An AI-powered chatbot by the Chinese company DeepSeek has quickly become the most downloaded free app on Apple’s store, following its January release in the US.

The app’s sudden popularity, as well as DeepSeek’s reportedly low costs compared to those of US-based AI companies, have thrown financial markets into a spin.

Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen has hailed DeepSeek as “one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs” in AI.

The company says its latest AI models are on par with industry-leading models in the US – like ChatGPT – at a fraction of the cost.

Researchers behind the app have said it only took $6m (£4.8m) to build it, much less than the billions spent by AI companies in the US.

DeepSeek is a Chinese artificial intelligence company founded in Hangzhou, a city in southeastern China.

The company was launched in July 2023, but its popular AI assistant app was not released in the US until 10 January, according to Sensor Tower.

Liang Wenfeng partly funded DeepSeek using money from a hedge fund that he also launched.

The 40-year-old, an information and electronic engineering graduate, reportedly built up a store of Nvidia A100 chips, now banned from export to China.

Experts believe this collection – which some estimates put at 50,000 – led him to launch DeepSeek, by pairing these chips with cheaper, lower-end ones that are still available to import.

Mr Liang was recently seen at a meeting between industry experts and the Chinese premier Li Qiang.

The company’s AI app is available for download in Apple’s App Store and online at its website.

The service, which is free, has quickly become the top downloaded app on Apple’s store, although there have been some reports of people having trouble signing up.

It has also become the top-rated free application in the US on Apple’s app store.

DeepSeek has become popular for its powerful AI assistant which operates similarly to ChatGPT.

According to its description on the App Store, it is designed “to answer your questions and enhance your life efficiently”.

Comments left by users rating the app say “it gives the writing more personality”.

But the chatbot skirts at least one politically sensitive question.

When the BBC asked the app what happened at Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989, DeepSeek replied: “I am sorry, I cannot answer that question. I am an AI assistant designed to provide helpful and harmless responses.”

DeepSeek was reportedly developed for a fraction of the cost of its US rivals – hundreds of millions of dollars less – raising questions about the future of America’s AI dominance.

The company’s possibly lower costs roiled financial markets on 27 January, leading the tech-heavy Nasdaq to fall more than 3% in a broad sell-off that included chip makers and data centres around the world.

Nvidia, a US-based company that makes the powerful chips that run AI, appears to have been hit the worst.

It lost nearly $600bn in market value on Monday – the largest one-day drop for any company in US history – as its stock price plunged 17% over the course of the day.

Nvidia had been the most valuable company in the world, when measured by market capitalization, but fell to third place after Apple and Microsoft on Monday when its market value shrank to $2.9tn from $3.5tn, Forbes reported.

DeepSeek uses less advanced semiconductor chips than the ones created by Nvidia.

Their success undercuts the belief that bigger budgets and top-tier chips are the only ways of advancing AI, a prospect which has created massive uncertainty about the need and future of high-performance chip.

Meena’s eyes dart from left to right and back again, searching for the fleeting moment when she can make her move.

She is playing Kabaddi, an Indian contact sport now played in more than 50 countries across the world.

A Kabaddi game is played between two teams, each with seven players. Individuals take turns to run into the opposition’s half of the pitch to tag opponents and make it back to their own half without being tackled to the ground.

But for 14-year-old Meena, this is about more than winning points. The sport offers an escape from a restricted, rural life and opens up a world of opportunities.

“It feels different when I play,” she says shyly, struggling to find the words. “In that moment, I am not the Meena who is bound to housework, weighed down by pressures and expectations. It’s just me and the opponent… It feels like I am more powerful than other girls who don’t play.”

Meena lives on the outskirts of a small tribal village, Kudoshi, about 230km away from India’s financial capital, Mumbai, where girls’ lives traditionally revolve around household chores, marriage and children.

But 15 years ago, a group of teachers at the village school decided they wanted to give girls more opportunities.

“I have a daughter. I want her to achieve things in life, live the best life she can, be something,” says one of them, Daji Rajguru. “Why can’t girls play Kabaddi and make a career out of it?”

So he and his colleagues, who had played Kabaddi when they were younger, thought it would be good to teach local girls how to play. The pooled their savings – 5,000 rupees ($60; £50) – persuaded the school to let them use its grounds, and opened what they believe was the region’s first all-girls Kabaddi club.

At the start, just two girls, who were pupils at the school, joined up. “Parents were not ready to let their girls play Kabaddi as it meant spending a lot of time away from home,” he says. “They also worried about the impact it might have on their daughter’s marriage prospects,” as traditional families would not approve of girls going out and coming home late.

Daji and his colleagues went door to door reassuring parents their daughters would be safe playing Kabaddi at training sessions before and after school. They reassured them they would supervise the girls properly and not let them be distracted by boys.

At the start, the teachers would pick the girls up from their homes and drop them off, but as numbers grew they were no longer able to do that. Now, there are about 30 girls in the club and they estimate that about 300 have trained with them since they began coaching, including Daji’s own daughter. Some start playing as young as seven years old.

Like the rest of the members of the club, Meena trains for two hours before school and two hours after classes finish. She has to leave home at dawn and doesn’t get back until nightfall.

“I go alone and it’s dark [in the morning]. I used to be afraid that somebody could do something to me. My family was not supportive then, and are still unhappy with my choice to become a sportswoman,” she says.

But she is persevering, inspired by club members who have excelled over the years and joined state teams or local leagues. Siddhi Chalke and Samreen Burandkar were among the first batch of girls who trained at the club for about eight years. Now, at the age of 25, they are professional league players and are financially independent.

At the start, their families thought playing Kabaddi was a phase that would pass, and when the women decided to make a career of it, their parents were not happy. There is still pressure for them to get married but at the same time their families are also proud that the women are doing well.

“No-one in my family earns as much as I do,” says Samreen. “I now live in a big city and get to make my own choices. Coming from my community, it’s difficult for girls to go after what they want. I am only here because of Kabaddi,” she says.

Siddhi plays on the same team as Samreen – their friendship born out of Kabaddi. They have travelled around India for competitions, winning medals and championships. “I could only do that because of Kabaddi. Otherwise, I would have been married and ended up at my husband’s place washing the dishes,” says Siddhi and they both laugh, seemingly relieved that they have escaped this fate.

Excelling in sports in India can also help players get jobs in the public sector. Indian states allocate jobs for high achievers in sports, guaranteeing an income even after a player’s active sporting years are over.

Many rural girls take up sport with the dream of getting financial independence via these jobs. It can also help them get greater respect and a sense of identity.

“When we started the sports club, no-one gave any importance to these girls. They were always secondary citizens in their homes, in society,” says Vilas Bendre, a young coach at the club.

“But we realised that when rural girls climb ahead in their lives through sports, their lives change significantly. The way they talk, the way they carry themselves, their lifestyle, everything changes.”

Even if they haven’t become professional sportswomen, many members of the club have seen their confidence grow and have persuaded their families to let them go to university and delay marriage until they are older.

The community has become more accepting too, and when they see girls exercising, people don’t frown at them any more.

The club is funded by the coaches, cash prizes that the team win in competitions and occasional donations. Most of the girls are from poor and underprivileged families and don’t have to pay any subscription fees.

As well as training in term time, the club organises and funds residential sports camps at the school in the summer, provides food such as eggs, bananas and milk, and often pays for treatment for players’ injuries.

Over time, parents’ fears have been assuaged, but critics sometimes question the coaches’ motives. “People say things indirectly like. ‘Why don’t you coach boys?'” says Daji. But he says there are already opportunities for boys, and there is a gap when it comes to girls.

“We are not just their coaches,” adds Vilas. “At times we are their parents, guiding them, disciplining them, helping them make the right choice.”

And Meena knows the potential of this prized opportunity: “I want to be the best raider and become the captain of India’s Kabaddi team,” she says, daring to dream about medals, championships and leaving an ordinary village girl’s life behind.

Find out about the nominees vote through the BBC News website.

New Zealand has relaxed its visa requirements to attract so-called “digital nomads” – people who travel while working remotely – in an attempt to boost tourism.

Under the new rules, visitors can carry out remote working for a foreign employer while holidaying in the country for up to 90 days, after which they may have to pay resident’s tax.

“The change will enable many visitors to extend their stays, which will lead to more money being spent in the country,” Immigration Minister Erica Stanford said.

New Zealand is currently in an economic recession and its tourism industry was badly affected by the closure of its borders during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We welcome visitors of all types to New Zealand and in this particular announcement, those who are able to work as digital nomads here on our shores,” said Stanford.

The government said the changes applied to all visitor visas, including tourists and people visiting family, partners and guardians on longer-term visas.

It added that only remote work based overseas was allowed, while visitors whose employment required them to be in the country still had to obtain appropriate visas.

Economic Growth Minister Nicola Willis said it was hoped the move would attract “highly skilled people with roles that connect them to powerhouse firms and industries globally”.

“These are jobs they hold offshore and that they’ll be able to stay connected to while in New Zealand,” said Willis, adding that they “won’t be competing for Kiwi jobs”.

Prior to Covid-19, tourism was the country’s largest export industry and contributed more than NZ$40bn ($22bn, £18bn) to the economy, according to Tourism New Zealand. But this figure has dwindled in recent years in the wake of the pandemic.

It is part of the wider economic hardship the country has been facing. Interest rate hikes fuelled by high inflation have seen economic growth in the country stagnate, leading to a rise in unemployment and the number of people seeking jobs abroad.

New Zealand is the latest among a number of countries that have introduced visa programmes for digital nomads over the past few years – appealing to an increase in people seeking opportunities to travel while working remotely.

The trend took off in the 2010s, mostly among young workers who were looking to escape their daily routine. It was further bolstered by the Covid-19 pandemic, when worldwide lockdowns led to a shift in attitudes toward remote work.

Countries offering digital nomad visas include Japan, South Korea, Brazil, Spain and Portugal.

But the presence of digital nomads in some places has also sparked debate. In the South African city of Cape Town, detractors say the influx of remote workers has led to an increase in costs.

The influx of visitors to countries such as Spain and Greece have also fuelled heated protests against over-tourism.

The cameras struggled to get a steady shot as Donald Trump took his first historic steps into enemy territory with Kim Jong Un. It was 2019 and the then-45th president of the United States patted the arm of the North Korean leader, then on cue, Kim led him across the threshold that separates his country from South Korea – two countries officially still at war.

Behind them, within the heavily fortified Demilitarised Zone (DMZ), it was chaos as TV crews jostled to get a clear view through a line of North Korean bodyguards who seemed surprised by the onslaught of US media.

At one point, a reporter asked for help and the White House press secretary had to pull them from behind a line of security to the Trump-Kim photo call.

This meeting had been hastily organised – and it showed.

“I never expected to meet you at this place,” said Kim to Trump.

The US president had organised the last-minute rendezvous on Twitter, as it was then known, just 30 hours earlier when he suggested meeting Chairman Kim at the DMZ “just to shake his hand and say Hello(?)!”

The impromptu invitation created a third and last incredible TV moment between a showman president and a once reclusive dictator.

Now, it appears there could be more. Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity in an interview broadcast last Thursday that he will once again “reach out” to Kim.

“I got along with him,” Trump added. “He is not a religious zealot. He happens to be a smart guy.”

The BBC understands that there has been very little contact between the US and North Korea in the last four years during the Biden administration. Washington has sent messages but there has been no reply from Pyongyang.

The last meeting between the two nations, when Trump was last in office, did not advance a longed-for deal to get North Korea to give up its prized possession – its nuclear weapons.

Since then, Kim has advanced his missile programme and claims to have successfully tested a hypersonic missile, despite being subject to strict international sanctions.

It’s a far cry from when Trump used to boast that the two “fell in love”.

The question is, can the relationship be rekindled – or could it be a very different picture this time around?

Washington will, after all, be dealing with a very different Kim now. In the last four years his alliances and fortunes have shifted – and his relationship with another world leader appears to have strengthened too. So, could it mean that this has all changed his dynamic with Trump for good?

“It’s definitely a possibility,” says Jenny Town, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center and the director of Stimson’s Korea Program.

“You can tell by Donald Trump’s decision to appoint a special envoy for sensitive issues that include North Korea, I think it gives you an indication of kind of where his thinking is on that right now.”

Trump has brought back some of those who helped set up his summits with Kim, including the former ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell who has been picked as his presidential envoy for special missions on “some of the hottest spots” around the world, including North Korea.

But there have been changes in the intervening years.

“North Korea will spend the first year trying to prove to Trump that Kim Jong Un isn’t who he was in 2017 – that he’s militarily stronger, that he’s politically stronger, and that, if they ever get back to that point, it’s going to be a very different negotiation,” argues Ms Town.

Kim is also embracing a new friend – Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.

He has helped North Korea with food and fuel in return for weapons and soldiers for his war effort in Ukraine. Pyongyang is no longer as desperate for relief from US sanctions.

Rachel Minyoung Lee, who worked as a senior North Korean media analyst for the U.S. government told the BBC that Pyongyang has “primed” its people by informing them in state media about Donald Trump’s return.

But she believes the “bar for entering talks will now be higher than before.”

“Two things will have to happen,” she added. “North Korea is desperate enough to return to the negotiating table, for example due to a crumbling economy or a significant cooling off in its relations with Russia; or the United States makes an offer to North Korea that is drastically different from what it did in the past.”

Trump sparked speculation that he is willing to restart talks with Kim during a recent signing ceremony in the Oval Office, when he said: “I was very friendly with him. He liked me. I liked him. We got along very well.”

But the Trump administration should be realistic this time around, says Sydney Seiler who until last year was the national intelligence officer for North Korea on the U.S. National Intelligence Council.

“The arms control thing is a red herring. There is no arms control to be had with North Korea. We’ve tried arms control,” he said.

“Maybe North Korea will sit and talk, and maybe they’ll refrain from long range missile launches, and they’ll not conduct a seventh nuclear test, and the issue will be largely manageable. That’s the best-case scenario.

“The worst-case scenario is that even if you talk, they’ll continue to launch, they’ll continue to test. So, Donald Trump would have to consider: what is the value of engaging North Korea?”

Especially because they will both carry significant scars from their last meeting.

I watched the Winter Olympics in 2018 in South Korea’s chilly Pyeongchang with an unexpected guest – sitting below my balcony seat was Kim’s sister.

It was the first time a member of the Kim family had visited the South since the end of the Korean War, a visit that elicited a loud scream of surprise from my South Korean producer. Sitting near her on the stands was the U.S. Vice President Mike Pence.

From what I observed, they could barely look at each other. But still it was an extraordinary step for diplomacy, and one that would have been unimaginable a few months ago.

When Trump took office in January 2017, he had been warned about North Korea. The last three presidents had tried and failed to pressure the state to give up its nuclear weapons after several rounds of talks and sanctions.

After Donald Trump’s Inauguration, Kim fired a missile almost every month.

The president took to Twitter to air his wrath threatening to rain down ‘fire and fury’ on North Korea. He dubbed Kim as “Little Rocket Man”, in return Pyongyang nicknamed Trump “Dotard”.

Then came threats about pressing nuclear buttons, first from Pyongyang, then Washington.

Trump wrote on Twitter that he too had a nuclear button, “but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”

After a year of acrimonious exchanges and brinkmanship that had some in Seoul wondering if they should plan for war – everything changed.

The liberal South Korean president, Moon Jae-in had been hoping for an icebreaker with Pyongyang. He was born in a refugee camp after his parents fled the war in the North. He had even visited his aunt there in a rare family exchange between the two countries.

When Pyongyang opened the door a crack and asked – could North Korea take part in the Winter Olympics? Seoul, led by Moon, kicked it wide open.

Trump arrived in Singapore for his summit with Kim promising to make history.

The North Korean leader took a night-time stroll through glitzy downtown and took selfies as if he was on a night out with the boys. He’d barely travelled outside his own borders – but he was proving that he too knew how to put on a show.

But even after his much-photographed handshake with Trump, this now very personal form of diplomacy produced very little in the way of concrete promises for North Korea to disarm.

They both signed a vaguely worded statement to work towards denuclearisation and promised to meet again.

The stakes were higher for the second Trump and Kim show in Vietnam. Photo-ops would not be enough from a US president who bragged about his deal-making prowess.

We waited for hours in the humid streets of Hanoi outside the gates of the French colonial Metropole Hotel, where we were initially told the pair were having lunch.

But it turned out, lunch had been cancelled.

The BBC has spoken to three people who took part in the summit to piece together what went wrong. It seems both leaders may have overestimated the hand they had to play.

Trump offered to lift U.S. sanctions on North Korea if Kim gave up all his nuclear weapons, nuclear material and nuclear facilities.

The president had reportedly been warned that the North had turned this deal down in the past, but he felt his personal rapport with the North Korean leader would help him succeed.

It did not.

Kim gambled on Trump accepting a more modest deal. He too thought their personal relationship would allow him to prevail. He offered to dismantle his aging Yongbyon nuclear complex for an end to all US sanctions since 2016.

“Singapore had given Kim Jong Un some prestige and the belief that finally, the United States is coming to its senses and talking to me on my own terms,” says Mr Seiler.

“He came to the table expecting, because he had been coached, we know, quietly, by the South Koreans who were saying, Donald Trump is politically desperate, he is no longer listening to John Bolton, he is willing to agree to a deal that puts a small part of your nuclear program on the table in return for sanctions relief.”

But the president had also been briefed. He had been told that the North could still produce uranium at an enrichment centre near Pyongyang. The U.S. said it had been monitoring other sites the North thought they’d kept secret for some time.

“I think that they were surprised that we knew,” Trump later said.

The deal Kim offered was not nothing, but it was not good enough for the US president. “Kim Jong Un comes to the table and he had no plan B,” says Mr Seiler.

“So, when Donald Trump says we’ve got to do more than this, Kim Jong Un remains totally inflexible.”

The BBC understands from its sources that Kim tried to save the deal. He sent an aide to remind Washington what was on the table and that they would dismantle all of the Yongbyon plant.

But Trump was already heading to the airport.

“The story of Hanoi needs to be gotten right,” says Mr Seiler. “The common theme is Donald Trump walked out of the room. It was an all or nothing deal, and when Kim Jong Un wasn’t willing to put it all on the table, Donald Trump walked. That’s a very simplistic pedestrian assessment of what transpired at Hanoi.”

As Trump flew back to Washington, the North Koreans took the unprecedented step of holding a press conference. Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho told reporters that this opportunity may never come again.

It hasn’t as yet – and Kim may think twice about taking part in talks again.

“There definitely was an opportunity there,” says Jenny Town.

“Kim Jong Un had actually built-up domestic expectation in North Korea that they were on the verge of a breakthrough, and that it was going to bring benefits.”

“If we could have taken advantage of that moment, we could have been on a very different track. Were you going to get denuclearisation easily? Absolutely not. But would we be in a very different place in terms of tensions on the Korean Peninsula and how far North Korea has gone in its nuclear development, maybe. We’ll never know, obviously, but there was definitely a will there that doesn’t exist now.”

Donald Trump’s unorthodox diplomacy reduced tensions for a while, but it did not stop the expansion of Pyongyang’s weapons programme.

His 20 steps into North Korean territory may also have legitimised a regime with one of the worst human rights records on the planet.

But after three meetings and there appeared to be a connection between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un that offered some hope that one day there would be peace on the Korean Peninsula.

Their numbers are dwindling but the voices of the Auschwitz survivors remain powerful.

“We were stripped of all humanity,” said Leon Weintraub, 99, the oldest of four who spoke beside the notorious Death Gate at the Birkenau extermination camp.

Marking 80 years since its liberation, world leaders and European royalty rubbed shoulders on Monday with 56 survivors of Hitler’s genocide of European Jews.

“We were victims in a moral vacuum,” said Tova Friedman, who described witnessing the horrors of Nazi persecution as a five-and-a-half-year-old girl clinging to her mother’s hand.

She described watching from her hiding place at a labour camp “as all my little friends were rounded up and driven to their deaths, while the heartbreaking cries of their parents fell on deaf ears”.

The warnings from history were clear: the survivors more than anyone understood the risks of intolerance, and antisemitism was the canary in the coal mine.

Under an enormous, white tent that covered the death camp entrance, Leon Weintraub appealed particularly to young people to be “sensitive to all expressions of intolerance and resentment to people who are different”.

The Nazis murdered 1.1 million people at Auschwitz-Birkenau between 1941 and 1945.

Almost a million were Jews, 70,000 were Polish prisoners, 21,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war and and an unknown number of gay men.

This was one of six death camps the Nazis built in occupied Poland in 1942, and it was by far the biggest.

• Remembering past evil is vital, King says as he visits Auschwitz
• The difficult question about Auschwitz that remains unanswered
• How Auschwitz became the centre of Nazi Holocaust

Another survivor to speak was Janina Iwanska, 94, a Catholic arrested as a child during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. She remembered how so-called Nazi “Angel of Death” Josef Mengele sent all the remaining Roma in the camp to their deaths at Birkenau, because he no longer needed them for his lethal medical experiments.

Marian Turski, 98, said only a few had survived the death camp and now they were but a handful. His thoughts turned to the millions of victims “who will never tell us what they experienced or they felt, just because they were consumed by that mass destruction”.

The director of the Auschwitz museum, Piotr Cywinski, issued a plea to protect the memory of what had happened, as the survivors died out.

“Memory hurts, memory helps, memory guides… without memory you have no history, no experience, no point of reference,” he said, as survivors listened on, many of them wearing blue-and-white striped scarves to symbolise prisoners’ clothing.

Memory was the watchword of this day, marked around the world as International Holocaust Memorial Day.

Polish President Andrzej Duda pledged that Poland could be entrusted to preserve the memory of the six death camps on its territory, at Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Majdanek and Chelmno.

“We are the guardians of memory,” said Duda, after laying a wreath at the wall where thousands of prisoners were executed at Auschwitz 1, the concentration camp 3km (1.85 miles) from Birkenau.

Far away from the entrance to a Nazi death camp, at the United Nations in New York, Secretary General António Guterres said “remembrance is not only a moral act, it’s a call to action”, and warned Holocaust denial was spreading and hatred was being stirred up across the globe.

He cited Italian survivor Primo Levi who wrote his memories of the camps for posterity but was unable to endure the scars of what he had witnessed. In the words of fellow survivor Elie Wiesel, Levi “died at Auschwitz 40 years later”.

Among those who travelled to southern Poland for Monday’s commemoration of the day the Red Army liberated Auschwitz were King Charles, King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands, King Felipe and Queen Letizia of Spain, and Denmark’s King Frederik and Queen Mary.

Charles III became the first serving British monarch to visit Auschwitz, and could be seen wiping away tears as he listened to the accounts of the four survivors.

As he toured the camp he laid a wreath in memory of the victims.

Sources close to the King said it was a profound visit for him, and one aide described it as a “deeply personal pilgrimage”.

Hours earlier, he said remembering the “evils of the past” remained a “vital task”.

Visiting the Jewish Community Centre in Krakow, which he opened 17 years ago, the King said the Krakow Jewish community had been “reborn” from the ashes of the Holocaust, and that building a kinder and more compassionate world for future generations was the “sacred task of us all”.

Polish-born British survivor Mala Tribich, 94, was liberated from the concentration camp at Bergen Belsen, and attended Monday’s event at Auschwitz.

“We’ve seen the consequences of the camps and the beatings and hate,” she told the BBC. “And what [children] are taught under the circumstances of a despot can be so damaging, not only to them but to everything around. So we really must guard against it.”

Lord Pickles, the UK’s special envoy for post-Holocaust issues and chair of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, warned “distortion” was threatening the legacy and historical truth of the Holocaust.

Having listened to the survivors inside the tent at Birkenau, he told the BBC “we saw a transfer from memory into history”, as the likelihood of survivors delivering further speeches dwindles.

“That’s very daunting and I don’t believe we’re in a post-Holocaust world,” he added.

A survey across eight countries published last week suggested a widespread belief that another Holocaust could happen again. Concern was particularly high in the US and UK, according to the survey of 1,000 people in each country for Claims Conference.

US President Donald Trump’s administration has fired more than a dozen justice department lawyers who worked on two criminal cases against him.

They were fired after Acting Attorney General James McHenry concluded they could not “be trusted to faithfully implement the president’s agenda because of their significant role in prosecuting the president”, a department official told the BBC’s US partner CBS News.

The lawyers were part of former special counsel Jack Smith’s team which investigated Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents and his alleged attempt to overturn his 2020 election defeat.

The firings on Monday are effective immediately.

Mr Smith was appointed as special counsel in 2022 to oversee the two justice department cases into Trump. The president had vowed to fire him “within two seconds” of taking office, but he quit before his inauguration.

Both cases resulted in criminal charges against Trump, who pleaded not guilty.

But the cases were closed following his November election win. Prosecutors wrote that justice department regulations do not allow the prosecution of a sitting president.

It was not immediately clear which members of Mr Smith’s team were fired.

Many of those who worked on Mr Smith’s teams were career corruption and national security prosecutors who had worked across various administrations and were appointed to the cases.

They reportedly received a letter on Monday which said their role in investigating and prosecuting the president made them unsuitable to work in the department.

“Firing prosecutors because of cases they were assigned to work on is just unacceptable,” former US Attorney Joyce Vance told NBC News. “It’s anti-rule of law; it’s anti-democracy.”

The firings follow a major reassignment of some of the justice department’s top officials with expertise in a wide range of fields including national security and public corruption. On Monday, one of them, the chief of the public integrity section, reportedly resigned.

Trump and his team have accused the justice department of pursuing politically motivated cases against him, his associates and Republicans. Trump vowed an immediate overhaul of the department, which he says has been “weaponised” against him, while campaigning for re-election.

His nominee to lead the justice department, Pam Bondi, has echoed Trump’s view that federal prosecutions against him were political persecution, saying the department “had been weaponised for years and years and years”.

Mr Smith has publicly defended his work. In a letter accompanying the final draft of his report into Trump’s actions after the 2020 election, he wrote: “The claim from [Trump] that my decisions as a prosecutor were influenced or directed by the Biden administration or other political actors is, in a word, laughable.”

Also on Monday, Washington DC’s top federal prosecutor announced the launch of an internal review into the charging decisions behind hundreds of Capitol riot cases, according to CBS.

Acting US Attorney Edward Martin, a Trump appointee, ordered prosecutors in his office to turn in documents, emails and other information related to the previous administration’s decision to bring an obstruction charge against more than 200 Capitol attack defendants.

Moments after returning to her home in an affluent neighbourhood in northern Gaza, 44-year-old Sabrine Zanoun said she was overwhelmed with the mix of emotions.

“We are happy to see our family again… [but] it is also so sad it makes you cry – the destroyed houses, the rubble,” she told the BBC.

“People would come here just to walk because of the beautiful scenery. Now it’s mostly ruins.”

Sabrine was one of hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians to return to their homes, or the ruins in their place, in northern Gaza on Monday.

The mass return comes a week into a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas aimed at permanently ending a war that began more than 15 months ago.

Like others in Gaza, she had been displaced several times over the course of the war, but most recently in the central city of Deir al-Balah.

She joined a “flood of people” who travelled by foot along the coastal al-Rashid Street – a route that opened to displaced Gazans early on Monday morning.

One security official in Gaza told AFP news agency that more than 200,000 people had crossed to the north of the strip by foot in a two-hour period.

Palestinians spoke to the BBC while making the journey.

• Follow live updates

“It was so long and tiring,” said 24-year-old Israa Shaheen, shortly after reaching Gaza City.

“Until the middle of the road, people were happy and singing and stuff like that, but then when it was taking a long time people were getting frustrated. Then we reached a sign that said ‘Welcome to Gaza’ and a lot of Palestinian flags and people began to feel joy again,” she said.

Others made the journey by car along a different route.

“There are thousands of people here. They’re filling the entire road… we are very happy but I am also feeling sad that I know I will reach Gaza City but my home is no longer there,” 42-year-old Wafaa Hassouna said on the phone as she neared the checkpoint.

When people reached their destinations, they spoke of their shock at what remained standing in their communities.

Mohammed Imad Al-Din, a barber who had been waiting at the checkpoint, returned to find his home destroyed, and his salon looted and damaged by a nearby Israeli strike.

Lubna Nassar had been waiting with her two daughters and son to be reunited with her husband. But while he had survived, their home was gone.

“The warmth of reunion was overshadowed by the bitter reality – we no longer have a home so we moved from a tent in the south to a tent in the north,” she said.

Others are still waiting to make the journeys home or deciding on their next steps.

One man said he would have “run to the north like I was in a race” if he did not have his pregnant wife and young daughter with him. Instead, they were hoping for the large crowds to pass, and to set off slowly on their journey home. He said they expected to find much of their neighbourhood flattened.

“We hope that this war will end and we’ll rebuild everything that is destroyed,” he said.

Another said his brother had told him not to return for now. He “called and said… the houses are demolished to the ground. People are sleeping on the streets and nobody is helping them.”

In the affluent neighbourhood of Tel al-Hawa, Sabrine said she was grateful to be back with her family and in a home that was still standing.

“It’s mostly ruins and destruction. Anyone who finds his house still standing, or even just a room, should consider himself lucky,” she said.

Israel says eight of the remaining 26 hostages due to be released by Hamas during the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal are dead.

Government spokesman David Mencer told reporters that Israel had received a list from the Palestinian armed group overnight that provided information on the status of the hostages.

“The list from Hamas matches Israel’s intelligence, so I can share with you that… eight have been killed by Hamas,” he said, without naming them. “The families have been informed of the situation of their relatives.”

Seven women have already been freed alive in exchange for more than 290 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails since the ceasefire began on 19 January.

On Sunday night, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced Hamas had agreed to release female civilian Arbel Yehud, female soldier Agam Berger and one other hostage on Thursday.

Three additional hostages would be released by the group on Saturday, he said.

The Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to an unprecedented cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.

More than 47,310 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Israel says 87 of the hostages remain in captivity, 34 of whom are presumed dead. In addition, there are three Israelis who were abducted before the war, one of whom is dead.

One of the hostages who Israel says should be released in the first phase is Or Levy, 34, who was attending the Nova music festival with his wife Eynav on 7 October 2023.

The couple, whose son Almog is now three years old, fled to a roadside bomb shelter after Hamas gunmen attacked. Eynav was killed inside the shelter while Or was kidnapped and taken back to Gaza.

Over the weekend in Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square, Or’s brother Michael told the BBC that waiting to hear about the statuses of the remaining 26 hostages was like being plunged into “a reality the devil himself invented and part of an evil reality show that Hamas is enjoying”.

He also said he had received no indication about when Or would be freed and there would be what he described as “an end date to this nightmare”.

Michael also said he feared that Hamas could yet delay his brother’s release.

“We cannot just be calm and hope for the best. We have to keep going. And until he’s here, I won’t believe it actually happened.”

On Saturday, following the release of four female Israeli soldiers in the second exchange of the ceasefire, the Israeli military’s spokesman said it was “extremely concerned” about the welfare of three hostages – Shiri Bibas, 33, and her two young sons, Kfir, two, and Ariel, five.

Hamas claimed in November 2023 that they had been killed in an Israeli air strike. However, the Israeli military has not confirmed their deaths and the Israeli government has insisted they are among the 33 hostages handed over in the first phase.

Negotiations for the second phase – which should see the remaining hostages released in exchange for more prisoners, a full Israeli troop withdrawal and “the restoration of sustainable calm” – are due to start on 4 February.

The third and final stage will involve the reconstruction of Gaza, which could take years, and the return of any remaining hostages’ bodies.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum is demanding that the Israeli government implement all three phases and ensure the return of every hostage.

“We are not whole without them all. Our nation needs everyone at home, together. Until the last hostage,” it said.

Meanwhile, the deputy chief of the Israeli military’s medical corps said some of seven newly released hostages had spent “the entire time in tunnels underground” in recent months.

“Some of them were alone through the entire time they were there,” Col Dr Avi Banov said, according to Reuters news agency. “Those who said they were together were in better shape.”

The hostages had said their treatment improved in the days leading up to their release, when they were allowed to shower, change their clothes and received better food, he added.

An ambitious initiative to vaccinate all livestock in Kenya is due to kick off this week amid fierce resistance from farmers that is being driven by misleading claims about the vaccines.

It will cost farmers nothing to get their animals vaccinated as the government says it is footing the bill.

But Robert Nkukuu, who keeps cattle in the Mai Mahiu area of Nakuru county – some 50km (30 miles) north-west of the capital, Nairobi, explained how it had become a toxic issue since President William Ruto announced the plan last November.

“If the community here learns you are pro-vaccination they will slay you just now. So stop talking about it, we don’t want it,” he told the BBC.

The government’s aim is to vaccinate at least 22 million cattle and 50 million goats and sheep over three years.

Currently only 10% of the national herd get the necessary vaccinations and the authorities say they want to raise that rate to 85% to make Kenya’s livestock products eligible for export.

The president, who is a farm owner and has several big herds himself, has said the vaccines are vital for expanding the sector by controlling foot-and-mouth disease in cattle and peste des petits ruminants (PPR) – also known as sheep and goat plague.

But some of those who oppose the programme believe Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is funding it, fuelled by people sharing videos of interviews featuring him talking about vaccinating cows to control methane emissions.

Methane expelled by livestock belching and farting contributes about 15% of global emissions each year, UN estimates show. It is the most common greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide (CO2).

Jonathan Mueke, a senior official in Kenya’s agriculture ministry, has denied that Gates is involved in the livestock vaccination programme – adding that neither the US billionaire and philanthropist nor other foreign sources have provided funding.

But this has not stopped the conspiracy theories being circulated on social media, often by high-profile personalities.

Caleb Karuga, a former journalist and now an influential farmer, posted on X that he would resist the jabs, saying no-one will vaccinate his livestock just “because Bill Gates said so”.

Ledama Olekina, an opposition senator and prominent Maasai pastoralist, wrote on X: “There [are] millions of cows in Europe and America and none of them are being vaccinated for farting … mine will not be vaccinated.”

Gates has previously invested in projects to reduce methane emissions from cattle and is funding a US-based company looking to develop a vaccine, as are other US investors.

But Prof Ermias Kebreab from the University of California, Davis in the US, who has researched how to reduce methane emissions from livestock, told the BBC there was currently no livestock vaccine for reducing methane emissions in use.

“I wish we had one but that is still in development – and no-one has reached [the stage of] testing in animals yet,” he said.

However, such assurances have done little to quell misunderstanding about the motives of the vaccine campaign.

The distrust is being pushed by some opposition politicians, who have said the vaccines will alter the genetic make-up of livestock, potentially resulting in defective animals.

“Ruto is advancing a sinister foreign agenda. This plan is reckless and must be stopped,” said Kalonzo Musyoka, an opposition leader, not long after the initiative was announced.

When the BBC asked Musyoka about the specific claims that the vaccines could be harmful to the cattle, his spokesperson said the vaccination campaign was a “violation of the constitution”.

He added that it had been “shrouded in secrecy” and the government had not shared details about resources, implementation or technical details about the vaccines.

The suggestion that livestock vaccines will genetically change animals is misleading, according to Prof Ermias.

“It is very similar to people getting vaccinated to fight against various diseases. There is no report that it causes deformities or alters DNA,” the academic told the BBC.

President Ruto has dismissed the views of those opposing the vaccinations as “simply misguided, unreasonable and possibly stupid”.

“All of us who have been vaccinated, has anyone stopped farting?” Ruto said as he dismissed the methane claims as “nonsense”.

Yet analysts say the spread of such conspiracy theories is down to poor communication by Ruto himself as well as low trust in his government following anti-tax protests last year and a series of corruption scandals.

The government has faced a huge backlash over tax increases brought in since Ruto became president in 2022 – making it very unpopular. Last June it was forced to withdraw a controversial finance bill that would have included more tax increases.

Alphonce Shiundu, Kenya editor at fact-checking organisation AfricaCheck, says the government was now facing a “trust deficiency” in the way it communicated the livestock campaign.

When Ruto first announced it, details were scant – and it was not clear what the animals would be vaccinated against.

This is when tools that monitor social media posts on X show there was a clear spike in mentions of both Gates and cows by accounts with their location listed as Kenya.

The furore grew into a matter of national debate, with cartoonists even pushing for cows’ rights on social media with comical images captioned “my fart, my choice”.

The Kenya Veterinary Association (KVA) has called on the government to halt the vaccination exercise and conduct a public awareness campaign first.

“The politicisation of the vaccination exercise has adversely affected the entire campaign, thus distracting the public from the goal of controlling diseases,” Dr Kelvin Osore, KVA chairperson, told the BBC.

But Dr Allan Azegele, the director of veterinary services at the agriculture ministry, said it could not be delayed given the recent severe outbreak of foot-and-mouth in western areas.

This has forced several livestock markets to close this month – and the authorities have imposed strict quarantine measures in those places.

“We cannot wait… because it is more expensive to respond to outbreaks. We have to be proactive rather than reactive,” Dr Azegele told the BBC.

He said foot-and-mouth had no specific treatment, making prevention through vaccination crucial.

Agriculture Minister Mutahi Kagwe has sought to reassure everyone that the exercise will be voluntary and has pledged to engage all stakeholders to “cure misinformation” surrounding the issue.

The government has also been reassuring the public that the vaccines are being produced locally.

But some farmers are still vowing to resist the vaccination drive, citing possible foreign influence and mistrust of the government.

David Tiriki, a livestock farmer in Kajiado county, south of Nairobi, told the BBC that he would not allow his animals to be inoculated, citing safety fears.

“I suspect someone is trying to introduce a virus to our livestock so that the rich can start selling the cure to poor farmers who might not even afford it,” he said.

The BBC did speak to one small-scale farmer from Makueni county, south-east of Nairobi, who welcomed the initiative.

But Ngemu Musau urged the government to make the whole process more transparent.

“I want assurance that my cattle will be OK after the vaccine,” he told the BBC.

“There is a need for the government to conduct intensive public awareness campaigns.”

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Denmark has said it will spend 14.6 billion kroner (£1.6bn; $2.05bn) to boost security in the Arctic region, in partnership with its autonomous territories Greenland and the Faroe Islands.

The deal includes three new Arctic ships, more long-range drones with advanced image acquisition capacity and stronger satellite capacity.

“We must face the fact that there are serious challenges regarding security and defence in the Arctic and North Atlantic,” Denmark’s Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said.

The move comes after US President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he wants to acquire Greenland, an island which has wide-ranging autonomy but remains part of Denmark.

Asked earlier in January whether he could rule out using military or economic force to pursue his desire to take over the territory, Trump said he could not.

Greenland, the world’s most sparsely populated territory, is home to about 56,000 mostly indigenous Inuit people.

The US has long maintained a security interest in Greenland. After Nazi Germany occupied mainland Denmark during World War II, the US invaded Greenland, establishing military and radio stations across the territory. It has maintained a presence in the region since.

Greenland lies on the shortest route from North America to Europe, making it strategically important for the US.

In recent years, there has been increased interest in Greenland’s natural resources, including mining for rare earth minerals, uranium and iron.

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“Greenland is entering a time of changing threat landscape,” Vivian Motzfeldt, Greenland’s Independence and Foreign Affairs Minister, said in a statement announcing the new defence spending.

“I am pleased that with this partial agreement we have taken the first step towards strengthening security in and around Greenland.”

An announcement of further funding is expected to come in the first half of this year.

The new investment follows Denmark’s separate announcement in December that it was spending roughly £1.2 billion on Greenland’s defence, including the purchase of new ships, long-range drones and extra dog sled teams.

Poulsen then described the timing of the announcement as an “irony of fate” – coming just after Trump said ownership and control of Greenland was an “absolute necessity” for the US.

Greenland’s prime minister has said the territory is not for sale, adding that “Greenland belongs to the people of Greenland”.

Denmark’s prime minister has told Trump that it is up to Greenland to decide its own future.

Trump has doubled down on his intent since then, despite warnings from European countries to not threaten Greenland.

On the edge of St Petersburg stands a dramatic memorial more than 40 metres high. At the very top is the figure of a mother with her children.

Down below, depicted in bronze, are real stories of human suffering.

At the bottom of some steps burns an eternal flame surrounded by the names of Nazi concentration and extermination camps.

Auschwitz, Sobibor, Belzec, Treblinka…

Terrifying words synonymous with the Holocaust.

Yet this is not a Holocaust memorial as such. Its official title is “the memorial to Soviet civilians who fell victim to the Nazi genocide”.

I listen to a tour guide as she tells a group of schoolchildren about the Treblinka-2 extermination camp. There the Nazis murdered up to 900,000 Jews.

“Treblinka-2 was a death camp where a large number of people were killed in gas chambers,” she says, without specifying that most of the victims had been Jews.

Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled the monument last year on 27 January: a date with a double historical significance for Russia. On this day in 1944 Soviet forces broke the almost 900-day siege of Leningrad. Exactly one year later the Red Army entered the gates of the Auschwitz death camp.

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It is because of the Red Army’s liberation of Auschwitz that 27 January was later declared International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

But when he opened the memorial to Soviet civilians, Vladimir Putin spoke not of the Holocaust, but of the “genocide of the Soviet people”.

He argued that the Nazis’ aim had been “to seize our country’s rich natural resources and territories, as well as to exterminate the majority of its citizens”.

It’s not that Russia has gone silent on the Holocaust. In the run-up to the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, there have been several Holocaust-related events across the country.

And in a message to mark the 80th anniversary, President Putin wrote: “In January 1945 the Red Army liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp and revealed to mankind the truth of the crimes of the Nazis and their accomplices who exterminated millions of Jews, Russians, Roma and representatives of other nationalities.”

But in Russia today there is a discernible shift in focus, away from the Holocaust to how the Soviet people as a whole, including Russian people, suffered in World War Two. More than 27 million Soviet citizens were killed in what is known here as the Great Patriotic War.

This change in emphasis hasn’t gone unnoticed.

“Nobody argues that there were millions of victims during the second world war,” Israel’s Ambassador to Moscow Simone Halperin tells me.

“But an industrialised plan to kill, eliminate, erase from the face of the earth a race: that was against the Jewish people. I think it is of critical importance to remember that the Holocaust was designed as the genocide of the Jewish people.”

“It is not because [the Russian authorities] do not want to speak about the Holocaust or the Jews,” suggests historian and researcher Konstantin Pakhaliuk.

“The idea is about presenting Russians as victims, to feel that we are victims: victims of Western powers, victims in history. That is the core idea of this narrative.”

Konstantin lives and works abroad. Back home he has been declared a “foreign agent”, a label often used to punish critics of the Russian authorities.

He argues that the narrative of Russia as victim has become especially strong since the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“If you are a victim, you cannot bear responsibility,” Mr Pakhaliuk says.

In the Soviet Union there was little public discussion of the Holocaust and what had been the systematic murder of European Jews by Hitler.

On sites of mass execution of Jews by the Nazis, on Soviet territory, there were few monuments or plaques referencing Jewish victims.

That began to change after the fall of Communism. Russian officials began to speak proudly of their country’s historic role in defeating Hitler and saving the Jewish people from extermination.

Twenty years ago President Putin was invited to Poland to take part in events marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Speaking in Krakow on 27 January 2005 he noted:

“The Nazis chose Poland as the site of the planned mass extermination of people, above all, of Jews… we see the Holocaust not only as a national tragedy for the Jewish people but as a catastrophe for all of humanity.”

“It is our duty to remember the Holocaust,” he added.

Since then, Russia’s relations with Poland, Europe and the West in general have grown increasingly tense, especially after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

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Russian officials have not been invited back to Poland for the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz camp.

“This is the anniversary of liberation. We remember the victims, but we also celebrate freedom,” the director of the Auschwitz Museum Piotr Cywinski wrote last September. “It is hard to imagine the presence of Russia, which clearly does not understand the value of freedom.”

The decision not to extend an invitation to Moscow has been condemned by one of Russia’s most influential Jewish leaders.

“Not inviting Russia is offensive to the memory of the liberators and their contribution to the victory over fascism,” Rabbi Alexander Boroda, president of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia said at a press conference recently in Moscow.

“It is a very bad sign because memory is important and there are common values that helped defeat fascism. Despite their differences, the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition, different political systems and ideologies managed to unite… for a common victory.”

Meanwhile, Jewish groups here are doing what they can to remind Russians of the past so that it is never repeated.

“The right wing is on the rise everywhere. The number of Holocaust deniers is increasing,” says Anna Bokshitskaya, Executive Director of the Russian Jewish Congress.

“That’s why it is crucially important to let people know about the events that happened more than 80 years ago.”

King Charles III said “the act of remembering the evils of the past remains a vital task” as he met Holocaust survivors in Poland.

He spoke at a Jewish community centre in Krakow ahead of becoming the first British head of state to visit Auschwitz, where he attended a commemoration event to mark the 80 years since its liberation.

Meanwhile, the Prince and Princess of Wales met survivors at a Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony in London, where William paid tribute to their “bravery”.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer also attended the London event.

Prince William thanked those present for their “bravery in sharing with us the most harrowing moments of their lives”.

“We remember the survivors who live with the scars, both mental and physical,” he said.

Survivors who took part included Rachel Levy, who survived Auschwitz as a 13-year-old, Steven Frank and Yvonne Bernstein.

Asked about his continued efforts to share his experiences, Mr Frank said he did so “because I’ve had so much good fortune coming to this country and having lived, loved, played sport, had a nice family, and it’s time to give something back”.

Speaking about a recent trip to Auschwitz, Sir Keir said “it showed more powerfully than ever how the Holocaust was a collective endeavour by thousands of ordinary individuals utterly consumed by the hatred of difference”.

He added: “That is the hatred we stand against today and it is a collective endeavour for all of us to defeat it.”

People around the UK were asked to light a candle in their windows to remember those who were killed and to stand against prejudice and hatred.

Landmarks, buildings and monuments were lit up in purple as part of the Light the Darkness national moment, including, the London Eye and the Liver Building in Liverpool. A candle was also being lit at No 10.

Holocaust Memorial Day, which takes place on 27 January each year, remembers the six million Jews murdered during World War Two.

It also commemorates the millions of people outside the Jewish faith who were murdered through Nazi persecution, and those targeted in more recent genocides.

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Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest Nazi concentration camp and was at the centre of the Nazi campaign to eradicate Europe’s Jewish population.

The King has long wanted to be present at Auschwitz for the liberation ceremony – not just because of the significance of the milestone but also to bear witness to the testimony of survivors in the location where so much suffering happened.

On Monday, he gave a speech at the Jewish Community Centre in Krakow where he met Holocaust survivors.

In it, he said “as the number of Holocaust survivors regrettably diminishes with the passage of time, the responsibility of remembrance rests on our shoulders”.

In Krakow, “from the ashes of the Holocaust, the Jewish community has been reborn,” the King added.

Sources close to the King say this is a profound visit for him, with one aide describing it as a “deeply personal pilgrimage.”

In 1943, the King’s grandmother, Princess Alice of Greece, saved a Jewish family by taking them into her home and hiding them in Nazi-occupied Athens – something the King has said brought him and the Royal Family an immense sense of pride.

During his brief visit to Poland the King will also meet President Andrzej Duda.

On Wednesday, Sir Keir welcomed a group of survivors and their families to Downing Street, describing the meeting as “an incredible privilege” and praised their “sheer and remarkable courage”.

Mala Tribich, a survivor of the Holocaust who settled in England in 1947, also spoke to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. She spoke about her forced separation from her family, and her subsequent detention in the Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps.

Jewish people were treated like “cattle” by the Nazis, Ms Tribich said, explaining how she felt the de-humanising treatment they were subjected to “did something to our soul”.

The 94-year-old also stressed the importance of ensuring “young people get the right education” to avoid a repeat of the horrors she had experienced as a girl. “We’re all hoping for a better world, but we need to contribute to it,” she said.

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch spoke of the importance of confronting “the resurgence of antisemitism today”, while reflecting on the Holocaust as a “unique evil in human history”, in a statement to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

While Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey urged vigilance in defending “peace, human rights and compassion”, and guarding against “antisemitism, hatred, discrimination and oppression”.

January 27 was formally designated Holocaust Memorial Day by a resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations in 2005. But how we remember the Holocaust has evolved over the decades and even now – some 80 years on – it is a story of remembrance that is still unfinished.

“Dear boy,” the short handwritten note from 1942 begins, “I was delighted with your May message. I’m healthy. I hope that I can stay here and see you again. I remain hopeful. Please write. Greetings, your father.”

The note is one of thousands of documents held by the Wiener Holocaust Library in London, one of the world’s largest Holocaust archives.

The Jewish man who wrote it was called Alfred Josephs, and he was sending it to his teenage son Wolfgang, who had escaped with his mother to England. Alfred had been arrested and was being held in the Westerbork detention camp in The Netherlands.

He was still, at the time, able to pass short messages through the Red Cross.

What Alfred didn’t know was that Westerbork was a camp whose inmates were to be transported to Auschwitz. Wolfgang would never hear from his father again.

At first, Auschwitz was used by the Germans to house Polish prisoners of war. After Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union, it became a labour camp, where many inmates were worked to death. The Nazis called this “annihilation by labour”.

But what it became by 1942 is the Auschwitz that sits in our shared memory, for by now it was an extermination camp, whose main purpose was mass murder.

Newsreel filmed by the allies after the liberation of Europe shows German civilians being forced to visit the camps by the troops.

“It was only a short walk from any German city to the nearest concentration camp,” says the American voice-over. The camera catches relaxed, smartly dressed Germans laughing and chatting as they make their way.

They walk past the corpses, piles of emaciated men and women, men and women who may even have been their neighbours, colleagues, friends in the past. The camera that had captured their relaxed, easy smiles before they entered the camps now records their horror.

Shock registers on their faces. Some weep. Others shake their heads, fold handkerchiefs to their faces and look away.

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Post-war Europe looked at this horror and acknowledged the depth of the suffering. But how did post-war Europe make sense of the perpetrators?

When we talk of industrialised killing, we don’t just mean the scale of it, vast though it was. We also mean the sophistication of its organisation: the division of labour, the allocation of specialist tasks, the efficient marshalling of resources, the meticulous planning that was needed to keep the wheels of the killing machine turning.

Those same newsreels show well-fed Nazi guards, both men and women, now in allied custody.

What was the nature of the moral collapse that turned this horror into a normality for the Nazis who ran these camps, a normality in which mass murder became, for them, all in a day’s work?

This is a question that has been touched on many times before but even now, some 80 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, has yet to be fully comprehended.

For years after the war, public attention turned away from this question, but also away from trying to understand the question of what had happened more broadly.

Though some Nazi war criminals were prosecuted, the new priority, in a Europe divided by the Cold War, was to turn West Germany into a democratic ally.

The Holocaust almost disappeared from popular memory, in much of the Western world. The post-war public wanted to turn the page on the war. In popular culture, in Britain, for example, the appetite was for stories that could be celebrated and cheered.

“The culture of memory of the Second World War was still emphasising heroism,” says Dr Toby Simpson, the director of the Wiener Holocaust Library. “There was an emphasis on the Normandy landings, for example.

“And in the stories that the survivors wanted to tell there was very little heroism to be found in a story where they’ve been stripped of their humanity, agency, their choice. They’d been turned into a non-person.”

The Italian survivor, Primo Levi, wrote his Auschwitz memoir If This Is A Man immediately after the war. He had been one of a few thousand still at Auschwitz when Soviet troops arrived on 27 January 1945.

Most prisoners had been forced to march west, towards Germany, in freezing winter weather. Already weakened by camp conditions, many died on the way in what came to be known as the Death Marches. Levi was too sick and Soviet troops found him close to death in the camp infirmary.

Today, If This is a Man is regarded as a masterpiece of survivor testimony and one of the most important memoirs of the entire era. But in 1947, Primo Levi found it hard to find a publisher, even in his native Italy.

Finally, a small independent publisher in Turin published it in a print run of 2,500. It sold 1,500 copies then disappeared. For publishers, and for the public, it was still too soon. Few, it seemed, wanted to look.

“Primo Levi didn’t sell because the time wasn’t right and because he was too great a writer to give a heroic answer. His answer is greater than heroism,” says Jay Winter, professor of history Emeritus at Yale University. Many of Prof Winter’s mother’s family were killed in the Holocaust.

He adds: “A lot of people turned Primo Levi into a saint but all you have to do is to read the poem at the beginning of If This is a Man to see that he is not forgiving anybody – he is not forgiving and not forgetting.”

“There was Holocaust memorialisation in the 1950s,” says Prof David Feldman at Birkbeck University in London, “but it was something that was done by Jews themselves, in small fragmented groups.

“These were occasions of mourning more than memorialisation. The idea that we have now, of memorialisation, that somehow there are lessons to be drawn from the Holocaust, was not commonplace then”.

According to Prof Winter: “The countries that were reconstructing… needed a myth of resistance, of heroic armed conflict against the Nazis or Italian fascists.” That myth of resistance “had no place for concentration camp inmates”.

Only in the 1960s did popular interest return. When Israeli agents captured Adolf Eichmann, a key figure in the extermination campaign, they put him on trial in Jerusalem, and televised it. Now, Holocaust memorialisation began to reach the wider public.

Through the Eichmann trial, the new mass medium of television brought survivors’ testimony into the living rooms of the western world.

It coincided, too, with a cultural shift in public attitudes to war. A generation born in the aftermath of World War Two were coming of age in the 1960s.

Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem incorporated the words of the World War One poet Wilfred Owen – whose poetry had also faded from popular consciousness – to a new generation. Anti-war sentiment was fuelled further by the US involvement in Vietnam.

“I would say the Eichmann trial also brought perpetrators into people’s living rooms,” says Prof Feldman. “Survivors’ testimony and the emphasis on survivors being central to Holocaust memorialisation came later. It developed slowly in the 1960s. By the 1990s it was well established.”

The Holocaust story – at last – took its place in our collective consciousness.

From the 1960s onwards, Levi’s memoir found a global readership. Anne Frank’s father Otto had also struggled, in the early post-war period, to find a publisher for his daughter’s diary. To date it has sold an estimated 30 million copies.

As for Wolfgang Josephs, as late as August 1946, he was still hoping against hope that he might find his father alive. He received a typewritten note from the British Red Cross. It informed him, with regret, that Red Cross officials in Europe had searched the lists of survivors, and his father’s name was not among them.

Wolfgang anglicised his name to Peter Johnson and settled in the UK, at a time when few in the western world wanted to hear the stories of those who had witnessed, or survived, the Holocaust. He donated his family papers to the Wiener Holocaust Library, which remains a vast repository of evidence of the darkest period in Europe’s history.

Now, 80 years on, there are so few survivors left that soon the duty to remember will pass to posterity.

“I think remembering the Holocaust is even more important now,” says Dr Simpson, “because it happened at such a scale, and with such an intensity of hatred, that [there is still] the need to understand, to explain this continent-wide event in which six million Jews were murdered.” And so too is there still a need to fully comprehend how to make sense of the perpetrators – and the nature of the moral collapse that enabled this to take place.

As Primo Levi wrote: “The injury cannot be healed. It extends through time.”

“Seeing a concentration camp with my own eyes and listening to a survivor who went through it all, that’s really brought it home. It’s important for young people like me. We’ll soon be able to vote. The far right is gaining more and more support in Germany and we need to learn from the past.”

Xavier is a 17-year-old German student. I met him at a Holocaust education centre in Dachau, in southern Germany, just around the corner from what was once a Nazi concentration camp of the same name. He and his classmates were spending two days there, learning about their country’s Nazi past and debating its relevance in today’s world.

Eighteen-year-old Melike admitted she didn’t know much about the Holocaust before coming to Dachau. Listening to Eva Umlauf, a survivor, talk about what happened, touched her heart, she said.

She wished racism and intolerance were spoken about more frequently. “I wear a headscarf and people are often disapproving. We need to learn more about one another so we can all live well together.”

Miguel warned of growing racism and antisemitism on social media platforms, including jokes about the Holocaust. “We need to prevent that,” his 17-year-old friend Ida chimed in.

“We are the last generation who can meet and listen to people who survived that tragedy. We have to make sure everyone is informed to stop anything like that ever happening again.”

They are earnest and hopeful. Some might say naive.

Here in Europe, 80 years after the end of the Holocaust, societies seem increasingly divided. There’s a rise in support for political parties, often, but not exclusively on the far right and far left, that are quick to point at the Other. The outsider. The unwanted. Be they migrants, Muslims, LGBTQ+ people or Jews.

“I want everyone to live together, Jewish, Catholic, black, white or whatever,” says Eva Umlauf, the Holocaust survivor who made such an impression on the German teens.

She describes the Holocaust as a warning of what can happen when prejudice takes over.

“That’s why I dedicate my time to talking, talking, talking,” she says. Now in her 80s, she was the youngest inmate to be freed from the Nazi extermination camp, Auschwitz, eight decades ago this Monday. She has written a book about her experiences and, alongside working as a child psychiatrist, she speaks often about the death camps and antisemitism, to audiences at home and abroad.

“Death Mills” is the title of a US war department film, shown to German civilians after the war, edited from allied footage captured when liberating the around 300 concentration camps run by the Nazis and their allies between 1933 and 1945.

Skeletal naked people, with shaven heads and hollow eyes, shuffle and stumble past the camera. One man gnaws at a fleshless bone, clearly desperate for food. Piles of dead bodies are strewn in all corners; emaciated faces forever twisted in open-mouthed screams.

While in warehouse after warehouse, you see carefully labelled gold teeth, reading glasses and shoes belonging to murdered men, women and children. And bundles of hair shaved from female inmates, packed and ready for sale for Nazi profit.

The Nazis used concentration and death camps for the slave labour and mass extermination of people deemed “enemies of the Reich” or simply “Untermenschen” (subhumans). These included, amongst others: ethnic Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, people with disabilities, others labelled as homosexuals and the biggest target of all: European Jews.

In total, six million Jews were murdered in what became known as the Holocaust. Numbers have been calculated based on Nazi documents and pre- and post-war demographic data.

The legal term “genocide” was coined and recognised as an international crime, following the world’s realisation of the extent, and grim intent, of Nazi mass murder which continued with fervour even as they were losing the war. It refers to acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

Auschwitz is probably the best-known Nazi camp. Its horrors have come to symbolise the Holocaust as a whole. 1.1 million people were murdered there, among them, a million Jews. Most were poisoned en masse in gas chambers. Their bodies burned in huge crematoria. The ash given to local farmers for use in their fields.

“I was too young to realise much of what was going on at Auschwitz,” Eva told the students. “But what my mind has forgotten, my body remembers.”

The teens listened intently. No-one fidgeted or glanced at their smartphones, as Eva explained she had the number A-26959 tattooed in blue ink on her arm.

Being forcibly tattooed was part of the “process” for every prisoner arriving at Auschwitz who wasn’t immediately gassed to death and instead was selected for forced labour or medical experimentation.

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“Why did they choose to tattoo a two-year-old baby?” Eva asks. She says she finds just one answer to that question: that the “superhumans” – the Nazis believed they were creating a superior race – did not think that Jews were human beings.

“We were rats, subhumans, totally dehumanised by this master race. And so it did not matter to them if you were two years old, or 80 years old.”

Recounting the trauma she inherited from her young mother, the loss of every family member from before the Holocaust and the loneliness she felt postwar as a little girl with no grandma to hug her or bake cakes with her, Eva at one point begins to cry silently. Especially when she plays a video of her recently taking part in the annual “March of the Living” at Auschwitz, where survivors walk alongside youngsters from all over Europe, with the mantra “Never Again”.

As they watch her, a number of the teens in Eva’s audience have tears rolling down their cheeks too.

But a short drive away, in the Jewish community centre of Munich, which is guarded by armed police, acting president of the Jewish Community Charlotte Knobloch tells me how worried she is about spiralling modern-day antisemitism.

Born in the early 1930s, Ms Knobloch remembers holding her father’s hand and watching Jewish shop windows smashed and synagogues in flames on Kristallnacht, the Night of the Broken Glass in November 1938, when the Nazi regime carried out mass acts of violence against Jews and their property, while most non-Jewish Germans either cheered or looked the other way.

She says antisemitism never disappeared entirely after the war, but she hadn’t believed things would become as worrying again as they are now. Even in Germany, she says, which historically has done much to confront its Nazi past and to be vigilant against antisemitism.

It’s an assertion supported anecdotally by members of the Jewish community in Germany and elsewhere who say they now fear wearing a Star of David in public and prefer not to have a Jewish newspaper delivered to their homes, for fear of being labelled “a Jew” by their neighbours.

Studies by the Community Security Trust in the UK and the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency tell the same story. The FRA says 96% of Jews interviewed across 13 European countries report experiencing antisemitism in everyday life.

Jewish communities in South America note a significant uptick in antisemitism too, while in Canada, a synagogue was firebombed a few weeks ago and there was a shooting incident at a Jewish school. In the US last summer, Jewish graves were desecrated in the city of Cincinnati.

Former President Joe Biden identified global antisemitism as a foreign policy concern. Academic Deborah Lipstadt, who was his special envoy for monitoring and combating it, highlights antisemitism online – often along with Islamophobia and other forms of discrimination – which she says are manipulated by outside actors like Russia, Iran and China to sow division in society and to further their own goals and messaging.

She also speaks of a global rise in antisemitism following Israel’s military response in Gaza which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians – after the Hamas-led massacre of 1,200 people inside Israel on 7 October 2023.

Prof Lipstadt says Israel’s military actions are often blamed on Jewish people in general. All Jews cannot be held responsible for the decisions of the government of Israel, she says. That is racism.

The Amadeu Antonio Foundation, which collects information on antisemitic incidents in Germany, lists an incident last month where red-lettered graffiti was daubed on a church and the town hall in the town of Langenau, calling both for a boycott of Israel and the gassing of Jews – a reference to the Nazi gas chambers of the Holocaust.

Auschwitz and the Holocaust didn’t begin with poison gas. Their roots were in the othering of Jews that goes back centuries in Europe.

The CEO of the Conference of European Rabbis, Gady Gronich warns the targeting of minorities is now again becoming mainstream. The Muslim community is bearing the brunt right now, he says, also describing himself as shocked at the levels of antisemitism he sees.

He thinks 80 years on from World War Two, some are intentionally choosing to leave the Holocaust and the responsibility to learn from it in the past.

But the past will not be silenced. Near the Polish city of Gdansk, under snow-covered leaves covering the forest floor, you still find the discarded remains of shoes, belonging to victims of the Holocaust.

There are soles so tiny, partially buried under the earth, their murdered owners must have been young children. The stitching on some bits of leather are still plain to see. Millions of shoes were sent here to a leather factory, run by slave labour at what was then Stutthof concentration camp.

The shoes came from all over Nazi-occupied territory. But mainly, it’s believed, from Auschwitz.

“For me, these shoes are screaming. They are shouting: we were alive 80 years ago!” Polish musician Grzegorz Kwiatkowski tells me. He’s a long-time campaigner for the shoes to be salvaged and put on display, alongside others already in the concentration camp museum. The shoes’ message is anti-war and anti-discrimination, says Gregor. And should be heard.

“These shoes belonged to people. You know, they could be our shoes, right? Your shoes, or my shoes, or my wife’s shoes, or my son’s shoes. These shoes are asking for attention, not only to preserve them, but to change ourselves (as human beings) in a moral way. I was pretty sure things would be very different in 2025 to how they are.”

This year’s commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz is seen as particularly significant. It’s possibly the last big anniversary that eyewitnesses and survivors will be alive to tell us what happened – and to ask us: what are we remembering today and which lessons have we already clearly forgotten?

Mangala Pradhan will never forget the morning she lost her one-year-old son.

It was 16 years ago, in the unforgiving Sundarbans – a vast, harsh delta of 100 islands in India’s West Bengal state. Her son Ajit, just beginning to walk, was full of life: frisky, restless, and curious about the world.

That morning, like so many others, the family was busy with their daily chores. Mangala had fed Ajit breakfast and taken him to the kitchen as she cooked. Her husband was out buying vegetables, and her ailing mother-in-law rested in another room.

But little Ajit, always eager to explore, slipped away unnoticed. Mangala shouted for her mother-in-law to watch him, but there was no reply. Minutes later, when she realised how quiet it had become, panic set in.

“Where is my boy? Has anyone seen my boy?” she screamed. Neighbours rushed in to help.

Desperation quickly turned to heartbreak when her brother-in-law found Ajit’s tiny body floating in the pond in the courtyard outside their ramshackle home. The little boy had wandered out and slipped into the water – a moment of innocence turned into unthinkable tragedy.

Today, Mangala is one of 16 mothers in the area who walk or cycle to two makeshift creches set up by a non-profit where they look after, feed and educate some 40 children, who are dropped off by their parents on way to work. “These mothers are the saviours of children who are not their own,” says Sujoy Roy of Child In Need Institute (CINI), which set up the creches.

The need for such care is urgent: countless children continue to drown in this riverine region, which is dotted with ponds and rivers. Every home has a pond used for bathing, washing, and even drawing drinking water.

A 2020 survey by medical research organisation The George Institute and CINI found that nearly three children aged between one and nine years drowned daily in the Sundarbans region. Drownings peaked in July, when the monsoon rains began, and between ten in the morning and two in the afternoon. Most children were unsupervised at that time as caregivers were occupied with chores. Around 65% drowned within 50m of home, and only 6% received care from licensed doctors. Healthcare was in shambles: hospitals were scarce and many public health clinics were defunct.

In response, villagers clung to ancient superstitions to save rescued children. They spun the child’s body over an adult’s head, chanting invocations. They beat the water with sticks to ward off spirits.

“As a mother, I know the pain of losing a child,” Mangala told me. “I don’t want any other mother to endure what I did. I want to protect these children from drowning. We live amid so many dangers anyway.”

Life in Sundarbans, home to four million people, is a daily struggle.

Tigers, known to attack humans, roam dangerously close to and enter crowded villages where the poor eke out a living, often squatting on land.

People fish, collect honey, and gather crabs under the constant threat of tigers and venomous snakes. From July to October, rivers and ponds swell due to heavy rains, cyclones lash the region, and rampaging waters swallow villages. Climate change is worsening this uncertainty. Nearly 16% of the population here is aged one to nine.

“We’ve always co-existed with water, unaware of the dangers, until tragedy strikes,” says Sujata Das.

Sujata’s life was overturned three months ago when her 18-month-old daughter Ambika, drowned in the pond at their joint family home in Kultali.

Her sons were at their coaching classes, some family members had gone to the market, and an elderly aunt was busy working at home. Her husband, who usually works in the southern state of Kerala, was home that day, repairing a fishing net at the nearby trawler. Sujata had gone to fetch water at a local handpump because a promised water connection at her residence had still not materialised.

“Then we found her floating in the pond. It had rained, water had risen. We took her to a local quack, who declared her dead. This tragedy has woken us up to what we should do to prevent such tragedies in the future,” says Sujata.

Sujata, like others in the village, plans to fence her pond with bamboo and nets to prevent children from wandering into the water. She hopes that children who don’t know how to swim are taught in village ponds. She wants to encourage neighbours to learn CPR to provide lifesaving aid to rescued drowning children.

“Children don’t vote, so the political will to address these issues is often lacking,” says Mr Roy. “That’s why we’re focusing on building local resilience and spreading knowledge.” Support from India’s top science agency, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), in funding creches and pond fencing has also been crucial.

Over the past two years, around 2,000 villagers have received CPR training. Last July, a villager saved a drowning child by reviving him before he was sent to the hospital. “The real challenge lies in setting up creches and raising awareness among the community,” he adds.

Implementing even simple solutions is challenging due to costs and local beliefs.

In the Sundarbans, superstition about angering water deities made it hard to get people to fence their ponds. In neighbouring Bangladesh, where drowning is the leading cause of death for children aged one-four, wooden playpens were introduced in courtyards to keep children safe. However, compliance was low – children disliked them, and villagers often used them for goats and ducks. “This created a false sense of security, and drowning rates slightly increased over three years,” says Jagnoor Jagnoor, an injury epidemiologist at the George Institute.

Eventually non-profits set up 2,500 creches in Bangladesh, cutting drowning deaths by 88%. In 2024, the government expanded this to 8,000 centres, benefitting 200,000 children annually. Water-rich Vietnam focused on children aged six-10, using decades of mortality data to develop policies and teach survival skills. This reduced drowning rates, especially among schoolchildren travelling on waterways.

Drowning remains a major global issue. In 2021, an estimated 300,000 people drowned – over 30 lives lost every hour, according to the WHO. Nearly half were under 29, and a quarter were under five. India’s data is scanty, officially recording around 38,000 drowning deaths in 2022, though the actual number is likely much higher.

In the Sundarbans, the harsh reality is ever-present. For years, children have been either allowed to roam freely or tied with ropes and cloth to prevent wandering. Jingling anklets were used to alert parents to their children’s movements, but in this unforgiving, water-surrounded landscape, nothing feels truly safe.

Kakoli Das’s six-year-old son walked into an overflowing pond last summer while delivering a piece of paper to a neighbour. Unable to distinguish between the road and the water, Ishan drowned. He had suffered seizures as a child and couldn’t learn to swim due to the risk of fever.

“Please, I beg every mother: fence your ponds, learn how to revive children and teach them how to swim. This is about saving lives. We cannot afford to wait,” says Kakoli.

For now, the creches serve as a beacon of hope, offering a way to keep children safe from the dangers of water. On a recent afternoon, four-year-old Manik Pal sang a cheerful ditty to remind his friends: I won’t go to the pond alone/Unless my parents are with me/I’ll learn to swim and stay afloat/And live my life fear-free.

Less than a week into his presidency, Donald Trump has briefly engaged in his first international tariff dispute. And the target wasn’t China, Mexico or Canada – frequent subjects of his ire – it was Colombia, one of America’s closest allies in South America.

Colombia’s offence was refusing to allow two US flights carrying deported migrants to land because they were military, not civilian, transport planes. That was enough to prompt Trump to threaten to drop the hammer.

“We will not allow the Colombian government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the criminals they forced into the United States,” Trump posted on his social media site.

On top of the 25% tariffs he said he would impose, Trump said the US would introduce a travel ban and “immediate visa revocations” on Colombian government officials, as well as its allies and supporters.

But later, the White House said Colombia had now agreed to accept migrants arriving on US military aircraft “without limitation or delay”. As a result, the US will not go ahead with the tariffs.

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For his first week in office, the US president had seemed to be prioritising executive action on immigration over trade measures – even if the latter were a key campaign promise. As if to drive that point home, Trump now appears ready to punish nations that he views as not sufficiently supporting America’s new hard-line immigration polices.

He is serving a warning to US allies and adversaries alike: If you don’t co-operate with the US, the consequences will be severe.

Colombia has backed down from a tariff war, but the tactic poses a test for the new Trump administration.

If future sanctions lead to higher prices for US consumers, will the American public object? Will they be willing to tolerate some financial pain incurred to advance Trump’s immigration priorities?

The US imports about 27% of its coffee from Colombia, according to the US Department of Agriculture, as well as other goods like bananas, crude oil, avocados and flowers. The coffee imports alone are worth nearly $2bn (£1.6bn).

Colombian President Gustavo Petro had initially responded by saying his country would accept repatriated citizens on “civilian planes, without treating them like criminals”.

It’s no secret that Petro doesn’t like Donald Trump – he’s heavily criticised his policies on migration and the environment in the past.

In a lengthy response on X, he said Trump would “wipe out the human species because of greed” and accused the US president of considering Colombians an “inferior race”.

Petro went on to describe himself as “stubborn” and said that while Trump could try to “carry out a coup” with “economic strength and arrogance” he would, in short, fight back.

Most significantly, Petro said: “From today on, Colombia is open to the entire world, with open arms.”

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This is something that should worry a US president who wants to tackle migration. His incoming administration officials have made clear that that mission will require looking beyond the Mexico border.

Trump’s pick for deputy Secretary of State, Christopher Landau, has long argued that “working with other countries to stop such migratory flows” must be a “global imperative of US foreign policy”. Sunday’s spat might make working together a lot less likely.

Tens of thousands of migrants every year from around the world, from India to China, head north towards the US after landing in South America and travelling up through Colombia across the Darien Gap – a key choke point just north of the Panama-Colombia border. It’s a dangerous journey usually facilitated by criminal gangs.

In his response to Trump’s actions, President Petro noted that if talks over managing migration through Darien were suspended, “illegal activities will increase”. Those comments could be viewed as a veiled threat of more undocumented migrants on the way.

Petro was quick to say that his country would not refuse Colombian nationals deported from the US – only that they must receive “dignified treatment”.

Even after Colombia acted to defuse the row, it said a dialogue would be maintained to “guarantee the dignity of our citizens”.

But these kinds of tariffs are a test of will – and could still be applied to other nations that do not agree to the US’s demands. From the looks of it, this is just Trump’s opening move.

From a set of roaring rapids, comes a grand vision.

There are plans to build a magnificent, multi-billion dollar mega-dam on the Congo River – one that would produce enough renewable electricity to power vast areas of Africa.

The structure would be called the Grand Inga Dam. Located in the Democratic Republic of Congo, it would have twice the power generation of China’s Three Gorges and, therefore, be the world’s largest hydroelectric plant.

The Grand Inga Dam enticed investors and developers but decades after it was first dreamt up, the site reserved for the structure remains untouched.

While DR Congo’s government has insisted the plan is still in motion, critics point to the long delays, DR Congo’s record of poor governance and the potential for serious environmental harm.

There is also concern about the project’s revolving set of international partners. Just last week, Chinese state-owned firm the Three Gorges Corporation, withdrew from the project, a source close to the partnership told the BBC.

And then there is the eye-watering bill, which is reportedly as high as $80bn (£63bn) in a country that is one of the poorest in the world.

But some believe the nay-sayers are holding Grand Inga to a different standard than other major infrastructure projects. And while construction has not begun, there has been a flurry of meetings and discussions between interested parties over the past year.

The need for the Grand Inga is certainly there. Roughly 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa lack access to electricity, according to the International Energy Agency, a global watchdog. It is a pressing issue – African heads of state, private sector figures and development partners are currently discussing the issue at the Africa Energy Summit in Tanzania.

Attempts to solve this problem date back decades. In the early 2000s DR Congo and its neighbours – South Africa, Angola, Namibia and Botswana – dreamt up an interconnected electricity grid.

They looked to the vast Congo River, realising that its powerful waters have an immense hydropower potential.

The international collective – known as Westcor – sought to multiply the two dams that already existed on the river – Inga 1 and Inga 2.

DR Congo’s long-time leader Mobutu Sese Seko oversaw their construction in the 1970s and 1980s, but by the end of the century, both dams were dilapidated due to a lack of funding for their maintenance.

Westcor eventually disbanded but their Grand Inga dream lived on. Inga 1 and 2 now work at around 80% of their capacity and DR Congo has drawn up plans to supercharge this output, by adding six more dams along the river.

These extra dams are forecast to generate up to 40,000MW of electricity at any one time – enough to power New York city during the summer.

Through Inga, DR Congo will play its role as “the trigger of the African revolver… a catalyst for the industrialisation of Africa,” says the country’s Agency for the Development and Promotion of the Grand Inga Project.

The BBC contacted the agency for this article but it did not comment.

Despite its previous projections that Inga 3 would be completed by 2018, construction has not even begun.

The lack of visible progress suggests the project has stalled, but recent messaging from the World Bank – the world’s leading development organisation – implies otherwise.

Late last year, the bank announced it was back in talks with the Congolese government, having withdrawn its funding for Inga 3 back in 2016.

The World Bank had cited “strategic differences” but eight years later – and with Félix Tshisekedi having replaced Joseph Kabila as DR Congo’s president – it has done a U-turn.

“I think it’s the first time that I feel more optimistic. I almost believe that we can get it done,” Demetrios Papathanasiou, the World Bank’s global director of energy and extractives, told a South African panel last February.

This optimism seemed to be felt elsewhere, also. A pan-African alliance of finance institutions – including the African Development Bank – has recently been working together to help attract private investment to the project.

The Grand Inga is like a “serpent – it is up, down, visible, not visible,” José Ángel González Tausz, chairman of AEE Power, a Spanish-run company and partner in the project, tells the BBC.

In November, Fabrice Lusinde, the head of DR Congo’s public electricity company Snel, said that if work on Inga 3 began in 2026, two of its turbines should be up and running by 2032. Electricity produced by these turbines would then finance the plant’s other turbines, he said.

On its own, Inga 3 is projected to produce 4,800MW of electricity. South Africa, a country hindered by regular power cuts, has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) stating that they will import just over half of this amount.

South Africa’s authorities have argued that Inga will deliver consistent and reliable energy, but critics in the country say cheaper electricity can be found elsewhere.

A Nigerian company, Natural Oilfield Services, has also reportedly signed up as a buyer. Like South Africa, Nigeria also suffers from severe electricity shortages.

Guinea and Angola have reportedly expressed interest in the Grand Inga Dam too.

So why – after decades of talks – have no new dams materialised?

“It is a project in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” Mr Tausz says bluntly. “Even if the project is one of the best all over the world – it does not have the credibility.”

For decades, DR Congo has been blighted by corruption, a lack of infrastructure and sluggish development. Conflict in the east of the country also makes international headlines – though Inga is thousands of kilometres away from the fighting.

Investors are also “afraid” because the Grand Inga would not show returns for decades, Mr Tausz says, adding “who knows what will happen in Congo in the next 30 years”.

Mr Tausz – whose father worked as an engineer on Inga 1 in 1972 – also says that a lack of financial commitment by the Congolese government has contributed to the delay.

And then there is the funding issue. In September 2023, DR Congo’s president told reporters that the country was “still facing difficulties in mobilising investments” for the dam.

The recent withdrawal of China’s Three Gorges Corporation intensifies these difficulties. Three Gorges was a major partner, which brought money and expertise to the complex project.

According to the BBC’s source, who spoke under condition of anonymity, Three Gorges pulled out as they were frustrated with the way DR Congo President Tshisekedi was handling the project.

There has been no official confirmation of the pull-out.

But are these problems unique to the Grand Inga Dam? Not really, says Professor George Aggidis, a hydropower expert at the UK’s Lancaster University.

He says years of delays and numerous changes of partners are “normal” for a major infrastructure project like the Inga Dam.

He points to the UK’s Mersey Tidal Project – which if successful would be the world’s largest tidal barrier. The idea was first floated in 1984 and has been abandoned, then revived in the decades since.

“Does that mean we are unstable here in the UK?” Prof Aggidis asks. He describes the Inga project as “doable”.

A similar sentiment is shared by Alexander Schwab, an executive at Andritz, an Austrian-based company that signed on to supply equipment for Inga 3.

Mr Schwab says Andritz signed a MoU with the Congolese authorities but has not received any word on the project since 2021.

He seems largely unfazed by the lack of communication, saying that one in three major infrastructure projects will be “stalled somewhere”.

For Mr Schwab, the Grand Inga is “one of the best mega projects… in the world”.

But despite its potential, there are deep concerns about the project’s environmental and social impact.

A common criticism is that the dam will benefit South African consumers and DR Congo’s mining companies, but not the Congolese people. Some 80% of the population lack access to electricity.

“Inga will not bring electricity for the people,” says Emmanuel Musuyu, the head of Congolese civil society coalition Corap. He alleges that the majority of electricity has already been promised to South Africa and the mines.

In a recent report on Inga 3, the DR Congo authorities acknowledged that the dam is “alone not sufficient to address DRC’s energy and development challenges” but said it could act as a “catalyst” for national change.

The World Bank said it was exploring how it could support the government to ensure Inga “delivers broad benefits for energy access”.

Environmental and rights groups also worry that approximately 37,000 residents in the Inga area will be displaced without compensation. According to organisations like International Rivers and Observatori del Deute en la Globalització, thousands were forcibly removed from their homes and never compensated when Inga I and II were built.

They also say that the first two dams damaged the region’s biodiversity and that any extra dams are likely to do the same.

“It will have a specific impact on the fish and all animals in the water… when you change the flow of water in rivers, we can see some species of fish disappear,” says Mr Musuyu.

A 2018 study argued that many large-scale hydropower projects in Europe and the US have been disastrous for the environment.

DR Congo’s authorities have recognised that people would be displaced by Inga III, but said residents would be resettled in areas with basic services and promised that “fair compensation” would be awarded.

They have also recognised the risks to the local environment and said an assessment aiming to reduce this impact would be completed within the next two years. However, according to the BBC’s source close to the project, the authorities have not yet raised enough money to fund these studies.

If the Grand Inga is simply experiencing the ups and downs that come with big infrastructure projects, the World Bank may still have cause for optimism.

But the dam is a complex engineering project – one that requires its many stakeholders to work together in harmony.

The World Bank returning, only for the Three Gorges to leave, suggests DR Congo is struggling to maintain such unity.

And despite DR Congo’s ambition, construction cannot begin unless funding is secured.

So for now, it appears as though this project which has the potential to change the lives of millions of people in Africa remains just that – a grand vision.

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The BBC has heard from hundreds of people who have been angered by comments by the former boss of M&S and Asda that working from home is “not proper work”.

In an interview with Panorama, Lord Rose told the BBC that home working was part of the UK economy’s “general decline” and employees’ productivity was suffering.

More than 350 people, the majority of whom support working from home, contacted the BBC with their stories.

One of them was Alba, 52, from Dorking, who is currently searching for a remote job. “We are not lazy. We don’t want to golf all day.”

Alba, who previously worked as a business administrator, lives with chronic pain, travel sickness and migraines, and says she needs to work from home to manage her condition.

“I just want a comfortable environment where I can deal with my health issues,” she says.

Out of 357 responses submitted by individuals who chose to contact the BBC, 250 people said working from home was essential, with many citing health issues as a key reason for flexible working.

“I’m not in senior management, I’m not asking for a high salary, I just don’t want to be on sickness benefits and that’s what will happen if I can’t work from home,” says Alba.

She adds that her health issues once resulted in an ambulance being called at work.

Clare McNeil, director at Timewise, a consultancy specialising in flexible working policies, highlights that the benefits of remote work extend to employers as well, with such policies reducing staff turnover and sickness absence.

Mark Mortensen, associate professor of organisational behaviour at the business school INSEAD, says defining productivity can be challenging, particularly in creative and collaborative roles.

But Rebecca Mitchell, 38, a software engineer from London, says the difference in her productivity at work has been “drastic” since she started working from home 10 years ago.

Rebecca, who has ADHD, says that before working remotely, she struggled to stay employed.

“Working from an office adds too much stress and leads to a wealth of mental health issues for me,” she says.

She says that whereas before, she felt overlooked for career progression because of her disability, since working from home her salary has tripled.

“Autism and ADHD are only now being accepted. People understand neurodivergence now like they didn’t before.

“People like me rely on working from home in order to be a productive part of the workforce.”

The shift towards working from home has increased in the UK since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

While the trend in working only from home has fallen since 2021, a hybrid-working model – some days travelling to work and some days working at home – has become the new normal for many people.

According to a snapshot survey from the Office for National Statistics, 25% of working adults in Great Britain were hybrid working in January 2025, while 15% were working from home. The data shows where people said they were working on the day they completed the survey, rather than their wider working pattern.

But, of the BBC’s responses, 50 were against working from home.

One of those was Hannah, 31, a technical support manager in Birmingham.

After the pandemic, her employer shut down all its offices so she had to work remotely full-time. She says this has taken a toll on her mental, physical and financial health, prompting her to consider changing careers and moving house to improve her situation.

“It feels like I’m in a lockdown that’s never going to end,” she says.

Lord Rose, who recently stepped down as Asda’s chairman, told the BBC: “We have regressed in this country in terms of working practices, productivity and the country’s wellbeing.”

For Hannah, who is single, remote work has left her feeling isolated.

“All the people who love working from home are in relationships, or have children, live with family – they’re not 100% alone all the time like me.”

Meena’s eyes dart from left to right and back again, searching for the fleeting moment when she can make her move.

She is playing Kabaddi, an Indian contact sport now played in more than 50 countries across the world.

A Kabaddi game is played between two teams, each with seven players. Individuals take turns to run into the opposition’s half of the pitch to tag opponents and make it back to their own half without being tackled to the ground.

But for 14-year-old Meena, this is about more than winning points. The sport offers an escape from a restricted, rural life and opens up a world of opportunities.

“It feels different when I play,” she says shyly, struggling to find the words. “In that moment, I am not the Meena who is bound to housework, weighed down by pressures and expectations. It’s just me and the opponent… It feels like I am more powerful than other girls who don’t play.”

Meena lives on the outskirts of a small tribal village, Kudoshi, about 230km away from India’s financial capital, Mumbai, where girls’ lives traditionally revolve around household chores, marriage and children.

But 15 years ago, a group of teachers at the village school decided they wanted to give girls more opportunities.

“I have a daughter. I want her to achieve things in life, live the best life she can, be something,” says one of them, Daji Rajguru. “Why can’t girls play Kabaddi and make a career out of it?”

So he and his colleagues, who had played Kabaddi when they were younger, thought it would be good to teach local girls how to play. The pooled their savings – 5,000 rupees ($60; £50) – persuaded the school to let them use its grounds, and opened what they believe was the region’s first all-girls Kabaddi club.

At the start, just two girls, who were pupils at the school, joined up. “Parents were not ready to let their girls play Kabaddi as it meant spending a lot of time away from home,” he says. “They also worried about the impact it might have on their daughter’s marriage prospects,” as traditional families would not approve of girls going out and coming home late.

Daji and his colleagues went door to door reassuring parents their daughters would be safe playing Kabaddi at training sessions before and after school. They reassured them they would supervise the girls properly and not let them be distracted by boys.

At the start, the teachers would pick the girls up from their homes and drop them off, but as numbers grew they were no longer able to do that. Now, there are about 30 girls in the club and they estimate that about 300 have trained with them since they began coaching, including Daji’s own daughter. Some start playing as young as seven years old.

Like the rest of the members of the club, Meena trains for two hours before school and two hours after classes finish. She has to leave home at dawn and doesn’t get back until nightfall.

“I go alone and it’s dark [in the morning]. I used to be afraid that somebody could do something to me. My family was not supportive then, and are still unhappy with my choice to become a sportswoman,” she says.

But she is persevering, inspired by club members who have excelled over the years and joined state teams or local leagues. Siddhi Chalke and Samreen Burandkar were among the first batch of girls who trained at the club for about eight years. Now, at the age of 25, they are professional league players and are financially independent.

At the start, their families thought playing Kabaddi was a phase that would pass, and when the women decided to make a career of it, their parents were not happy. There is still pressure for them to get married but at the same time their families are also proud that the women are doing well.

“No-one in my family earns as much as I do,” says Samreen. “I now live in a big city and get to make my own choices. Coming from my community, it’s difficult for girls to go after what they want. I am only here because of Kabaddi,” she says.

Siddhi plays on the same team as Samreen – their friendship born out of Kabaddi. They have travelled around India for competitions, winning medals and championships. “I could only do that because of Kabaddi. Otherwise, I would have been married and ended up at my husband’s place washing the dishes,” says Siddhi and they both laugh, seemingly relieved that they have escaped this fate.

Excelling in sports in India can also help players get jobs in the public sector. Indian states allocate jobs for high achievers in sports, guaranteeing an income even after a player’s active sporting years are over.

Many rural girls take up sport with the dream of getting financial independence via these jobs. It can also help them get greater respect and a sense of identity.

“When we started the sports club, no-one gave any importance to these girls. They were always secondary citizens in their homes, in society,” says Vilas Bendre, a young coach at the club.

“But we realised that when rural girls climb ahead in their lives through sports, their lives change significantly. The way they talk, the way they carry themselves, their lifestyle, everything changes.”

Even if they haven’t become professional sportswomen, many members of the club have seen their confidence grow and have persuaded their families to let them go to university and delay marriage until they are older.

The community has become more accepting too, and when they see girls exercising, people don’t frown at them any more.

The club is funded by the coaches, cash prizes that the team win in competitions and occasional donations. Most of the girls are from poor and underprivileged families and don’t have to pay any subscription fees.

As well as training in term time, the club organises and funds residential sports camps at the school in the summer, provides food such as eggs, bananas and milk, and often pays for treatment for players’ injuries.

Over time, parents’ fears have been assuaged, but critics sometimes question the coaches’ motives. “People say things indirectly like. ‘Why don’t you coach boys?'” says Daji. But he says there are already opportunities for boys, and there is a gap when it comes to girls.

“We are not just their coaches,” adds Vilas. “At times we are their parents, guiding them, disciplining them, helping them make the right choice.”

And Meena knows the potential of this prized opportunity: “I want to be the best raider and become the captain of India’s Kabaddi team,” she says, daring to dream about medals, championships and leaving an ordinary village girl’s life behind.

Find out about the nominees vote through the BBC News website.

The mineral-rich east of the Democratic Republic of Congo has been dogged by conflict for more than 30 years, since the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Numerous armed groups have competed with the central authorities for power and control of the potential fortune in this vast nation.

The instability has sucked in neighbouring countries to devastating effect – notoriously in the 1990s when two huge conflicts, dubbed Africa’s World Wars, resulted in the deaths of millions of people.

After a rapid advance in the region, fighters from the M23 rebel group have entered Goma – a major city of more than a million people in the east of DR Congo.

Sitting on the border with Rwanda and the shores of Lake Kivu, it is a vital trading and transport hub that is within reach of mining towns supplying metals and minerals in high demand such as gold, tin and coltan, which is a key component of mobile phones and batteries for electric vehicles.

The rebels say they now control the city, but the Congolese government says its troops still hold some key locations.

• As it happened: The day’s events as they unfolded

The M23 are led by ethnic Tutsis, who say they needed to take up arms to protect the rights of the minority group.

They say that several previous deals to end the fighting have not been respected – they take their name from a peace agreement that was signed on 23 March 2009.

Shortly after its creation in 2012, the M23 rapidly gained territory and seized Goma – acts that were met with international opprobrium and accusations of war crimes and human rights violations.

It was forced to withdraw from Goma, and then suffered a series of heavy defeats at the hands of the Congolese army along with a UN force that saw it expelled from the country.

M23 fighters then agreed to be integrated into the army in return for promises that Tutsis would be protected.

But, in 2021, the group took up arms again, saying the promises had been broken.

Neighbouring Rwanda has in the past consistently denied that it supported the M23, but ever since 2012 UN experts have accused it of providing weapons, logistical support and even ultimately commanding the rebels.

DR Congo’s government, as well as the US and France, have also identified Rwanda as backing the group. Last year, a UN experts report said that up to 4,000 Rwandan troops were fighting alongside the M23.

In a statement on Sunday, Rwanda did not explicitly deny that it backed the M23 but instead said that the fighting near its border was a “serious threat” to its “security and territorial integrity”.

It added that Rwanda was being scapegoated and blamed the recent fighting on the Congolese authorities, saying they had refused to enter into a dialogue with the M23.

A peace process, mediated by Angola and involving Rwanda and DR Congo, did result in a ceasefire deal last year, however that soon fell apart and fighting resumed.

The origin of the current fighting can partly be traced back to the genocide in Rwanda in 1994.

About 800,000 people – the vast majority from the Tutsi community – were slaughtered by ethnic Hutu extremists.

The genocide ended with the advance of a force of Tutsi-led rebels commanded by Paul Kagame, who is now president.

Fearing reprisals, an estimated one million Hutus then fled across the border to what is now DR Congo. This stoked ethnic tensions as a marginalised Tutsi group in the east – the Banyamulenge – felt increasingly under threat.

Rwanda’s army twice invaded DR Congo, saying it was going after some of those responsible for the genocide, and worked with members of the Banyamulenge and other armed groups.

After 30 years of conflict, one of the Hutu groups, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), which includes some of those responsible for the Rwandan genocide, is still active in eastern DR Congo.

Rwanda describes the FDLR as a “genocidal militia” and says its continued existence in the DR Congo’s east threatens its own territory.

It accuses the Congolese authorities of working with the FDLR – accusations which DR Congo denies.

Rwanda is unlikely to stay out of DR Congo unless it is satisfied that the FDLR is no longer a threat to itself, or to the Tutsi communities in eastern DR Congo.

However, it is widely accused of using the conflict as a way to profit from eastern DR Congo’s mineral wealth.

A UN peacekeeping mission has been in place since 1999. The current force – known as Monusco – is made up of more than 10,000 troops.

However, of these, only the Force Intervention Brigade is allowed to carry out offensive operations against armed groups. It was this force that helped defeat the M23 in 2013.

Monusco has been the target of anger from ordinary Congolese who see it as failing to do its job. President Félix Tshisekedi, deeming the mission a failure, had asked it to leave by the end of last year.

But the departure was delayed and in December the mission was extended for another year.

The Southern African Development Community (Sadc), a regional grouping of 16 countries, has also deployed a military force to eastern DR Congo, but it has been unable to halt the rebels.

South Africa said nine of its soldiers had been killed in clashes with rebels at the end of last week as they were trying to stop the advance on Goma. Three Malawian soldiers have also been killed.

The UN said that Uruguay had lost one of its soldiers who was part of the Monusco force.

• A quick guide to DR Congo

President Donald Trump has said he thinks the US will gain control of Greenland, underlining his persistent claim on the Arctic island, on one occasion pointing to “economic security” as the reason. While the autonomous Danish territory has been quick to say it isn’t for sale, its vast and mostly untapped mineral resources are in great demand.

Jagged grey peaks suddenly appear before us, as the motorboat navigates choppy coastal waters and dramatic fjords at Greenland’s southern tip.

“Those very high pointy mountains, it’s basically a gold belt,” gestures Eldur Olafsson, the chief executive of mining company Amaroq Minerals.

After sailing for two hours we stepped ashore at a remote valley beneath Nalunaq mountain, where the firm is drilling for gold.

It’s also scouring the surrounding mountain range and valleys, hunting for other valuable minerals, having snapped up exploration licences spanning over 10,000 sq km (3,861 sq miles).

“We’re looking for copper, nickel, and rare earths,” says the Icelandic boss. “This is uncharted, and still has the potential to have multiple big deposits.”

The base camp is a cluster of mobile buildings and bright orange accommodation tents housing more than 100 staff, including Greenlanders, Australians, and British former coal miners. From there a road climbs up the valley, and we drive by car into the gold mine, following a dark tunnel upwards inside the mountain.

“See here!” says Mr Olafsson pointing to a seam of white quartz and a thin dark line. “Gold, gold, gold. All the way over. Isn’t that extraordinary?”

• Four ways this Trump Greenland saga could go
• Trump threat casts ominous shadow over Greenland

The mine, which Amaroq bought in 2015, had operated for most of the preceding decade, but closed due to then falling gold prices, and high operating costs.

Amaroq is confident that the mine will now be profitable. And it plans to ramp up production this year, where it has built a brand new processing plant to crush the ore and refine the precious metal into gold bars.

“We can either walk off site every month with a suitcase of gold, versus a 30,000 tonne ship [carrying the ore],” explains Mr Olafsson.

He says that Greenland presents an unrivalled opportunity because its huge mineral reserves are largely untouched.

“It can be the supplier of all the minerals the Western world will need for decades,” adds Mr Olafsson. “And that is a very unique position.”

Yet currently there are just two active mines on the entire island.

Greenland is a self-governing territory that is part of Denmark, but controls its own natural resources.

It’s endowed with the eighth largest reserves of so-called rare earth elements, which are vital for making everything from mobile phones to batteries and electric motors. It also has large amounts of other key metals, such as lithium and cobalt.

There is oil and gas too, but new drilling is banned, while deep-sea mining has also been ruled out.

Christian Kjeldsen, director of Greenland’s Business Association, says that the global “geopolitical situation right now is driving interest in the world’s biggest island”.

He points to China having the world’s largest reserves of rare earth metals, while the West wants to secure alternative supplies.

“You have a very strong China sitting very heavily on the critical raw materials,” he says.

That has fuelled a growing focus among Western nations to get access to Greenland’s minerals. China has also been keen to get involved, but its presence is limited.

Reuters recently reported that the US lobbied an Australian mining firm not to sell Greenland’s biggest rare earth project to potential Chinese buyers.

Greenland’s Minister for Business, Trade and Raw Materials, Naaja Nathanielsen, says that interest in the territory’s minerals has “absolutely increased within the last five years or so”.

She adds: “We’re used to being a hotspot for the climate crisis. We want to be a part of the solution.”

Permits have now been given for 100 blocs across Greenland, where companies are searching for viable deposits. British, Canadian and Australian mining firms are the biggest foreign licence holders, while Americans hold just one.

But there are many more steps before these sites become potential mines.

Yet while Greenland may be sitting on mineral riches, any “gold rush” continues to be slow to materialise.

The economy, which has an annual GDP of just over $3bn (£2.4bn), is still driven by the public sector and fishing. And the territory also relies on an annual $600m subsidy from Denmark.

Greenland’s politicians hope that mining revenues will reduce reliance on the annual $600m subsidy from Denmark, and help boost independence efforts. But in the meantime Greenland is making more money from tourism.

Officially mining is still important for independence, says Javier Arnaut, head of Arctic Social Sciences at Greenland University. “But in practical terms, you can see that there are very few mining licenses awarded.”

Ms Nathanielsen concedes that while there are partnerships being developed with the US and EU, “we still have not seen large amounts of money flowing into this sector”. She hopes that there will be another three to five mines operating within the next decade.

However mining is not easy in Greenland because of its remote geography and weather. It’s the world’s largest island and 80% of it is covered by an ice sheet. It has rugged mountains and no roads between settlements.

“It’s an arctic terrain,” says Jakob Kløve Keiding, from the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, which has mapped the territory’s deposits. “We have problems with harsh conditions in terms of the climate and limited infrastructure. So it’s quite expensive to open a mine.”

Those high costs, coupled with low global metal prices, have held back investors.

Others blame red tape for the sector’s slow growth. The territory has strict environmental regulations and social impact requirements, and getting permits can take time.

Ms Nathanielsen maintains that most communities do support mining, and that it boosts local economies. “They [overseas miners] are shopping in the local shop. They’re employing local employees. They’re chartering a local boat or helicopter,” she says.

Yet in the south’s biggest town, Qaqortoq, resident Heidi Mortensen Møller is sceptical whether new mines will lead to employment for locals. “When they say they’re going to add jobs, who are they talking about?”

Jess Berthelsen, head of local labour union, SIK, says that many people think mining income “will leave the country”, and not benefit Greenland. But he supports the growth of the sector. “Greenland needs more income and to earn money from other ways than fishing.”

It’s unclear how Trump’s latest gambit on Greenland will play out. However, the territory’s prime minister Mute Egede said earlier this month that “we need to do business with the US” and that it was “doors open in terms of mining”.

Mr Kjeldsen from the business association, hopes it will be bring “much needed investment” to the sector. “On the other hand, if the uncertainty surrounding the signals from Trump drag on for a longer period, there is a risk that this might impact the investment environment negatively.”

An AI-powered chatbot by the Chinese company DeepSeek has quickly become the most downloaded free app on Apple’s store, following its January release in the US.

The app’s sudden popularity, as well as DeepSeek’s reportedly low costs compared to those of US-based AI companies, have thrown financial markets into a spin.

Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen has hailed DeepSeek as “one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs” in AI.

The company says its latest AI models are on par with industry-leading models in the US – like ChatGPT – at a fraction of the cost.

Researchers behind the app have said it only took $6m (£4.8m) to build it, much less than the billions spent by AI companies in the US.

DeepSeek is a Chinese artificial intelligence company founded in Hangzhou, a city in southeastern China.

The company was launched in July 2023, but its popular AI assistant app was not released in the US until 10 January, according to Sensor Tower.

Liang Wenfeng partly funded DeepSeek using money from a hedge fund that he also launched.

The 40-year-old, an information and electronic engineering graduate, reportedly built up a store of Nvidia A100 chips, now banned from export to China.

Experts believe this collection – which some estimates put at 50,000 – led him to launch DeepSeek, by pairing these chips with cheaper, lower-end ones that are still available to import.

Mr Liang was recently seen at a meeting between industry experts and the Chinese premier Li Qiang.

The company’s AI app is available for download in Apple’s App Store and online at its website.

The service, which is free, has quickly become the top downloaded app on Apple’s store, although there have been some reports of people having trouble signing up.

It has also become the top-rated free application in the US on Apple’s app store.

DeepSeek has become popular for its powerful AI assistant which operates similarly to ChatGPT.

According to its description on the App Store, it is designed “to answer your questions and enhance your life efficiently”.

Comments left by users rating the app say “it gives the writing more personality”.

But the chatbot skirts at least one politically sensitive question.

When the BBC asked the app what happened at Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989, DeepSeek replied: “I am sorry, I cannot answer that question. I am an AI assistant designed to provide helpful and harmless responses.”

DeepSeek was reportedly developed for a fraction of the cost of its US rivals – hundreds of millions of dollars less – raising questions about the future of America’s AI dominance.

The company’s possibly lower costs roiled financial markets on 27 January, leading the tech-heavy Nasdaq to fall more than 3% in a broad sell-off that included chip makers and data centres around the world.

Nvidia, a US-based company that makes the powerful chips that run AI, appears to have been hit the worst.

It lost nearly $600bn in market value on Monday – the largest one-day drop for any company in US history – as its stock price plunged 17% over the course of the day.

Nvidia had been the most valuable company in the world, when measured by market capitalization, but fell to third place after Apple and Microsoft on Monday when its market value shrank to $2.9tn from $3.5tn, Forbes reported.

DeepSeek uses less advanced semiconductor chips than the ones created by Nvidia.

Their success undercuts the belief that bigger budgets and top-tier chips are the only ways of advancing AI, a prospect which has created massive uncertainty about the need and future of high-performance chip.

US First Lady Melania Trump’s new official portrait has been released.

Shot in the White House one day after her husband was sworn in as president, the black and white photo shows her wearing a dark business suit and white shirt as she rests her hands on a reflective table in the Yellow Oval Room.

The Washington Monument, which towers over the nation’s capital, is seen in the background.

Mrs Trump – a former fashion model herself – is familiar with having her clothing choices and poses dissected by critics.

The portrait was shot by Régine Mahaux, a photographer from Belgium who has been taking photos of the Trump family for more than 20 years.

She also photographed Mrs Trump’s official portrait in 2017, for Trump’s first term in office. “I was really honoured to be chosen to shoot this official portrait for the second time,” Ms Mahaux told the BBC on Monday.

“As an artist to work with such an inspiring woman is a great privilege. She is a perfectionist and is really involved in the creative process.”

Here is what experts said about the image.

Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw is the Faculty Director for the Department of History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania. She curated the exhibition Every Eye is Upon Me: First Ladies of the United States at The National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC.

Like the official portrait from her husband’s first administration, also by the Trumps’ favourite photographer Régine Mahaux, this picture of Melania Trump shows her wearing business attire and posed in front of a window.

While the window in the first picture was recognisable to White House aficionados as it was located in the family quarters of the executive mansion, this one sited in the Yellow Oval Room facing the Ellipse features the Washington Monument placed just off to the left behind the First Lady.

The rhyming of her body with this well-known obelisk, a symbol of the power invested in the first presidency, is striking.

Her pose, with fingertips placed firmly on a remarkably reflective table, seems to communicate a readiness to “get down to business” and act upon the platform afforded to the unique role of hostess and advocate for the disempowered that Americans have historically expected first ladies to inhabit.

Mrs Trump is extraordinarily comfortable in front of the camera, and this probably has a lot to do with her past as a model. But I think the relationship that she has developed with Ms Mahaux over the past two decades accounts for most of that ease.

This photographer is a person that she trusts to make her appear confident, composed, and classy.

To be good at their jobs, models must put themselves in the hands of the photographer who is directing the shoot and trusting that the resulting pictures will serve their purpose is critical to the equation.

Mrs Trump trusts Ms Mahaux to accurately communicate her message, whatever that may be. The message of this picture is that the first lady has moved from the marginal space of the family quarters to the room just above the Oval Office.

She appears ready to wield more of the power that she seemed rather reluctant to embrace in her first stay at the White House. And yet, she has positioned herself firmly behind that ultra shiny table, keeping a bit of a boundary between herself and the viewer.

Staying a little mysterious, a little enigmatic, and a little inscrutable.

Ellie Violet Bramley is a fashion writer who says the portrait carries a heaviness that appears at odds with the traditional role of a first lady.

From the suit to the stance, the new portrait feels carefully orchestrated to exude a kind of power that feels at odds with the first lady’s traditional role of softening a presidency in the public’s eyes – and making it feel more human.

Unlike the military-inflected ensemble worn by the first lady on inauguration day, this is a look that feels more aligned with corporate power. Ditto the stance: the positioning of the hands on the table seems intended to semaphore a kind of business-like intention – it has, after all, been reported that the first lady has been “preparing intensively” for the White House this time around.

Much could be read into the details.

Her shirt might be undone, in contrast to the severe, buttoned-up tailoring of last week, but her shoulders are sharp and accentuated. Her wide lapels could be reminiscent of the suiting of 1980s New York, a time and place when Melania’s husband cut his teeth, but the silhouette is more sculpted and modern.

During Trump’s first presidency, Mrs Trump was largely quiet, beyond a slogan jacket that read “I really don’t care, do you?” worn to a migrant child detention centre, and her Be Best platform, which had somewhat vague aims such as promoting healthy living.

This time around, her appearances have hinted at a more intentional second run. The Washington Monument stands in the background, locating her very firmly in DC and not New York or Mar-a-Lago.

And gone is the soft focus, the half-smile and the parted lips from her official portrait last time she was in the White House. Gone also is the colour: this time around the portrait is black and white.

Much can be read into her eyes. The mere fact that they are so directly looking at camera – and the viewer in turn – in contrast to inauguration day when she opted for a boater hat that shrouded her eyes, feels noteworthy.

But while eye contact can be about approachability, here it doesn’t read that way. If previous first ladies such as Michele Obama and Jill Biden made accessibility their brand, in her official portrait, Melania remains enigmatic.

US tech giant Nvidia lost over a sixth of its value after the surging popularity of a Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) app spooked investors in the US and Europe.

DeepSeek, a Chinese AI chatbot reportedly made at a fraction of the cost of its rivals, launched last week but has already become the most downloaded free app in the US.

AI chip giant Nvidia and other tech firms connected to AI, including Microsoft and Google, saw their values tumble on Monday in the wake of DeepSeek’s sudden rise.

In a separate development, DeepSeek said on Monday it will temporarily limit registrations because of “large-scale malicious attacks” on its software.

The DeepSeek chatbot was reportedly developed for a fraction of the cost of its rivals, raising questions about the future of America’s AI dominance and the scale of investments US firms are planning.

Last week, OpenAI joined a group of other firms who pledged to invest $500bn (£400bn) in building AI infrastructure in the US.

President Donald Trump, in one of his first announcements since returning to office, called it “the largest AI infrastructure project by far in history” that would help keep “the future of technology” in the US.

DeepSeek is powered by the open source DeepSeek-V3 model, which its researchers claim was trained for around $6m – significantly less than the billions spent by rivals.

But this claim has been disputed by others in AI.

The researchers say they use already existing technology, as well as open source code – software that can be used, modified or distributed by anybody free of charge.

DeepSeek’s emergence comes as the US is restricting the sale of the advanced chip technology that powers AI to China.

To continue their work without steady supplies of imported advanced chips, Chinese AI developers have shared their work with each other and experimented with new approaches to the technology.

This has resulted in AI models that require far less computing power than before.

It also means that they cost a lot less than previously thought possible, which has the potential to upend the industry.

After DeepSeek-R1 was launched earlier this month, the company boasted of “performance on par with” one of OpenAI’s latest models when used for tasks such as maths, coding and natural language reasoning.

Silicon Valley venture capitalist and Trump adviser Marc Andreessen described DeepSeek-R1 as “AI’s Sputnik moment”, a reference to the satellite launched by the Soviet Union in 1957.

At the time, the US was considered to have been caught off-guard by their rival’s technological achievement.

DeepSeek’s sudden popularity has startled stock markets in Europe and the US.

In the US, AI chipmaker Nvidia ended Monday’s trading having plunged 16.9% while its rival Broadcom slumped 17.4%.

Other tech firms also sank, with Microsoft down 2.14% and Google’s owner Alphabet down over 4%.

In Europe, Dutch chip equipment maker ASML ended Monday’s trading with its share price down by more than 7% while shares in Siemens Energy, which makes hardware related to AI, had plunged by a fifth.

“This idea of a low-cost Chinese version hasn’t necessarily been forefront, so it’s taken the market a little bit by surprise,” said Fiona Cincotta, senior market analyst at City Index.

“So, if you suddenly get this low-cost AI model, then that’s going to raise concerns over the profits of rivals, particularly given the amount that they’ve already invested in more expensive AI infrastructure.”

Singapore-based technology equity adviser Vey-Sern Ling told the BBC it could “potentially derail the investment case for the entire AI supply chain”.

But Wall Street banking giant Citi cautioned that while DeepSeek could challenge the dominant positions of American companies such as OpenAI, issues faced by Chinese firms could hamper their development.

“We estimate that in an inevitably more restrictive environment, US access to more advanced chips is an advantage,” analysts said in a report.

Meanwhile, DeepSeek said on Monday it had been the victim of a cyberattack.

“Due to large-scale malicious attacks on DeepSeek’s services, we are temporarily limiting registrations to ensure continued service,” it said in a statement.

“Existing users can log in as usual. Thanks for your understanding and support.”

The company was founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng in Hangzhou, a city in southeastern China.

The 40-year-old, an information and electronic engineering graduate, also founded the hedge fund that backed DeepSeek.

He reportedly built up a store of Nvidia A100 chips, now banned from export to China.

Experts believe this collection – which some estimates put at 50,000 – led him to launch DeepSeek, by pairing these chips with cheaper, lower-end ones that are still available to import.

Mr Liang was recently seen at a meeting between industry experts and the Chinese premier Li Qiang.

In a July 2024 interview with The China Academy, Mr Liang said he was surprised by the reaction to the previous version of his AI model.

“We didn’t expect pricing to be such a sensitive issue,” he said.

“We were simply following our own pace, calculating costs, and setting prices accordingly.”

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Coca-Cola has recalled its drinks in some countries across Europe because they contain “higher levels” of a chemical called chlorate.

The firm said in a statement that the recall was focused on Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. It added just five product lines had been shipped to Britain, and they had already been sold.

Affected products include the Coke, Fanta, Sprite, Tropico and Minute Maid brands, according to the Belgium branch of Coca-Cola’s international bottling and distribution operation.

Chlorate can be produced when chlorine-based disinfectants are used in water treatment and food processing.

“Independent expert analysis concludes that any associated risk for consumers is very low,” a spokesperson told the BBC.

Coca-Cola said it had not received any consumer complaints in Great Britain, and that it had “alerted the authorities on this matter and will continue to collaborate with them.”

The company added the issue has affected “a very small number of imported cans” of Appletiser, Coca-Cola Original Taste, Coca-Cola Zero Sugar, Diet Coke and Sprite Zero with production codes from 328 GE to 338 GE” which Coca-Cola said can be found on the base of the can.

Anne Gravett from the Food Standards Agency said it was investigating.

“If we identify any unsafe food, we’ll take action to ensure it is removed and alert consumers,” she added.

Exposure to high levels of chlorate can cause health problems including thyroid problems, especially among children and infants.

NHS and private nutritionist Caron Grazette told the BBC: “We need to question whether or not we want to digest chemicals in soft drinks which are used in the production of fireworks and disinfectants, however small the quantity”.

Chlorate’s effects on humans when taken in excess include nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, and limiting the blood’s ability to absorb oxygen, added Ms Grazette, citing recent research into the chemical.

The higher levels of chlorate were discovered during routine testing at the company’s production facility in Ghent, Belgium, according to an unnamed company spokesperson quoted by the AFP news agency.

The majority of unsold products had been withdrawn from shelves, according to AFP, and the company was in the process of withdrawing the rest.

A Coca-Cola spokesperson said it “considers the quality and safety of its products as its top priority”.

Denmark has said it will spend 14.6 billion kroner (£1.6bn; $2.05bn) to boost security in the Arctic region, in partnership with its autonomous territories Greenland and the Faroe Islands.

The deal includes three new Arctic ships, more long-range drones with advanced image acquisition capacity and stronger satellite capacity.

“We must face the fact that there are serious challenges regarding security and defence in the Arctic and North Atlantic,” Denmark’s Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said.

The move comes after US President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he wants to acquire Greenland, an island which has wide-ranging autonomy but remains part of Denmark.

Asked earlier in January whether he could rule out using military or economic force to pursue his desire to take over the territory, Trump said he could not.

Greenland, the world’s most sparsely populated territory, is home to about 56,000 mostly indigenous Inuit people.

The US has long maintained a security interest in Greenland. After Nazi Germany occupied mainland Denmark during World War II, the US invaded Greenland, establishing military and radio stations across the territory. It has maintained a presence in the region since.

Greenland lies on the shortest route from North America to Europe, making it strategically important for the US.

In recent years, there has been increased interest in Greenland’s natural resources, including mining for rare earth minerals, uranium and iron.

• Why does Trump want Greenland and what do its people think?
• Trump says he believes US will ‘get Greenland’

“Greenland is entering a time of changing threat landscape,” Vivian Motzfeldt, Greenland’s Independence and Foreign Affairs Minister, said in a statement announcing the new defence spending.

“I am pleased that with this partial agreement we have taken the first step towards strengthening security in and around Greenland.”

An announcement of further funding is expected to come in the first half of this year.

The new investment follows Denmark’s separate announcement in December that it was spending roughly £1.2 billion on Greenland’s defence, including the purchase of new ships, long-range drones and extra dog sled teams.

Poulsen then described the timing of the announcement as an “irony of fate” – coming just after Trump said ownership and control of Greenland was an “absolute necessity” for the US.

Greenland’s prime minister has said the territory is not for sale, adding that “Greenland belongs to the people of Greenland”.

Denmark’s prime minister has told Trump that it is up to Greenland to decide its own future.

Trump has doubled down on his intent since then, despite warnings from European countries to not threaten Greenland.

US President Donald Trump’s administration has fired more than a dozen justice department lawyers who worked on two criminal cases against him.

They were fired after Acting Attorney General James McHenry concluded they could not “be trusted to faithfully implement the president’s agenda because of their significant role in prosecuting the president”, a department official told the BBC’s US partner CBS News.

The lawyers were part of former special counsel Jack Smith’s team which investigated Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents and his alleged attempt to overturn his 2020 election defeat.

The firings on Monday are effective immediately.

Mr Smith was appointed as special counsel in 2022 to oversee the two justice department cases into Trump. The president had vowed to fire him “within two seconds” of taking office, but he quit before his inauguration.

Both cases resulted in criminal charges against Trump, who pleaded not guilty.

But the cases were closed following his November election win. Prosecutors wrote that justice department regulations do not allow the prosecution of a sitting president.

It was not immediately clear which members of Mr Smith’s team were fired.

Many of those who worked on Mr Smith’s teams were career corruption and national security prosecutors who had worked across various administrations and were appointed to the cases.

They reportedly received a letter on Monday which said their role in investigating and prosecuting the president made them unsuitable to work in the department.

“Firing prosecutors because of cases they were assigned to work on is just unacceptable,” former US Attorney Joyce Vance told NBC News. “It’s anti-rule of law; it’s anti-democracy.”

The firings follow a major reassignment of some of the justice department’s top officials with expertise in a wide range of fields including national security and public corruption. On Monday, one of them, the chief of the public integrity section, reportedly resigned.

Trump and his team have accused the justice department of pursuing politically motivated cases against him, his associates and Republicans. Trump vowed an immediate overhaul of the department, which he says has been “weaponised” against him, while campaigning for re-election.

His nominee to lead the justice department, Pam Bondi, has echoed Trump’s view that federal prosecutions against him were political persecution, saying the department “had been weaponised for years and years and years”.

Mr Smith has publicly defended his work. In a letter accompanying the final draft of his report into Trump’s actions after the 2020 election, he wrote: “The claim from [Trump] that my decisions as a prosecutor were influenced or directed by the Biden administration or other political actors is, in a word, laughable.”

Also on Monday, Washington DC’s top federal prosecutor announced the launch of an internal review into the charging decisions behind hundreds of Capitol riot cases, according to CBS.

Acting US Attorney Edward Martin, a Trump appointee, ordered prosecutors in his office to turn in documents, emails and other information related to the previous administration’s decision to bring an obstruction charge against more than 200 Capitol attack defendants.

DeepSeek looks and feels like any other chatbot, though it leans towards being overly chatty.

Just as with OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini, you open the app (or website) and ask it questions about anything, and it does its best to give you a response.

It gives long answers and will not be drawn on expressing an opinion, however directly it is asked for one.

The chatbot often begins its response by saying the topic is “highly subjective” – whether that is politics (is Donald Trump a good US president?) or soft drinks (which is more tasty, Pepsi or Coke?).

It wouldn’t even commit to saying whether or not it was better than OpenAI’s rival artificial intelligence (AI) assistant ChatGPT, but it did weigh up the pros and cons of both – ChatGPT did exactly the same, and even used very similar language.

DeepSeek says it was trained on data up to October 2023, and while the app seems to have access to current information such as today’s date, the website version does not.

That is not dissimilar to earlier versions of ChatGPT and is probably a similar attempt at safeguarding – to stop the chatbot spewing out misinformation pumped onto the web in real time.

It can be quite fast in its responses, but is currently groaning under the weight of so many people rushing to try it out as it has gone viral.

But there is one area in which it is nothing like its US rival – DeepSeek censors itself when it comes to questions about subjects banned in China.

• What is DeepSeek and why has it shaken the AI sector?
• Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeek sparks market turmoil
• More than $500bn erased from Nvidia’s value

Sometimes it begins a response, which then disappears from the screen and is replaced by “let’s talk about something else”.

One obviously taboo subject is the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square which ended with 200 civilians being killed by the military according to the Chinese government – other estimates have ranged from hundreds to many thousands.

But DeepSeek will not answer any questions about it, or even more broadly about what happened in China on that day.

US-developed ChatGPT, by comparison, does not hold back in its answers about Tiananmen Square.

Kayla Blomquist, a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute and director of the Oxford China Policy Lab, says “relatively speaking” the Chinese government has been “hands off” with the app.

“I would say there’s a shift as we’ve seen an announcement in huge investment from the central government just in the last week – so that is probably going to signal a change moving forward.”

DeepSeek comes with the same caveats as any other chatbots regarding accuracy, and has the look and feel of more established US AI assistants already used by millions.

For many – especially those who do not subscribe to top-tier services – it probably feels pretty much the same.

Imagine a mathematical problem, in which the true answer runs to 32 decimal places but the shortened version runs to eight.

It’s not quite as good – but for most people, that won’t matter.

It may be the case it has managed to cut costs and compute, but we do know that it is built at least in part on the shoulders of the giants: it uses Nvidia chips – albeit older, cheaper versions – and utilises Meta’s open-source Llama architecture, as well as AliBaba’s equivalent Qwen.

“I think this absolutely challenges the idea of monetisation strategies that a lot of leading US AI firms have had,” said Ms Blomquist.

“It is pointing to potential methods of model development that are much less compute and resource-intensive that would potentially signal a shift in paradigm, although that’s unconfirmed and remains to be seen.

“We’ll see what the next couple of months bring.”

The cameras struggled to get a steady shot as Donald Trump took his first historic steps into enemy territory with Kim Jong Un. It was 2019 and the then-45th president of the United States patted the arm of the North Korean leader, then on cue, Kim led him across the threshold that separates his country from South Korea – two countries officially still at war.

Behind them, within the heavily fortified Demilitarised Zone (DMZ), it was chaos as TV crews jostled to get a clear view through a line of North Korean bodyguards who seemed surprised by the onslaught of US media.

At one point, a reporter asked for help and the White House press secretary had to pull them from behind a line of security to the Trump-Kim photo call.

This meeting had been hastily organised – and it showed.

“I never expected to meet you at this place,” said Kim to Trump.

The US president had organised the last-minute rendezvous on Twitter, as it was then known, just 30 hours earlier when he suggested meeting Chairman Kim at the DMZ “just to shake his hand and say Hello(?)!”

The impromptu invitation created a third and last incredible TV moment between a showman president and a once reclusive dictator.

Now, it appears there could be more. Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity in an interview broadcast last Thursday that he will once again “reach out” to Kim.

“I got along with him,” Trump added. “He is not a religious zealot. He happens to be a smart guy.”

The BBC understands that there has been very little contact between the US and North Korea in the last four years during the Biden administration. Washington has sent messages but there has been no reply from Pyongyang.

The last meeting between the two nations, when Trump was last in office, did not advance a longed-for deal to get North Korea to give up its prized possession – its nuclear weapons.

Since then, Kim has advanced his missile programme and claims to have successfully tested a hypersonic missile, despite being subject to strict international sanctions.

It’s a far cry from when Trump used to boast that the two “fell in love”.

The question is, can the relationship be rekindled – or could it be a very different picture this time around?

Washington will, after all, be dealing with a very different Kim now. In the last four years his alliances and fortunes have shifted – and his relationship with another world leader appears to have strengthened too. So, could it mean that this has all changed his dynamic with Trump for good?

“It’s definitely a possibility,” says Jenny Town, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center and the director of Stimson’s Korea Program.

“You can tell by Donald Trump’s decision to appoint a special envoy for sensitive issues that include North Korea, I think it gives you an indication of kind of where his thinking is on that right now.”

Trump has brought back some of those who helped set up his summits with Kim, including the former ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell who has been picked as his presidential envoy for special missions on “some of the hottest spots” around the world, including North Korea.

But there have been changes in the intervening years.

“North Korea will spend the first year trying to prove to Trump that Kim Jong Un isn’t who he was in 2017 – that he’s militarily stronger, that he’s politically stronger, and that, if they ever get back to that point, it’s going to be a very different negotiation,” argues Ms Town.

Kim is also embracing a new friend – Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.

He has helped North Korea with food and fuel in return for weapons and soldiers for his war effort in Ukraine. Pyongyang is no longer as desperate for relief from US sanctions.

Rachel Minyoung Lee, who worked as a senior North Korean media analyst for the U.S. government told the BBC that Pyongyang has “primed” its people by informing them in state media about Donald Trump’s return.

But she believes the “bar for entering talks will now be higher than before.”

“Two things will have to happen,” she added. “North Korea is desperate enough to return to the negotiating table, for example due to a crumbling economy or a significant cooling off in its relations with Russia; or the United States makes an offer to North Korea that is drastically different from what it did in the past.”

Trump sparked speculation that he is willing to restart talks with Kim during a recent signing ceremony in the Oval Office, when he said: “I was very friendly with him. He liked me. I liked him. We got along very well.”

But the Trump administration should be realistic this time around, says Sydney Seiler who until last year was the national intelligence officer for North Korea on the U.S. National Intelligence Council.

“The arms control thing is a red herring. There is no arms control to be had with North Korea. We’ve tried arms control,” he said.

“Maybe North Korea will sit and talk, and maybe they’ll refrain from long range missile launches, and they’ll not conduct a seventh nuclear test, and the issue will be largely manageable. That’s the best-case scenario.

“The worst-case scenario is that even if you talk, they’ll continue to launch, they’ll continue to test. So, Donald Trump would have to consider: what is the value of engaging North Korea?”

Especially because they will both carry significant scars from their last meeting.

I watched the Winter Olympics in 2018 in South Korea’s chilly Pyeongchang with an unexpected guest – sitting below my balcony seat was Kim’s sister.

It was the first time a member of the Kim family had visited the South since the end of the Korean War, a visit that elicited a loud scream of surprise from my South Korean producer. Sitting near her on the stands was the U.S. Vice President Mike Pence.

From what I observed, they could barely look at each other. But still it was an extraordinary step for diplomacy, and one that would have been unimaginable a few months ago.

When Trump took office in January 2017, he had been warned about North Korea. The last three presidents had tried and failed to pressure the state to give up its nuclear weapons after several rounds of talks and sanctions.

After Donald Trump’s Inauguration, Kim fired a missile almost every month.

The president took to Twitter to air his wrath threatening to rain down ‘fire and fury’ on North Korea. He dubbed Kim as “Little Rocket Man”, in return Pyongyang nicknamed Trump “Dotard”.

Then came threats about pressing nuclear buttons, first from Pyongyang, then Washington.

Trump wrote on Twitter that he too had a nuclear button, “but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”

After a year of acrimonious exchanges and brinkmanship that had some in Seoul wondering if they should plan for war – everything changed.

The liberal South Korean president, Moon Jae-in had been hoping for an icebreaker with Pyongyang. He was born in a refugee camp after his parents fled the war in the North. He had even visited his aunt there in a rare family exchange between the two countries.

When Pyongyang opened the door a crack and asked – could North Korea take part in the Winter Olympics? Seoul, led by Moon, kicked it wide open.

Trump arrived in Singapore for his summit with Kim promising to make history.

The North Korean leader took a night-time stroll through glitzy downtown and took selfies as if he was on a night out with the boys. He’d barely travelled outside his own borders – but he was proving that he too knew how to put on a show.

But even after his much-photographed handshake with Trump, this now very personal form of diplomacy produced very little in the way of concrete promises for North Korea to disarm.

They both signed a vaguely worded statement to work towards denuclearisation and promised to meet again.

The stakes were higher for the second Trump and Kim show in Vietnam. Photo-ops would not be enough from a US president who bragged about his deal-making prowess.

We waited for hours in the humid streets of Hanoi outside the gates of the French colonial Metropole Hotel, where we were initially told the pair were having lunch.

But it turned out, lunch had been cancelled.

The BBC has spoken to three people who took part in the summit to piece together what went wrong. It seems both leaders may have overestimated the hand they had to play.

Trump offered to lift U.S. sanctions on North Korea if Kim gave up all his nuclear weapons, nuclear material and nuclear facilities.

The president had reportedly been warned that the North had turned this deal down in the past, but he felt his personal rapport with the North Korean leader would help him succeed.

It did not.

Kim gambled on Trump accepting a more modest deal. He too thought their personal relationship would allow him to prevail. He offered to dismantle his aging Yongbyon nuclear complex for an end to all US sanctions since 2016.

“Singapore had given Kim Jong Un some prestige and the belief that finally, the United States is coming to its senses and talking to me on my own terms,” says Mr Seiler.

“He came to the table expecting, because he had been coached, we know, quietly, by the South Koreans who were saying, Donald Trump is politically desperate, he is no longer listening to John Bolton, he is willing to agree to a deal that puts a small part of your nuclear program on the table in return for sanctions relief.”

But the president had also been briefed. He had been told that the North could still produce uranium at an enrichment centre near Pyongyang. The U.S. said it had been monitoring other sites the North thought they’d kept secret for some time.

“I think that they were surprised that we knew,” Trump later said.

The deal Kim offered was not nothing, but it was not good enough for the US president. “Kim Jong Un comes to the table and he had no plan B,” says Mr Seiler.

“So, when Donald Trump says we’ve got to do more than this, Kim Jong Un remains totally inflexible.”

The BBC understands from its sources that Kim tried to save the deal. He sent an aide to remind Washington what was on the table and that they would dismantle all of the Yongbyon plant.

But Trump was already heading to the airport.

“The story of Hanoi needs to be gotten right,” says Mr Seiler. “The common theme is Donald Trump walked out of the room. It was an all or nothing deal, and when Kim Jong Un wasn’t willing to put it all on the table, Donald Trump walked. That’s a very simplistic pedestrian assessment of what transpired at Hanoi.”

As Trump flew back to Washington, the North Koreans took the unprecedented step of holding a press conference. Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho told reporters that this opportunity may never come again.

It hasn’t as yet – and Kim may think twice about taking part in talks again.

“There definitely was an opportunity there,” says Jenny Town.

“Kim Jong Un had actually built-up domestic expectation in North Korea that they were on the verge of a breakthrough, and that it was going to bring benefits.”

“If we could have taken advantage of that moment, we could have been on a very different track. Were you going to get denuclearisation easily? Absolutely not. But would we be in a very different place in terms of tensions on the Korean Peninsula and how far North Korea has gone in its nuclear development, maybe. We’ll never know, obviously, but there was definitely a will there that doesn’t exist now.”

Donald Trump’s unorthodox diplomacy reduced tensions for a while, but it did not stop the expansion of Pyongyang’s weapons programme.

His 20 steps into North Korean territory may also have legitimised a regime with one of the worst human rights records on the planet.

But after three meetings and there appeared to be a connection between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un that offered some hope that one day there would be peace on the Korean Peninsula.

Less than a week into his presidency, Donald Trump has briefly engaged in his first international tariff dispute. And the target wasn’t China, Mexico or Canada – frequent subjects of his ire – it was Colombia, one of America’s closest allies in South America.

Colombia’s offence was refusing to allow two US flights carrying deported migrants to land because they were military, not civilian, transport planes. That was enough to prompt Trump to threaten to drop the hammer.

“We will not allow the Colombian government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the criminals they forced into the United States,” Trump posted on his social media site.

On top of the 25% tariffs he said he would impose, Trump said the US would introduce a travel ban and “immediate visa revocations” on Colombian government officials, as well as its allies and supporters.

But later, the White House said Colombia had now agreed to accept migrants arriving on US military aircraft “without limitation or delay”. As a result, the US will not go ahead with the tariffs.

• Colombia backs down on deportation flights

For his first week in office, the US president had seemed to be prioritising executive action on immigration over trade measures – even if the latter were a key campaign promise. As if to drive that point home, Trump now appears ready to punish nations that he views as not sufficiently supporting America’s new hard-line immigration polices.

He is serving a warning to US allies and adversaries alike: If you don’t co-operate with the US, the consequences will be severe.

Colombia has backed down from a tariff war, but the tactic poses a test for the new Trump administration.

If future sanctions lead to higher prices for US consumers, will the American public object? Will they be willing to tolerate some financial pain incurred to advance Trump’s immigration priorities?

The US imports about 27% of its coffee from Colombia, according to the US Department of Agriculture, as well as other goods like bananas, crude oil, avocados and flowers. The coffee imports alone are worth nearly $2bn (£1.6bn).

Colombian President Gustavo Petro had initially responded by saying his country would accept repatriated citizens on “civilian planes, without treating them like criminals”.

It’s no secret that Petro doesn’t like Donald Trump – he’s heavily criticised his policies on migration and the environment in the past.

In a lengthy response on X, he said Trump would “wipe out the human species because of greed” and accused the US president of considering Colombians an “inferior race”.

Petro went on to describe himself as “stubborn” and said that while Trump could try to “carry out a coup” with “economic strength and arrogance” he would, in short, fight back.

Most significantly, Petro said: “From today on, Colombia is open to the entire world, with open arms.”

• Six big immigrations changes under Trump – and their impact so far
• Surge of children crossing the Darien Gap jungle
• Millions more Colombians living in conflict zones

This is something that should worry a US president who wants to tackle migration. His incoming administration officials have made clear that that mission will require looking beyond the Mexico border.

Trump’s pick for deputy Secretary of State, Christopher Landau, has long argued that “working with other countries to stop such migratory flows” must be a “global imperative of US foreign policy”. Sunday’s spat might make working together a lot less likely.

Tens of thousands of migrants every year from around the world, from India to China, head north towards the US after landing in South America and travelling up through Colombia across the Darien Gap – a key choke point just north of the Panama-Colombia border. It’s a dangerous journey usually facilitated by criminal gangs.

In his response to Trump’s actions, President Petro noted that if talks over managing migration through Darien were suspended, “illegal activities will increase”. Those comments could be viewed as a veiled threat of more undocumented migrants on the way.

Petro was quick to say that his country would not refuse Colombian nationals deported from the US – only that they must receive “dignified treatment”.

Even after Colombia acted to defuse the row, it said a dialogue would be maintained to “guarantee the dignity of our citizens”.

But these kinds of tariffs are a test of will – and could still be applied to other nations that do not agree to the US’s demands. From the looks of it, this is just Trump’s opening move.

Israel says eight of the remaining 26 hostages due to be released by Hamas during the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal are dead.

Government spokesman David Mencer told reporters that Israel had received a list from the Palestinian armed group overnight that provided information on the status of the hostages.

“The list from Hamas matches Israel’s intelligence, so I can share with you that… eight have been killed by Hamas,” he said, without naming them. “The families have been informed of the situation of their relatives.”

Seven women have already been freed alive in exchange for more than 290 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails since the ceasefire began on 19 January.

On Sunday night, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced Hamas had agreed to release female civilian Arbel Yehud, female soldier Agam Berger and one other hostage on Thursday.

Three additional hostages would be released by the group on Saturday, he said.

The Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to an unprecedented cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.

More than 47,310 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Israel says 87 of the hostages remain in captivity, 34 of whom are presumed dead. In addition, there are three Israelis who were abducted before the war, one of whom is dead.

One of the hostages who Israel says should be released in the first phase is Or Levy, 34, who was attending the Nova music festival with his wife Eynav on 7 October 2023.

The couple, whose son Almog is now three years old, fled to a roadside bomb shelter after Hamas gunmen attacked. Eynav was killed inside the shelter while Or was kidnapped and taken back to Gaza.

Over the weekend in Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square, Or’s brother Michael told the BBC that waiting to hear about the statuses of the remaining 26 hostages was like being plunged into “a reality the devil himself invented and part of an evil reality show that Hamas is enjoying”.

He also said he had received no indication about when Or would be freed and there would be what he described as “an end date to this nightmare”.

Michael also said he feared that Hamas could yet delay his brother’s release.

“We cannot just be calm and hope for the best. We have to keep going. And until he’s here, I won’t believe it actually happened.”

On Saturday, following the release of four female Israeli soldiers in the second exchange of the ceasefire, the Israeli military’s spokesman said it was “extremely concerned” about the welfare of three hostages – Shiri Bibas, 33, and her two young sons, Kfir, two, and Ariel, five.

Hamas claimed in November 2023 that they had been killed in an Israeli air strike. However, the Israeli military has not confirmed their deaths and the Israeli government has insisted they are among the 33 hostages handed over in the first phase.

Negotiations for the second phase – which should see the remaining hostages released in exchange for more prisoners, a full Israeli troop withdrawal and “the restoration of sustainable calm” – are due to start on 4 February.

The third and final stage will involve the reconstruction of Gaza, which could take years, and the return of any remaining hostages’ bodies.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum is demanding that the Israeli government implement all three phases and ensure the return of every hostage.

“We are not whole without them all. Our nation needs everyone at home, together. Until the last hostage,” it said.

Meanwhile, the deputy chief of the Israeli military’s medical corps said some of seven newly released hostages had spent “the entire time in tunnels underground” in recent months.

“Some of them were alone through the entire time they were there,” Col Dr Avi Banov said, according to Reuters news agency. “Those who said they were together were in better shape.”

The hostages had said their treatment improved in the days leading up to their release, when they were allowed to shower, change their clothes and received better food, he added.

Authoritarian Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko has secured another victory in an election labelled by Western governments as a sham.

The Central Election Committee stated on Monday that Lukashenko won 86.8% of the vote and that turnout was almost 87%.

There were four other names on the ballot – carefully chosen to present no challenge to the current leadership – but no credible contenders were allowed to take part in the election, as all opposition figures are either in jail or in exile abroad.

No independent observers monitored the vote, either.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said the election had been a blatant affront to democracy, while German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock posted on X that “the people of Belarus had no choice”.

Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said President Vladimir Putin – who has ruled Russia since 2000 – congratulated his close ally Lukashenko for his “solid victory”.

Peskov said Moscow believed that the Belarusian election was an “absolutely legitimate, well organised, transparent election” and slammed “the voices that sound from the West”.

The leaders of China, Venezuela and Pakistan also offered their congratulations to Lukashenko.

Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya dismissed the election as “yet another political farce”.

She claimed victory in the 2020 election, in which she stood in placed of her jailed husband.

Lukashenko mistakenly believed Tikhanovskaya would pose no challenge to him – but after she appeared to have won massive support, she was driven out of the country.

No opposition now remains in Belarus, which has also shuttered all its independent media.

On Sunday evening, Lukashenko told the BBC’s Steve Rosenberg his opponents had “chosen” prison or exile.

“We never forced anyone out of the country,” he said, adding that he “couldn’t care less whether [the West] recognises our election”.

This will be Lukashenko’s seventh term in power. He has ruled Belarus since 1994.

The chairman and president of Fuji TV, one of Japan’s biggest networks, have resigned in the wake of a sexual misconduct allegation against a famous TV host.

Dozens of companies have pulled their advertisements from the network, which was criticised for trying to cover up the scandal.

Masahiro Nakai was accused of sexually assaulting a woman at a 2023 dinner party allegedly organised by Fuji TV staff. He announced his retirement from show business last week.

The Japanese government has called on Fuji TV to regain trust from viewers and sponsors.

In a press conference on Monday, Fuji TV chairman Shuji Kano and president Koichi Minato bowed as they announced their resignations. It came shortly after an emergency board meeting.

They apologised to viewers as well as stakeholders for the trouble and anxiety caused in a scandal that has rocked Japan’s entertainment industry.

“I feel deeply the weight of my responsibility for undermining trust in the media,” said Mr Minato. “Looking back, I realise there were shortcomings in our response.”

Mr Minato had admitted previously that the company had known about the allegation against Nakai shortly after the alleged incident took place. But Fuji TV chose not to disclose it at the time, as it “prioritised the woman’s physical and mental recovery as well as the protection of her privacy”, he had said.

Reports emerged last month that Nakai had paid the unnamed woman more than half a million dollars. More allegations then surfaced that a Fuji TV employee had helped to arrange the dinner party.

Nakai, a former member of boy band SMAP and a household name who fronted several Fuji TV shows, has denied using violence against the woman. He has also said that he had “resolved” the matter with her through a settlement.

But this did little to quell public anger.

Car manufacturers Nissan and Toyota were among the companies that pulled advertising from Fuji TV.

In an open letter, investment firm Rising Sun Management which is the majority shareholder of Fuji TV’s parent company, said that the scandal “exposes serious flaws in your corporate governance”.

Fuji TV has since set up an independent committee to investigate the scandal.

Executive vice president Kenji Shimizu, who will replace Mr Minato as president, said he would “never tolerate acts that violate human rights” and committed to preventing similar incidents by “starting from scratch”.

Earlier this month, the network suspended a weekly show hosted by Nakai while other major networks have also dropped the presenter.

Other TV networks have also announced their own investigations, following reports that similar dinner parties involving celebrities are a common practice in the industry.

Belgian footballer Radja Nainggolan has been arrested as part of an investigation into cocaine trafficking.

The 36-year-old was one of several suspects apprehended by Belgian police on Monday morning, after a series of raids were carried out across the country.

“The investigation concerns alleged facts of importation of cocaine from South America to Europe, via the port of Antwerp, and its redistribution in Belgium,” the Brussels prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

No further information has been released to the public.

The arrest comes just six days after Nainggolan came out of retirement to sign for Lokeren in the Belgian second division.

He scored on his debut, giving his side a point in their 1-1 home draw to K. Lierse.

Born in Antwerp, the midfielder spent most of his career in Italy, playing for both Roma and Inter Milan.

Between 2009 and 2018, he made 30 appearances for the Belgium national team.

The seven members of one of Scotland’s biggest child sex abuse rings have been given life-long sentences and warned that they may never be released.

Three victims under the age of 13 were subjected to horrific sexual abuse and violence in a Glasgow drug den dubbed “the beastie house” over a seven-year period.

Police said the children had suffered “unimaginable abuse”, with the offences including rape, attempted murder and assault.

Iain Owens, 46; Elaine Lannery, 40; Lesley Williams, 43; Paul Brannan, 42; Scott Forbes, 51; Barry Watson, 48, and John Clark, 49, were jailed for between eight and 20 years and handed orders for lifelong restriction (OLRs).

These orders are reserved for the most serious court cases in Scotland which do not involve murder, and mean the individual will either be in prison or on parole for the rest of their life.

Judge Lord Beckett told the gang, whose jail sentences totalled more than 93 years, that they may never be released from prison.

He said: “This court is used to hearing the worst examples of human behaviour but such depravity towards young children is beyond my experience.

“This is not typical behaviour and such extreme abuse of children seems to be rare.”

He praised the “formidable strength” of the children and their “courage and perseverance”, despite threats from Owens.

Lord Beckett added: “It is possible to imagine from their desperate darkness, their carers have brought some light to their young lives – a home, a structure and nurture over a number of years.”

The judge also highlighted the victim impact statements and said one child wrote with “agonising articulacy” about her ordeal and the suffering of the other children.

He added: “In stark contrast to what was inflicted on her, and its impact, an impression of innate humanity shines through her words.”

Two girls and a boy were violently and sexually assaulted on multiple occasions between 2012 and 2019.

The trial heard that the gang would hold “rape nights” and “dance and sex nights” in a squalid flat in Glasgow that was frequented by drug users.

A girl was raped by members of the gang while she was still young enough to wear a nappy.

She described the flat as the “dark and scary beastie house” because she had been locked in a cupboard with a box that was full of spiders.

The girl was also shut in an oven and a fridge and was forced to eat dog food.

An older boy and girl were also subjected to savage beatings and sexual violence.

Members of the gang also used Class A drugs in front of the children and caused them to consume alcohol and drugs.

The trial heard that the children first came into contact with social work in Glasgow in August 2017 and were deemed to be at risk in July 2018.

But the allegations of violence and sexual abuse did not come to light until March 2020.

Police were alerted by a man who had got to know the children. One of the victims became hysterical when she mistakenly thought she had been shut in a room.

The man and his wife then documented details of what the children recalled happening at the hands of the gang.

Jurors were also told Owens, Lannery, Williams, Watson, Clark and Forbes – who was known as Scott the Cameraman – all had previous convictions but none were for any type of sex crime.

The gang had denied the charges but were found guilty in November 2023 after a two-month trial at the High Court in Glasgow.

Owens, Lannery, Brannan and Williams were found guilty of attempted murder.

Charges related to causing the children to take part in seances and witchcraft were dropped during the trial.

Sentencing had been delayed until now because of delays in risk assessments which were ordered to help Lord Beckett decide whether to impose the lifelong restriction orders.

Owens was jailed for at least 20 years before he can apply for parole, Lannery for 17 years, Brannan for 15 years and Williams for 14 years.

Clark was sentenced to at least 10 years, Watson to nine years and six months, and Forbes to eight years.

Another woman, 40-year-old Marianne Gallagher, was convicted of one count of assault to injury but was cleared of all other charges.

Her sentencing was initially deferred for 12 months for good behaviour and returned to court on 6 January this year.

She was spared further punishment and admonished by Lord Beckett after he heard Gallagher had not offended over the last year.

After the sentencing, Det Insp Lesley-Ann McGee said it had been “a long, complex and challenging investigation” and that she hoped the outcome could help the young victims move forward.

She also urged anyone who has been affected by abuse to contact Police Scotland, no matter how much time had passed.

Colin Anderson, independent chair of Glasgow’s child protection committee, said the case would now be the subject of a case learning review.

He said this would be led by an independent expert and feature input from agencies, individuals and families.

Mary Glasgow, chief executive at Children First, said no sentence would reflect the “extreme cruelty and horrifying abuse” that the children experienced.

She added: “The depths of their suffering will be unimaginable to most people in Scotland, but none of us should turn away from it.

“This is one of the most extreme cases of abuse ever seen in a Scottish court, but every day children and young people in Scotland are experiencing violence and abuse.”

Leading KC Tommy Ross said orders for lifelong restriction (OLRs) are reserved for the most serious court cases which do not involve murder.

Before an order is imposed the subject must undergo an extensive risk assessment process, conducted by psychologists, which typically takes about 12 weeks.

A judge then sets a minimum prison term – known as the punishment part – that the offender must serve before they are eligible to apply for parole.

And, if granted parole, they are subject to recall back to prison in the event that they commit any new offences or breach the terms of their release.

Mr Ross told BBC Scotland News: “Essentially when you get an order for lifelong restriction you will either be in prison or parole for the rest of your natural life.”

In 2023/24 a total of 18 OLRs were imposed in courts across Scotland

The final missing monkey of a group that escaped from a South Carolina research facility has been captured and returned, according to local police.

More than three dozen monkeys escaped from the primate research facility last November after a keeper left their pen open.

The Yemassee Police Department confirmed in a social media post that all monkeys have now been returned.

Greg Westergaard, CEO of Alpha Genesis, which runs the facility, told local media that the final monkey was returned “safe and sound”.

During their escape, the 43 monkeys, all young females of the rhesus macaque species, stayed close to the research facility.

Soon after they got out in November the monkeys “appeared to be in good health, dancing and running about in the trees”, according to the Yemassee Police Department, which has been providing regular updates.

“All monkeys recovered previously continue to be in excellent health, still feasting on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, as well as monkey biscuits,” CEO Westergaard said in an update that the police posted in November.

They were on the loose in a part of the state known as the Lowcountry.

Alpha Genesis breeds primates for medical testing and research and, according to South Carolina newspaper The Post and Courier, animals have broken out of the facility two other times in the last decade.

In 2016, 19 monkeys escaped before being returned about six hours later. Two years earlier, 26 primates escaped.

The town of Yemassee, 60 miles (100km) east of Charleston, has a population of fewer than 1,100 residents.

The Animal Welfare Institute requested the US Department of Agriculture investigate the research facility following the latest escape.

A nationwide immigration crackdown on Sunday resulted in the arrest of 956 people, the most since Donald Trump returned to power, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

A number of federal agencies with newly expanded detention powers were involved in the raids in a number of cities including Chicago, Newark and Miami.

Trump came to power after making mass deportations of undocumented immigrants a central campaign promise.

His predecessor Joe Biden carried out an average of 311 immigration deportations daily, according to ICE, mostly individuals who had committed crimes.

Since taking office, Trump has carried out 21 executive actions to overhaul the US immigration system.

• Six big immigration changes under Trump – and their impact so far

Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, was in Chicago to oversee the operation there but his federal crackdown has made Democratic leaders unhappy.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson acknowledged the ICE enforcement activity, saying Chicago police were not involved and reminding residents to know their rights.

In Miami on Sunday, federal law enforcement agencies conducted several “immigration enforcement actions,” the city’s Homeland Security Investigation said on social media.

This included ICE’s local office Miami detaining undocumented migrants on various offences.

An unnamed man told CBS News, the BBC’s US news partner, that ICE took his wife during on the Miami raids this weekend.

“It’s despicable what they’re doing right now,” he told CBS. “It’s very embarrassing.”

• 1,500 active-duty troops headed to US-Mexico border
• Colombia backs down on deportation flights after Trump tariffs threat

He said his wife was in the process of getting citizenship when ICE arrived: “They just came and they snatched her.”

Last week, Newark Mayor Ras Barka said undocumented residents and citizens – including one military veteran – were detained without a warrant during an ICE raid of a local business.

“Newark will not stand by idly while people are being unlawfully terrorised,” Baraka said.

Immigration advocates have warned that during ICE raids other people, including citizens, could get caught in the cross-fire.

Meanwhile, Homan has repeatedly said that undocumented people caught up in raids of criminals who are without documentation, will be deported too.

On Sunday, in an interview with ABC News, Homan said he expected arrest and deportation numbers to “steadily increase,” and said the focus right now was “public safety threats, national security threats”.

The 956 reported arrests on Sunday follow 286 arrests on Saturday, 593 arrests on Friday and 538 arrests on Thursday.

During Joe Biden’s four years in office he carried out 1.5 million deportations, according to figures by the Migration Policy Institute. Those numbers mirror the deportation numbers in Trump’s first term.

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• WATCH: Trump’s first week in three minutes

A looming trade war between the US and Colombia appears to have been averted after the Colombian government agreed to allow US military flights carrying deported migrants to land in the Andean country.

The spat erupted on Sunday when President Gustavo Petro barred two military planes carrying Colombians deported from the US from landing.

The Trump administration responded by threatening to slap punitive tariffs on Colombian exports to the US.

President Petro at first said Colombia would retaliate by imposing tariffs on US goods, but the White House later announced that Colombia had agreed to accept migrants – including those arriving on US military aircraft – “without limitation or delay”.

The White House hailed the agreement with Colombia as a victory for Trump’s hard-line approach, after the countries’ two leaders had exchanged threats on social media on Sunday.

“Today’s events make clear to the world that America is respected again,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote in a statement.

She added that the tariffs and sanctions which the Trump administration had threatened to impose on Colombia, should it not comply, would be “held in reserve, and not signed, unless Colombia fails to honour this agreement”.

She also said that President Donald Trump “expects all other nations of the world to fully co-operate in accepting deportation of their citizens illegally present in the United States”.

• Trump’s threat to Colombia sends a message
• Follow live: Nearly 1,000 arrests in a day as Trump’s promise of mass deportations ramps up
• What the president has done since taking power

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

The row between Colombia’s left-wing president and Trump escalated rapidly on Sunday.

Petro, a keen user of social media, posted on X that he had “barred US planes carrying Colombian migrants from entering our territory” because “the US can’t treat Colombian migrants like criminals”.

He demanded that the US put procedures in place for migrants to be “treated with dignity”.

He also said he was ready to send the presidential plane to the US to transport the migrants.

Colombia has accepted deportation flights from the US in the past. In 2024, 124 planes carrying deported migrants from the US landed in the country.

But President Petro appeared to object to the return of deportees on military rather than civilian flights – and to the way the migrants may be treated on those military flights.

In his posts on X, Petro referenced a news video showing migrants deported from the US to Brazil, who had been handcuffed and had their feet restrained during the deportation flight.

He said that he would “never allow Colombians to be returned handcuffed on flights”.

Petro’s refusal to let two US military planes carrying Colombian deportees to land triggered a quick response by Trump on Truth Social.

“I was just informed that two repatriation flights from the United States, with a large number of Illegal Criminals, were not allowed to land in Colombia. This order was given by Colombia’s Socialist President Gustavo Petro, who is already very unpopular amongst his people,” he wrote.

Trump argued that Petro’s denial of these flights had jeopardised the national security and public safety of the US.

He said he had directed his administration to “immediately” impose 25% tariffs on all Colombian goods coming into the US, which he said would be raised to 50% if Colombia did not comply within a week.

He also said he had imposed a travel ban and revoked the visas of Colombian government officials “and all allies and supporters”.

In his post, he warned that “these measures are just the beginning”.

Petro responded on X with a long, rambling but ultimately defiant post in which he said he would match any US-imposed tariffs.

“Your blockade does not scare me, because Colombia, besides being the country of beauty, is the heart of the world,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, members of Petro’s administration worked behind the scenes to defuse the row.

In a late-night news conference, Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo announced that the two countries had “overcome the impasse” and that Colombia would accept returned citizens.

While Murillo did not directly refer to the White House statement, according to which Colombia had agreed to allow US military flights to take the deportees back, he did not deny it either.

The foreign minister reiterated Colombia’s offer to send its presidential plane to the US to transport the deportees.

While the Colombian concession seems to have averted the looming trade war, the US has said that visa restrictions on Colombian government officials would stay in place until the first planeload of deportees landed in Colombia.

Colombians arriving at US airports will also undergo greater scrutiny under the measures imposed on Sunday, the Trump administration said.

Colombia’s foreign minister said he would travel to Washington “in the coming days” for high-level meetings with administration officials.

The row marks a low point in relations between the two countries, which historically have been allies and co-operated closely in the fight against drug trafficking, with the US providing billions of dollars in military aid and training to Colombia’s security forces.

Punitive tariffs such as those threatened by Trump and Petro would have hurt both Colombian producers and US consumers.

Trade between the two countries was worth $53.5bn (£42.8bn) in 2022, according to the US Office of the US Trade Representative.

Colombia’s main exports to the US are oil, coffee and cut flowers.

Democrat Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez urged Americans to “remember: we pay the tariffs, not Colombia”.

“Trump is about to make every American pay even more for coffee,” she wrote before the tariffs had been suspended.

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second presidential term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.