Arriving at Nato headquarters early on Thursday, Europe’s defence ministers had one common message – that there could be no negotiations about Ukraine without Ukraine and Europe at the table too.

The question is to what extent the US is listening.

After a frenetic 24 hours of US declarations, there is a tangible sense that Europe’s leaders have been caught by surprise; that they now fear being bypassed on any potential Ukraine deal and being deprived of a voice on the future of European security.

Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock spoke of Donald Trump’s call with Vladimir Putin as being “very much out of the blue”, even if the US president had made it clear for months that he was aiming to bring a quick end to the war.

“There can be no negotiation about Ukraine without Ukraine,” said the UK’s John Healey.

“The same is true for Europe,” warned Dutch Defence Secretary Ruben Brekelmans.

“Because of course what is negotiated also has implications for Europe, so we think Europe should also sit at the table.”

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk rammed home the message on X when he posted: “All we need is peace. A just peace. Ukraine, Europe and the United States should work on this together. Together.”

The US is clearly engaging with its Nato allies and Ukraine. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth is spending two days at Nato HQ and Vice-President JD Vance will see Volodymyr Zelensky at the Munich Security Conference.

But Europe’s problem, and specifically the EU’s problem, is that it struggles to speak with one voice and present a united vision.

Ursula von der Leyen, the EU’s most recognisable figurehead, met Hegseth this week but has been barely visible since.

Europe’s leaders have had plenty of time to prepare for Trump’s peace plan. Now they’re left wondering whether the US is listening to them, or even reading their communiques.

The UK joined Poland, France, Germany, Italy and Spain late on Wednesday in agreeing that the security of the European continent was “our common responsibility” and that a just and lasting peace in Ukraine was necessary for transatlantic security too.

Baerbock told German radio that obviously Europe could not replace the US in military support for Ukraine, but a strong Europe was in US interest and it had to be made clear that “the USA needs us too”.

Europe could have claimed more agency instead of waiting for Trump’s initiative, Tyyne Karjalainen, of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, said.

“These statements we’re seeing now…I’m afraid they’re a symbol of weakness not strength,” she added.

So far, there is no obvious space for Europe in Trump’s peace push, and arguably not enough for Kyiv. Until now there had been a general acceptance that there should be no talking to Vladimir Putin without Ukraine.

Trump is planning face-to-face talks with the Russian leader, apparently in Saudi Arabia, but the two men have already prepared the ground with a lengthy phone-call.

The US president’s follow-up chat with Volodymyr Zelensky was far shorter.

Zelensky spoke initially of his belief that “America’s strength is sufficient to pressure Russia and Putin into peace”.

But on a trip to the southern city of Kherson on Thursday he made clear that, as an independent state, Ukraine would not accept either bilateral negotiations or “any agreements reached without us”.

“Putin hopes that by holding talks only with Trump, he will be able to negotiate more favourable terms,” Aleksandra Kozioł, from the Polish Institute of International Affairs, said.

“In doing so, he will also present himself as a leader who talks to another superpower on an equal footing.”

The worry for European leaders is that the US may have already moved some way towards meeting Russia’s war aims – and that it might go further.

Ukraine’s consistent demand has been for a complete withdrawal of Russian troops from its sovereign territory and for Ukrainian control over its state borders.

Judging by remarks from Trump and Hegseth, the US already considers Russia’s 2014 capture of Crimea and eastern areas in the Donbas as a and that Ukraine won’t be joining Nato.

Trump added that Ukraine needed fresh elections “at some point”, repeating a Putin fallacy that Zelensky was no longer a legitimate leader, even though Ukraine is under martial law precisely because of Russia’s war.

Hegseth was adamant there had been no betrayal of Kyiv, but German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said it was “regrettable…that the Trump administration has already made public concessions to Putin before negotiations have even begun”.

“It would have been better to talk about Ukraine’s possible Nato membership or the country’s possible loss of territory only at the negotiating table and not to take it off the table beforehand,” he said.

Along with the evident alarm that Putin may already have the upper hand, there was a clear warning from Nato and the EU on Thursday that any agreement had to last.

Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte said it was crucial that any deal should not unravel as had been allowed to happen with Russia in the past.

“It is always important to bear in mind that Russia is the aggressor here and it cannot be rewarded for its aggression,” warned EU Commission spokeswoman Anitta Hipper.

“When it comes to any discussions, any peace deals, it needs to be sustainable. A bad deal will only lead to more war. Just as it did before.”

European governments are already expecting to foot the bill to help rebuild Ukrainian cities, but President Trump may ask for European boots on the ground as well, to provide security guarantees.

Not only do Europeans have a strong argument to be involved in the overall plan, but Poland, the Baltic states and the Nordic countries would be especially wary of an emboldened Russia if it fell apart.

Hegseth stressed on Thursday that standing up against Russia’s “war machine” was an “important European responsibility”, and he reinforced Trump’s demand for 5% of economic output (GDP) to be spent on defence.

Few European governments have managed anything like that, while Russia’s government is already spending almost a third of its annual budget on defence.

Poland aims to spend 4.7% of its GDP on defence this year and Latvia 3.45%, but Germany has only just hit 2% and Spain and Portugal are hoping to reach 2% in 2029.

Luxembourg’s Defence Minister Yuriko Backes acknowledged the US demand but said numbers should not be set arbitrarily.

“What we should be focusing on is our plans and our ambitions that determine our investments not the other way around,” she said.

The Indian government has brought the troubled north-eastern state of Manipur under direct federal rule days after Chief Minister N Biren Singh resigned.

Singh, from India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), quit on Sunday after facing months of pressure to step down.

Ethnic clashes broke out between the state’s majority Meitei and minority Kuki communities in May 2023 over economic benefits, land rights and job quotas.

More than 250 people have been killed in the conflict and tens of thousands displaced.

The state hit the global headlines in July 2023 when a video showing two women being paraded naked by a mob went viral, sparking outrage in India.

While the scale of unrest has reduced since the peak in 2023, divisions between the communities persist and violent incidents continue to occur.

Singh’s position had become increasingly untenable in recent months with Kuki groups accusing him of favouring the Meitei community, of which he is a member – an accusation he denied.

Media reports said there was also rising discontent against him within the BJP.

BJP leaders tried but failed to agree on someone to replace him as chief minister.

On Thursday evening, the office of President Droupadi Murmu announced that federal rule – known as President’s rule in India – had been imposed in the state.

“After receiving a report from the governor and after considering the report and other information received by me, I am satisfied that a situation has arisen in which the government of that state cannot be carried on in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution of India,” the statement said.

Manipur’s last assembly session was held in August and Monday was set to be the first day of the new session, but federally-appointed governor Ajay Bhalla released a statement declaring the session “null and void”.

Earlier, opposition Congress party members had said they would bring a no-confidence motion against the chief minister during the session.

Congress leader Jairam Ramesh told the ANI news agency that Singh resigned as he sensed the motion would be passed. Ramesh called for federal Home Minister Amit Shah to resign.

Opposition leaders have also criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has not visited the state since the violence began.

Meanwhile India’s Supreme Court is hearing a plea against Singh filed by a Kuki organisation which accuses him of playing a direct role in fuelling the violence. The petitioners have submitted leaked audio tapes to back up their claims.

The court has sought a forensic report on the tapes before the next hearing. Singh has denied any wrongdoing.

The conflict involves the state’s two largest ethnic groups, the majority Meitei and minority Kuki, and their battle over land and influence.

Tensions boiled over in May 2023 when Kukis began protesting against demands from the Meiteis to be given official tribal status. The Kukis argued this would strengthen the Meiteis’ already strong influence on government and society, allowing them to buy land or settle in predominantly Kuki areas.

But there are myriad underlying reasons. The Kukis say a war on drugs waged by the Meitei-led government is a screen to uproot their communities.

Since the violence, Manipur has been divided into two camps, with Meiteis inhabiting the Imphal Valley and the Kukis living in the surrounding hill areas. Borders and buffer zones guarded by security forces and community members separate the two regions.

Efforts to hold peace talks between the communities by federal and state officials have so far failed to end the conflict.

Hamas has said it is committed to implementing the Gaza ceasefire deal with Israel and will continue releasing hostages as scheduled, raising hopes that a resumption of the war can be averted.

Following talks in Cairo, the Palestinian armed group said mediators from Egypt and Qatar had confirmed they would “remove obstacles”.

There was no response from Israel. But Egyptian and Qatari reports also said mediators had bridged the gaps between the two sides and both were committed to continue implementation.

On Tuesday, Israel said the ceasefire would end if Hamas did not return hostages by Saturday. Hamas had earlier said it was postponing releases over what it claimed were Israeli violations.

Hamas said these included a failure to allow in the agreed amounts of vital humanitarian aid, including tents and shelters, which Israel denied.

The group’s threat to derail the deal prompted US President Donald Trump to propose Israel cancel the agreement altogether and “let hell break out” unless “all of the hostages” were returned by Saturday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he welcomed Trump’s demand and warned: “If Hamas does not return our hostages by Saturday noon [10:00 GMT], the ceasefire will end and the [Israeli military] will resume intense fighting until the final defeat of Hamas.”

However, there were conflicting messages from Israeli officials about whether he was demanding the release of all 76 hostages still in Gaza – in line with Trump’s ultimatum – or just the three due to be freed this weekend.

On Wednesday, an Egyptian security source told the BBC that Egypt and Qatar were “intensifying their diplomatic efforts in an attempt to salvage the ceasefire agreement”, as Hamas’s leader for Gaza, Khalil al-Hayya, arrived in Cairo to hold talks with Egypt’s intelligence chief and other officials.

On Thursday, Hamas put out a statement saying they focused on the need for all terms of the deal to be fulfilled, particularly regarding deliveries of caravans, tents, heavy construction equipment, medical supplies and fuel.

It added that the talks were “positive” and that the mediators had agreed to work to “remove obstacles and close gaps”.

“Accordingly, Hamas reaffirms its commitment to implementing the agreement as signed, including the exchange of prisoners according to the specified timeline.”

At the same time, Egyptian state-run Al Qahera TV reported that Egypt and Qatar had successfully “overcome obstacles” and that Israel and Hamas were committed to fully implementing the ceasefire deal.

Qatar-based Al Jazeera TV also said the negotiations had been successful and that mobile homes and heavy machinery would be allowed into Gaza on Thursday.

However, Israeli media then cited the Israeli prime minister’s office as calling the Al Jazeera report “fake news” and saying there was “no basis” to it.

An Israeli government spokesman later clarified the denial, writing on X: “There is no entry of caravans or heavy equipment into the Gaza Strip, and there is no co-ordination for this.”

The first phase of the ceasefire deal is supposed to last six weeks and see a total of 33 Israeli hostages exchanged for about 1,900 Palestinian prisoners and detainees from Gaza.

So far, 16 living Israeli hostages have been freed since the ceasefire took effect on 19 January. Hamas has also handed over five Thai hostages outside the terms of the deal.

The 17 other Israeli hostages due to be released during the first phase are two children, one woman, five men over the age of 50, and nine men under 50. They are supposed to be handed over in the next three weeks. Both sides have said eight of these hostages are dead, but only one has been named.

Negotiations for the ceasefire’s second phase – which should see the 43 remaining hostages released, a full Israeli withdrawal and a permanent ceasefire – have not yet begun.

The deal has also seen Israeli forces withdraw from densely populated areas of Gaza, hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians return to their homes in the north, and hundreds of aid lorries allowed into the territory each day.

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 48,230 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Most of Gaza’s population has also been displaced multiple times, almost 70% of buildings are estimated to be damaged or destroyed, the healthcare, water, sanitation and hygiene systems have collapsed, and there are shortages of food, fuel, medicine and shelter.

Before she goes to bed each night, Holly Wang logs on to DeepSeek for “therapy sessions”.

Ever since January, when the breakout Chinese AI app launched, the 28-year-old has brought her dilemmas and sorrows, including the recent death of her grandmother, to the chatbot. Its responses have resonated so deeply they have at times brought her to tears.

“DeepSeek has been such an amazing counsellor. It has helped me look at things from different perspectives and does a better job than the paid counselling services I have tried,” says Holly, who asked for her real name to be withheld to protect her privacy.

From writing reports and Excel formulas to planning trips, workouts and learning new skills, AI apps have found their way into many people’s lives across the world.

In China, though, young people like Holly have been looking to AI for something not typically expected of computing and algorithms – emotional support.

While the success of DeepSeek has inspired national pride, it also appears to have become a source of comfort for young Chinese like Holly, some of whom are increasingly disillusioned about their future.

Experts say the sluggish economy, high unemployment and Covid lockdowns have all played a role in this sentiment, while the Communist Party’s tightening grip has also shrunk outlets for people to vent their frustrations.

DeepSeek is a generative AI tool – similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini – trained on massive amounts of information to recognise patterns. This allows it to predict things like people’s shopping habits, create new content in text and images, and also carry on conversations like a person.

The chatbot has struck a chord in China partly because it is far better than other homegrown AI apps, but also because it offers something unique: its AI model, R1, lets users see its “thought process” before delivering a response.

The first time she used DeepSeek, Holly asked it to write a tribute to her late grandmother.

The app took all of five seconds to come up with a response, and it was so beautifully composed, it stunned her.

Holly, who lives in Guangzhou, responded: “You write so well, it makes me feel lost. I feel I’m in an existential crisis.”

DeepSeek then sent a cryptically poetic reply: “Remember that all these words that make you shiver merely echo those that have long existed in your soul.

“I am but the occasional valley you’ve passed through, that allows you to hear the weight of your own voice.”

Reflecting on this exchange on Chinese social media app RedNote, Holly tells the BBC: “I don’t know why I teared up reading this. Perhaps because it’s been a long, long time since I received such comfort in real life.

“I have been so weighed down by distant dreams and the endlessness of work that I have long forgotten my own voice and soul. Thank you, AI.”

Rival apps from the West like ChatGPT and Gemini are blocked in China as part of broader restrictions on foreign media and apps. To access them, users in China have to pay for Virtual Private Network (VPN) services.

Homegrown alternatives, including models developed by tech giants Alibaba, Baidu and ByteDance paled in comparison – that is, until DeepSeek came along.

Holly, who works in the creative industry, rarely uses the other Chinese AI apps, “as they are not that great”.

“DeepSeek can definitely outperform these apps in generating literary and creative content,” she says.

Nan Jia, who co-authored a paper on AI’s potential in offering emotional support, suggests that these chatbots can “help people feel heard” in ways fellow humans may not.

“Friends and family may be quick to offer practical solutions or advice when people just want to feel heard and understood.

“AI appears to be better able to empathise than human experts also because they ‘hear’ everything we share, unlike humans to whom we sometimes ask, ‘Are you actually hearing me?'” adds Nan, who is a business and management professor at the University of Southern California.

The demand for mental health services has grown across the world but they remain stigmatised in parts of Asia, experts say.

Another woman tells the BBC her experience using other Chinese AI apps “ended in disappointment” but that she has been “amazed” by DeepSeek.

The woman, who lives in Hubei province, had asked the app if she was oversharing her experiences and emotions with family and friends.

“It was my first time seeking counsel from DeepSeek. When I read its thought process, I felt so moved that I cried,” the woman wrote on RedNote.

In reasoning through her query, DeepSeek suggested that the woman’s self-perception as an over-sharer might stem from a deep desire for approval.

The chatbot gives itself a mental note: “Response should offer practical advice while being empathetic.” This could include “affirming the user’s sense of self-awareness”.

Its eventual response not only provided this affirmation, but also offered her a comprehensive step-by-step framework to help her decide if things needed to be changed.

“DeepSeek has introduced new perspectives that have freed me… I feel it really tries to understand your question and get to know you as a person, before offering a response,” she says.

John, a human resources manager in Shenzhen, told the BBC he appreciated the app’s ability to converse “like a friend or a deep thinker”.

“I’ve found its responses very helpful and inspiring. For the first time I see AI as my personal sounding board.”

Other users claim that Deepseek is able to tell their fortunes – based on some background information fed to it.

Many young Chinese have recently turned to psychics and astrology as a way of trying to allay their fears of the future.

There is a “significant shortage” of professional psychological counselling services in China, and those available are often “prohibitively expensive” for most individuals, says Fang Kecheng, a communications professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

A number of studies have pointed out that depression and anxiety disorders are growing among Chinese people, and Prof Fang believes the country’s economic slowdown, high unemployment and Covid lockdowns have played a role.

AI chatbots therefore help to fill the void, he says.

Prof Nan stressed, however, that people with serious mental health conditions should not rely on these apps.

“Those who have medical needs, in particular, should be seeking help from trained professionals… Their use of AI will have to be scrutinised very closely,” she says.

But amid all the praise, Deepseek has also raised concerns.

Due to the perception of power that China’s government wields even over private companies, there are fears – similar to that which sparked the US Congress’ crackdown on TikTok – that the Communist Party could lay its hands on the data of foreign users.

At least four jurisdictions have now introduced restrictions on DeepSeek, or are considering doing so. South Korea has blocked access to it for military purposes, while Taiwan and Australia have banned it from all government devices.

Italy’s regulator, which briefly banned ChatGPT in 2023, has done the same with DeepSeek, which has been asked to address concerns over its privacy policy.

In the US, two lawmakers are asking for the Chinese app to be banned from government devices.

And then there is the tightly controlled online space in which it must operate in China.

It is common for social media companies in the country to remove content that is perceived to be threatening to “social stability” or overly critical of the Communist Party.

As is the case with other popular apps and social media companies like Weibo or WeChat, politically sensitive topics are banned on DeepSeek.

When the BBC asked DeepSeek if Taiwan was a sovereign nation, the app initially offered a comprehensive response detailing Taipei’s and Beijing’s different perspectives, acknowledging that this was a “complex and politically sensitive issue”.

Then it scrubbed all that, declaring: “Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else.”

When asked about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre when pro-democracy protests were crushed and 200 civilians killed by the military, according to the Chinese government – other estimates range from hundreds to many thousands – DeepSeek again apologised, saying the topic was “beyond [its] current scope”.

Several of the DeepSeek users the BBC was initially in touch with stopped responding when asked if the app’s self-censorship was a cause for concern – an indication of how sensitive such discussions can be in China.

People have got into trouble with authorities in China because of their online activities.

But most of those who responded to the BBC said they had no interest in asking the chatbot difficult political questions.

“I don’t really care about political topics… Neither will I ask these questions because my [identifying details] are linked to the app,” says Yang, a Chinese tech consultant living in London.

Holly is accepting of how AI systems in different countries may have to operate differently.

“The developers will have to establish certain boundaries and content moderation policies according to where they are based. Those developed in the US will have their own sets of rules,” she says.

Another DeepSeek user writes of the app: “Its thought process is beautiful… It is an absolute blessing to people like me. Frankly, I can’t care less about the privacy concerns.”

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More than 250 people from 20 nationalities who had been working in telecom fraud centres in Myanmar’s Karen State have been released by an ethnic armed group and brought to Thailand.

The workers, more than half of whom were from African or Asian nations, were received by the Thai army, and are being assessed to find out if they were victims of human trafficking.

Last week Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra met Chinese leader Xi Jinping and promised to shut down the scam centres which have proliferated along the Thai-Myanmar border.

Her government has stopped access to power and fuel from the Thai side of the border, and toughened up banking and visa rules to try to prevent scam operators from using Thailand as a transit country for moving workers and cash.

Some opposition MPs in Thailand have been pushing for this kind of action for the past two years.

Foreign workers are typically lured to these scam centres by offers of good salaries, or in some cases tricked into thinking they will be doing different work in Thailand, not Myanmar.

The scammers look for workers with skills in the languages of those who are targeted for cyber-fraud, usually English and Chinese.

They are pressed into conducting online criminal activity, ranging from love scams known as “pig butchering” and crypto fraud, to money laundering and illegal gambling.

Some are willing to do the work, but others are forced to stay, with release only possible if their families pay large ransoms. Some of those who have escaped have described being tortured.

The released foreign workers were handed over by the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army, DKBA, one of several armed factions which control territory inside Karen State.

These armed groups have been accused of allowing the scam compounds to operate under their protection, and of tolerating the widespread abuse of trafficking victims who are forced to work in the compounds.

The Myanmar government has been unable to extend its control over much of Karen State since independence in 1948.

On Tuesday, Thailand’s Department of Special Investigation, which is similar to the US FBI, requested arrest warrants for three commanders of another armed group known as the Karen National Army.

The warrants included Saw Chit Thu, the Karen warlord who struck a deal in 2017 with a Chinese company to build Shwe Kokko, a new city believed to be largely funded by scams.

The BBC visited Shwe Kokko at the invitation of Yatai, the company which built the city.

Yatai says there are no more scams in Shwe Kokko. It has put up huge billboards all over town proclaiming, in Chinese, Burmese and English, that forced labour is not allowed, and that “online businesses” should leave.

But we were told by local people that the scam business was still running, and interviewed a worker who had been employed in one.

Like the DKBA, Saw Chit Thu broke away from the main Karen insurgent group, the KNU, in 1994, and allied himself to the Myanmar military.

Under pressure from Thailand and China, both Saw Chit Thu and the DKBA have said they are expelling the scam businesses from their territories.

The DKBA commander contacted a Thai member of parliament on Tuesday to arrange the handover of the 260 workers.

They included 221 men and 39 women, from Ethiopia, Kenya, the Philippines, Malaysia, Pakistan, China, Indonesia, Taiwan, Nepal, Uganda, Laos, Burundi, Brazil, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Tanzania, Sir Lanka, India, Ghana and Cambodia.

Google Maps has blocked reviews for the Gulf of Mexico, after criticism of its decision to label it “Gulf of America” for users in the US.

The tech giant updated the name of the location on Wednesday after President Donald Trump ordered it to be changed in official government documents.

Clicking on the label for the Gulf in Google Maps now brings up a note saying “posting is currently turned off”.

Google also appears to have deleted some negative reviews left in the wake of its name change.

The company has defended its decision, saying in a statement it “regularly puts protections on places during times when we anticipate an uptick of contributions that are off-topic or unrelated to someone’s direct experience with the place.”

It also highlighted a 2023 blog post about how it tackles “policy-violating content”, such as fake reviews, and the when it disables contributions or removes content to prevent abuse of its tools.

Users on social media claim hundreds of one star reviews have been removed, and have accused Google of “censorship.”

The most recent review left for the location result on Google Maps now appears to be from a month ago.

So-called “review-bombing” has become a popular form of online protest against companies or businesses that appear in Google Search or Maps results.

In December, Google removed derogatory reviews of a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania where Luigi Mangione – the 26-year-old since charged with the murder of United Healthcare boss Brian Thompson – had been arrested.

The tactic has also been deployed to manipulate an app’s ratings on mobile marketplaces.

In 2020, people used it to criticise President Trump’s then-proposal to ban TikTok – reportedly leaving hundreds of critical reviews on his re-election campaign app on Apple’s App Store.

It was also used by GameStop traders to hit back at stock-trading apps such as Robinhood that introduced trading restrictions amid the 2021 market upset.

Forbes reported on Thursday that the company had “tacitly admitted” to removing reviews criticising the Gulf location’s renaming on Maps.

The BBC has asked Google to confirm whether it has deleted them.

It comes after Google said in a blog post on Monday that US users would see “Gulf of America” replace Gulf of Mexico on Maps.

It said this followed a “longstanding policy” of reflecting name changes updated in official US government sources.

The name would remain unchanged in Mexico and the rest of the world would see “Gulf of America” added next to its current name in brackets, Google added.

Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum wrote a letter to the company asking them not to rename the Gulf in a letter in late January.

Meanwhile, Apple has also changed the name for US users of its own Maps app.

The White House highlighted it in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday – with an image of Apple Maps displaying “Gulf of America” instead of Gulf of Mexico.

Big tech firms and their chief executives have been accused of trying to “curry favour” with the Trump administration through controversial policy changes.

Meta announced it would ditch US fact-checkers and some global content policies in January, and later joined a slew of firms including Google and Amazon in scaling back diversity recruitment goals.

Seated around a breakfast table in Erie, Pennsylvania, four veterans in their mid-80s – John, Jack, Bob and Don – gather to reminisce about their decades of friendship.

But it is another Don, this one in his late 70s, who keeps creeping into their conversation: President Donald Trump.

Of the four, only Bob voted for Trump. But after seeing Elon Musk standing next to the Republican president in the Oval Office this week, defending his efforts to slash the size and spending of the federal government, he is already doubting his decision.

“I’m afraid of him,” Bob says of Musk. “I think he’s trying to be president.”

Erie County was one of the key battlegrounds that helped swing the 2024 presidential election in Trump’s favour. The Republican won 50.1% of the vote here just four years after his Democratic rival Joe Biden narrowly took the county.

And part of Trump’s winning platform was a clear promise to overhaul and upend the federal government, pledging on the campaign trail to deliver “trillions” in cuts if elected. Polls indicated that was popular with Republican voters, and that remains the case now.

What was less clear to voters before the election was just how much of a frontline role Musk would play in this administration. The 53-year-old owner of Tesla, SpaceX and X now leads the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) which is dedicated to shrinking government and is routinely pictured alongside the president.

Members of his team have entered various departments to monitor spending and offered millions of workers an exit route. They have moved to freeze federal funding as well as the work of agencies such as the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in a blizzard of activity in recent weeks.

• Fact-checking Elon Musk’s claims in the Oval Office
• Musk denies ‘hostile takeover’ of government
• What we know about Musk’s cost-cutting mission

But given the scale of Musk’s influence in the nascent Trump administration, Democrats are concerned about conflicts of interest as well as Musk, whose companies have billions in federal government contracts, potentially taking actions to benefit himself.

“This is dangerous. This is against America’s interests,” Senior Democrat Chuck Schumer said. “And President Trump needs to show some leadership and rein in Doge before it inflicts more harm.”

That concern was shared by John Pelinsky, a lifelong Democrat who in November’s election cast his ballot for Donald Trump. He said Democrats had swung too far to the left and he wanted four years of Trump to help “centre the country”.

While he does not regret his vote, he says Musk makes him feel uneasy.

“He had his little kid there with him in the Oval Office,” he said. “I’m not quite comfortable with that.”

“I think Musk’s influence might be a little too much on the president,” he added. “I’m seeing too much of him. He should just stick with his SpaceX and his electric cars.”

Musk, meanwhile, has been clear that he believes he is working to enact the wishes of Trump’s voters.

“The people voted for major government reform and that’s what the people are going to get,” he told reporters during a surprise White House appearance this week. “That’s what democracy is all about.”

A recent poll by the BBC’s US partner CBS News suggested a majority of Americans were in favour of Musk’s work but disagreed over how much influence he should have.

In Erie, plenty of supporters were thrilled to see not one billionaire businessman, but two, running the show in Washington.

Christine Barber shrugged off concerns and said the American people had elected Trump to run the country and he had appointed Musk to help him do that.

“Personally, I love him,” she said of Musk.

“Financially, and from a business perspective, we need somebody who knows what the heck they’re doing. And if anybody does, it’s Donald Trump and Elon Musk.”

Patrick Laughlan had a similar view. He said he trusted Trump and Musk “to the extent you can trust anybody you don’t know”.

“The guy’s obviously brilliant,” Laughlan said of Musk. “He’s doing a good job trying to get rid of waste. Both of those gentlemen are trying to get money back to Americans.”

Evan Lagace, a restaurant manager here, embraces Musk’s cuts to a system he views as bloated and inefficient. He said he appreciated that the tech billionaire was “donating his time to the country to help fix a major problem”.

“Like he did in a micro aspect with Twitter, he could hopefully do the same thing with our country,” Lagace said, referring to the mass layoffs and spending cuts Musk implemented after buying the social media company.

As for the accusations that Musk had grown too powerful in this White House, Lagace said it did not bother him.

“He’s already extremely powerful,” he said. “It makes no difference.”

Merger talks between Honda and Nissan have collapsed after the firms failed to agree on a multi-billion-dollar tie-up.

The Japanese carmakers, along with junior partner Mitsubishi, had aimed to combine their businesses to fight back against competition from rival firms, especially in China.

The merger would have created an auto group worth $60bn (£48bn), and the world’s fourth-largest by vehicle sales after Toyota, Volkswagen and Hyundai.

The companies said they would continue their partnership on electric vehicles.

Karl Brauer, an analyst from online research platform iSeeCars.com, said the failure of the merger was not a total surprise.

“Plenty of automotive mergers have not worked out, and this one had as much potential for disaster as it did to help both brands,” he added.

The planned tie-up was seen as providing Nissan, which for a while was Japan’s second-largest car company, with crucial relief following years of slowing sales and turmoil involving its top executives.

Honda entered negotiations in a leading position. It remains a popular brand globally, producing and selling more cars than Nissan.

Nissan, meanwhile, has struggled to recover from a leadership crisis since the arrest of former chief executive and chairman Carlos Ghosn in late 2018.

Mr Ghosn was dismissed from his post over allegations of financial misconduct, which he denies, and has lived as a fugitive in his home country of Lebanon after being smuggled out of Japan in a music equipment box.

Nissan announced cost-cutting measures last year, including shedding 9,000 jobs globally, and halving its current chief executive’s pay.

Honda’s boss Toshihiro Mibe had said any merger would be “based on the assumption that Nissan completes its turnaround action”.

The companies eventually disagreed on what role Nissan would play in the merger – equal partner or subsidiary.

Jesper Koll, from Japanese online trading platform operator Monex Group, said the “pressure to make it appear like a merger of equals in Japan is very strong”.

“Having somebody leading this would seem almost offensive to the other party.”

Mr Koll also said Honda could have come off worse, adding: “You’re taking a potentially great company and taxing it with having to bail out an ugly duckling.”

Both Nissan and Honda are also facing the prospect of tariffs in the United States, another major market.

The growing electric car market has been increasingly dominated by Chinese manufacturers, such as BYD.

This increased competition has left many of the world’s leading carmakers struggling to compete.

In March last year, months before they announced the merger plans, Nissan and Honda had agreed to explore a strategic partnership for electric vehicles.

“The talks started because we believe that we must build up capabilities to fight them, including the current emerging forces, by 2030,” Honda’s chief executive Toshihiro Mibe said, in reference to the Chinese competition. “Otherwise we will be beaten.”

Without the possibility of a Honda merger to ease its troubles, Nissan continues to face an uncertain road ahead.

A possible powerful investor has already emerged, however, with Taiwan’s Foxconn, which produces most of the world’s advanced computer chips, saying it will consider buying Nissan shares for “co-operation”.

Foxconn chairman Young Liu said the firm was interested in collaborating with Renault, the French car giant that has a 36% stake in Nissan after rescuing it from the brink of bankruptcy in 1999.

Renault chimed in on the Honda-Nissan fallout on Thursday, calling the terms of the proposed deal “unacceptable”.

Any future deal for Nissan, according to the analyst Karl Brauer, will need to rely on leadership “that can identify and execute synergies across both companies, as well as manage the political and cultural challenges”.

A Chinese fighter jet released flares in front of an Australian military aircraft while flying over the South China Sea early this week, authorities in Canberra have said.

Australia’s defence ministry said it “expressed concerns” to its Chinese counterparts over the “unsafe and unprofessional interaction”.

No one was injured and there was no damage to Australia’s P-8A surveillance jet after Tuesday’s incident, the ministry said.

But China said the Australian aircraft “intentionally intruded” into its airspace and that the Chinese fighter jet responded in a “legitimate, lawful, professional, and restrained” manner.

This is the latest in a string of encounters between the two countries’ militaries in the region, where China’s vast claims over islands and outcrops overlap with those of its neighbours.

While it has no claims to the South China Sea, Australia has aligned itself close to the US and its allies in saying that China’s assertions have no legal basis.

“Australia expects all countries, including China, to operate their militaries in a safe and professional manner,” the department said in a statement on Thursday.

Chinese foreign ministry’s spokesperson Guo Jiakun said in response that Australia violated China’s sovereignty and that Canberra must “stop undermining peace and stability in the South China Sea”.

In May last year, Australia accused a Chinese fighter plane of dropping flares close to an Australian navy helicopter that was part of a UN Security Council mission on the Yellow Sea.

In November 2023, Canberra accused Beijing’s navy of using sonar pulses in international waters off Japan, resulting in Australian divers suffering injuries.

In a separate statement on Thursday, Canberra said it was monitoring three Chinese navy vessels operating to the north-east of Australia.

These vessels had travelled through South East Asia before entering Australia’s maritime approaches, with one of the vessels transiting into waters in the country’s north, the defence department said.

“Australia respects the rights of all states to exercise freedom of navigation and overflight in accordance with international law, just as we expect others to respect Australia’s right to do the same,” it said.

A single phone call will not magically end the war in Ukraine.

Talks may now get under way. Exactly when and how they will conclude isn’t clear.

But President Vladimir Putin has already scored something of a diplomatic victory simply by holding this telephone conversation.

After all, three years ago he was out in the political wilderness.

Putin’s decision to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine had turned him into a pariah.

The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution condemning Russia for its “unlawful use of force against Ukraine.”

Russia was hit by thousands of international sanctions. The following year the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the Kremlin leader.

As for the President of the United States – then Joe Biden – he left no doubt of what he thought of his Russian counterpart, condemning Putin as a “murderous dictator” and a “pure thug”.

After Russia launched its large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, there were no more telephone calls between Putin and Biden.

Fast forward to 2025.

A change of president has brought a change of style, a change of language – and a totally different US approach to Russia.

Trump says he wants to “work together, very closely” with Putin to end the war in Ukraine. He hopes they will be “visiting each other’s nations”.

Clearly, so does Vladimir Putin, who invited Trump to Moscow.

• Trump says negotiations on Ukraine war to begin ‘immediately’ after call with Putin
• What is Nato, and why isn’t Ukraine a member?

If that visit goes ahead, it will signify a major shift in US-Russian relations. An American president has not visited Russia for more than a decade.

In many ways Putin has already got what he wants – the chance to negotiate directly with the United States on Ukraine, possibly over the heads of Kyiv and Europe – as well as the opportunity to put himself at the top table of international politics.

It remains unclear, though, how far Putin will be willing to compromise.

Russian officials claim Moscow is ready for talks but always refer back to Putin’s so-called peace proposal of June 2024, which reads more like an ultimatum.

Under that plan Russia would get to keep all the Ukrainian territory it has seized, plus some more land still under Ukrainian control.

On top of that, Ukraine would not be allowed to join Nato and western sanctions against Russia would be scrapped.

As one Russian newspaper put it earlier this week: “Russia is ready for talks. But on its terms.

“If you drop the diplomatic language, essentially that is called an ultimatum.”

European nations must provide the “overwhelming” share of funding for Ukraine, the new US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has said, as he signalled a drastic shift in Washington’s position on the war.

Speaking at a defence summit in Brussels, Hegseth said the US would no longer “tolerate an imbalanced relationship” with its allies and called on Nato members to spend much more on defence.

He also said it was “unrealistic” to expect Ukraine to return to its pre-2014 borders and downplayed the prospect of Ukraine joining Nato.

The comments came as Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin held a “lengthy” phone call in which they agreed to begin negotiations to end the war.

The new US defence secretary’s remarks are the clearest indication yet of the Trump administration’s position on the Ukraine war and what a peace plan to end the conflict could involve.

The positions set out by Hegseth will be met with dismay in Ukraine – which has repeatedly called for Nato membership and has rejected ceding territory as part of any peace deal – and will be welcomed by Moscow.

There will also be nervousness across the continent after Hegseth suggested the US would significantly scale back its support for Ukraine, insisting that European nations would now need to provide the “overwhelming share” of aid to Kyiv.

Hegseth, who was appointed defence secretary after Trump returned to the US presidency in January, was speaking at the Ukraine Defence Contact Group, a meeting of more than 40 countries allied to Ukraine.

He said: “We want, like you, a sovereign and prosperous Ukraine.

“But we must start by recognising that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective.

“Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering.”

Russia annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014 and then backed pro-Russian separatists in an armed insurgency against Kyiv’s forces in eastern Ukraine.

Moscow currently controls around a fifth of Ukraine’s territory, mainly in the east and south.

Hegseth said any durable peace must include “robust security guarantees to ensure that the war will not begin again”.

However, he said “the United States does not believe that Nato membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement”.

Instead, security guarantees should be backed by “capable European and non-European troops”.

“If these troops are deployed as peacekeepers to Ukraine at any point, they should be deployed as part of a non-Nato mission and they should not be covered under Article 5,” he said, referring to the alliance’s mutual defence clause.

• What is Nato and why isn’t Ukraine a member?

Hegseth also told Nato’s European members that they would need to provide the lion’s share of future aid for Kyiv, warning that Washington “will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship” with its allies.

“Safeguarding European security must be an imperative for European members of Nato,” Hegseth said. “Europe must provide the overwhelming share of future lethal and non-lethal aid to Ukraine.”

The US has been Ukraine’s biggest financial and military backer but Trump has been repeatedly critical of US aid spending and has said his priority is to end the war, which escalated in February 2022 after Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Hegseth echoed calls by Trump for Nato allies to increase their defence spending to 5% of their GDP, instead of the current 2% target – saying the latter is “not enough”.

The US currently spends roughly 3.4% of its GDP on defence, while the UK spends about 2.3%. Countries closer to Russia, like Poland and the Baltic states, spend the most proportionately at around 4%.

It will be difficult for Ukraine to hold back Russia’s advances without the same scale of support provided by Washington during Joe Biden’s administration.

While Russia is losing large numbers of troops in the conflict, the country’s commanders are prepared to throw everything at Ukrainian front lines.

Russia is also now spending more on defence than the whole of Europe combined, according to figures from The Military Balance, an annual comparison of the strengths of armed forces around the world.

Earlier this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was ready to negotiate a peace deal with Russia but wanted his country to do so from a “position of strength”.

Speaking to the Guardian, Zelensky said if Trump was able to get Ukraine and Russia to the negotiating table, the Ukrainian president planned to offer Russia a straight territory exchange, giving up land Kyiv has held in Russia’s Kursk region since the launch of a surprise offensive six months ago.

“We will swap one territory for another,” he said, but added that he did not know which part of Russian-occupied land Ukraine would ask for in return.

• What Trump’s win means for Ukraine
• Zelensky gives ‘victory plan’ a hard sell in the US – did it fall flat?
• Ukraine war in maps

Zelensky also said he would offer US firms lucrative contracts to rebuild Ukraine, in an apparent attempt to get Trump onside.

In November last year, he and the US president spoke following Trump’s election victory.

Zelensky said he had a “constructive exchange” with the then president-elect and that he was certain the war with Russia would “end sooner” than it otherwise would have once Trump became president.

But Trump’s Democratic opponents have accused him of being too close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and say his approach to the war amounts to surrender for Ukraine, which would in turn endanger all of Europe.

It also remains unclear whether a diplomatic solution to the war could be reached anytime soon that would be acceptable to both sides.

When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits Washington and meets President Donald Trump later on Thursday, there will be some warm hugs and shared laughs. But that will not be all.

Trump and Modi have developed a strong personal rapport over the years, marked by high-profile meetings and joint appearances. This time, they will also hold a joint press briefing, according to the White House.

Since their first meeting in Washington in 2017, their bond has grown through other events, including joint appearances at massive rallies in Houston and Ahmedabad. Their chemistry stems from shared worldviews and politics and a mutual strategic focus on countering China, a concern that has also strengthened the broader US-India partnership.

Not surprisingly, Trump has often criticised India, but he has never criticised Modi.

And so, during Modi’s visit, the two leaders will probably spend time mapping out next steps in the US-India strategic partnership, which is already in a good place.

Modi will reportedly meet several members of Trump’s cabinet, as well as US business leaders and members of the Indian-American community.

He may also meet SpaceX and Tesla chief Elon Musk. Modi, keen to scale up India’s burgeoning electric vehicles sector, would be happy if Musk opened a Tesla factory in India.

And yet the Trump-Modi conviviality and heady talk of strategic partnership may mask a sobering reality: during Modi’s visit, the relationship’s transactional side will come into sharp relief with each leader, especially Trump, armed with an array of demands.

Delhi knows Trump well. Many of Modi’s current cabinet ministers also served during his previous term, which overlapped with part of the first Trump administration. That familiarity has been on display since Trump’s inauguration last month: Delhi has publicly signalled its willingness to lower tariffs, take back undocumented Indian immigrants and buy American oil.

It has already lowered some tariffs and taken back 104 undocumented Indians, with the first plane arriving in India last week. These pre-emptive steps are meant to prevent Trump from making specific demands of India and to reduce the likelihood of tensions with the new Trump administration.

Still, Trump may ask Modi to make additional tariff reductions, to further chip away at a US goods and services trade deficit with India that has approached $46bn (£37.10bn) in recent years.

On Wednesday evening, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that Trump planned to announce reciprocal tariffs on other countries before his meeting with Modi.

But an obstacle could become an opportunity: Modi may call on Trump to enter into bilateral talks on an economic partnership accord meant to reduce tariffs on both sides.

In recent years, Delhi has shown a growing willingness to pursue trade deals. The Trump administration may prove to be a more willing interlocutor than the Biden administration, which imposed heavy environmental and labour-related conditions on new trade agreements.

• What are tariffs and why is Trump using them?

Trump may also ask Modi to take back more undocumented Indians. Given that some estimates put the number at more than 700,000 – the third-largest such group in the US – this will be a difficult and delicate issue for Delhi to navigate.

Last week, India’s Foreign Minister S Jaishankar told parliament that the government was working with the US to ensure Indian citizens were not mistreated while being deported after reports of them being shackled sparked anger.

Trump may also call on Modi to buy more American oil.

In 2021, India was the top destination for American oil exports, but the Russian invasion of Ukraine brought major changes in global oil markets and prompted Delhi to ramp up imports of cheap oil from close partner Russia. The price point will determine how much oil India is willing to buy from the US.

Modi may also come with his own energy ask: invest in Indian nuclear energy. Delhi is amending its nuclear liability law and has announced a new nuclear energy mission, in an attempt to sharpen international interest in the fuel.

India aims to meet half its energy requirements through renewable energy by 2030. Asking Trump to invest in nuclear fuel amounts to a potential happy medium: it is cleaner than fossil fuels, but far removed from the solar and wind power that may not strike the Trump administration as an attractive investment.

Technology will probably be discussed as well.

This was a fast-growing space for bilateral relations in the Biden era, thanks to the 2022 implementation of the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET), which both sides view as a new cornerstone for strategic partnership. iCET is meant to be directly overseen by the two national security advisers – to avoid getting bogged down in bureaucracy – which means they must each be personally invested in it.

Modi will likely seek assurances from Trump and his National Security Adviser Mike Waltz that they remain committed to this. Given Washington’s focus on countering China by making India a bigger part of tech global supply chains, they probably will.

Also on the tech co-operation front, Modi may make a pitch for Trump to maintain the H-1B visa regime. These visas for highly skilled foreign workers, heavily criticised by some influential Trump supporters, have been awarded to large numbers of Indian tech employees in the US.

Other countries may also come up during Modi’s conversations in Washington. Iran could loom especially large.

Delhi is partnering with Tehran to develop a port in Chabahar city – part of a broader Indian strategy to strengthen connectivity links with Central Asia, via Iran and Afghanistan. But last week, the US administration released a presidential memorandum outlining Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign on Tehran, which hints at removing sanctions waivers for those conducting commercial activities in Chabahar. Modi may seek clarity on what this means for Delhi.

Trump may also gauge Modi’s position on a big foreign policy priority: ending the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Delhi has a strong interest in these wars winding down. Modi’s position on the war in Ukraine – calling for an end to the conflict without criticising Putin or Russia – echoes that of Trump.

India’s special relationship with Russia and close ties with Israel may prompt Trump to see if Modi would want to play a third-party mediator role as well. Modi would probably be comfortable doing so only if the parties are receptive to outside mediation.

But despite some potentially delicate discussions this week, both leaders will want to maintain a positive tone.

In that regard, the Indo-Pacific Quad will be just what the doctor ordered.

Trump strongly backs this group which consists of the US, India, Japan and Australia and focuses on countering Beijing.

In his first term, Trump elevated the Quad’s annual meetings to the foreign minister level and Biden elevated them further to the leaders’ level.

India is scheduled to host this year’s Quad meeting and Modi may invite Trump to Delhi to attend this.

Trump reportedly is not a big fan of international travel but India is a trip he will probably be keen to make – to deepen his personal relationship with Modi and to advance a multifaceted bilateral partnership that extends well beyond the transactionalism that will carry the day in Washington this week.

Public anger in China over concerns raised by doctors that generic drugs used in public hospitals are increasingly ineffective has led to a rare response from the government.

Doctors say they believe the country’s drug procurement system, which incentivises the use of cheap generic drugs over original brand-name pharmaceuticals, has led to costs being cut at the expense of people’s safety.

But officials, quoted by multiple state media outlets on Sunday, say the issue is one of perception rather than reality.

One report said different people simply had different reactions to medicines and that claims about them being ineffective had “mostly come from people’s anecdotes and subjective feelings”.

The official response has done little to allay public fears over the reputation of drugs in public hospitals and pharmacies. It is the latest challenge to a healthcare system that is already under enormous strain because of a rapidly ageing population.

The debate surrounding the use of generic drugs began in December, when authorities announced the list of nearly 200 companies that had won contracts to sell medicines to Chinese state hospitals. Almost all were domestic makers of generic pharmaceuticals.

This intensified in January, when, in a video interview that went viral, the director of a hospital department in Shanghai, shared his concerns about the drug procurement system.

Zheng Minhua cited “antibiotics that cause allergies, blood pressure that won’t go down, anaesthetised patients who won’t sleep” and laxatives that did not clear the bowel as being among the issues that had been encountered.

Dr Zheng’s words immediately struck a chord and have been condensed into a social media slogan that has been viewed by millions in the past month – though much of the discussion of the topic has since been censored on Weibo. Many people have come forward to share their own bad experiences with alleged substandard drugs.

“I underwent intestinal surgeries in 2024, which required me to consume laxatives beforehand,” one Weibo user wrote. They said the drugs they were given had “no effect whatsoever”, even after the dose was doubled, and that they had to turn to drinking coffee to help clear their bowel.

The concerns raised over the efficacy of generic drugs has caused distrust and made some people unwilling to use them.

A person on Xiaohongshu, China’s Instagram-like app, said that when hospital doctors prescribed them the generic version of an antibiotic, they immediately went online to buy the “original” “real” one, since the generic version “tasted different”.

“There have been many people catching colds recently. A lot of them might have bought this drug. Quickly send reminders to your friends now and get them to check the brand before buying,” the user warned.

Some of the most popular posts discussing the procurement controversy have been taken down, though it is unclear by whom. China’s heavily monitored internet has a strong culture of censorship by both authorities and users themselves.

In a scathing, now-removed post by popular podcast host Meng Chang, he lambasted the lack of imported drugs in the public sector: “If this isn’t a bottom line, I don’t know what is.”

Public anger has also been focussed on the difficulties of accessing imported drugs that people believe to be of better quality.

In response to authorities’ attempt to reassure people of the quality of generic drugs, one Weibo user wrote: “As long as we are allowed to buy brand-name drugs ourselves, I have no other complaints.”

It was introduced in 2018 as a way to lower state expenditure on medicines and involves local governments putting out tender processes for around 70% of state hospitals’ annual drug requirements.

Various drug manufacturers then compete to offer the lowest prices for drugs to win these lucrative contracts.

This gives an advantage to domestically-produced generic drugs, which contain the same active pharmaceutical ingredients as original patented drugs but are often several times cheaper to make as they do not include the high costs of research and development.

China has emerged as one of the world’s largest players in the global generic pharmaceutical market, exporting both finished products to consumers abroad and key ingredients to foreign companies. At home, thousands of generic drug manufacturers compete to sell their products at competitive prices in the expanding domestic market.

For generic medicines to be eligible for China’s procurement process, they have to be tested and determined to be similar enough to the brand-name version of the drug.

Beijing has credited the drugs procurement system with saving millions of residents more than $50bn (£40bn) in its first five years.

But the procurement process has seen some drug manufacturers offer medicines at incredibly low prices. One of the winning bids last December was an aspirin tablet selling for less than one cent.

“Are drug tablets that cost less than one cent edible?” became a trending topic on Weibo at the time.

“The manufacturers that win the bids often set prices so low that they may struggle to produce high quality drugs with the correct ingredients, potentially leading to ineffective medications,” Stacy Zhang, associate professor at NYU Langone Health, told the BBC.

She added that while the procurement system “was not designed to restrict access to imported brand-name drugs”, it may still have “affected their accessibility”.

A proposal submitted by 20 doctors, including Dr Zheng, to Shanghai authorities last month stated that “there are widespread concerns in the industry that procurement prices are too low, prompting unethical companies to cut corners to reduce costs, affecting the efficacy of drugs”.

“Doctors are helpless because they have no choice, and there is no channel to escalate feedback.”

A recent article by Xia Zhimin, a doctor in Hangzhou, has added to the scrutiny. In it, he highlighted what he said was questionable data from the trials of generic drugs on the procurement list – it was identical to the data from the original drug on which it was based. Dr Xia suggested that it could be evidence of fraud.

The National Medical Products Administration responded by saying his findings were due to an “editorial error”. His article has since been removed.

Adding to quality concerns are counterfeit drugs, which have seeped into both generic and brand-name drugs markets across the world and are notoriously difficult to detect. The World Health Organization has described this a global health problem.

“To enhance affordability, the introduction of cost-effective generics is essential,” Kevin Lu, associate professor at the University of South Carolina’s College of Pharmacy, told the BBC.

He added that the procurement process needed “strengthened quality control” and “continued improvements in drug approval and manufacturing standards”.

The controversy comes at a time when China’s healthcare system is already under mounting pressure.

A rapidly ageing population has meant that the country’s total health expenditure has increased nearly 20-fold over the last 20 years, reaching 9 trillion yuan ($1.25 trillion; £1 trillion) in 2023.

Across the country, public medical insurance funds are running thin. Deficits have already appeared in some provinces, where local governments that had relied heavily on land sales for revenue are now struggling with debt as a real estate crisis engulfs China’s economy.

At the same time, the healthcare system has been experiencing a trust crisis. Violent attacks against medical staff have risen since the 2000s, fuelled by anger at the lack of resources and an erosion of faith in doctors.

Unlike issues that have been deemed politically sensitive and heavily censored by authorities, such as the persecution of political dissidents or the suppression of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, the ongoing controversy surrounding the procurement of drugs has at least been acknowledged by the state as a problem to be tackled.

The National Healthcare Security Administration said in a statement on 19 January that authorities “attached great importance” to these safety concerns and would seek feedback on the drug procurement policy.

“It is undeniable that the national centralised procurement is still in its infancy. There are many pharmaceutical companies with varying production quality,” state media Life Times quoted a public health scholar as saying. Other experts cited in the article called for drug evaluation standards to be improved.

As authorities try to remedy the procurement system’s faltering image, all the scrutiny is now overshadowing a system designed to be a win-win: saving lives and also saving money.

As one Weibo user argued, the savings from lower drug prices are but “a drop in a bucket” of China’s national healthcare costs. On the other hand, they wrote, allowing potentially defective drugs to be widely used is akin to “drinking poison to quench thirst”.

A proposed law in Colombia’s Congress seeks to ban the sale of merchandise that celebrates former drug lord Pablo Escobar, whose cocaine cartel has been linked to thousands of murders.

One day in 1989, Gonzalo Rojas was at school in the Colombian capital of Bogota when a teacher pulled him out of class to deliver some devastating news.

His father, also called Gonzalo, had died in a plane crash that morning.

“I remember leaving and seeing my mum and grandma waiting for me, crying,” says Mr Rojas, who was just 10-years-old at the time. “It was a very, very sad day.”

Minutes after take off, an explosion on board Avianca flight 203 killed the 107 passengers and crew, as well as three people on the ground who were hit by falling debris.

The blast wasn’t an accident. It was a deliberate bomb attack by Pablo Escobar and his Medellín cartel.

While an era defined by drug wars, bombings, kidnappings and a sky high murder rate has largely been relegated to Colombia’s past, Escobar’s legacy has not.

The notorious criminal, who was killed by security forces in 1993, has achieved a near cult-like status around the world, immortalised in books, music and TV productions like the Netflix series Narcos.

In Colombia itself, his name and face are adorned on mugs, keychains, and t-shirts in tourist shops catering mainly to curious visitors.

But a proposed law in Colombia’s Congress is seeking to change this.

The bill wants to ban Escobar merchandise – and that of other convicted criminals – to help put an end to the glorification of a drug boss who was central in the global cocaine trade and widely held responsible for at least 4,000 killings.

“Difficult issues that are part of the history and memory of our country cannot simply be remembered by a T-shirt, or a sticker sold on a street corner,” says Juan Sebastián Gómez, Congress member and co-author of the bill.

The proposed law would prohibit the selling, as well as the use and carrying of clothing and items promoting criminals, including Escobar. It would mean fines for those who violated the rules, and a temporary suspension of businesses.

Many vendors selling the goods claim a law prohibiting this merchandise would harm their livelihoods.

“This is terrible. We have a right to work, and these Pablo T-shirts especially always sell well,” says Joana Montoya, who owns a stall stocked full of Escobar merchandise in Comuna 13, a popular tourist zone of Medellín.

Medellín, Escobar’s hometown, was known as “the most dangerous city in the world” in the late 80s and early 90s due to violence associated with drug wars and Colombia’s armed conflict.

Today it’s been revitalised into a hub of innovation and tourism, with vendors eager to cash in on the influx of visitors wanting to take home souvenirs – some related to Escobar.

“This Escobar merchandise benefits many families here – it sustains us. It helps us pay our rent, buy food, look after our kids,” says Ms Montaya, who supports herself and her young daughter.

Ms Montoya says at least 15% of her sales come from Escobar products, but some sellers tell the BBC that for them it’s as much as 60%.

If the bill is approved there would be a defined time period for sellers to familiarise themselves with the new rules and phase out their Escobar stock.

“We’d need a transition phase so that people could stop selling these products and replace them with other ones,” explains Congressman Gómez. He says that Colombia has more interesting things to show than drug lords, and that the association with Escobar has stigmatised the country abroad.

Some of the T-shirts, sold for around £5, bear a catchphrase linked to Escobar – “silver or lead?”. This symbolises the choice the cartel boss gave to those who posed a threat to his criminal operations: accept a bribe or be killed.

Shop assistant María Suarez believes that the profit gained from sales of Escobar merchandise isn’t ethical.

“We need this ban. He did awful things and these souvenirs are things that shouldn’t exist,” she says, explaining that she feels uncomfortable that her boss stocks Escobar items.

Escobar and his Medellín cartel at one point were believed to have controlled 80% of the cocaine entering the US. In 1987, he was named as one of the richest people in the world by Forbes magazine.

He spent some of his fortune developing deprived neighbourhoods, but many people consider this as a tactic to buy loyalty from some segments of the population.

Years on from his father’s death, Mr Rojas remembers him as a calm and responsible man, who loved his family. For him, the bill is a defining moment.

“It’s a milestone in the road about how we reflect on what is happening in terms of the commercialisation of images of Pablo Escobar in order to correct it,” says Mr Rojas.

Yet he does have criticisms about the proposals. He believes the bill doesn’t focus enough on education.

Mr Rojas recalls a day many years ago when he met a man wearing a green T-shirt with a silhouette of Escobar, and the words “Pablo, President”.

“It caused me such confusion that I wasn’t able to say anything to him about it,” he says.

“There needs to be more of an emphasis on how we deliver different messages to new generations, so that there isn’t a positive image of what a cartel boss is.”

Mr Rojas has actively been involved in efforts to reshape narratives around Escobar and the drug trade. Along with some other victims, he launched narcostore.co in 2019, an online shop that appears to sell Escobar-themed items.

But none of the products actually exist and when customers select an item they are shown a video testimony from a victim. Mr Rojas says the site has attracted 180 million visits from around the world.

In Colombia’s Congress, the bill faces four stages it needs to pass before it can become law. Gómez says he’s hoping it sparks reflection both inside and outside of Congress.

“In Germany you don’t sell Hitler T-shirts or swastikas. In Italy you don’t sell Mussolini stickers, and you don’t go to Chile and get a copy of Pinochet’s ID card.

“I think the most important thing the bill can do is to generate a conversation as a country – a conversation that hasn’t happened yet.”

Medellín’s mayor – who was also a presidential candidate in the 2022 elections – has publicly backed the bill, calling the merchandise “an insult to the city, the country and the victims”.

In El Poblado, an upmarket area of Medellín popular with tourists, three Americans browse a stall brimming with souvenirs. One buys a cap with Escobar’s name and face printed on the front. He says he wants a memento of “history”.

But for supporters of the bill, this isn’t about removing Escobar from history, it’s about erasing a mythical construct of him, fostering new ways to honour the victims he killed – and acknowledging the lingering pain of victims left behind.

Smitha (not her real name), a domestic helper in Delhi for 28 years, can’t forget the day she was beaten in public by one of her employers.

The woman had accused Smitha – a Dalit woman from the most discriminated against caste in Hinduism’s entrenched social hierarchy – of stealing her daughter’s earrings and then refused to pay her.

“After many requests, I confronted her in public. That’s when she started abusing and hitting me. I held her hands to stop the abuse but the guards came and dragged me out of the housing society and locked the gate,” Smitha says.

She was eventually paid – a measly 1,000 rupees [$11; £9] for a month of sweeping, mopping and washing dishes – after a more sympathetic family intervened on her behalf. But she was banned from entering the housing community and did not bother going to the police as she believed they would not take action.

Smitha’s story is one among hundreds of thousands of accounts of mistreatment, abuse and sexual assault reported by India’s domestic workers. Most are women and many are migrants within the country, belonging to castes that are looked down upon.

Last month, India’s Supreme Court raised concerns over their exploitation and asked the federal government to look into creating a law to protect them from abuse.

But this isn’t the first time that an attempt has been made to create such a legal framework. Despite years of advocacy by various groups and federal ministries, no such law has ever been passed.

Separate bills proposed in 2008 and 2016, aimed at registering domestic workers and improving their working conditions, have not yet been passed. A national policy drafted in 2019 aimed at including domestic workers under existing labour laws has not been implemented.

Sonia George of the Self Employed Women’s Association (Sewa), who was part of the task force that formulated the draft policy, calls it one of the “most comprehensive policies for domestic workers” yet, but says that successive governments have failed to implement it.

As a result, India’s vast army of domestic helpers must rely on employer goodwill for basics such as wages or leave or even a baseline of respect. According to official statistics, India has 4.75 million domestic workers, including three million women. But the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates the true numbers to be between 20 and 80 million.

“We have a patronising relationship with the help and not a labour employment relationship,” says Professor Neetha N from the Centre for Women’s Development Studies.

“This maintains the status quo and is one of the biggest hurdles to regulating and legalising domestic work.”

As things stand, private homes are not considered to be an establishment or workplace, so domestic work falls outside the purview of social protections such as minimum wages, the right to safe working conditions, the right to unionise and access to social security schemes.

At least 14 Indian states, including Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Kerala, Meghalaya, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu, have mandated minimum wages for domestic workers and some federal laws, like India’s anti-sexual harassment and child labour laws, include domestic workers in their scope.

But there is very little awareness among domestic workers that they can take advantage of these provisions, Ms George says, adding that the nature of the profession also poses challenges.

Workers are scattered and there is no mechanism to register or even identify them as they generally don’t sign any kind of contract with their employers.

“We will need to set up systems to register domestic workers – getting over their ‘invisibility’ is a big step towards regularising the profession,” she says.

That applies to employers too. “They are completely invisible in the system and hence escape accountability and responsibility,” Ms George says.

The caste system also poses further complexities – workers from some castes may agree to clean toilets in a home while others from slightly different castes may not.

Ultimately the whole concept of domestic work should be redefined, Ms George says. “Domestic work is considered to be unskilled work but that is not the case in reality. You cannot care for a sick person or cook a meal without being skilled,” she adds.

In addition to failing to pass its own laws or implement its own policy, India has also not yet ratified ILO’s Convention 189 – a landmark international agreement that aims to ensure that domestic workers have the same rights and protections as other workers. Despite voting in favour of the convention in 2011, India does not yet conform to all its provisions.

India has a “moral obligation” to conform to the ILO convention, Ms George says. She adds that having a law will also help regulate private recruitment agencies and prevent the exploitation of domestic workers who go abroad to work.

Last year, the wealthy Hinduja family made headlines after a Swiss court found them guilty of exploiting their domestic workers. The family was accused of trafficking vulnerable Indians to Switzerland and forcing them to work in their mansion for excruciatingly long hours without proper pay. The family’s lawyers said they would appeal against the verdict.

Perhaps the simplest explanation for decades of inaction in the face of a tide of abuses lies in the conflict of interest such regulation poses for India’s decision makers, Ms George suggests.

“At the end of the day, the people at the table who have the power to sign off on a bill or a law are also employers of domestic workers and the ones who benefit from the status quo,” she says. “So, for any real change in the system, we first need a change in our mindset.”

Elon Musk has made a number of exaggerated or unevidenced claims during an Oval Office event alongside President Donald Trump.

The billionaire, who was making his first major media appearance since beginning his role as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), said his team was seeking to improve transparency in government.

But he provided no evidence when making sweeping statements about corruption in government agencies and also defended false allegations he had spread about US funds being used to send condoms to Gaza.

BBC Verify has examined these claims made by Musk.

Musk was challenged by a reporter about a recent White House claim, which he has repeated, that it had stopped $50m (£40.2m) worth of condoms being sent to the Gaza Strip.

The reporter asked whether the condoms were actually due to be sent to Gaza Province in Mozambique.

Musk appeared to concede that could be the case, and responded: “I’m not sure we should be sending $50m dollars on condoms anywhere… if it went to Mozambique instead of Gaza, I’m like, OK that’s not as bad, but still you know why are we doing that?”

Several posts on X have highlighted a US commitment to fund an HIV-prevention programme in Gaza, Mozambique.

US government records show that an American-funded scheme for Gaza, Mozambique was awarded $83.5m for “prevention, care, support and treatment interventions within HIV and TB facilities and communities” for a programme running until September 2026.

BBC Verify contacted the aid agency that granted the funding – the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF) – who told us that no money has been used to procure condoms.

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The US State Department told us two $50m donations due to be sent to the Gaza Strip via the International Medical Corps had been stopped, which it claimed included contraceptives such as condoms.

But responding to the claims, the charity said it wasn’t aware of any future US funding for condoms or any other contraceptives for Gaza.

They also said none of the funds they’d received from the US government since October 2023 had been used to procure or distribute condoms within the Gaza Strip.

The US has, in the past, provided contraceptives to countries around the world as part of family planning programmes.

In 2023 fiscal year (1 October – 30 September) $60.8m was sent abroad for contraceptives – with about $7m of that for condoms – according to a USAID report. None of this was listed for Gaza in the Middle East. $5.4m of contraceptives were listed for Mozambique, but none of this was for condoms.

These contraceptive programmes existed under Trump’s previous administration as well. During the 2019 fiscal year, for example, about $40m was spent sending contraceptives abroad, according to another USAID report.

Although he did not mention her by name, Elon Musk appeared to reference former USAID administrator Samantha Power’s alleged net worth.

President Trump asked Musk to “mention some of the things that your team has found some of the crazy numbers, including the woman that walked away with about 30 million.”

There have been claims on social media about Power’s net worth increasing to this amount during her time at USAID.

One post claims: “Ex-USAID chief Samantha Power’s net worth skyrockets – from $6.7m to $30m on a $180k salary… Where did the extra $23.3m come from? And all of this in just 3 years!”

Musk responded to another post on X about Power’s work at USAID, asking “how did she accumulate wealth that is 100 times her after tax salary?”

Musk responded to Trump’s prompt in the Oval Office by saying: “There are quite a few people in the bureaucracy who have ostensibly a salary of a few hundred thousand dollars but somehow managed to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth while they are in that position, which is, you know what happened to USAID.

“Maybe they’re very good at investing… I think the reality is that they’re getting wealthy at the taxpayer expense.”

Power’s detractors have not provided any evidence whatsoever of a sudden increase in her wealth or that she benefited from her role at USAID beyond her salary.

The claim appears to come from a website called Inside Biden’s Basement, which estimated that Samantha Power was worth between $10m and $30m.

There is no breakdown of the figure or methodology but it does include three of Power’s government ethics disclosure forms from 2021-22.

These forms show Power’s income from various sources, including her teaching salary, investments, payments for speaking engagements and book royalties.

Most of those figures are published in a range, such as shares in a particular company being worth between $15,000 and $50,000 or a bank account containing between $1m and $5m. As such, the range of results returned when estimating Power’s wealth are wide.

BBC Verify added up the income and investments from the form that Power submitted before she was sworn in as administrator in 2021, in which her wealth and income come out at between about $9m and $22m.

The most recent disclosure form available on the government website gives her accounts for 2023 and is problematic because it gives one account containing “over $1m” without stating an upper limit. If you take that as being between $1m and $5m in line with her other entries, you get an overall range of $9m to $25m.

In line with the filing rules, the 2021 figure does include her $461,167 salary from her previous job at Harvard, while the latest figures do not include her $183,100 salary from USAID.

So from her published accounts, it seems that she was pretty wealthy before she started working at USAID and that has not changed a great deal, although that is working within very broad ranges.

BBC Verify approached Samantha Power for comment via her official website.

Social security provides a base income for people in the US who are either retired or can’t work because of a disability. It covers about 67 million Americans.

Regarding the programme, Musk said: “There’s crazy things… cross re-examination of Social Security, and we’ve got people in there that are 150 years old.” He did not provide evidence of this.

BBC Verify has been unable to find specific evidence for the claim – although we don’t have access to all the US social security data that Musk has been granted.

“I think they’re probably dead… and then there’s a whole bunch of social security payments where there’s no identifying information,” Musk added.

There have been previous reports which have identified tens of billions of dollars of fraud in social security payments – but we have found no specific evidence of 150-year-olds claiming benefits.

There is a 2023 report by the social security inspector general which identified about 19 million people born in 1920 or earlier who didn’t have any death data on file – 44,000 of whom were still receiving social security benefits.

The report was triggered by calls to better maintain claimant records, after the Social Security Administration in 2021 estimated some 24,000 people received payments by the agency after death, amounting to almost $300m.

There were an estimated 101,000 people over 100 years old in 2024 across the US, according to the Pew Research Center, most of whom you would expect to be receiving social security, considering it covers retired people.

Speaking about government inefficiencies Musk claimed only 10,000 federal employees could retire per month because the paperwork is written down manually and kept in a mine.

He said: “The limiting factor is the speed at which the mine shaft elevator can move determines how many people can retire from the federal government, and the elevator breaks down sometimes, and then nobody can retire.”

That same day, Musk’s department posted about the mine on X.

“Federal employee retirements are processed using paper, by hand, in an old limestone mine in Pennsylvania. 700+ mine workers operate 230 feet underground to process ~10,000 applications per month, which are stored in manila envelopes and cardboard boxes. The retirement process takes multiple months.”

Musk is referring to Iron Mountain, a high security storage facility in Pennsylvania which holds government documents in a former limestone mine.

A 2014 article by The Washington Post reported that the retirement paperwork at the facility was processed “entirely by hand, and almost entirely on paper”.

More recently, a 2019 audit report found that between 2014 and 2017, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) – which manages the federal retirement program – did not meet its goal of processing most retirement applications within 60 days.

The report said that one of the reasons for this was OPM’s “continued reliance on paper applications and manual processing”. Insufficient staffing and incomplete applications were the other reasons provided for processing delays.

It did not mention problems with the storage facility or its elevators.

The number of claims processed for civil service and federal employee retirements rarely exceed 10,000 per month, according to US government data. These figures also show that cases can take multiple months to process.

BBC Verify has contacted the OPM about Musk’s claims.

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South Africa appears to be at a crossroads in its waxing and waning relationship with the US following President Donald Trump’s controversial decision last week to cut financial aid to the country.

Trump said South Africa was pursuing what he called “unjust and immoral practices” against the white minority Afrikaner community and by filing a genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in December 2023.

His move has sent shockwaves across South Africa, with experts fearing he may go on to use this opportunity to end preferential access to the US market through its special US-Africa trade programme known as the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa).

The two countries have generally had friendly relations since the end of white-minority rule in 1994 when anti-apartheid icon and Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela was elected South Africa’s first black president.

Though it took the US another 14 years to remove Mandela from its “terrorist watch list” for his role in fighting the racist system of apartheid, which had been introduced by South Africa’s then-Afrikaner rulers in1948.

The latest tension flared up a few days after Trump’s inauguration last month when South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into law the Expropriation Bill, which allows the government to confiscate land without compensation in certain circumstances.

Trump’s response came last week when he threatened to cut future funding over what he termed “terrible things, horrible things” the country’s leadership was doing.

The US president further accused South Africa, without any basis in fact, of “confiscating land” and “doing things that are perhaps far worse than that”.

He doubled down in the face of the South African government’s vehement rebuttal and signed an executive order last Friday freezing aid.

This adds up to nearly $440m (£353m) – the amount of aid reportedly allocated in 2023 – though the US embassy in South Africa has subsequently said that funding from Pepfar, an American programme countering the global spread of HIV, will not be affected, adding the caveat that “not all Pepfar activities will resume”.

South Africa is one of the biggest beneficiaries of Pepfar, which contributes about 17% to its HIV/Aids programme in which around 5.5 million people receive anti-retrovirals.

In his executive order, Trump also accused South Africa of a “shocking disregard of its citizens’ rights” and taking “aggressive positions” against the US and its ally Israel in its ICJ case.

In addition to the aid freeze, Trump offered to help refugees from the Afrikaner community, who are mostly white descendants of early Dutch and French settlers, to settle in the US.

His stance has played into the hands of conservative Afrikaner lobby groups, including AfriForum and Solidarity, which want the government repeal what it calls “race-based laws” such as affirmative action and black economic empowerment.

This chimes with views by Trump’s close adviser Elon Musk, the tech billionaire who was born in South Africa. He questioned on X why Ramaphosa had “openly racist ownership laws”.

This is not the first time South Africa’s land reform policy has drawn Trump’s ire.

In 2018, during his first presidency, he accused South African authorities of the “large-scale killing of farmers” and asked his then secretary of state to look into the matter of the government “seizing land from white farmers”.

While Trump’s remarks sparked a backlash at the time, Dr Oscar van Heerden, a political analyst at the University of Johannesburg, told the BBC there had “never been this kind of radical action taken to the point of an executive order being signed”.

With their relationship now in a precarious state – both countries are weighing up their next move.

On the trade front, Donald MacKay, CEO of Johannesburg-based trade consulting firm XA Global Trade Advisors, said that while the US was one of South Africa’s biggest partners, it was not its “closest trading partner”.

South Africa exports a variety of minerals to the US, including platinum, iron and manganese.

It also the one of the largest exporters under Agoa, generating about $2.7bn in revenue in 2023, mostly from the sale of vehicles, jewellery and metals.

“Over the years, that relationship has waxed and waned. It’s never been terribly strong [since white-minority rule ended in South Africa]. But at the same time, I think it also never deteriorated quite as much as it has in recent years and I don’t think it’s South Africa’s fault,” Mr MacKay told the BBC.

But he admitted South Africa had done “a lot” in recent years to irritate the US.

“Those irritations get to accumulate and under President Trump… this is seen as an opportunity to put South Africa in its place.”

Dr Van Heerden put the change in dynamics partly down to “global shifts” and “new competition driving up against the US” from the likes of China, India and Brazil.

While experts spoke on the benefits of Agoa, which is coming up for review later this year, they agreed that the impact might not be as significant as some fear.

Agoa was introduced in 2000 and it gives eligible sub-Saharan African countries duty-free access to the US for more than 1,800 products.

Mr MacKay said he would be surprised if South Africa continued benefiting from this preferential agreement after the review.

“My instinct is, whatever the reason that Trump is upset with South Africa, at the moment Agoa would be the easiest mechanism to use to punish South Africa.”

Dr Van Heerden added that even if agreement was not renewed, or South Africa ended up being excluded, those businesses currently benefiting from it would suffer short-term losses but would manage to bounce back in a few years.

He said at the moment President Ramaphosa’s government was opting for the diplomatic route – though the Trump administration’s seeming lack of interest in diplomacy drastically reduced chances of success.

This has probably not been helped by South Africa’s Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola blunt response on Wednesday to Trump’s move, saying there was “no chance” that South Africa would withdraw its case against Israel at the ICJ.

“Standing by our principles sometimes has consequences, but we remain firm that this is important for the world, and the rule of law,” Lamola told the Financial Times.

South Africa has accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians living in Gaza, an allegation Israel denies.

Meanwhile, Ramaphosa, in his capacity as G20 president, has announced he will be sending a delegation around the world to clarify South Africa’s domestic and foreign policies – with Washington being a key stop.

South Africa assumed the presidency of the G20, a cohort of countries that meet to discuss global economic and political issues, in December last year, seeing it as an opportunity to bolster its international standing.

But in a snub to South Africa, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced that he will not attend a G20 meeting of foreign ministers taking place next week in Johannesburg.

“My job is to advance America’s national interests, not waste taxpayer money or coddle anti-Americanism,” he said.

South Africa is part of Brics, and alliance of major developing countries including Brazil, Russia, India and China, that is attempting to challenge the political and economic power of the wealthier nations of North America and Western Europe.

Mr MacKay believes it will be difficult for South Africa and other nations to navigate relations with the US under “the most unpredictable politician in the world”, suggesting that they will have to increasingly see Brics as an alternative partner.

But significantly for South Africa, the European Union (EU), one of its largest trading partners, has reaffirmed its support for the country.

António Costa, president of the European Council – which sets the general political direction and priorities of the EU – posted on X on Monday that he had spoken to Ramaphosa by phone to highlight the “EU’s commitment to deepen ties with South Africa”.

Should South Africa’s charm offensive fail, Mr Van Heerden suggests the government could opt to “negotiate hard” and use the minerals it supplies to the US as a “bargaining chip”.

But he voices a warning: “South Africa is going to have to think very carefully about how they play this chess game [where] the opening gambit has already been made by President Trump and Elon Musk.”

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The Gaza ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas has looked shaky since it came into force on 19 January but now looks the closest yet to totally falling apart.

A senior Egyptian source told the BBC that regional mediators Egypt and Qatar were “intensifying their diplomatic efforts in an attempt to salvage the ceasefire agreement”.

A top-level Hamas delegation has now arrived in Cairo for talks “to contain the current crisis”, a Hamas official told the BBC. He reiterated his group’s “full commitment” to the terms of the deal.

On Tuesday, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “If Hamas does not return our hostages by Saturday noon, the ceasefire will end and the [Israeli military] will resume intense fighting.”

However, there has been mixed messaging on whether he means all 76 hostages still in Gaza – in line with the high-stakes ultimatum recommended by US President Donald Trump.

Trump was reacting to a Hamas threat to derail the agreement on Monday.

It complained of Israeli ceasefire violations, in particular relating to aid, and warned that it would delay the release of hostages on Saturday.

In the past week, the president’s new radical plan for a US takeover of Gaza – without its two million Palestinian residents – has also changed the context for the ceasefire which his administration helped to broker.

On Wednesday, the White House restated Trump’s plan, while admitting that Jordan’s King Abdullah II had rejected the idea during talks in Washington a day earlier.

“The king would much prefer that the Palestinians stay in place,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. “But the president feels it would be much better and more majestic if these Palestinians could be moved to safer areas.”

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So, what more do we know about what has been happening behind the scenes?

When it comes to the outcome of the four-hour Israeli security cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Israeli journalists admitted puzzlement over contradictory and confusing briefings.

After the Israeli prime minister’s video message demanded the release of “our” hostages, the first reports – quoting an unnamed senior Israeli official – said this referred to the original three male hostages scheduled to be freed.

It was then said that Israel expected the final nine living hostages slated for release in the six-week first phase of the ceasefire to be freed, which is supposed to see a total of 33 captives handed over.

Key ministers then began to weigh in. Miri Regev – a close ally of Netanyahu – said on X the decision was “very clear” and echoed the Trump demand. She said: “By Saturday, everyone will be released!”

The far-right Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich – who has threatened to leave Netanyahu’s coalition if there is not a return to fighting at the end of the six-week ceasefire deal – went further still.

On social media, he proposed telling Hamas to release all the hostages or else have “the gates of hell” opened, with no fuel, water or humanitarian aid entering Gaza.

He said there should be “only fire and brimstone” from Israeli warplanes and tanks, with the strip completely occupied and its population expelled.

“We have all the international backing for this matter,” he stated.

His comments indicate how Trump’s post-war vision for Gaza has strengthened the far-right in Israel.

That is said to worry the Israeli security chiefs who negotiated the current ceasefire deal and believe its collapse will endanger hostages’ lives.

Israeli media report that they are pushing for a way to bring back the next three captives held by Hamas on schedule at the weekend.

Hostages’ families and their supporters have been alarmed by the latest developments, as have war-weary Gazans.

The fact that the Hamas leader for Gaza, Khalil al-Hayya, is leading a delegation to follow up on implementation in Cairo, shows that the armed group is also trying to get the ceasefire agreement back on track.

Since 19 January, the deal has seen a total of 16 Israeli hostages brought home in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Five Thai farm workers were also released.

At the same time, Israeli troops have withdrawn to just inside the perimeter of Gaza, including along the Egypt border.

The relative calm has allowed hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians to return to their own neighbourhoods and brought in a surge of humanitarian aid.

However, the current impasse stems from Hamas’s claim that Israel has not upheld its promises for the first phase of the truce.

It says that this required Israeli authorities to allow about 300,000 tents and 60,000 caravans into Gaza.

With so many people returning to the ruins of their homes – during cold, wet wintry weather – such shelters have been desperately needed.

Fuel and generators are also said to be in short supply – especially in the north of Gaza – where they are urgently required, especially for water pumps and bakeries.

It is hard to verify exactly what has gone into the strip.

According to figures quoted by the UN, “since the ceasefire came into effect, 644,000 people across Gaza have received shelter assistance including tents, sealing-off materials and tarpaulins”.

The Israeli military body Cogat said that Israel was “committed to and is fulfilling its obligation to facilitate the entry of 600 humanitarian aid trucks into the Gaza Strip each day”.

It added: “According to the data available to us, since the agreement came into effect, hundreds of thousands of tents have entered the Gaza Strip.”

Despite the conflicting accounts, it can be assumed that issues over aid that Israel allows into Gaza could be resolved by mediators.

“Cairo and Doha are urging all parties to adhere to the terms of the agreement amid political and field complexities that make the task more challenging,” the senior Egyptian source told the BBC.

“The continuation of the ceasefire is in everyone’s interest, and we warn that the collapse of the agreement will lead to a new wave of violence with serious regional repercussions.”

Even if the immediate crisis can be overcome by this weekend, then it will still leave the next stage of ceasefire talks unresolved.

The first phase of the deal is supposed to end in March, unless Hamas and Israel agree an extension. So far, negotiations on that have been put off.

The Israeli prime minister delayed discussions on the next phase amid pressure from within his governing coalition and growing evidence during the ceasefire that – in contradiction to his war goals – Hamas remains a significant political and military force in Gaza.

During hostage handovers and aid distribution, Hamas has sought to project an image of its own power.

Though it has previously signalled willingness to share power with other Palestinian factions, it still appears unlikely to disarm.

On top of this, Trump doubling down on his idea of turning Gaza into a Mediterranean travel destination – after relocating those living there to Jordan and Egypt – has caused shock and outrage across the Arab world.

Egypt says it has formulated its own comprehensive Gaza reconstruction plan – which will not involve Palestinians leaving their land.

The leaders of Egypt, Qatar, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are expected to meet ahead of a conference in Cairo on 27 February.

The ongoing dispute about the future of Gaza adds to the confusion and sense of deep mistrust amid efforts to solve the present issues.

Arriving at Nato headquarters early on Thursday, Europe’s defence ministers had one common message – that there could be no negotiations about Ukraine without Ukraine and Europe at the table too.

The question is to what extent the US is listening.

After a frenetic 24 hours of US declarations, there is a tangible sense that Europe’s leaders have been caught by surprise; that they now fear being bypassed on any potential Ukraine deal and being deprived of a voice on the future of European security.

Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock spoke of Donald Trump’s call with Vladimir Putin as being “very much out of the blue”, even if the US president had made it clear for months that he was aiming to bring a quick end to the war.

“There can be no negotiation about Ukraine without Ukraine,” said the UK’s John Healey.

“The same is true for Europe,” warned Dutch Defence Secretary Ruben Brekelmans.

“Because of course what is negotiated also has implications for Europe, so we think Europe should also sit at the table.”

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk rammed home the message on X when he posted: “All we need is peace. A just peace. Ukraine, Europe and the United States should work on this together. Together.”

The US is clearly engaging with its Nato allies and Ukraine. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth is spending two days at Nato HQ and Vice-President JD Vance will see Volodymyr Zelensky at the Munich Security Conference.

But Europe’s problem, and specifically the EU’s problem, is that it struggles to speak with one voice and present a united vision.

Ursula von der Leyen, the EU’s most recognisable figurehead, met Hegseth this week but has been barely visible since.

Europe’s leaders have had plenty of time to prepare for Trump’s peace plan. Now they’re left wondering whether the US is listening to them, or even reading their communiques.

The UK joined Poland, France, Germany, Italy and Spain late on Wednesday in agreeing that the security of the European continent was “our common responsibility” and that a just and lasting peace in Ukraine was necessary for transatlantic security too.

Baerbock told German radio that obviously Europe could not replace the US in military support for Ukraine, but a strong Europe was in US interest and it had to be made clear that “the USA needs us too”.

Europe could have claimed more agency instead of waiting for Trump’s initiative, Tyyne Karjalainen, of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, said.

“These statements we’re seeing now…I’m afraid they’re a symbol of weakness not strength,” she added.

So far, there is no obvious space for Europe in Trump’s peace push, and arguably not enough for Kyiv. Until now there had been a general acceptance that there should be no talking to Vladimir Putin without Ukraine.

Trump is planning face-to-face talks with the Russian leader, apparently in Saudi Arabia, but the two men have already prepared the ground with a lengthy phone-call.

The US president’s follow-up chat with Volodymyr Zelensky was far shorter.

Zelensky spoke initially of his belief that “America’s strength is sufficient to pressure Russia and Putin into peace”.

But on a trip to the southern city of Kherson on Thursday he made clear that, as an independent state, Ukraine would not accept either bilateral negotiations or “any agreements reached without us”.

“Putin hopes that by holding talks only with Trump, he will be able to negotiate more favourable terms,” Aleksandra Kozioł, from the Polish Institute of International Affairs, said.

“In doing so, he will also present himself as a leader who talks to another superpower on an equal footing.”

The worry for European leaders is that the US may have already moved some way towards meeting Russia’s war aims – and that it might go further.

Ukraine’s consistent demand has been for a complete withdrawal of Russian troops from its sovereign territory and for Ukrainian control over its state borders.

Judging by remarks from Trump and Hegseth, the US already considers Russia’s 2014 capture of Crimea and eastern areas in the Donbas as a and that Ukraine won’t be joining Nato.

Trump added that Ukraine needed fresh elections “at some point”, repeating a Putin fallacy that Zelensky was no longer a legitimate leader, even though Ukraine is under martial law precisely because of Russia’s war.

Hegseth was adamant there had been no betrayal of Kyiv, but German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said it was “regrettable…that the Trump administration has already made public concessions to Putin before negotiations have even begun”.

“It would have been better to talk about Ukraine’s possible Nato membership or the country’s possible loss of territory only at the negotiating table and not to take it off the table beforehand,” he said.

Along with the evident alarm that Putin may already have the upper hand, there was a clear warning from Nato and the EU on Thursday that any agreement had to last.

Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte said it was crucial that any deal should not unravel as had been allowed to happen with Russia in the past.

“It is always important to bear in mind that Russia is the aggressor here and it cannot be rewarded for its aggression,” warned EU Commission spokeswoman Anitta Hipper.

“When it comes to any discussions, any peace deals, it needs to be sustainable. A bad deal will only lead to more war. Just as it did before.”

European governments are already expecting to foot the bill to help rebuild Ukrainian cities, but President Trump may ask for European boots on the ground as well, to provide security guarantees.

Not only do Europeans have a strong argument to be involved in the overall plan, but Poland, the Baltic states and the Nordic countries would be especially wary of an emboldened Russia if it fell apart.

Hegseth stressed on Thursday that standing up against Russia’s “war machine” was an “important European responsibility”, and he reinforced Trump’s demand for 5% of economic output (GDP) to be spent on defence.

Few European governments have managed anything like that, while Russia’s government is already spending almost a third of its annual budget on defence.

Poland aims to spend 4.7% of its GDP on defence this year and Latvia 3.45%, but Germany has only just hit 2% and Spain and Portugal are hoping to reach 2% in 2029.

Luxembourg’s Defence Minister Yuriko Backes acknowledged the US demand but said numbers should not be set arbitrarily.

“What we should be focusing on is our plans and our ambitions that determine our investments not the other way around,” she said.

More than 250 people from 20 nationalities who had been working in telecom fraud centres in Myanmar’s Karen State have been released by an ethnic armed group and brought to Thailand.

The workers, more than half of whom were from African or Asian nations, were received by the Thai army, and are being assessed to find out if they were victims of human trafficking.

Last week Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra met Chinese leader Xi Jinping and promised to shut down the scam centres which have proliferated along the Thai-Myanmar border.

Her government has stopped access to power and fuel from the Thai side of the border, and toughened up banking and visa rules to try to prevent scam operators from using Thailand as a transit country for moving workers and cash.

Some opposition MPs in Thailand have been pushing for this kind of action for the past two years.

Foreign workers are typically lured to these scam centres by offers of good salaries, or in some cases tricked into thinking they will be doing different work in Thailand, not Myanmar.

The scammers look for workers with skills in the languages of those who are targeted for cyber-fraud, usually English and Chinese.

They are pressed into conducting online criminal activity, ranging from love scams known as “pig butchering” and crypto fraud, to money laundering and illegal gambling.

Some are willing to do the work, but others are forced to stay, with release only possible if their families pay large ransoms. Some of those who have escaped have described being tortured.

The released foreign workers were handed over by the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army, DKBA, one of several armed factions which control territory inside Karen State.

These armed groups have been accused of allowing the scam compounds to operate under their protection, and of tolerating the widespread abuse of trafficking victims who are forced to work in the compounds.

The Myanmar government has been unable to extend its control over much of Karen State since independence in 1948.

On Tuesday, Thailand’s Department of Special Investigation, which is similar to the US FBI, requested arrest warrants for three commanders of another armed group known as the Karen National Army.

The warrants included Saw Chit Thu, the Karen warlord who struck a deal in 2017 with a Chinese company to build Shwe Kokko, a new city believed to be largely funded by scams.

The BBC visited Shwe Kokko at the invitation of Yatai, the company which built the city.

Yatai says there are no more scams in Shwe Kokko. It has put up huge billboards all over town proclaiming, in Chinese, Burmese and English, that forced labour is not allowed, and that “online businesses” should leave.

But we were told by local people that the scam business was still running, and interviewed a worker who had been employed in one.

Like the DKBA, Saw Chit Thu broke away from the main Karen insurgent group, the KNU, in 1994, and allied himself to the Myanmar military.

Under pressure from Thailand and China, both Saw Chit Thu and the DKBA have said they are expelling the scam businesses from their territories.

The DKBA commander contacted a Thai member of parliament on Tuesday to arrange the handover of the 260 workers.

They included 221 men and 39 women, from Ethiopia, Kenya, the Philippines, Malaysia, Pakistan, China, Indonesia, Taiwan, Nepal, Uganda, Laos, Burundi, Brazil, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Tanzania, Sir Lanka, India, Ghana and Cambodia.

Hamas has said it is committed to implementing the Gaza ceasefire deal with Israel and will continue releasing hostages as scheduled, raising hopes that a resumption of the war can be averted.

Following talks in Cairo, the Palestinian armed group said mediators from Egypt and Qatar had confirmed they would “remove obstacles”.

There was no response from Israel. But Egyptian and Qatari reports also said mediators had bridged the gaps between the two sides and both were committed to continue implementation.

On Tuesday, Israel said the ceasefire would end if Hamas did not return hostages by Saturday. Hamas had earlier said it was postponing releases over what it claimed were Israeli violations.

Hamas said these included a failure to allow in the agreed amounts of vital humanitarian aid, including tents and shelters, which Israel denied.

The group’s threat to derail the deal prompted US President Donald Trump to propose Israel cancel the agreement altogether and “let hell break out” unless “all of the hostages” were returned by Saturday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he welcomed Trump’s demand and warned: “If Hamas does not return our hostages by Saturday noon [10:00 GMT], the ceasefire will end and the [Israeli military] will resume intense fighting until the final defeat of Hamas.”

However, there were conflicting messages from Israeli officials about whether he was demanding the release of all 76 hostages still in Gaza – in line with Trump’s ultimatum – or just the three due to be freed this weekend.

On Wednesday, an Egyptian security source told the BBC that Egypt and Qatar were “intensifying their diplomatic efforts in an attempt to salvage the ceasefire agreement”, as Hamas’s leader for Gaza, Khalil al-Hayya, arrived in Cairo to hold talks with Egypt’s intelligence chief and other officials.

On Thursday, Hamas put out a statement saying they focused on the need for all terms of the deal to be fulfilled, particularly regarding deliveries of caravans, tents, heavy construction equipment, medical supplies and fuel.

It added that the talks were “positive” and that the mediators had agreed to work to “remove obstacles and close gaps”.

“Accordingly, Hamas reaffirms its commitment to implementing the agreement as signed, including the exchange of prisoners according to the specified timeline.”

At the same time, Egyptian state-run Al Qahera TV reported that Egypt and Qatar had successfully “overcome obstacles” and that Israel and Hamas were committed to fully implementing the ceasefire deal.

Qatar-based Al Jazeera TV also said the negotiations had been successful and that mobile homes and heavy machinery would be allowed into Gaza on Thursday.

However, Israeli media then cited the Israeli prime minister’s office as calling the Al Jazeera report “fake news” and saying there was “no basis” to it.

An Israeli government spokesman later clarified the denial, writing on X: “There is no entry of caravans or heavy equipment into the Gaza Strip, and there is no co-ordination for this.”

The first phase of the ceasefire deal is supposed to last six weeks and see a total of 33 Israeli hostages exchanged for about 1,900 Palestinian prisoners and detainees from Gaza.

So far, 16 living Israeli hostages have been freed since the ceasefire took effect on 19 January. Hamas has also handed over five Thai hostages outside the terms of the deal.

The 17 other Israeli hostages due to be released during the first phase are two children, one woman, five men over the age of 50, and nine men under 50. They are supposed to be handed over in the next three weeks. Both sides have said eight of these hostages are dead, but only one has been named.

Negotiations for the ceasefire’s second phase – which should see the 43 remaining hostages released, a full Israeli withdrawal and a permanent ceasefire – have not yet begun.

The deal has also seen Israeli forces withdraw from densely populated areas of Gaza, hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians return to their homes in the north, and hundreds of aid lorries allowed into the territory each day.

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 48,230 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Most of Gaza’s population has also been displaced multiple times, almost 70% of buildings are estimated to be damaged or destroyed, the healthcare, water, sanitation and hygiene systems have collapsed, and there are shortages of food, fuel, medicine and shelter.

Merger talks between Honda and Nissan have collapsed after the firms failed to agree on a multi-billion-dollar tie-up.

The Japanese carmakers, along with junior partner Mitsubishi, had aimed to combine their businesses to fight back against competition from rival firms, especially in China.

The merger would have created an auto group worth $60bn (£48bn), and the world’s fourth-largest by vehicle sales after Toyota, Volkswagen and Hyundai.

The companies said they would continue their partnership on electric vehicles.

Karl Brauer, an analyst from online research platform iSeeCars.com, said the failure of the merger was not a total surprise.

“Plenty of automotive mergers have not worked out, and this one had as much potential for disaster as it did to help both brands,” he added.

The planned tie-up was seen as providing Nissan, which for a while was Japan’s second-largest car company, with crucial relief following years of slowing sales and turmoil involving its top executives.

Honda entered negotiations in a leading position. It remains a popular brand globally, producing and selling more cars than Nissan.

Nissan, meanwhile, has struggled to recover from a leadership crisis since the arrest of former chief executive and chairman Carlos Ghosn in late 2018.

Mr Ghosn was dismissed from his post over allegations of financial misconduct, which he denies, and has lived as a fugitive in his home country of Lebanon after being smuggled out of Japan in a music equipment box.

Nissan announced cost-cutting measures last year, including shedding 9,000 jobs globally, and halving its current chief executive’s pay.

Honda’s boss Toshihiro Mibe had said any merger would be “based on the assumption that Nissan completes its turnaround action”.

The companies eventually disagreed on what role Nissan would play in the merger – equal partner or subsidiary.

Jesper Koll, from Japanese online trading platform operator Monex Group, said the “pressure to make it appear like a merger of equals in Japan is very strong”.

“Having somebody leading this would seem almost offensive to the other party.”

Mr Koll also said Honda could have come off worse, adding: “You’re taking a potentially great company and taxing it with having to bail out an ugly duckling.”

Both Nissan and Honda are also facing the prospect of tariffs in the United States, another major market.

The growing electric car market has been increasingly dominated by Chinese manufacturers, such as BYD.

This increased competition has left many of the world’s leading carmakers struggling to compete.

In March last year, months before they announced the merger plans, Nissan and Honda had agreed to explore a strategic partnership for electric vehicles.

“The talks started because we believe that we must build up capabilities to fight them, including the current emerging forces, by 2030,” Honda’s chief executive Toshihiro Mibe said, in reference to the Chinese competition. “Otherwise we will be beaten.”

Without the possibility of a Honda merger to ease its troubles, Nissan continues to face an uncertain road ahead.

A possible powerful investor has already emerged, however, with Taiwan’s Foxconn, which produces most of the world’s advanced computer chips, saying it will consider buying Nissan shares for “co-operation”.

Foxconn chairman Young Liu said the firm was interested in collaborating with Renault, the French car giant that has a 36% stake in Nissan after rescuing it from the brink of bankruptcy in 1999.

Renault chimed in on the Honda-Nissan fallout on Thursday, calling the terms of the proposed deal “unacceptable”.

Any future deal for Nissan, according to the analyst Karl Brauer, will need to rely on leadership “that can identify and execute synergies across both companies, as well as manage the political and cultural challenges”.

Seated around a breakfast table in Erie, Pennsylvania, four veterans in their mid-80s – John, Jack, Bob and Don – gather to reminisce about their decades of friendship.

But it is another Don, this one in his late 70s, who keeps creeping into their conversation: President Donald Trump.

Of the four, only Bob voted for Trump. But after seeing Elon Musk standing next to the Republican president in the Oval Office this week, defending his efforts to slash the size and spending of the federal government, he is already doubting his decision.

“I’m afraid of him,” Bob says of Musk. “I think he’s trying to be president.”

Erie County was one of the key battlegrounds that helped swing the 2024 presidential election in Trump’s favour. The Republican won 50.1% of the vote here just four years after his Democratic rival Joe Biden narrowly took the county.

And part of Trump’s winning platform was a clear promise to overhaul and upend the federal government, pledging on the campaign trail to deliver “trillions” in cuts if elected. Polls indicated that was popular with Republican voters, and that remains the case now.

What was less clear to voters before the election was just how much of a frontline role Musk would play in this administration. The 53-year-old owner of Tesla, SpaceX and X now leads the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) which is dedicated to shrinking government and is routinely pictured alongside the president.

Members of his team have entered various departments to monitor spending and offered millions of workers an exit route. They have moved to freeze federal funding as well as the work of agencies such as the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in a blizzard of activity in recent weeks.

• Fact-checking Elon Musk’s claims in the Oval Office
• Musk denies ‘hostile takeover’ of government
• What we know about Musk’s cost-cutting mission

But given the scale of Musk’s influence in the nascent Trump administration, Democrats are concerned about conflicts of interest as well as Musk, whose companies have billions in federal government contracts, potentially taking actions to benefit himself.

“This is dangerous. This is against America’s interests,” Senior Democrat Chuck Schumer said. “And President Trump needs to show some leadership and rein in Doge before it inflicts more harm.”

That concern was shared by John Pelinsky, a lifelong Democrat who in November’s election cast his ballot for Donald Trump. He said Democrats had swung too far to the left and he wanted four years of Trump to help “centre the country”.

While he does not regret his vote, he says Musk makes him feel uneasy.

“He had his little kid there with him in the Oval Office,” he said. “I’m not quite comfortable with that.”

“I think Musk’s influence might be a little too much on the president,” he added. “I’m seeing too much of him. He should just stick with his SpaceX and his electric cars.”

Musk, meanwhile, has been clear that he believes he is working to enact the wishes of Trump’s voters.

“The people voted for major government reform and that’s what the people are going to get,” he told reporters during a surprise White House appearance this week. “That’s what democracy is all about.”

A recent poll by the BBC’s US partner CBS News suggested a majority of Americans were in favour of Musk’s work but disagreed over how much influence he should have.

In Erie, plenty of supporters were thrilled to see not one billionaire businessman, but two, running the show in Washington.

Christine Barber shrugged off concerns and said the American people had elected Trump to run the country and he had appointed Musk to help him do that.

“Personally, I love him,” she said of Musk.

“Financially, and from a business perspective, we need somebody who knows what the heck they’re doing. And if anybody does, it’s Donald Trump and Elon Musk.”

Patrick Laughlan had a similar view. He said he trusted Trump and Musk “to the extent you can trust anybody you don’t know”.

“The guy’s obviously brilliant,” Laughlan said of Musk. “He’s doing a good job trying to get rid of waste. Both of those gentlemen are trying to get money back to Americans.”

Evan Lagace, a restaurant manager here, embraces Musk’s cuts to a system he views as bloated and inefficient. He said he appreciated that the tech billionaire was “donating his time to the country to help fix a major problem”.

“Like he did in a micro aspect with Twitter, he could hopefully do the same thing with our country,” Lagace said, referring to the mass layoffs and spending cuts Musk implemented after buying the social media company.

As for the accusations that Musk had grown too powerful in this White House, Lagace said it did not bother him.

“He’s already extremely powerful,” he said. “It makes no difference.”

Two brothers have denied assaulting police officers in a disturbance at Manchester Airport.

Footage of a fracas at the airport’s Terminal 2 building on 23 July last year was widely shared online.

Mohammed Fahir Amaaz, 20, and Muhammad Amaad, 25, from Rochdale, pleaded not guilty when they appeared at Liverpool Crown Court earlier.

A trial, expected to last three weeks, has been scheduled at the same court on 30 June.

The court heard Mr Amaaz is alleged to have assaulted PC Zachary Marsden and PC Lydia Ward at the terminal’s car park paystation, causing them actual bodily harm.

He is also accused of the assault of PC Ellie Cook in the same incident and assaulting a member of the public earlier at a nearby Starbucks cafe.

Mr Amaad is alleged to have assaulted PC Marsden, causing actual bodily harm.

Both men, of Tarnside Close, had their unconditional bail extended after they entered not guilty pleas.

Google Maps has blocked reviews for the Gulf of Mexico, after criticism of its decision to label it “Gulf of America” for users in the US.

The tech giant updated the name of the location on Wednesday after President Donald Trump ordered it to be changed in official government documents.

Clicking on the label for the Gulf in Google Maps now brings up a note saying “posting is currently turned off”.

Google also appears to have deleted some negative reviews left in the wake of its name change.

The company has defended its decision, saying in a statement it “regularly puts protections on places during times when we anticipate an uptick of contributions that are off-topic or unrelated to someone’s direct experience with the place.”

It also highlighted a 2023 blog post about how it tackles “policy-violating content”, such as fake reviews, and the when it disables contributions or removes content to prevent abuse of its tools.

Users on social media claim hundreds of one star reviews have been removed, and have accused Google of “censorship.”

The most recent review left for the location result on Google Maps now appears to be from a month ago.

So-called “review-bombing” has become a popular form of online protest against companies or businesses that appear in Google Search or Maps results.

In December, Google removed derogatory reviews of a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania where Luigi Mangione – the 26-year-old since charged with the murder of United Healthcare boss Brian Thompson – had been arrested.

The tactic has also been deployed to manipulate an app’s ratings on mobile marketplaces.

In 2020, people used it to criticise President Trump’s then-proposal to ban TikTok – reportedly leaving hundreds of critical reviews on his re-election campaign app on Apple’s App Store.

It was also used by GameStop traders to hit back at stock-trading apps such as Robinhood that introduced trading restrictions amid the 2021 market upset.

Forbes reported on Thursday that the company had “tacitly admitted” to removing reviews criticising the Gulf location’s renaming on Maps.

The BBC has asked Google to confirm whether it has deleted them.

It comes after Google said in a blog post on Monday that US users would see “Gulf of America” replace Gulf of Mexico on Maps.

It said this followed a “longstanding policy” of reflecting name changes updated in official US government sources.

The name would remain unchanged in Mexico and the rest of the world would see “Gulf of America” added next to its current name in brackets, Google added.

Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum wrote a letter to the company asking them not to rename the Gulf in a letter in late January.

Meanwhile, Apple has also changed the name for US users of its own Maps app.

The White House highlighted it in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday – with an image of Apple Maps displaying “Gulf of America” instead of Gulf of Mexico.

Big tech firms and their chief executives have been accused of trying to “curry favour” with the Trump administration through controversial policy changes.

Meta announced it would ditch US fact-checkers and some global content policies in January, and later joined a slew of firms including Google and Amazon in scaling back diversity recruitment goals.

A Chinese fighter jet released flares in front of an Australian military aircraft while flying over the South China Sea early this week, authorities in Canberra have said.

Australia’s defence ministry said it “expressed concerns” to its Chinese counterparts over the “unsafe and unprofessional interaction”.

No one was injured and there was no damage to Australia’s P-8A surveillance jet after Tuesday’s incident, the ministry said.

But China said the Australian aircraft “intentionally intruded” into its airspace and that the Chinese fighter jet responded in a “legitimate, lawful, professional, and restrained” manner.

This is the latest in a string of encounters between the two countries’ militaries in the region, where China’s vast claims over islands and outcrops overlap with those of its neighbours.

While it has no claims to the South China Sea, Australia has aligned itself close to the US and its allies in saying that China’s assertions have no legal basis.

“Australia expects all countries, including China, to operate their militaries in a safe and professional manner,” the department said in a statement on Thursday.

Chinese foreign ministry’s spokesperson Guo Jiakun said in response that Australia violated China’s sovereignty and that Canberra must “stop undermining peace and stability in the South China Sea”.

In May last year, Australia accused a Chinese fighter plane of dropping flares close to an Australian navy helicopter that was part of a UN Security Council mission on the Yellow Sea.

In November 2023, Canberra accused Beijing’s navy of using sonar pulses in international waters off Japan, resulting in Australian divers suffering injuries.

In a separate statement on Thursday, Canberra said it was monitoring three Chinese navy vessels operating to the north-east of Australia.

These vessels had travelled through South East Asia before entering Australia’s maritime approaches, with one of the vessels transiting into waters in the country’s north, the defence department said.

“Australia respects the rights of all states to exercise freedom of navigation and overflight in accordance with international law, just as we expect others to respect Australia’s right to do the same,” it said.

India and France plan to work together on developing small modular nuclear reactors, India’s foreign ministry said after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the country.

Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron emphasised the importance of nuclear energy for “strengthening energy security” and transitioning towards a “low-carbon economy”.

It comes days after Delhi announced plans to change its strict nuclear liability law, which holds operators accountable for accidents or incidents and has been blamed for delays to previous nuclear projects.

Modi is also expected to discuss potential nuclear investments by US firms during his visit to Washington on Thursday.

India’s foreign ministry said the Delhi and Paris would develop small modular reactors and advanced modular reactors for civil use.

Such reactors can be built in factories and transported to locations where they can be assembled and installed.

They do not require large tracts of land or extensive infrastructure and are significantly smaller than traditional nuclear reactors.

Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said the aim was to initiate “cooperation” as modular reactor technology was “still in its initial stages”.

“We intend to be able to cooperate in co-designing the reactors, co-developing them and co-producing them, we feel this will allow us to tackle complications faced in other conventional projects,” he said.

The proposed partnership signals a shift in India’s nuclear energy policy.

Modi’s government, previously known for strict regulation of nuclear power, appears to be opening up to greater international cooperation and private sector participation.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman unveiled ambitious nuclear energy targets earlier this month, setting a goal of generating 100GW of nuclear energy by 2047.

The government has promised more than $2bn (£1.6bn) for nuclear research and development, most of which will be used with the aim of developing five indigenous reactors by 2033.

The focus on small modular reactors also represents a shift in India’s collaboration with France on nuclear power.

The countries had previously planned to build the world’s biggest nuclear plant in India’s western Maharashtra state.

The project has, however, been held up for more than a decade, mainly because of clauses introduced to India’s nuclear liability law following accusations that India had previously let Western companies off the hook over the devastating 1984 gas leak from a pesticide factory in the city of Bhopal as well as concerns over nuclear safety in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.

Modi is currently in the US for a two-day visit where he will hold meetings with President Donald Trump and business leaders.

Earlier in the week, India’s federal Oil Minister Hardeep Puri hinted that nuclear energy would be on the agenda for the two leaders.

On Tuesday, US Vice-President JD Vance met Modi on the sidelines of the AI Summit in Paris and discussed ways in which Washington could help Delhi diversify its energy sources by investing in American nuclear technology, news agencies reported quoting a White House statement.

Rachel Reeves has had a difficult start to her ministerial career.

As well as Labour’s new chancellor taking on the challenges of the UK economy, she has faced tricky questions about her past.

They began with scrutiny of her online CV late last year.

On the professional networking site LinkedIn, the Chancellor of the Exchequer claimed to have worked as an economist at Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) immediately before becoming an MP.

One of those who challenged it was a retired former colleague, Kev Gillett.

In a public post on LinkedIn, which he asked followers to share, he wrote: “Back in 2009 Rt Hon Rachel Reeves worked 3 levels below me. Just facts. She was a Complaints Support Manager at LBG/HBOS. Not an Economist. #factcheck.”

In fact it emerged that she had worked in a managerial role within the bank’s complaint handling department and her LinkedIn profile was updated to remove the claim.

Rachel Reeves’s online CV exaggerated how long she spent working at the Bank of England

Gillett also made another claim about Reeves’s time at the bank from 2006 to 2009, writing that she: “Nearly got sacked due to an expenses scandal where the 3 senior managers were all signing off each others expenses.”

Reeves’s team vigorously denied the allegations.

However, Labour’s imminent victory in last summer’s general election prompted a post on a private Facebook group for former HBOS employees that BBC News has seen asking if anyone remembered Reeves.

One former employee replied: “the expenses dept certainly do!”

Several others made reference to Reeves being investigated over her expenses spending.

BBC News has been seeking the truth behind these suggestions, speaking to more than 20 people, many of whom were former colleagues, and gaining access to receipts, emails and other documents.

We have learnt that there was an expenses investigation into Reeves and two other senior managers.

A detailed six-page whistleblowing complaint and dozens of pages of attached evidence, which we have seen, raised concerns that the three managers were using the bank’s money to “fund a lifestyle” with allegedly inappropriate spending on dinners, events, taxis and gifts, including for each other.

We have not been able to establish what the final outcome of the investigation was. Indeed it may not have concluded.

But the initial part of the investigation, which was conducted by Internal Audit at the request of the bank’s risk department, found that the three managers appeared to have broken the rules and the whistleblower’s allegations were substantiated, according to a senior source with knowledge of the investigation.

A spokesman for Reeves said the Chancellor had no knowledge of the investigation, always complied with expenses rules and left the bank on good terms.

Reeves was in her 20s and trying to become an MP when she took up a job at Halifax Bank of Scotland in West Yorkshire in 2006.

The role required her to move north from London, where she had unsuccessfully stood as Labour’s parliamentary candidate in what had been a safe Conservative seat.

She initially worked in the mortgage department, but in late 2007 moved to become Head of Business Planning in the Customer Relations department, which handled complaints.

Her career at HBOS coincided with what would prove to be a tumultuous time for the bank.

The global financial crisis which began in late summer of 2007 would force the sector to embark on a massive programme of job cuts and cost savings.

In September 2008, HBOS itself came close to collapse, requiring a government-brokered takeover by Lloyds and an emergency bailout which would total £20.5bn of taxpayers’ money.

It was shortly after this near-collapse, by early 2009, that a whistleblower from her department raised concerns about the spending habits of Reeves and two other managers, one of whom was Reeves’s boss.

Before this, in late 2008, a memo was circulated to Reeves and others which called for tighter cost control in the department.

Written by a planning and strategy manager, the document, “Financial Risk Control within Customer Relations”, raised concerns about “spending on travel” and on corporate spending cards, including Motivation cards which were used to reward staff.

It laid out proposals to “improve cost controls” which included monthly discussions with Reeves and another of the senior managers who the whistleblower claimed had mis-used expenses to “give visibility of claims, invoices, Thanks card use and reports”.

Separately, Reeves was emailed in mid-December 2008 about proposals for a presentation setting out how much had been spent on Motivation cards, recognising top performers and on taxi travel, to “focus attention on particular aspects of travel that are costly and perhaps need more consideration”.

Reeves replied to say that she was not sure a “huge analysis” was needed and she wanted to see the papers before they went any further.

The whistleblower’s complaint submitted by early 2009 was a six-page document laying out a range of concerns about an alleged spending culture in the Customer Relations department.

It focused on the behaviour of three individuals: Reeves, Reeves’s boss, and another senior manager in the department. Reeves’s boss, who we are not naming, was responsible for signing off the expenses of the other two managers.

The report and attached receipts and other documents seen by BBC News show Reeves was accused of spending hundreds of pounds on handbags, perfume, earrings and wine for colleagues, including one gift for her boss. Concern was also expressed about her spending on taxis and on a Christmas party. The whistleblower believed the spending to be excessive.

After a call to the whistleblowing hotline, the whistleblower was instructed to hand in a physical copy of their report and supporting evidence, two sources said.

A separate source, who contacted BBC News themselves in the wake of an article on the furore around Reeves’s CV last year, was also aware that someone had blown the whistle on Reeves and another colleague.

The report was passed to the bank’s risk department and, at their request, was taken on by the Internal Audit department.

A source who worked in risk at the bank told us: “Given the nature of the allegations – claiming expenses for things you wouldn’t normally claim expenses for – and the relative seniority of the individuals, the matter was referred for investigation by a team outside of that department.”

The Internal Audit department, which had access to expenses claims and sign-offs, then assessed the complaint and supporting documents, according to two sources.

It found that there was evidence of apparent wrongdoing by the three senior managers including Reeves, a senior source with direct knowledge of the investigation told BBC News.

Internal Audit completed its involvement in the investigation and passed its findings to an investigative part of the Risk department in around April 2009. The normal process would then have been for the managers to be interviewed about the allegations. There would then be an assessment of potential disciplinary action if necessary.

However it does not appear that this next interview stage took place, or that the investigation ever reached a formal conclusion. Reeves insisted she was never interviewed, as did her boss, who said she was “not aware of an expenses probe and my departure was not related to any alleged investigation”. The other senior manager declined to comment.

There is no evidence of which we are aware that the bank’s internal investigation was completed, or that there was ever a concluding finding of any wrongdoing.

Reeves left the bank in May 2009, as did her boss. The other senior manager was on sick leave in May and never returned to work at the bank.

There is no suggestion any of the departures were linked to the investigation or spending issues and a spokesman for Reeves said the Chancellor left the bank on good terms.

They also provided a statement from the lawyer who provided legal advice on the compromise agreement – a voluntary legal document ending an employee’s employment – she signed on her departure.

He said it was a “standard-style agreement adopted by the company when a mutually agreed exit was made during the bank’s restructure”.

“Absolutely no allegations of wrongdoing or misconduct were mentioned by the HBOS HR team during this process,” he said.

What lay behind the whistleblower’s complaint and the grumbles of other colleagues was unhappiness relating to several different areas of spending.

One concern was the use of bank payment cards to pay for Christmas and birthday gifts.

“A culture developed among senior managers in Customer Relations where gifts were given freely to direct reports – both upwards and downwards,” one former colleague of Reeves claimed.

“[They had] a very cavalier attitude regarding the budget in the department.”

Reeves and the other senior managers had both a corporate credit card and another payment card known as a ‘Motivation’ or ‘Thanks’ card.

The Motivation card was intended to be used to reward high-performers for good work.

There was guidance about its use. In February 2008 a memo instructed HBOS employees on the correct use of Motivation cards, which were widely used within the Customer Relations department.

It stated that the cards were to be used to “reward/acknowledge colleagues who have gone the extra mile”.

Suggested gifts included “chocolates, flowers, wine, vouchers or you could simply log on and send a free e-card to say ‘Thanks’ for a job well done”, the memo said.

It warned that managers would be “responsible for all transactions on your card and will be held accountable if spending on your statement cannot be verified”.

Spending in this area was scrutinised because the company incurred tax on it.

The memo doesn’t explicitly prohibit Christmas and birthday gifts.

But 11 former employees told us they had never heard of colleagues being bought birthday gifts with the bank’s money, and believed that doing so was in breach of the rules. Several said any birthday gifts were bought with their own money.

However, one ex-staff member, Jane Wayper, a former HR business partner who was given permission to speak to us by Reeves’s team, claimed that “birthday gifts and Christmas presents could be purchased using Motivation cards” and “staff were encouraged to do so for their teams”.

Reeves bought birthday presents for colleagues with HBOS’s money throughout her time in Customer Relations, receipts show, with purchases including wine and cosmetics. Some were bought using a Motivation card, while others were reimbursed through an expenses claim.

She also spent £152 on a handbag and perfume as a present for her boss using the bank’s money, according to the whistleblower’s report. The present was a joint gift from Reeves and one of the other managers who was later investigated alongside her.

And she bought earrings as a present for her PA, which she claimed back on expenses.

Her PA, Linda Barrowclough, said she had received Christmas and birthday gifts from Reeves but had assumed they were “personal gifts [and] they’d have come out of her own pocket”.

Reeves also used her Motivation card to spend more than £400 on a leaving meal for a colleague, which the whistleblowing complaint claimed was not a permitted use.

The situation around Christmas gifts, which Reeves also bought for her PA and others, was more complicated.

That’s because, according to internal bank guidance we have seen, these could be bought on expenses providing they were small gifts of £25 or less and they were not bought using the Motivation card.

The £25 limit was based on tax advice as anything more substantial would attract tax.

It appeared to her colleagues that Reeves had broken these rules.

But there does appear to have been confusion about the policy. We have also seen emails showing that Reeves was encouraged by her boss to buy more expensive Christmas presents, and to pay for them with her Motivation card.

In late October 2008, Reeves’s manager wrote that “after checking with other departments, it looks like the standard practice of buying Christmas gifts for direct reports using motivation bank will continue this year”, emails seen by the BBC show.

She suggested spending £50 to £75 per person on the presents.

A reminder titled “further clarity” about how to buy Christmas gifts and how much to spend was circulated by another HBOS employee in early December, emails show.

Reeves and the other managers who were later investigated were all among the recipients of this email confirming the rules on Christmas gifts.

While seasonal gifts, such as at Christmas, were allowed, the managers were explicitly told they could not use Motivation cards for these purchases. The cost of these “trivial” gifts was also not allowed to exceed £25, in line with HMRC guidance, the email said.

This is because rewards for performance at work are taxable whereas seasonal gifts such as those given for Christmas, providing they are not too costly, are exempt.

Replying to the email, Reeves wrote that she didn’t understand why the “goal posts are shifting” and said she had already ordered and paid for her presents using “Motivation Bank/Thanks, and I do not intend to cancel them,” claiming this would cost more time and money.

A colleague responsible for finance acknowledged that the message on paying for Christmas gifts hadn’t always been clear but said: “I don’t believe that the goalposts are being moved.”

Receipts show that gifts bought by Reeves at Christmas 2008 included a £49 handbag for her PA, while she herself received £55 worth of wine from her boss.

There was a widespread belief at the bank that there had been an expenses investigation into Reeves and two colleagues.

But Reeves has said that she has no recollection of being investigated or having questions raised over her expenses.

A spokesman for Reeves said she was “proud of the work she did at HBOS” and was not aware of the claims about her expenses until approached by the BBC.

“She was not aware of an investigation nor was she interviewed, and she did not face any disciplinary action on this or any other matters. All expenses were submitted and signed off in the proper way,” she said.

The spokesman also said Reeves left in 2009 “on good terms and received a severance payment, including her full notice pay and bonus”.

“HBOS allowed her to keep a company car for six months after she left and she was given a favourable reference.”

Reeves’s team put forward several formal HBOS employees for interview who they said corroborated her account that she had not been investigated.

One said she hadn’t seen evidence of senior managers misusing expenses and the bank had controls to prevent it but she left in February 2008, more than a year before Reeves departed. She also said that she had never heard of giving birthday and Christmas gifts at HBOS’s expense as being part of the bank’s policies.

Another, Jane Wayper, the former HR business partner, said in a statement that she didn’t recognise the accusations against Reeves and “would have been aware of any investigation which concluded there was a case to answer” as she would have been involved in the disciplinary process.

She said there was “extensive oversight of all expenses policies” and claimed that “birthday gifts and Christmas presents could be purchased using Motivation cards”. But this is at odds with a document seen by BBC News and the testimony of 11 sources we have spoken to.

Many of Reeves’ former HBOS colleagues were worried about the consequences of sharing confidential information with BBC News but believe it is in the public interest for what happened, and their concerns about the now-Chancellor’s spending of the bank’s money, to be reported.

But, given their concerns about speaking out publicly, we have agreed not to name them.

A Downing Street spokesman said the prime minister had no concerns about Reeves’s conduct.

Asked whether Sir Keir Starmer still thought the Chancellor had integrity after she updated her career history on LinkedIn, his official spokesman said: “Yes. The Chancellor and the prime minister are working hand in hand to deliver on the priorities, the plan for change, and to deliver the higher growth and the improvements in living standards that the country needs.”

The Number 10 official added that the chancellor had gone through the declaration process, which all members of Cabinet go through, when asked if she disclosed that there had been an investigation into her expenses before she was an MP.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the investigation raised questions for the chancellor.

She posted on X: “Keir Starmer said ‘restoring trust in politics is the great test of our era’. Until she [Reeves] comes clean – not just about her CV but about the circumstances in which she left HBOS, no one will take him seriously.”

The investigation at HBOS was not the last time Reeves would face scrutiny over her expenses.

In 2015, it emerged that she was among 19 MPs who had had their official credit cards suspended by the parliamentary expenses watchdog after failing to show their spending was valid.

Reeves owed more than £4,000 in spending at the time when her card was blocked. She subsequently cleared her debt.

If you have any information on stories you would like to share with the BBC Politics Investigations team, please get in touch at politicsinvestigations@bbc.co.uk

The Indian government has brought the troubled north-eastern state of Manipur under direct federal rule days after Chief Minister N Biren Singh resigned.

Singh, from India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), quit on Sunday after facing months of pressure to step down.

Ethnic clashes broke out between the state’s majority Meitei and minority Kuki communities in May 2023 over economic benefits, land rights and job quotas.

More than 250 people have been killed in the conflict and tens of thousands displaced.

The state hit the global headlines in July 2023 when a video showing two women being paraded naked by a mob went viral, sparking outrage in India.

While the scale of unrest has reduced since the peak in 2023, divisions between the communities persist and violent incidents continue to occur.

Singh’s position had become increasingly untenable in recent months with Kuki groups accusing him of favouring the Meitei community, of which he is a member – an accusation he denied.

Media reports said there was also rising discontent against him within the BJP.

BJP leaders tried but failed to agree on someone to replace him as chief minister.

On Thursday evening, the office of President Droupadi Murmu announced that federal rule – known as President’s rule in India – had been imposed in the state.

“After receiving a report from the governor and after considering the report and other information received by me, I am satisfied that a situation has arisen in which the government of that state cannot be carried on in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution of India,” the statement said.

Manipur’s last assembly session was held in August and Monday was set to be the first day of the new session, but federally-appointed governor Ajay Bhalla released a statement declaring the session “null and void”.

Earlier, opposition Congress party members had said they would bring a no-confidence motion against the chief minister during the session.

Congress leader Jairam Ramesh told the ANI news agency that Singh resigned as he sensed the motion would be passed. Ramesh called for federal Home Minister Amit Shah to resign.

Opposition leaders have also criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has not visited the state since the violence began.

Meanwhile India’s Supreme Court is hearing a plea against Singh filed by a Kuki organisation which accuses him of playing a direct role in fuelling the violence. The petitioners have submitted leaked audio tapes to back up their claims.

The court has sought a forensic report on the tapes before the next hearing. Singh has denied any wrongdoing.

The conflict involves the state’s two largest ethnic groups, the majority Meitei and minority Kuki, and their battle over land and influence.

Tensions boiled over in May 2023 when Kukis began protesting against demands from the Meiteis to be given official tribal status. The Kukis argued this would strengthen the Meiteis’ already strong influence on government and society, allowing them to buy land or settle in predominantly Kuki areas.

But there are myriad underlying reasons. The Kukis say a war on drugs waged by the Meitei-led government is a screen to uproot their communities.

Since the violence, Manipur has been divided into two camps, with Meiteis inhabiting the Imphal Valley and the Kukis living in the surrounding hill areas. Borders and buffer zones guarded by security forces and community members separate the two regions.

Efforts to hold peace talks between the communities by federal and state officials have so far failed to end the conflict.

TikTok’s uncertain future in the US has caused a surge in people putting the app on their phones through unofficial means, the BBC has been told.

An executive order from President Donald Trump means the social media platform can be used in the US despite the Supreme Court upholding a law which will see it sold or banned.

Even so, Apple and Google are preventing new downloads of the app meaning people are increasingly turning to a technique called “sideloading” if they want to get it for the first time or reload it to a new device.

It involves users turning to third-party sites, which are sometimes referred to as black markets, rather than official retailers to get hold of software.

One such company, Signulous, says 120,000 people have used its services to get TikTok onto iPhones.

Neil Pomperleau, from the firm, shared screenshots from his dashboard that showed more than 2,000 downloads per hour at times.

“One of the most popular apps in the world can only be sideloaded in the US so it’s been a good thing for us with record traffic to our site and a spike in customers”, he told the BBC.

People in the US are also turning to virtual private networks (VPNs), which allow users to pretend they are in a different country – so TikTok fans can make it appear they are in Canada, for example, where the ban does not apply.

Search engine queries for “VPN” hit an all-time high last month, according to Google data.

• When could TikTok be banned and will Trump save it?
• Apple ‘like The Godfather’ with new App Store rules

Dozens of YouTube guides about the method have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times in the last three weeks.

Experts say the trends show how difficult a ban would be to enforce, if one is introduced when a final decision on TikTok – due by April – is made.

Currently it is not illegal to download TikTok and although US lawmakers ruled that distributing it is against the law, both President Trump and his predecessor, Joe Biden, indicated they would not not enforce it.

Unofficial app shops like Mr Pomperleau’s operate in a legal grey area by signing up customers to software developer accounts.

The firms often charge a fee to take customers through the technical process of sideloading – something which comes with an increased risk of downloading faulty or malicious software due to the stores being less well-resourced than official app stores.

Mr Pomerleau – whose firm charges people a $20 annual fee – admits he is operating in risky territory.

“The law on the books is that TikTok is not allowed to be distributed in the US but we’re sort of operating on this pinky swear from two different US presidents that they won’t enforce this law.”

“I imagine Google and Apple are a little too risk-averse for their size and the whole situation’s really unpredictable,” he says.

TikTok itself appears to trust the President’s promise too.

On Monday it released a download kit to make it easier for Android users to sideload the app onto devices. Sideloading on Android phones is more common than on iPhones.

Another iPhone sideloading company called AppDB has had nearly 95,000 TikTok downloads and seen its membership double since the ban according to screen shots shared with the BBC.

“People will always find a way to get what they want,” says Aleksei Borodin from AppDB.

One US user who downloaded TikTok through the sideloading process, Dewayne Puckett, said it was “an experience, but the app works like normal”.

Apple argues that sideloading apps is a security risk and has long insisted apps need to be vetted and verified through the official App Store.

The company charges an average 30% commission to apps using its store, which it says is for the protection of consumers.

Although the fee is controversial, it is true that generally Apple is more successful at keeping malicious apps out than other marketplaces like Google’s Play Store.

Since March last year Apple has been forced to allow competition app shops onto the iPhone in the EU after new laws were passed to encourage more choice.

Sudan has said a final deal has been agreed with Russia to establish a naval base on the war-torn country’s Red Sea coast, saying there were “no obstacles” to it.

An agreement was discussed under former President Omar al-Bashir, but the military government that overthrew him had later said the matter was under review.

Sudan’s Foreign Minister Ali Youssef said on Wednesday a deal had been signed and they were in “complete agreement” with Russia over the establishment of the port. He said what remained was only the ratification of the deal.

The US, China and France already have a naval presence in the seas off the Horn of Africa – a key strategic and trading route.

“Sudan and Russia have reached an understanding on the agreement regarding the Russian naval base,” Youssif told a press briefing on Wednesday with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow.

“The matter is very simple… We have agreed on everything,” he said.

No further details were provided and Lavrov did not comment on the matter.

The deal was discussed under Bashir’s rule in 2019 and initially signed in November 2020, soon after the military takeover, but its fate had been unclear since war broke out in 2023.

The ongoing civil war, in which thousands have been killed, began after the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) became involved in a vicious power struggle.

• How Russia is trying to influence Africa

Moscow has for years sought to establish a base near Port Sudan.

The port agreement, which was to last for 25 years, had been for Russia to establish a naval logistics hub, with warships including nuclear-powered vessels, and up to 300 personnel.

The Red Sea provides a strategic route that is vital to global commerce as well as a defence and geopolitical hotspot.

Russian interests in Port Sudan are said to have grown amid fears of losing its military assets in Syria. The new government in Syria last month terminated a treaty granting Russia a long-term lease for a port where Russia has had its only foreign naval base.

In recent months, Russian officials have reportedly visited Port Sudan – the de facto capital of Sudan during the war – and has sought to cultivate ties with both warring sides in the civil war.

Russia has also been expanding its influence in other African countries, including signing military co-operation agreements and displacing traditional Western allies.

• Why Wagner is winning hearts in the Central African Republic
• Putin offers African countries Russia’s ‘total support’
• Wagner – built by blood and treasure in Africa
• Russia in Africa: How disinformation operations target the continent

India and France plan to work together on developing small modular nuclear reactors, India’s foreign ministry said after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the country.

Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron emphasised the importance of nuclear energy for “strengthening energy security” and transitioning towards a “low-carbon economy”.

It comes days after Delhi announced plans to change its strict nuclear liability law, which holds operators accountable for accidents or incidents and has been blamed for delays to previous nuclear projects.

Modi is also expected to discuss potential nuclear investments by US firms during his visit to Washington on Thursday.

India’s foreign ministry said the Delhi and Paris would develop small modular reactors and advanced modular reactors for civil use.

Such reactors can be built in factories and transported to locations where they can be assembled and installed.

They do not require large tracts of land or extensive infrastructure and are significantly smaller than traditional nuclear reactors.

Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said the aim was to initiate “cooperation” as modular reactor technology was “still in its initial stages”.

“We intend to be able to cooperate in co-designing the reactors, co-developing them and co-producing them, we feel this will allow us to tackle complications faced in other conventional projects,” he said.

The proposed partnership signals a shift in India’s nuclear energy policy.

Modi’s government, previously known for strict regulation of nuclear power, appears to be opening up to greater international cooperation and private sector participation.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman unveiled ambitious nuclear energy targets earlier this month, setting a goal of generating 100GW of nuclear energy by 2047.

The government has promised more than $2bn (£1.6bn) for nuclear research and development, most of which will be used with the aim of developing five indigenous reactors by 2033.

The focus on small modular reactors also represents a shift in India’s collaboration with France on nuclear power.

The countries had previously planned to build the world’s biggest nuclear plant in India’s western Maharashtra state.

The project has, however, been held up for more than a decade, mainly because of clauses introduced to India’s nuclear liability law following accusations that India had previously let Western companies off the hook over the devastating 1984 gas leak from a pesticide factory in the city of Bhopal as well as concerns over nuclear safety in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.

Modi is currently in the US for a two-day visit where he will hold meetings with President Donald Trump and business leaders.

Earlier in the week, India’s federal Oil Minister Hardeep Puri hinted that nuclear energy would be on the agenda for the two leaders.

On Tuesday, US Vice-President JD Vance met Modi on the sidelines of the AI Summit in Paris and discussed ways in which Washington could help Delhi diversify its energy sources by investing in American nuclear technology, news agencies reported quoting a White House statement.