officers were called at 20:25 GMT on Thursday to reports that a man had entered the museum and caused damage to security and IT systems.

“Police swiftly attended and arrested a man in his 50s at the scene on suspicion of burglary and criminal damage,” he added. “He has been bailed pending further enquiries.”

The British Museum – which holds items including the Rosetta Stone, the Anglo-Saxon ship burial at Sutton Hoo and the contested Parthenon Sculptures – sees millions of people go through its doors each year to see the permanent collections and exhibitions.

Last year it was named the top UK visitor attraction, having had 5,820,860 visitors in 2023.

There are currently three temporary exhibitions, including Silk Roads and Picasso: Printmaker.

The museum said it apologised for any inconvenience and asked customers to contact its box office to reschedule their visits or have tickets refunded.

Since taking office on Monday, President Donald Trump has announced a flurry of immigration-related executive orders, paving way for a widespread effort to crack down on undocumented migrants in the US.

In more than 21 actions, Trump has moved to overhaul parts of the US immigration system, including how migrants are processed and deported from the US.

The White House has since publicised some of these efforts. On Friday, the new White House Press Secretary shared images of deportation flights being carried out by military cargo planes.

While Trump has promised “mass deportations” and arrests, it remains unclear how much of his plan is already being implemented.

Here is a breakdown of some of the significant actions taken by Trump on immigration in his first week, and how they compare to past policies.

A cornerstone of Trump’s immigration policy is removing unlawful migrants out of the US and the promise of “mass deportations”.

To that effect, the Department of Defence has said that it will provide military aircrafts to deport more than 5,000 people that have been detained by Border Patrol in San Diego and El Paso, Texas.

ICE statistics show that over 1,000 people were removed or repatriated on Thursday, the fourth day of the Trump administration.

Trump has also moved to expand the scope of expedited deportations of undocumented migrants, reviving a policy under his first term that Biden had discontinued.

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Expedited removals were previously limited to areas within 100 miles (160km) of US international borders, and applied to those who did not request asylum or failed to show a legitimate case for asylum.

With Trump’s changes, these removals can now occur anywhere in the US, and will apply to undocumented migrants who can’t prove that they have been in the country for more than two years.

Deportations are not unique to the Trump administration.

Biden carried out deportations as well, with 271,000 immigrants deported to 192 countries in fiscal year 2024. This amounts to around 740 a day, making the current preliminary figures under Trump slightly higher.

In total, Biden carried out 1.5 million deportations in his four years, according to figures by the Migration Policy Institute. That is around the same that was carried out under Trump’s first term.

That number is lower than deportations carried out under Barack Obama’s first term, which added up to a total of 2.9 million.

The Pentagon announced on Wednesday the deployment of 1,500 active duty troops to the southern US border. This is in addition to 2,500 active-duty personnel already there, officials said – marking a 60% increase in Army troops in the area.

The troops will fly helicopters to help Border Patrol agents with monitoring, said acting Defense Secretary Robert Salesses. They will also help in the construction of barriers to stop migrants from coming in.

Salesses signalled that “this is just the beginning” and more troops may be sent soon.

Officials added that a number of additional “border enforcement missions” are in development, without providing specifics.

Biden also deployed active-duty troops to the border, which were used to assist Border Patrol with primarily administrative tasks ahead of the expiration of Title 42, a public health order that was used to expel migrants quickly during Covid-19.

Border crossings significantly dropped in Biden’s final year as president. In December 2024 – the last full month of the Biden administration – about 47,330 migrant apprehensions were recorded, down from a high of nearly 250,000 in December 2023.

The figures are lower than the monthly averages in Trump’s first term, before the Covid-19 pandemic. In May 2019, for example, border patrol agents recorded 132,800 migrant encounters.

In an executive order, Trump suspended the entry of all undocumented migrants to the US, and border patrol agents have been instructed to turn people away without granting them asylum hearings.

Before the order, migrants were able to arrive at the US border and had the legal right to seek asylum.

In June 2024, however, the Biden administration issued its own executive order that temporarily suspended the right to seek asylum for those who did not arrive at an official point of entry, or without an appointment using CBP One, a mobile application. In September, asylum restrictions were tightened further.

Trump has also halted the US refugee resettlement programme. Under Biden in 2024, the US accepted more than 100,000 refugees – its highest since 1995.

He also ended a major Biden-era programme that allowed up to 30,000 migrants per month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to fly into the US on humanitarian grounds.

The “Remain in Mexico” policy from Trump’s first-term will be reinstated as well. This forced non-Mexican asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until their asylum claims in the US were resolved. It impacted around 71,000 people under Trump’s first term.

The controversial policy was regularly criticised by immigration advocates, who said that the migrants were often left in Mexico for months and sometimes were preyed upon by criminal gangs.

There is an estimated backlog of 3.6m cases in US immigration courts, and migrants often have to wait years. Many have been left wondering whether those cases will still be heard.

Trump has fired several top immigration court officials since taking office, however, which may impact the processing of those cases.

A big change that was felt almost immediately after Trump took office is the scrapping of the CBP One smartphone app, which migrants were able to use to schedule appointments with US border patrol agents.

The CBP One app was launched by the Biden administration as a way to organise and streamline the entry of migrants who are fleeing prosecution.

Some 30,000 people were said to be stranded inside Mexico since the app was taken down – all of them with scheduled appointments that are now cancelled.

About 270,000 migrants were estimated to be on the Mexican side of the border waiting to get appointments through the app, according to government figures obtained by CBS, the BBC’s US partner.

The move was met with anguish by migrants who had travelled long journeys to the border, and who had waited months to secure those appointments.

Advocates say that, with its removal, there is now no practical pathway to protection for arriving migrants.

The American Civil Liberties Union has since filed a legal challenge against the app’s closure.

Mexico is anticipating an influx of migrants from Trump’s deportation orders, and has started building giant tent shelters in nine border cities to temporarily house them.

Municipal official Enrique Licon of Ciudad Juárez – a city that borders El Paso, Texas – told Reuters that these shelters will be able to house thousands of people and should be ready in a few days, calling the effort “unprecedented”.

The shelters will provide people food, medical care and assistance in getting identification documents. A fleet of buses will also be at the ready to help transport Mexicans back to their hometowns.

It is part of a larger effort called “Mexico Embraces You”, a government-wide campaign to welcome citizens who may be deported from the US and help them reintegrate in their home country.

Other nearby nations – like Guatemala – are launching similar efforts to absorb their deportees.

But some have raised concerns about whether Mexico and others will be ready to handle the number of people that may be coming their way.

Many of the migrants are also fleeing political turmoil or criminal violence in their home countries, raising questions about whether they’ll be safe if they return.

Some of Trump’s executive orders were signed with the aim of expanding Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) ability to arrest and detain unlawful migrants on US soil.

One of them reverses a longstanding guideline that prohibited immigration raids in areas deemed “sensitive”, such as schools, hospitals and churches.

Another calls for an expansion of a programme that allows ICE to delegate its immigration enforcement duties to state and local police.

It remains unclear how many raids have taken place since inauguration day.

Cities have braced themselves for the large-scale raids promised by Trump, but sources have told US media that ICE has only been conducting “routine operations” so far.

White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said that 538 arrests have been conducted on Thursday.

For comparison, ICE detained more than 149,700 in the 2024 fiscal year under the Biden administration, which equals an average of 409 a day.

A selection of news photographs from around the world.

At some of the many thousands of funerals in Gaza over the past 15 months, mourners have laid a bright orange vest over the body.

The vests are usually well worn and marked by dust, sometimes blood. They belong to the Civil Defence, Gaza’s main emergency service.

Throughout the Israeli bombardment, the Civil Defence was responsible for pulling the living and the dead from the rubble. Along with Gaza’s ambulance service, the rescue workers have taken on some of the most harrowing work in the strip.

And they have paid a steep price. The agency said on Monday that that 99 of its rescue workers had been killed and 319 wounded during the conflict – some with life-changing injuries.

When the Civil Defence buries its own, where possible the vests of the dead are laid on their bodies.

“We put the vest there because our colleague sacrified his soul in it,” said Nooh al-Shaghnobi, a 24-year-old rescue worker, in a phone interview from Gaza City.

“We hope it will show God that this man did good with his life, that he saved others.”

Israel killed more than 47,000 Palestinians in Gaza during the conflict – mostly women and children – and wounded more than 111,000, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures are seen as reliable by the UN. A recent study published by the Lancet medical journal found that the death toll during the first nine months of the war may have been underestimated by more than 40%.

The fragile ceasefire that came into effect last weekend is holding. But for the rescue workers of the Civil Defence, the next phase of their work is just beginning.

The agency estimates that there are more than 10,000 people buried under the vast sea of rubble across Gaza. The figure is based on information collected throughout the war about who was in each building destroyed by Israel, and who the agency knows to have been recovered already.

In areas that were completely occupied by Israeli forces during the destruction, they do not have detailed information and are relying on residents to help them. In the Tel el-Hawa neighbourhood of Gaza City on Tuesday, rescue worker Al-Shaghnobi found a man with information about the fate of a flattened apartment building.

“He told us seven dead were recovered, but there was an elderly gentleman, a child and an infant left behind,” Al-Shaghnobi said.

“Fortunately there was a privately-owned bulldozer nearby and we were able to excavate the top layer of rubble,” he said. “And underneath we found three skeletons that matched the description.”

Al-Shaghnobi has accrued a large following during the war by sharing his experiences on social media. Though he pixelates some images, others show the horrors he and other young rescue workers have faced.

One video shows him under the rubble, carefully extricating the body of an infant from around the body of another small child, who is alive. Other images he sent to the BBC show the extreme nature of the rescue work.

“You should become numb as time goes on,” Al-Shagnobi said, during a shift in Gaza City. “But I have become worse. I feel more pain, not less. I find it harder to cope. I have seen 50 of my colleagues die in front of me. Who outside of Gaza can imagine this?”

As the first of the Israeli hostages were released from Gaza last week, in exchange for 90 Palestinians from Israeli jails, Israeli authorities described the extensive psychological support waiting for the returning hostages.

But for those experiencing horrors in Gaza, such support is extremely limited. None of the four rescue workers who spoke to the BBC this week from Gaza said they had been offered counselling.

“We all need this,” said Mohammed Lafi, a 25-year-old rescue worker in Gaza City, “but no one talks about it.”

Lafi, who has been with the agency for six years, has a wife and infant son at home. “When I pull the body of a baby from the rubble I scream inside myself if he is the same age as my son. My body shakes.”

Even if counselling were to be widely available, “a year of therapy would not be enough for one day of this job,” said Abdullah al-Majdalawi, a 24-year-old Civil Defence worker who lives with his parents in Gaza City.

Al-Majdalawi said that when he returned to his home between shifts he did small jobs and chores constantly, “because I have become afraid of my own memories”.

“I am very solitary now,” he said. “I do not really talk to others about what I have seen. But I feel that my whole body is becoming tight, and I need some kind of therapy because things are accumulating.”

The Civil Defence workers had come to be viewed from the outside as heroes, Al-Majdalawi said. “But they do not see what is happening inside. Inside I am fighting a war against myself.”

As the ceasefire began, new images from inside Gaza showed scenes of near-total destruction, particularly in the north of the enclave. Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal said that the agency hoped to recover the remaining dead from under the rubble within 100 days, but he acknowledged it was a difficult target, because they have virtually no bulldozers and other heavy equipment yet.

The Civil Defence has accused Israel of deliberately targeting and destroying its vehicles and equipment in strikes – an accusation Israel denies. Rescue workers told the BBC they were currently working with simple hand tools like hammers and had few working vehicles. “We have so little equipment we need another Civil Defence to rescue the Civil Defence,” Al-Majdalawi said.

A spokesman for the agency said on Friday they had been able to recover just 162 bodies since the ceasefire began nearly a week ago.

The UN aid coordination office OCHA has warned that the recovery of the bodies could take years, owing to the lack of equipment, personnel, and what it estimates is 37 million tonnes of rubble littered with unexploded bombs and dangerous materials like asbestos.

The amount of time that many of the dead also hinders the identification process. At the European Hospital in Khan Younis in the south of Gaza, people were searching for loved ones this week among remains brought to the hospital and laid outside on white sheets. In many cases, the only option was to search for shoes, clothes or other personal effects.

“I believe I will recognise my son immediately, even if his face has no features and he is only a skeleton,” said Ali Ashour, a university professor, of his 18-year-old boy Mahjoud.

“I will recognise him because I am his father and I know him better than a million people,” he said.

Ashour still harboured hope that Mahjoud might have been taken prisoner, he said, but he planned to search the dead every day until he knew. “Any time they bring more remains I will come,” he said. “And if I see my son I will lift him out from between the other bodies and carry him away.”

Nisreen Shaaban was searching for her 16-year-old son Moatassem, who she said had left their home in Beit Hanoun for 15 minutes and never returned.

“I have opened every shroud here looking for the clothes he was wearing, trying to smell his scent,” she said. She was surrounded by human remains. “I feel as though I am living in a cemetery,” she said. “It is a city of horrors.”

The Civil Defence agency estimates that nearly 3,000 people may have been incinerated in the bombardment, robbing some families of an end to their search. But there are many more than that who still need to be recovered.

“These people need to be found and honoured,” Al-Shaghnobi, the rescue worker, said. “This work awaits us. All we need is the equipment and we will do it.”

Winemaker Maxime Chapoutier would be arrested if he tried to sell two of his newest wines in his native France.

“There would likely be outrage about these wines in France, and that would be a good thing,” he says. “Sometimes you need to be provocative to drive change.”

The two bottles in question, one white and one red, would be illegal in France because they are made from a blend of French and Australian base wines.

Under both French and European Union law it is forbidden to make a wine that combines EU and non-EU fruit. In France in particular, authorities take such things very seriously.

The French wine industry has a celebrated word called “terroir”, which applies to all the environmental factors that affect vines growing in a vineyard, such the soil, the climate, and the elevation. As a result, wines from a specific place are held in the highest esteem.

Add a strict appellation or classification system for France’s wine regions, and the thought of blending French and Australian wine to create a global hybrid would horrify many French wine lovers.

Yet Maxime has done just this, and it is all thanks to one word – Brexit.

For while he cannot sell the two wines in the EU, he can do so in the UK now that London no longer has to follow food and drink rules set by Brussels.

Maxime has created the wines in partnership with UK online retailer The Wine Society, where they are called Hemispheres Red and Hemispheres White. The red is made from syrah grapes, or shiraz as they are called in Australia, while the white is a blend of marsanne and viognier varieties.

The Australian red and white wine components are shipped in bulk to the UK, where they are blended with wine from France’s northern Rhone and Roussillon regions before bottling.

Maxime who works for his family’s celebrated Rhone-based wine company Chapoutier, say that while he respects France’s focus on terroir, there should be room for global blends to also be sold.

“Chapoutier has been making wine for more than 200 years, very terroir driven, and biodynamic,” he says. “But more and more people are turning their back on French wines because they don’t understand the complicated appellation rules.

“We need to adapt for consumers and make wines more accessible, which international blends can help to do. Maybe the EU law will change. It is also more ecological to ship wine from Australia to Europe in bulk, as you don’t have the weight of all the glass bottles.”

Another wine company now making wines by combining grapes from two continents is Australian firm Penfolds. It sells reds made from both Australian and Californian grapes, and others that mix Australian and French. Again they cannot be sold in the EU, but they can in the UK, US, Australia and elsewhere.

Penfolds refers to these blends as “wine of the world”, and says that they “possess an otherness that can best be described as worldly”. Whatever that is supposed to mean.

Unsurprisingly, some more traditional winemakers are not in favour of this development. One such person is Jas Swan, an independent winemaker based in Germany.

While the two-continent blends from Chapoutier and Penfolds are made with care from quality grapes, and priced accordingly, she is fearful that if the trend grows it will mean a lot more cheap, low-grade wine going on sale.

“I believe that those types of wine would have nothing left of any terroir, even before they left their continent,” she says. “Those wines would have seen only machine work, heavy additions to keep them clean, and are manufactured to be easy to drink for the masses.

“Why can consumers not be more demanding? The consumerism is insane.”

Peter Richards, who holds the top global wine industry qualification, the master of wine (MW), is also sniffy. “The notion of cross-country blending for wine isn’t something I find outrageous in itself,” he says. “My concern is more that this is about creating novelty for novelty’s sake.”

His wife, Susie Barrie, who is also an MW, adds: “I remain to be convinced that a wine made by blending grapes from different countries can be great in terms of taste.”

By contrast, wine writer Jamie Goode says that development of two-continent wine “is actually quite a fun idea”.

“If the wines are good, and made well from good vineyard sites – and not simply a gimmick blending together cheap bulk wines and then slapping a huge margin on the wine – then this is quite interesting.

“The fundamental basis for fine wine is the notion of terroir – that wines come from a place, and their flavour expresses this place in unique ways. But not all wines have to be terroir wines, and there’s room for wines like this.

“In some ways, there’s a lot of skill required to blend the right wines together to create something interesting coming from such different places.”

Pierre Mansour, head of buying for The Wine Society, says he and his colleagues came up with the idea of creating two wines made from grapes from different continents as part of the company’s 150th birthday celebrations.

“We were thinking about the future of wine, and we wanted to do something innovative. In the end we thought that one area of innovation is blending, of creating a wine that can mitigate for the impact of climate change on a particular country.

“And from a carbon footprint out of view, it is more environmentally friendly to ship wine in bulk from Australia to the UK. But at the same time we did expect ‘terroirists’ to say ‘hold on this is fundamentally against the French principal of wine’.

“So we approached Chapoutier, thinking that they might say ‘are you mad, how dare you insult us’, but they were great. They were really enthusiastic.”

The latest series of The Traitors is coming to an end, after weeks of wild accusations, wilder betrayals and Claudia Winkleman’s devious looks-to-camera.

Many of us like to think we could handle the pressures and skullduggery of being a traitor in the remote Scottish castle. But could you really make it to the end undetected?

Before you apply for the next series of The Traitors, work through our scenarios to find out if you’ve got what it takes to be a treacherous mastermind, or whether you are far too faithful for that.

The US State Department has issued a halt to nearly all existing foreign assistance and paused new aid, according to an internal memo sent to officials and US embassies abroad.

The leaked notice follows President Trump’s executive order issued on Monday for a 90-day pause in foreign development assistance pending a review of efficiencies and consistency with his foreign policy.

The United States is the world’s biggest international aid donor spending $68bn in 2023 according to government figures. The State Department notice appears to affect everything from development assistance to military aid.

It makes exceptions only for emergency food aid and for military funding for Israel and Egypt. The leaked memo’s contents have been confirmed by the BBC.

“No new funds shall be obligated for new awards or extensions of existing awards until each proposed new award or extension has been reviewed and approved,” says the memo to staff.

It adds that US officials “shall immediately issue stop-work orders, consistent with the terms of the relevant award, until such time as the secretary shall determine, following a review.”

It also orders a wide scale review of all foreign assistance to be completed within 85 days to ensure the aid adheres to President Trump’s foreign policy goals.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio – the US’s top diplomat – has previously stated that all US spending abroad should take place only if it makes America “stronger”, “safer” or “more prosperous”.

One former senior State Department official told the BBC the notice meant a “potentially huge” impact on foreign aid programmes funded by the US.

“One can imagine, for example, the humanitarian de-mining programmes around the world suddenly being told stop work. That’s a pretty big deal,” said Josh Paul, who oversaw Congressional relations on weapons transfers at the State Department until late 2023.

Dave Harden, a former US Agency of International Aid (USAID) mission director in the Middle East, told the BBC the move was “very significant”, saying it could see humanitarian and development programmes funded by the US around the world being immediately suspended, while the review is carried out.

He said it could affect a wide range of critical development projects including water, sanitation and shelter.

“The employees of the implementing partner or the [non-governmental organisation] would be able to be paid, but actual assistance, I think, needs to be halted,” said Mr Harden.

“I have gone through [assistance suspensions] many times when I was the West Bank and Gaza mission director, but that was specific to that account. This is global,” he said.

“Not only does it pause assistance, but it puts a ‘stop work’ order in existing contracts that are already funded and underway. It’s extremely broad,” he added.

The AFP news agency reported the funding freeze could also potentially affect Ukraine, which received billions of dollars in weapons under Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden.

Rubio’s memo, justifying the freeze, said it was impossible for the new administration to assess whether existing foreign aid commitments “are not duplicated, are effective and are consistent with President Trump’s foreign policy”.

Rubio has issued a waiver for emergency food assistance, according to the memo.

This comes amid a surge of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip after a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas began, and several other hunger crises around the world, including Sudan.

The memo also said waivers have so far been approved by Rubio for “foreign military financing for Israel and Egypt and administrative expenses, including salaries, necessary to administer foreign military financing”.

The State Department has been approached for comment.

If President Donald Trump was polarising on the campaign trail, his first week back in office was no different.

He was officially sworn in as the 47th president of the United States on Monday before signing hundreds of executive actions, reversing policies from President Joe Biden’s administration and following through on many of the promises he made on the campaign trail.

We spoke to 10 Americans across the political spectrum about how they felt about the week.

Here are their big takeaways.

Kyle Plessa, 39, an independent who voted for Trump: “I felt like I was watching like WWE, professional wrestling. Just the boisterousness, the showmanship, the playing for the cameras. You can tell that the entertainment is a big part of Donald Trump’s credo as opposed to whether you had Barack Obama or Joe Biden inaugurated.”

Greg Bruno, 67, a Republican who voted for Trump: “I think Trump proved he’s a man of the people when he threw those pens into the audience after signing the executive orders in front of 20,000 people. It just showed you who he really is working for.”

Richard Weil, 74, an independent who voted for Kamala Harris: “[His inaugural address] was not quite as dark as his first speech [in 2017], but it was certainly bitter. There was nothing in there that said good things about America.”

Angela Ramos, 37, an independent who voted for Harris: “I found a lot of Trump’s speech to be disingenuous, because he mentioned specific things like justice, honour, integrity, trustworthiness, but these are not qualities that I think are reflected in his policy or his behaviour… I watched it out of a sense of civic duty.”

Larry Kees, 47, a Republican who voted for Trump: “I was happy [with the executive orders]. There were so many of them. I couldn’t keep track. Obviously he’s not a regular politician – with most politicians, you’ll hear one thing and they’ll do another.”

Tony Flecklin, 69, a Republican who voted for Trump: “You can expect behaviour from him that’s going to be unlike what you normally run into. But in general, his policies in terms of border protection, economic sufficiency, oil and gas, I am wholeheartedly in favour of.”

Greg Bruno, a Republican: “This is why he was elected. Many of these orders involve issues that the American public wants to see done. Those are promises that were made in the campaign and he’s fulfilling them.”

Carlyn Jorgensen, 40, an independent who voted for Harris: “I haven’t liked the fact that the front row was essentially CEOs – that you had Elon Musk and [Jeff] Bezos in the front row. That, to me, just felt like – are we heading towards an oligarchy at this point?”

Angela Ramos, an independent: “Most deeply concerning to me are the departure from the Paris Climate Accords and the World Health Organization, simply because our actions have really deep consequences, not just for us within the US, but for the entire world.”

David Lieck, 58, a Democrat who voted for Harris: “I felt like he’s essentially pandering to his base in the action he took with respect to the pardons and the commuting of the sentences of the January 6 rioters. I felt that was vindictive and sending the wrong message to the American people.”

Greg Bruno, a Republican: “He came into his first presidency under attack… you put a person in a defensive crouch when you’re under attack like that. This presidency doesn’t have that element. So not only is he coming in not under attack, but he’s coming in as a highly experienced person in how to wield the power of the presidency.”

Shantonu Mazumdar, 58, a Democrat who voted for Harris: “I think he’s gotten a little bit harder, more hard line, it feels like. He’s, I think, emboldened a little bit by his constituents and the people who have supported him. I think he’s been given a little bit more… freedom to be further to the right than he was before.”

Richard Weil, an independent: “I think he’s more focused. I think he’s angrier, he’s more revengeful… but I think he’s turning into a bitter old man. I do think he has changed and I think he’s changed for the worse.”

Tony Flecklin, a Republican: “I’m happy that he’s following through with what his promises were. Sometimes his methods are a little draconian. That’s just the nature of Donald J. Trump. He’s not going to be wimpy about the way he approaches things.”

• EXPLAINED: What Trump has done since taking power
• VOTERS: 10 Americans give their verdict on week one
• BORDER: Six things Trump has done about migration
• PARDONS: Jan 6 defendants get nearly everything they want
• WATCH: Trump’s first week in three minutes

World leaders, the bosses of the world’s biggest companies and a sprinkling of celebrities gathered in the small Swiss mountain town of Davos for the annual World Economic Forum this week.

On the other side of the Atlantic, President Donald Trump was starting his political comeback as the new US president.

“Nothing will stand in our way”, he declared, as he vowed to end America’s “decline”.

Towards the end of the gathering, President Trump was beamed in straight from the White House webcam to deliver his message of world domination directly to the global elite.

While he charmed, almost seduced the audience with a credible picture of a booming US economy about to scale new technological heights, he simultaneously menaced with threats of tariffs to those who did not choose to shift their factories into the US.

Trillions of dollars of tariffs for the US Treasury for those businesses exporting into the US market from foreign factories.

“Your prerogative” he said, with a smile not out of place in a Godfather movie. And then for one of his own, the Bank of America chief Brian Moynihan, a remarkable public lashing accusing the lending giant of “debanking” many of his conservative supporters.

He awkwardly mumbled about sponsoring the World Cup.

In this first week of his second term, most people at Davos were nodding along, as they cannot think what else to do, just yet.

Two worlds colliding, as the ‘America First’ President was beamed in like a 30-foot interplanetary emperor, into the beating heart of the rules-based international economic order.

It is one thing suggesting that trade deficits are a problem with your domestic electorate. It is quite another to suggest at an internationalist forum that a G7 ally, Canada, become a state of your nation, eliciting gasps in the audience, and not just from Canadians.

The address was, by design, charming and offensive. There was carrot and stick for the rest of the world.

As delegates absorbed the mix of threats, invites and on occasion, praise, many appeared to be trying to decide just how much Trump might damage the global trading system, whilst assessing just how far ahead his America is getting in this tech driven AI boom.

Davos has been for this first week the alternative pole of the Trump second term.

There was a coherence to his agenda to use every means to drive down energy prices including by pressurising the Saudis on oil.

This he said would not just help to lower inflation, but also drain Russia’s war coffers of oil dollars to help end the Ukraine war, by economic means. The ceasefire in the Middle East has already bought Trump some geopolitical credibility in these circles.

Christine Lagarde, David Miliband, and John Kerry shuffled into the hall. Various bank chiefs assembled on stage to praise and then lightly question the President.

The bottom line was this: Is president Trump serious about what sounded like campaign trail threats to the world economic system? The answer will reverberate for the next four years and beyond.

The answer sounded like a most definitely, yes. However, this does not mean it is going to work.

Some leading US CEOs told me that they were preparing for tit-for-tat retaliatory tariffs to be applied to their exports. Their assumption was that the President’s love of a rising stock market would restrict his deployment of tariffs.

But no one really knows. In any event, much is up for grabs. He has already withdrawn from the World Health Organisation.

In the promenades the whisper was of his Project 2025 allies suggesting US withdrawal from the IMF and the World Bank too.

The rest of the world does have some counter leverage, once it decides to get back up after the Trump whirlwind.

The Canadians are now briefing on their retaliatory tariffs. In conversations with both the British business secretary and EU trade minister, Jonathan Reynolds and European Union trade chief, Maros Sefcovic, I detected a desire for calm dialogue.

Both are making similar arguments to try to dissuade Trump from wider tariffs.

Mr Reynolds told me that as the US does not have a goods trade deficit with the UK, there is no need for tariffs.

Mr Sefcovic said that the US should really think about its services surplus too.

But do they not consider the threats to G7 and Nato allies Canada and Denmark (over Greenland) to be straightforwardly unacceptable and as absurd as France claiming back Louisiana? Sefcovic did not want to whip anything up.

Diplomats are making lists of US goods that Europe can now purchase to demonstrate “wins” for President Trump, from arms to gas to the magnets in wind turbines.

It might make some sense for the rest of the G7 to work in unison on retaliation against the tariffs, in order to concentrate the minds of Congress, and the competing factions inside the court of Trump.

There is no sign of that happening.

The US tech supremacy story epitomised by the broligarchy – including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg, Apple leader Tim Cook, and Google chief Sundar Pichar – had top seats at the inauguration this week.

While the US is streets ahead of Europe, its standing against China is more uncertain.

One of the talks of Davos was DeepSeek’s high performing, much cheaper AI model, made in China. The prediction that the tech bros would be tearing strips out of each other in the court of Trump began to come true within hours, rather than months.

Meanwhile, while most, though not all, here in Davos sounded rather seduced by Trump’s tech-fuelled optimism, some in Europe also see a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to attract top researchers who may be rather less than enamoured with the direction of US politics. It was openly suggested by the European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde.

Others sought solace in the fact that Europe no longer has to face Biden’s massive green subsidies, creating a more level playing field again for Europe.

President Trump is changing the terms of world trade. The response of the rest of the world to this is as important as what the Trump administration itself decides.

Since taking office on Monday, President Donald Trump has announced a flurry of immigration-related executive orders, paving way for a widespread effort to crack down on undocumented migrants in the US.

In more than 21 actions, Trump has moved to overhaul parts of the US immigration system, including how migrants are processed and deported from the US.

The White House has since publicised some of these efforts. On Friday, the new White House Press Secretary shared images of deportation flights being carried out by military cargo planes.

While Trump has promised “mass deportations” and arrests, it remains unclear how much of his plan is already being implemented.

Here is a breakdown of some of the significant actions taken by Trump on immigration in his first week, and how they compare to past policies.

A cornerstone of Trump’s immigration policy is removing unlawful migrants out of the US and the promise of “mass deportations”.

To that effect, the Department of Defence has said that it will provide military aircrafts to deport more than 5,000 people that have been detained by Border Patrol in San Diego and El Paso, Texas.

ICE statistics show that over 1,000 people were removed or repatriated on Thursday, the fourth day of the Trump administration.

Trump has also moved to expand the scope of expedited deportations of undocumented migrants, reviving a policy under his first term that Biden had discontinued.

• Trump has vowed to end birthright citizenship. Can he do it?
• From snowy cities to Mexican border – Trump deportations loom
• ‘No choice but to go back’ – migrants despair over Trump border restrictions

Expedited removals were previously limited to areas within 100 miles (160km) of US international borders, and applied to those who did not request asylum or failed to show a legitimate case for asylum.

With Trump’s changes, these removals can now occur anywhere in the US, and will apply to undocumented migrants who can’t prove that they have been in the country for more than two years.

Deportations are not unique to the Trump administration.

Biden carried out deportations as well, with 271,000 immigrants deported to 192 countries in fiscal year 2024. This amounts to around 740 a day, making the current preliminary figures under Trump slightly higher.

In total, Biden carried out 1.5 million deportations in his four years, according to figures by the Migration Policy Institute. That is around the same that was carried out under Trump’s first term.

That number is lower than deportations carried out under Barack Obama’s first term, which added up to a total of 2.9 million.

The Pentagon announced on Wednesday the deployment of 1,500 active duty troops to the southern US border. This is in addition to 2,500 active-duty personnel already there, officials said – marking a 60% increase in Army troops in the area.

The troops will fly helicopters to help Border Patrol agents with monitoring, said acting Defense Secretary Robert Salesses. They will also help in the construction of barriers to stop migrants from coming in.

Salesses signalled that “this is just the beginning” and more troops may be sent soon.

Officials added that a number of additional “border enforcement missions” are in development, without providing specifics.

Biden also deployed active-duty troops to the border, which were used to assist Border Patrol with primarily administrative tasks ahead of the expiration of Title 42, a public health order that was used to expel migrants quickly during Covid-19.

Border crossings significantly dropped in Biden’s final year as president. In December 2024 – the last full month of the Biden administration – about 47,330 migrant apprehensions were recorded, down from a high of nearly 250,000 in December 2023.

The figures are lower than the monthly averages in Trump’s first term, before the Covid-19 pandemic. In May 2019, for example, border patrol agents recorded 132,800 migrant encounters.

In an executive order, Trump suspended the entry of all undocumented migrants to the US, and border patrol agents have been instructed to turn people away without granting them asylum hearings.

Before the order, migrants were able to arrive at the US border and had the legal right to seek asylum.

In June 2024, however, the Biden administration issued its own executive order that temporarily suspended the right to seek asylum for those who did not arrive at an official point of entry, or without an appointment using CBP One, a mobile application. In September, asylum restrictions were tightened further.

Trump has also halted the US refugee resettlement programme. Under Biden in 2024, the US accepted more than 100,000 refugees – its highest since 1995.

He also ended a major Biden-era programme that allowed up to 30,000 migrants per month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to fly into the US on humanitarian grounds.

The “Remain in Mexico” policy from Trump’s first-term will be reinstated as well. This forced non-Mexican asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until their asylum claims in the US were resolved. It impacted around 71,000 people under Trump’s first term.

The controversial policy was regularly criticised by immigration advocates, who said that the migrants were often left in Mexico for months and sometimes were preyed upon by criminal gangs.

There is an estimated backlog of 3.6m cases in US immigration courts, and migrants often have to wait years. Many have been left wondering whether those cases will still be heard.

Trump has fired several top immigration court officials since taking office, however, which may impact the processing of those cases.

A big change that was felt almost immediately after Trump took office is the scrapping of the CBP One smartphone app, which migrants were able to use to schedule appointments with US border patrol agents.

The CBP One app was launched by the Biden administration as a way to organise and streamline the entry of migrants who are fleeing prosecution.

Some 30,000 people were said to be stranded inside Mexico since the app was taken down – all of them with scheduled appointments that are now cancelled.

About 270,000 migrants were estimated to be on the Mexican side of the border waiting to get appointments through the app, according to government figures obtained by CBS, the BBC’s US partner.

The move was met with anguish by migrants who had travelled long journeys to the border, and who had waited months to secure those appointments.

Advocates say that, with its removal, there is now no practical pathway to protection for arriving migrants.

The American Civil Liberties Union has since filed a legal challenge against the app’s closure.

Mexico is anticipating an influx of migrants from Trump’s deportation orders, and has started building giant tent shelters in nine border cities to temporarily house them.

Municipal official Enrique Licon of Ciudad Juárez – a city that borders El Paso, Texas – told Reuters that these shelters will be able to house thousands of people and should be ready in a few days, calling the effort “unprecedented”.

The shelters will provide people food, medical care and assistance in getting identification documents. A fleet of buses will also be at the ready to help transport Mexicans back to their hometowns.

It is part of a larger effort called “Mexico Embraces You”, a government-wide campaign to welcome citizens who may be deported from the US and help them reintegrate in their home country.

Other nearby nations – like Guatemala – are launching similar efforts to absorb their deportees.

But some have raised concerns about whether Mexico and others will be ready to handle the number of people that may be coming their way.

Many of the migrants are also fleeing political turmoil or criminal violence in their home countries, raising questions about whether they’ll be safe if they return.

Some of Trump’s executive orders were signed with the aim of expanding Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) ability to arrest and detain unlawful migrants on US soil.

One of them reverses a longstanding guideline that prohibited immigration raids in areas deemed “sensitive”, such as schools, hospitals and churches.

Another calls for an expansion of a programme that allows ICE to delegate its immigration enforcement duties to state and local police.

It remains unclear how many raids have taken place since inauguration day.

Cities have braced themselves for the large-scale raids promised by Trump, but sources have told US media that ICE has only been conducting “routine operations” so far.

White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said that 538 arrests have been conducted on Thursday.

For comparison, ICE detained more than 149,700 in the 2024 fiscal year under the Biden administration, which equals an average of 409 a day.

Inside a giant sphere, the engineers pored over their equipment. Before them stood a silvery metal contraption swathed in colourful wires – a box that they hope will one day make oxygen on the moon.

Once the team vacated the sphere, the experiment began. The box-like machine was now ingesting small quantities of a dusty regolith – a mixture of dust and sharp grit with a chemical composition mimicking real lunar soil.

Soon, that regolith was gloop. A layer of it heated to temperatures above 1,650C. And, with the addition of some reactants, oxygen-containing molecules began to bubble out.

“We’ve tested everything we can on Earth now,” says Brant White, a program manager at Sierra Space, a private company. “The next step is going to the moon.”

Sierra Space’s experiment unfolded at Nasa’s Johnson Space Center this summer. It is far from the only such technology that researchers are working on, as they develop systems that could supply astronauts living on a future lunar base.

Those astronauts will need oxygen to breathe but also to make rocket fuel for spacecraft that might launch from the moon and head to destinations further afield – including Mars.

Lunar base inhabitants might also require metal and they could even harvest this from the dusty grey debris that litters the lunar surface.

Much depends on whether we can build reactors able to extract such resources effectively or not.

“It could save billions of dollars from mission costs,” says Mr White as he explains that the alternative – bringing lots of oxygen and spare metal to the moon from Earth – would be arduous and expensive.

Luckily, the lunar regolith is full of metal oxides. But while the science of extracting oxygen from metal oxides, for example, is well understood on Earth, doing this on the moon is much harder. Not least because of the conditions.

The huge spherical chamber that hosted Sierra Space’s tests in July and August this year induced a vacuum and also simulated lunar temperatures and pressures.

The company says it has had to improve how the machine works over time so that it can better cope with the extremely jagged, abrasive texture of the regolith itself. “It gets everywhere, wears out all sorts of mechanisms,” says Mr White.

And the one, crucial, thing that you can’t test on Earth or even in orbit around our planet, is lunar gravity – which is roughly one sixth that of the Earth. It might not be until 2028 or later that Sierra Space can test its system on the moon, using real regolith in low gravity conditions.

The moon’s gravity could be a real problem for some oxygen-extracting technologies unless engineers design for it, says Paul Burke at Johns Hopkins University.

In April, he and colleagues published a paper detailing the results of computer simulations that showed how a different oxygen-extracting process might be hindered by the moon’s relatively feeble gravitational pull. The process under investigation here was molten regolith electrolysis, which involves using electricity to split lunar minerals containing oxygen, in order to extract the oxygen directly.

The problem is that such technology works by forming bubbles of oxygen on the surface of electrodes deep within the molten regolith itself. “It is the consistency of, say, honey. It is very, very viscous,” says Dr Burke.

“Those bubbles aren’t going to rise as fast – and may actually be delayed from detaching from the electrodes.”

There could be ways around this. One could be to vibrate the oxygen-making machine device, which might jiggle the bubbles free.

And extra-smooth electrodes might make it easier for the oxygen bubbles to detach. Dr Burke and his colleagues are now working on ideas like this.

Sierra Space’s technology, a carbothermal process, is different. In their case, when oxygen-containing bubbles form in the regolith, they do so freely, rather than on the surface of an electrode. It means there is less chance of them getting stuck, says Mr White.

Stressing the value of oxygen for future lunar expeditions, Dr Burke estimates that, per day, an astronaut would require the amount of oxygen contained in roughly two or three kilograms of regolith, depending on that astronaut’s fitness and activity levels.

However, a lunar base’s life support systems would likely recycle oxygen breathed out by astronauts. If so, it wouldn’t be necessary to process quite as much regolith just to keep the lunar residents alive.

The real use case for oxygen-extracting technologies, adds Dr Burke, is in providing the oxidiser for rocket fuels, which could enable ambitious space exploration.

Obviously the more resources that can be made on the moon the better.

Sierra Space’s system does require the addition of some carbon, though the firm says it can recycle most of this after each oxygen-producing cycle.

Along with colleagues, Palak Patel, a PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, came up with an experimental molten regolith electrolysis system, for extracting oxygen and metal from the lunar soil.

“We’re really looking at it from the standpoint of, ‘Let’s try to minimise the number of resupply missions’,” she says.

When designing their system, Ms Patel and her colleagues addressed the problem described by Dr Burke: that low gravity could impede the detachment of oxygen bubbles that form on electrodes. To counter this, they used a “sonicator”, which blasts the bubbles with sound waves in order to dislodge them.

Ms Patel says that future resource-extracting machines on the moon could derive iron, titanium or lithium from regolith, for example. These materials might help lunar-dwelling astronauts make 3D-printed spare parts for their moon base or replacement components for damaged spacecraft.

The usefulness of lunar regolith does not stop there. Ms Patel notes that, in separate experiments, she has melted simulated regolith into a tough, dark, glass-like material.

She and colleagues worked out how to turn this substance into strong, hollow bricks, which could be useful for building structures on the moon – an imposing black monolith, say. Why not?

It doesn’t matter how much you prepare for it. It still takes you by surprise. As the great-granddaughter of a woman who was murdered in Auschwitz, I am meeting the granddaughter of a man who drove Jews to their death. I’m lost for words.

I never got to meet my grandfather Ludvig, who survived the Holocaust, or his mother Rachel. They were put onto a cattle cart to the Auschwitz death camp in 1944. Ludvig, who was about 15 at the time, was separated from his mother and sent to another concentration camp. But Rachel was tortured, gassed and murdered.

I grew up hearing so many stories about them, and spending time with other Holocaust survivors in my family in Australia. They were at the forefront of my mind when I found myself in Germany interviewing Cornelia Stieler.

Cornelia’s grandfather was the main breadwinner in a household with very little income. He originally worked as a coal miner, but after a near-fatal accident which left him trapped under coal for two days, he decided to do something else. Things turned around when he eventually got a job at Deutsche Reichsbahn as a train driver. Cornelia’s mother used to speak of that achievement with pride, saying getting the job was “the chance of a lifetime”.

At first, he was transporting goods for the war effort. But it soon turned into something more sinister. “I believe that my grandfather served as a train driver, commuting between the death camps. He stayed in Liegnitz, now Legnica, in a boarding school, so there was a certain separation from the family and between the death camps.”

Cornelia says that when her grandfather first started the job, he didn’t know what it would become. “I think my grandfather saw a lot of horrible things and didn’t know how to get out of this work, didn’t know how to deal with it.”

After training as a family therapist, she delved into her past and tried to understand him better. She tells me she started asking: “At what point was he a perpetrator? Was he an accessory to perpetrators? When could he have left?”

At this point, my mouth is dry. My heart is racing. Listening to all of this feels like an out-of-body experience. All I can think about is how her grandfather drove trains into Auschwitz, and that’s how my grandfather and great-grandmother ended up there. I’m thinking about all my other relatives – cousins that I know existed but know nothing about – who were murdered in Auschwitz too.

“If I were any younger, I think I’d feel a strong hate towards you,” I tell her, fighting back tears. “But I don’t because saying all of those things must have been really difficult to admit.”

“Give me your hand,” Cornelia says, also welling up. “It’s important. Your tears, and my touch, are touching me… My grandfather was a train driver in Auschwitz. What can I say? Nothing.

“I can’t apologise, it’s not possible,” she adds, implying the crime is too grave. “My grandfather felt very, very guilty, and he died with his guilt.” Cornelia thanks me for my openness and says there’s a need to fully uncover the history.

Then she says something you might not expect – that some Germans from Schönwald, where her family came from, had reacted angrily to her research. The now Polish town renamed Bojków, some 100km from Kraków, hasn’t come to terms with its Nazi past.

Cornelia explains that originally, the town was against the ideology of the Nazi Party, but over time, became consumed by it. Hitler saw Schönwald as a model village – an Aryan village in a land of Slavs. He was hoping that a “fifth column” of ethnic Germans there would become a useful aid in the military.

It was the site of the Gleiwitz incident – a false flag incident staged by Nazi Germany in 1939 to justify the invasion of Poland, one of the triggers of World War Two. And in 1945, towards the end of the war, it was the first German village to be attacked by advancing Soviet forces.

But just before that, it was the scene of one of the Nazis’ so-called death marches.

As Soviets approached Auschwitz, Hitler’s elite guard, the SS, forced around 60,000 prisoners there – mostly Jews – to move further west. Between 19 and 21 January 1945, one of those marches passed through Schönwald. In below freezing temperatures, the prisoners were dressed only in their thin striped uniforms with just wooden shoes on their feet. Those who collapsed from starvation and exhaustion were shot.

Those who survived were put onto open cattle cart trains heading further west, usually to other concentration camps, like Buchenwald. The Nazis wanted to hold onto their slave labour – even at this point, some still believed in an ultimate triumph of the Third Reich.

A local history and religion teacher, Krzysztof Kruszynski, takes me to the main street where the death march passed. People wait to catch their bus outside the main church on Rolnikow Street – known as Bauer-Strasse in German times. He points to ground, and tells me these are the original cobble stones that the prisoners had to walk on.

“It is a silent witness of the death march,” he says. “But the stone cannot talk.”

This history has been buried until now – partly because Germans from Schönwald were forced to flee after the Soviet attack that came soon after and Poles resettled the village. One German-Polish woman in her 80s, Ruta Kassubek, told me how drunk Soviet soldiers had stormed her family home and murdered her father. But there’s another reason: an active suppression of the past.

It didn’t surprise me that some Germans had responded negatively to Cornelia’s research. Germany prides itself on its , or culture of remembrance: mandatory Holocaust education, museums, memorials. But many see that as the job of state and government. And while they’re happy enough to face the past in the abstract, it’s harder to deal with their own family history, says Benjamin Fischer, a former Jewish student leader and political consultant. He calls it the “deindividualisation of history”.

A study by Bielefeld University found that a third of Germans believed their family members helped save Jews during the Holocaust. That’s “ridiculous”, says Benjamin, and “statistically impossible”.

On the ground in Bojków, 80 years after the death march, things are changing. Last week, a delegation of Germans, Jews and Poles, including local authorities, schools and emergency services unveiled a new memorial commemorating those who died in the town’s death march.

Cornelia and Krzysztof were there. For Cornelia the history is deeply personal. She is convinced that studying and remembering it is key to understanding how society could change so rapidly. And I’m grateful for it. Their work and passion gives me hope in a world of rising antisemitism – as I try to keep the memory of how my family came to be murdered alive.

The people of Schönwald believed their town lay at the pinnacle of high culture and spirituality. But then it “folded into immorality”, Cornelia says. “This is a development that we need to understand… They weren’t solely good or evil. People can go into jobs with good intentions but very quickly, [find themselves] on the wrong side.

“We can’t change the past. We can’t turn back time. But it’s important to talk about this, to remind people of what happened, to remind people of what humans can do to one another.”

British retailer WH Smith is in talks to sell its high street stores, the business has said.

In a statement on Saturday the firm said that it was “exploring potential strategic options for this profitable and cash generative part of the group, including a possible sale”.

It went on to say that over the past decade, the business had become “a focused global travel retailer,” with more than 1,200 stores across 32 countries.

The first of its more than 500 stores opened more than 230 years ago, in 1792, operating as a news vendor. It has since grown into a major high street and travel retailer.

The travel retail business side of WH Smith, which operates from airports, train stations and hospitals, now accounts for more than 85% of its profit. The high street business makes up the rest.

The retailer said there was “no certainty that any agreement will be reached” but added it would provide updates on the possible sale.

WH Smith was valued at £1.5bn at the close of business on Friday. That figure represents the value of the entire group.

In 2019, a Which? best retailer of the year survey found WH Smith ranked the lowest, with shoppers describing the stationery specialist as “cramped and messy”.

Catherine Shuttleworth, a consumer retail analyst at Savvy Marketing, said shopping behaviour in the UK had “radically changed”, reducing the reasons to visit a WH Smith.

“Most of us read our news online not in magazines and newspapers, we download books and send birthday cards through online operators,” she said.

The focus for a business like WH Smith was now “in shops in high footfall areas like airports, stations and hospitals,” she added.

Nicholas Found, of the Retail Economics research consultancy, said potential buyers may see opportunities to “restructure and reimagine WH Smith’s high street presence”. He however warned that the modern high street was a “challenging climate” in which to operate.

Revenue from WH Smith’s high street stores dropped by £17m in 2024 compared with the year before, but profits stayed the same after the business closed 14 of its stores last year.

Speaking after WH Smith’s most recent financial results, group chief executive Carl Cowling said: “Our UK high street business continued to deliver its strategy of managing space to maximise returns and maintaining a flexible cost structure.

“As part of this space management, we opened 30 Toys R Us shop-in-shops in the second half of the financial year, and have agreed a further 37 to open ahead of Christmas 2024.”

Toys R Us went bust in 2018 and a deal was struck with WH Smith to host concessions.

In 2023, Mr Cowling told the BBC that the retailer would not be opening any more UK high street stores. Instead, it would focus on UK airports and train stations, as well as opening shops in the US and Europe.

Mr Found said it was clear that WH Smith had “strategically pivoted” towards the “fast-growing travel retail business”. Dropping its high street business, he added, would allow it to focus entirely on its new direction.

Japanese TV host Masahiro Nakai, one of the country’s most recognisable faces on television, has announced that he is retiring after a sexual assault allegation that has rocked the country’s entertainment industry.

Nakai, who presented for Fuji Television, was accused of sexually assaulting a woman at a 2023 dinner party held by staff.

Dozens of companies have pulled their commercials from Fuji Television amid claims that the company’s staff had tried to cover up the scandal.

Nakai has denied using violence against the woman, and said on 9 January that he had “resolved” the matter with her through a settlement. But this did little to quell public anger.

In a social media statement posted on Thursday, Nakai said that he was “truly sorry for causing trouble and losses to so many people”.

“I’m really, really sorry for saying good-bye this way.”

His resignation comes days after Fuji Television president Koichi Minato confirmed that the company did not disclose Nakai’s scandal despite being aware of it long before it was reported in the media.

Vehicle makers Nissan and Toyota, as well as retail company Seven & I holdings which runs the retail 7-eleven convenience store chain, were among those that announced they were pulling advertising from Fuji Television over the scandal.

Fuji Television is expected to set up an independent committee to investigate the scandal.

Appearances of Nakai have also been scrubbed from programmes.

Nakai soared to stardom in the 1990s as the leader of Japanese boy band SMAP, one of Asia’s most successful acts. The group released more than 50 singles – many of which became chart toppers – and launched a weekly variety show on prime-time television.

After SMAP disbanded in 2016, Nakai went on to become a television host as well as one of the wealthiest celebrities in Japan.

Japan’s entertainment industry is facing a reckoning with long unspoken cases of sexual assault.

In 2023, J-pop executive Johnny Kitagawa, who by then had been dead for four years, was exposed to have sexually abused hundreds of boys and young men for decades.

His talent agency, Johnny & Associates, had managed SMAP among other boy bands.

There are times in history when countries are gripped by election fever.

January 2025 in Belarus is not one of them.

Drive around Minsk and you’ll see no big billboards promoting the portraits of candidates.

There is little campaigning.

The grey skies and sleet of a Belarusian winter add to an overriding sense of inactivity.

And inevitability.

The outcome of the 2025 presidential election is not in doubt. Alexander Lukashenko, once dubbed “Europe’s last dictator,” who has ruled Belarus with an iron fist for more than 30 years, will be declared the winner and secure a seventh term in office.

His supporters call it an exercise in “Belarusian democracy”. His opponents reject the process as “a farce”.

Even Mr Lukashenko himself claims to lack interest in the process.

“I’m not following the election campaign. I’ve got no time,” the Belarusian leader told workers at the Minsk Automobile Plant this week.

The workers presented him with a gift: an axe for chopping wood.

“I’ll try it out before the election,” promised Mr Lukashenko, to rapturous applause.

Four-and-a-half years ago, at a different enterprise, the leader of Belarus received a much cooler reception.

One week after the 2020 presidential election, Alexander Lukashenko visited the Minsk Wheels Tractor Plant. Leaked video showed him being jeered and heckled by workers. They shouted ‘”Go away! Go away!”.

In 2020 the official election result – of 80% for Mr Lukashenko – had sparked anger and huge protests across the country. Belarusians poured onto the streets to accuse their leader of stealing their votes and the election.

In the brutal police crackdown that followed, thousands of anti-government protesters and critics were arrested. Eventually the wave of repression extinguished the protests and, with help from Russia, Mr Lukashenko clung to power.

The UK, the European Union and the United States refuse to recognise him as the legitimate president of Belarus.

Alexander Lukashenko’s staunchest opponents (and potential rivals) are either in prison or have been forced into exile.

That is why this week the European Parliament passed a resolution calling on the EU to reject the upcoming presidential election as “a sham” and pointing out that the election campaign has been taking place “in an environment of severe repression which fails to meet even the minimum standards for democratic elections”.

I remember interviewing Alexander Lukashenko last October, on the day the date of the presidential election was announced.

“How can these elections be free and democratic if the leaders of the opposition are in prison or abroad?” I asked.

“Do you actually know who the leaders of the opposition are?” Mr Lukashenko hit back.

“An opposition is a group of people who should serve the interests, at the very least, of a small number of people in the country. Where are these leaders you speak of? Wake up!”

Alexander Lukashenko is not the sole candidate. There are four others. But they seem more like spoilers, than serious challengers.

I drive four hours from Minsk to meet one of them. Sergei Syrankov is the leader of the Communist Party of Belarus. In the town of Vitebsk I sit in on one of his campaign events. In a large hall Mr Syrankov addresses a small audience, flanked by his party’s emblem, the hammer and sickle.

His campaign slogan is unusual to say the least: “Not instead of, but together with Lukashenko!”

He is a presidential candidate who openly backs his opponent.

“There is no alternative to Alexander Lukashenko as the leader of our country,” Mr Syrankov tells me. “So, we are taking part in the election with the president’s team.”

“Why do you think there is no alternative?” I ask.

“Because Lukashenko is a man of the people, a man of the soil, who has done everything to make sure we don’t have the kind of chaos they have in Ukraine.”

“You’re fighting for power yourself, but you support another candidate. That is…unusual,” I suggest.

“I am certain that Alexander Lukashenko will win a thumping victory. But even if he wins and I don’t, the Communists will be the winners,” responds Mr Syrankov.

“The main Communist in our country is our head of state. Lukashenko still has his old membership card from the days of the Soviet Communist Party.”

Also on the ballot is Oleg Gaidukevich, leader of the right-wing Liberal-Democratic Party of Belarus. He, too, isn’t running to win.

“If anyone dares to suggest the outcome of the election isn’t known, he’s a liar,” Mr Gaidukevich tells me.

“It’s obvious that Lukashenko will win. He has a massive rating….We’re going to battle to strengthen our positions and prepare for the next election.”

Mr Lukashenko’s critics reject the assertion that his popularity is “massive”. But there is no doubt he does have support.

On the edge of Vitebsk is the little town of Oktyabrskaya. Talking to people there I detect concern that a change of leader may spark instability.

“I want a stable salary, stability in the country,” welder Sergei tells me. “Other candidates make promises, but might not keep them. I want to keep what I’ve got.”

“The situation today is very tense,” says Zenaida. “Maybe there are other people worthy of power. But by the time a younger leader gets his feet under the desk, makes those important connections with with other countries, and with his own people that will take a long time.

“God forbid we should end up like Ukraine.”

In Belarus today there is fear of instability, fear of the unknown, and fear of the government. All work in Alexander Lukashenko’s favour.

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

At the storm’s height, nearly a million properties were without power across the British Isles, while many road and rail links were blocked. A 20-year-old man was killed when a tree fell on his car in Ireland as winds reached a record 114mph (183 km/h).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

While tens of thousands had been reconnected by Saturday morning, engineers said it could take a “significant number of days” for the grid to be fully repaired.

Loss of power to treatment plants and pumping stations has also caused water supply to be interrupted in several places, Irish Water said. As of Friday evening, it estimated 138,000 people were without water.

More than 77,000 properties were without power across the UK as of Saturday afternoon, according to tracker Power Outage – the vast majority being in Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland Electricity said it could take up to 10 days before all were back on the grid.

The infrastructure department said there were more than 1,800 incidents of fallen trees, branches and other debris blocking roads.

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

Northern Irish Education Minister Paul Givan said 60 schools had reported “significant damage to some buildings” and some may not be open on Monday.

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

ScotRail said engineers worked through the night on Friday to clear trees and other debris from tracks. It reported “extensive damage” to overhead lines.

The East Coast Main Line reopened early on Saturday between Edinburgh and Newcastle after fallen trees were cleared, Network Rail Scotland said.

Edinburgh Airport said it would be operating under “challenging conditions” on Saturday, and that the disruption on Friday would have knock-on impact on services over the coming days.

Glasgow and Belfast International said passengers should continue to check the latest travel information with their airline before travelling.

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

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

Passengers on Avanti West Coast are advised not to travel north of Preston.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

President Donald Trump has revoked security protection for former top US health official Anthony Fauci, who has faced death threats since leading the country’s Covid-19 response.

“You can’t have a security detail for the rest of your life because you work for government,” Trump told reporters, when asked about the decision on Friday. “It’s very standard.”

This week, Trump also revoked security protections for his former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, his former National Security Adviser John Bolton and former envoy Brian Hook, who all faced threats from Iran.

Dr Fauci has now hired his own private security team that he will pay for himself, US media report.

Asked whether he felt responsible for the officials’ safety, Trump said on Friday: “They all made a lot of money. They can hire their own security too.”

Dr Fauci was previously protected by federal marshals, and then a private security company, which was paid for by the government, according to the New York Times.

One of Dr Fauci’s most vocal Republican critics, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, had called for his security to be revoked.

He wrote in a post on X on Thursday that he had “sent supporting information to end the 24 hr a day limo and security detail for Fauci”.

“I wish him nothing but peace but he needs to pay for his own limos,” he said.

Trump has also revoked the security clearances of 51 intelligence officials who had claimed that Hunter Biden’s laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

Under US protocol, former presidents and their spouses are granted security protection for life. But protection for other US officials is decided based on the threat assessment from the intelligence community.

As the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr Fauci faced death threats during and after the coronavirus pandemic, as well as criticism from Republicans over mask mandates and other Covid restrictions.

He led the institute for 40 years, including during Trump’s first term. Trump had also awarded presidential commendations to Dr Fauci who served on the Operation Warp Speed task force during the pandemic.

Before leaving office, then-President Joe Biden issued a preemptive pardon for Dr Fauci.

The doctor told US media that he “truly appreciated” Biden for taking action, adding that the possibility of prosecution had created “immeasurable and intolerable distress” on his family.

“Let me be perfectly clear, I have committed no crime and there are no possible grounds for any allegation or threat of criminal investigation or prosecution of me,” he said.

Did the hero Prince slay the tabloid dragon? Or to quote one of its most memorable headlines, was it The Sun Wot Won It?

The dust is still settling on the settlement of Prince Harry’s epic legal battle against News Group Newspapers.

Had the trial gone ahead, Prince Harry would have alleged he had been the victim of unlawful newsgathering by NGN journalists between 1996 and 2011 – and that its leaders covered up wrongdoing by destroying evidence – something that the company denied. But the eight-week trial didn’t happen because the two sides suddenly settled.

He’s scored an apology for intrusion by The Sun, including NGN accepting that there was unlawful information gathering by private investigators working for the newspaper.

NGN has not admitted unlawful activity by journalists or editors – and the settlement means a judge won’t now have to decide if there was, as the Duke’s team alleges, a corporate cover-up of wrongdoing – a claim NGN vehemently denied and said it would fight at trial.

The space between those positions, in which both sides will feel they won something, is now the battleground.

The question is how far, realistically, can a campaign around historical events go? Is this week a reboot of investigations or, in fact, the final chapter?

The main focus of pressure and lobbying will be the police – because campaigners believe Scotland Yard didn’t go far enough in its previous investigations, missing opportunities to widen its focus beyond wrongdoing at The News of the World.

Speaking to the BBC on Friday, actor Hugh Grant – who said the financial risks forced him to settle, with The Sun’s owners last year – said the police’s job was not done “by any means” – and suing the newspapers was never going to get at the full truth.

So all eyes will be on Lord Tom Watson, the former Labour deputy leader, who NGN admits was placed under surveillance by News of the World journalists in 2009.

The last remaining claimant alongside Prince Harry, he says a dossier will go to the Metropolitan Police.

The Met for its part says there is no active criminal investigation into alleged newspaper wrongdoing.

That statement also means there’s no current probe into the separate Mirror Group titles, despite a judge ruling in 2023 that they had used phone hacking to get information on Prince Harry.

So why no investigation?

The police aren’t ruling one out, but Sir Mark Rowley, the Met’s commissioner, told LBC radio on Friday that they would need to see something “radically new”.

And that’s because Scotland Yard takes the view that it carried out a huge investigation 10 years ago.

Team Harry believe this is profoundly myopic. While some of their planned evidence for the NGN trial had come from the police, his lawyers also obtained new documents from NGN itself under rules for a fair trial.

Could that be new evidence? Let’s take the example of the records of the myriad of payments to private investigators.

Team Harry and Watson would have sought to prove at a trial that many were for unlawful activity. On one level you can see that would arguably fit a test of something radically new.

But, in its defence, News Group would have argued that none of this proved journalists or anyone else at the Sun knew information was being unlawfully gathered – far short of a whiff of a criminal enterprise.

What this single episode we had been expecting to see at the trial shows is how each allegation against NGN would have been fought rather than conceded. And if the police knock on the company’s door with its truncheon, they are likely to face a similarly robust response.

And that’s why the thrust of Lord Watson’s promised dossier to the police will become important. It will have to say something really big. And in the absence of a court finding – that challenge becomes larger still.

Other bodies could in theory act. Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee investigated phone-hacking allegations in 2011. It’s likely to face calls to review the evidence of NGN CEO Rebekah Brooks and others – evidence that NGN will stand by because there’s been no finding in court of unlawful activity by journalists, editors or executives.

There’s also the Information Commissioner’s Office. It had a role in the origins of this story, investigating privacy and data breaches by private investigators. The ICO says it has no plans to reopen or review this investigation.

The government has already ruled out launching “Leveson 2”, the second leg of the public inquiry promised by David Cameron. It was meant to investigate “unlawful or improper conduct” across tabloids and whether the police, put simply, had turned a blind eye to it because they had been corrupted by getting too close to journalists who may have been paying them off. But it never happened.

Labour in government won’t revisit it because too much time has passed.

A$AP Rocky’s assault trial began on Friday in Los Angeles, where the rapper is accused of firing a gun at a former friend.

The rapper, whose real name is Rakim Mayers, faces up to 24 years in prison if convicted on two felony assault charges in the 2021 incident near a Hollywood hotel.

In opening statements on Friday, prosecutors described the rapper as the aggressor and claimed he orchestrated a plan to shoot his childhood friend following a disagreement.

The Grammy-nominated hip-hop star, who is also a fashion mogul and the longtime partner of singer Rihanna, has pleaded not guilty and denied the allegations.

The victim, fellow artist and childhood friend Terell Ephron, testified last year that bullets grazed his knuckles when the rapper opened fire in his direction in Hollywood, just one block from the iconic Hollywood Walk of Fame. He said he decided to seek medical treatment at a hospital after flying back to New York.

Authorities say the shooting happened on 6 November in 2021 after a “heated discussion” in Hollywood between the rapper and Terell Ephron, who were both part of the A$AP Mob hip-hop collective and have known one another since their time together at a New York high school.

A jury of seven women and five men was selected over the course of three days this week before the opening arguments kicked off on Friday.

Mr Mayers, attending the trial in a grey suit, was joined by some members of his family on Friday, but notably absent was singer Rihanna, who he shares two children with. It’s unclear whether she might appear at the trial, but the rapper’s attorney told the court this week that Mr Mayers has tried to keep his family away from all of this.

Deputy District Attorney Paul Przelomiec opened the trial on Friday with a detailed presentation of video evidence, describing the case against the rapper as straightforward. “What will become almost instantly clear is that this is not a complicated case,” he told the jury.

Mr Mayers, along with two friends and Mr Ephron, met up to talk after they had a disagreement the night before. But the meeting turned violent.

The first video, which was partially obscured, showed a confrontation between two men, with two others stepping in to intervene. One man, identified as Mr Mayers, is seen pulling a gun but not firing. Additional footage from later that night captures two gunshots during a scuffle involving the same group.

“If you brought a gun, then you should shoot,” Mr Ephron reportedly told Mr Mayers, according to Przelomiec. Moments later, Mr Mayers is accused of opening fire, allegedly grazing Ephron’s knuckle.

“In his state of mind, he never believed he was going to be shot,” Przelomiec told the court.

Prosecutors also showed the jury text messages exchanged shortly after the incident between the pair, where Mr Ephron accuses the rap star of trying to kill him.

“U try killing me,” he wrote.

Mr. Mayers responded, “wtf iz ut talking about.”

The rapper rejected a plea offer ahead of the trial and said the weapon he was accused of firing was a “prop gun” incapable of firing real ammunition. The AP news agency reported that this would have meant agreeing to 180 days in prison.

Defence attorney Joe Tacopina on Friday said the gun was a starter pistol used as a prop, something the rapper’s security guards advised him to carry to fend off potential attackers. The rapper had been victim of crimes in the past, he said.

Mr Tacopina painted the case as bitter falling out between friends that was wrapped up in money.

“This case is about one man’s jealousy, which lies in green,” he told the jury. “This case is all about money, a clear attempt at extortion. Period, end of story.”

A key point of contention in the case is the police investigation and Mr Ephron’s injuries. The rapper’s attorneys have focused – and did on Friday – on Mr Ephron taking multiple days to report the incident to police and how authorities found no trace of a shooting.

Authorities who responded to the 2021 shooting did not find any bullet shell casings when surveying the area, but Mr Ephron returned to the scene later and gathered two shell casings he said he found in the area. He brought them when he reported the incident two days later.

The defence said the trial’s outcome hinges on Mr Ephron’s testimony, noting, “He’s the witness that this case will rise and fall on”.

The trial is expected to last about three weeks, with Mr Ephron expected to take the stand as a key witness.

The trial is happening at a crucial moment for A$AP Rocky’s career.

In May, he is set to co-chair the 2025 Met Gala alongside big names like Anna Wintour, British race car driver Lewis Hamilton, singer Pharrell Williams and basketball superstar LeBron James.

Later this summer, he is also set to appear in a film directed by Spike Lee called “Highest 2 Lowest” with acting legend Denzel Washington.

The star was previously given a two-year suspended sentence for his role in a brawl in Stockholm in August 2019.

The rapper and two members of his entourage were convicted of kicking and beating a 19-year-old man after an argument. They said they acted in self-defence, but the court rejected their argument.

The case drew worldwide media attention after US president Donald Trump unsuccessfully tried to secure Mr Mayers’s release from prison as he awaited trial.

Born in New York, Mr Mayers was one of the biggest break-out stars of the 2010s, earning eight platinum singles in the US including Wild For The Night, Everyday, LSD and A$AP Forever.

He rose to fame after being championed by Drake, and has worked with artists including Alicia Keys, Lana Del Rey, Skepta, Selena Gomez and Kendrick Lamar.

Every day families stream over a dry and dusty path into Chad, fleeing war and famine in Sudan – scenes that have clearly shaken the UK’s foreign secretary.

Under the sweltering sun, David Lammy visited the Adré border post on Friday to witness first-hand the impact of Sudan’s civil war which erupted when the army and its former ally, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), fell out.

Those who make it over the border have often been separated from their families in the chaos to escape and are desperate to see if their relatives have made it over safely.

“It’s some of the most horrific things I’ve ever heard and seen in my life,” said Lammy.

“Overwhelmingly, what I’ve seen here in Chad, on the border with Sudan, are women and children fleeing for their lives – telling stories of widespread slaughter, mutilation, burning, sexual violence against them, their children. And amongst it all, famine, hunger – such unbelievable plight.”

The foreign minister saw the dozens of women wrapped in light, multicoloured shawls and holding children of different ages crossing over on horse-drawn carts.

They looked weary sitting on bags holding the few belongings they could bring with them in the long journey to safety.

“Alhamdulillah” meaning “praise be God”, remarks Halima Abdalla when I asked her how she felt to have made it over the border.

The 28-year-old is relieved despite the tragedy she has suffered losing one of her children as she fled from Darfur, Sudan’s western region, which has suffered some of the most devastating violence over the last 21 months – much of it alleged to have been perpetrated by the RSF.

“I first went to el-Geneina, but I had to run again when fighting broke out there,” she says, explaining how she then became separated from her husband and two other children.

Aid workers in Adré say they have been trying to reunite families once they crossed the border.

“Some mothers have told us they had to choose which children to run with as they couldn’t carry all of them at one go,” an aid worker told the BBC.

Some abandoned children have been brought by humanitarian workers across the border and are put in foster care while efforts are made to find their families.

Standing on the Chadian side of the border, Lammy spoke to families that were fleeing and aid workers who were receiving them.

After meeting some of the refugees, he told the BBC: “All of these people have stories – very, very desperate stories of fleeing violence, of murder in their families, of rape, of torture, of mutilation.”

“I just sat with one woman who showed me burn marks. She had been burned by soldiers up and down her arms, she had been beaten and she had been raped. This is desperate, and we must bring the world’s attention to it and bring the suffering to an end.”

But he decried what he described as a “hierarchy of conflict” that has seemingly placed Sudan’s at the bottom, even though it is currently the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

In November last year, the UK foreign secretary spearheaded a resolution calling for a ceasefire at the UN Security Council, which Russia vetoed.

“How could you veto the plight that is going on here?” he asked, sounding exasperated.

He told the BBC he now planned to convene, in London, a meeting of Sudan’s neighbours like Chad and Egypt and other “international partners to broker the peace”.

Several attempts at peace talks led by the US and Saudi Arabia have failed to yield a solution to the conflict.

Since the mediation stalled, the US subsequently sanctioned the generals leading both sides of the war. It also determined that the RSF and its allies had committed genocide.

More than 12 million people have fled their homes since fighting broke out in April 2023.

Caught in the middle of the bitter fighting are more than 50 million civilians, almost half of whom desperately need humanitarian aid, according to UN agencies.

Malnutrition rates are among the world’s highest here. At the tented clinic in Adré, health workers measure the circumference of the upper arm of six-month-old Rasma Ibrahim.

The colour-coded tape goes all the way to the red end. The impact of her health status could last her entire lifetime. One in every seven children here in Adré is malnourished.

• Sudan war: A simple guide to what is happening
• Medics under siege: ‘We took this photo, fearing it would be our last’

The UK would continue to push for a ceasefire, said Lammy.

It has already doubled aid to £200m ($250m), and is calling for other donor countries to step up.

Aid agencies are however concerned by the announcement by newly inaugurated US President Donald Trump of a 90-day freeze on foreign aid.

A disruption in the support of one of the world’s largest donors will no doubt have devastating consequences on crises like Sudan. The UN is already struggling to meet its targets for badly needed aid money.

In 2024, an appeal for $2.7bn (£2.2bn) to support Sudan was put out, but only 57% of this money was provided.

At the food distribution centre in Adré, sacks of split yellow peas, millet, sorghum, and boxes of cooking oil and other supplies have been arranged neatly on top of tarpaulins as families from the nearby refugee camp queue for their quotas.

The cries of infants tied by shawls to their queueing mothers’ backs fill the air. One-by-one, the families are called to collect their rations.

A man helps lift a sack of dry food on to the shoulder of another, who then hums as he makes his way back to his makeshift home.

The population of Adré was about 40,000 before Sudan’s civil war began and now it has grown more than five-fold, according to local volunteers.

The refugees here are among the lucky few. Just across the border, in Darfur, famine was declared in August in Zamzam camp, near the city of el-Fasher, which the RSF has besieged for more than a year.

In December the UN-backed Famine Review Committee said it had spread to more areas – in Darfur to Abu Shouk and al-Salam camps and to parts of South Kordofan state.

The famine spread despite the re-opening of the Adré border that had been shut by the army on suspicion it was being used to transport weapons to its rivals.

As we left the border, three or four lorries with UN World Food Programme banners slowly rumbled down the dusty road crossing into Sudan.

They will be delivering much-needed aid to villages, towns and displacement camps beyond the border. But it is still far from sufficient.

“We have to step up and wake up now to this huge, huge crisis,” said Lammy.

• BBC hears of horror and hunger in rare visit to Darfur massacre town
• Duchess shocked by sexual exploitation of refugees

A years-long investigation into rock star Marilyn Manson over sexual assault and domestic violence allegations has been dropped, California prosecutors said on Friday.

Prosecutors said in a statement the allegations against Manson exceeded the statute of limitations, adding “we cannot prove charges of sexual assault beyond a reasonable doubt”.

Four women had filed lawsuits against Manson – whose legal name is Brian Warner – accusing him of rape, sexual assault and bodily harm.

Through his lawyer, Warner repeatedly denied the accusations and dismissed the claims as “falsehoods”.

Howard King, Warner’s attorney, said in a statement to the BBC that they are “very pleased” with the decision, and that his client has always maintained his innocence.

The four women who filed lawsuits accusing Warner of sexual and physical abuse include model Ashley Morgan Smithline, Game of Thrones actress Esmé Bianco and Warner’s former personal assistant Ashley Walters. The fourth woman chose to remain anonymous.

“We recognise and applaud the courage and resilience of the women who came forward to make reports and share their experiences,” Nathan J Hochman from the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said in the statement.

“We thank them for their cooperation and patience with the investigation.”

Authorities began their investigations in 2021, looking into alleged incidents between 2009 and 2011 in West Hollywood, where Warner lived.

In total, more than a dozen women had made allegations against the rock star, including his ex-fiancée Evan Rachel Wood.

Smithline – who filed the most recent lawsuit of the four women – said in court documents that Warner had “repeatedly threatened” her life, saying he would “find her” and “kill her if she left him”.

Her testimony echoed the experiences of Walters who, in court documents, described Warner as a terrifying and violent boss who gave friends permission to grope and kiss her. He also made her work for 48 hours in a row.

Since the allegations were made, Warner’s record label, booking agent and manager have severed ties with him.

“Obviously, my art and my life have long been magnets for controversy, but these recent claims about me are horrible distortions of reality,” Warner wrote in an Instagram post in February 2021.

Ukraine reportedly hit a Russian oil refinery and targeted Moscow during an attack involving a wave of at least 121 drones, one of the largest single operations of its kind during the war.

Video footage verified by the BBC shows a fireball rising over the refinery and pumping station in the Ryazan region, southeast of Moscow, which Ukrainian officials said was a target.

Russia said it had shot down 121 drones that had targeted 13 regions, including Ryazan and Moscow, but reported no damage.

Elsewhere, Ukrainian authorities said three people were killed and one was injured when a Russian drone hit a residential building in the Kyiv region.

Andriy Kovalenko, head of Ukraine’s centre for countering disinformation, said on Telegram that an oil refinery in Ryazan had been hit, as well as the Kremniy factory in Bryansk that Kyiv says produces missile components and other weapons.

Bloggers on Telegram posted images and videos of fires raging at the Ryazan facility, which covers around 6sq km (2.3sq miles). Verified footage shows people fleeing from the site in cars and on foot as a fireball rises into the sky.

BBC Verify used video footage to establish the location of two fires at the refinery. One video shows a fire near the northern entrance, whose location was matched by the road layout, signs and fences.

Two other videos show a larger fire on the eastern side of the refinery, around 3km (1.6m) away from the first. The location was identified by matching trees, pylons, road and path layouts.

Russian state-owned news agency RIA cited a statement from the Kremniy factory in Bryansk, which said work had been suspended after an attack by six drones. Pavel Malkov, the regional governor, said emergency services were responding.

The Kremlin acknowledged the attacks but made no mention of damage or casualties.

It claimed to have destroyed 121 Ukrainian drones, including six over the Moscow region, 20 in the Ryazan region, and a number over the border region of Bryansk.

Sergei Sobyanin, Moscow’s mayor, said the city’s air defences had intercepted attacks by Ukrainian drones at four locations.

He said air defences southeast of the capital in Kolomna and Ramenskoye had also repelled drones, without specifying how many. He said there was no damage.

Russian news agencies quoted Rosaviatsiya, the federal aviation agency, as saying two Moscow airports, Vnukovo and Domodedovo, had resumed flights after suspending operations for a time. Six flights were redirected to other airports.

In the city of Kursk, Mayor Igor Kutsak said overnight attacks had damaged power lines and cut off electricity to one district.

In Ukraine, officials said that its air defences had destroyed 25 of 58 drones launched overnight by Russia.

The interior ministry said debris from one of the drones had killed two men and a woman in Hlevakha, Kyiv region, and that another person had been injured.

Russia’s justice ministry on Friday designated the BBC Russian service’s Olga Ivshina a “foreign agent”.

Ivshina, who is based in London, is the fourth BBC journalist to be designated by Russia since the full invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022.

Last week BBC Russian’s Anastasia Lotareva, a senior editor in Riga, and Andrey Kozenko, a reporter in London, were added to the list.

Those named as foreign agents are compelled to mark any online content available in Russia as having come from a foreign agent, and to share financial details. Failure to comply can lead to fines or even imprisonment.

A spokesperson for the BBC said the corporation “strongly rejects and will challenge the designation”.

“The role of BBC News Russian journalists, reporting independently and impartially, has never been needed more, and we will support them to ensure they can continue to do their jobs serving Russian-speaking audiences.”