This year’s Munich Security Conference (MSC) was supposed to be primarily about two things: how to end the war in Ukraine without giving in to Russia, and how Europe needed to boost its spending on defence.

But the most senior American present, US Vice President JD Vance, used his time at the podium to talk about neither.

Instead, he shocked delegates on Friday by roundly attacking Washington’s allies, including Britain, in a blistering attack decrying misinformation, disinformation, and the rights of free speech.

It was a very weird 20 minutes – one met largely with silence from delegates in the hall.

Even a joke, “if American democracy can survive 10 years of [climate campaigner] Greta Thunberg scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk”, failed to raise a single laugh.

He accused European governments of retreating from their values, and ignoring voter concerns on migration and free speech.

Vance’s speech went down very badly – unequivocally badly. It was extraordinarily poorly judged.

But who was it aimed at?

A US commentator said to me afterwards: “That was all for US domestic consumption.”

The vice president did, however, go on to meet the embattled Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who did his best to sound positive.

The pair had “a good conversation”, according to Zelensky, who said it marked “our first meeting, not last, I’m sure”. The Ukrainian leader emphasised the need for Washington and Kyiv to speak more and work together “to prepare the plan [on] how to stop Putin and finish the war”.

“We want, really, we want peace very much. But we need real security guarantees,” Zelensky added.

According to US President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin also wants peace, but that is peace on his terms. Unless those have secretly changed, they involve capitulation to Russia’s demands and the permanent ceding of territory to Moscow.

Vance’s speech came days after President Trump effectively pulled the rug out from Ukraine’s negotiating position by conceding, via his Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, that restoring Ukraine’s territory to where it was before the first Russian invasion in 2014 is simply “not realistic”.

The US also dashed Kyiv’s hopes of joining Nato, a key ambition of President Zelensky, and ruled out sending US troops to help protect Ukraine’s borders from the next time Russia decides to invade.

Ahead of the Munich conference Europe was stunned by news that Trump had held an apparently cordial 90-minute phone call with Putin, thus abruptly ending the West’s three-year freeze in talking to the Russian leader that has been in place since the time of the 2022 invasion.

The delegates in Munich are scheduled to focus on the war in Ukraine in a high-profile debate on Saturday.

The fear in Munich amongst European leaders and their delegations is that in Donald Trump’s rush to secure a peace deal in Ukraine, Putin will emerge victorious, stronger and planning to seize more parcels of land in Europe.

Zakaria is 11 years old and lives in Gaza. He reckons he has seen thousands of bodies since the war started.

But at an age when children are typically found in a classroom, Zakaria is volunteering at one of Gaza’s few functioning hospitals – al-Aqsa.

As a succession of ambulances ferrying victims of the war between Israel and Hamas pull up outside the facility in the central town of Deir al-Balah, Zakaria clears a way through the crowds to retrieve newly arrived patients and rush them inside for treatment.

Moments later he is running through the corridors of the hospital with a stretcher and later carries a young child inside to the emergency room.

Several of his schoolfriends have been killed since the conflict started and hanging around the hospital means Zakaria witnesses shocking scenes. He says that once, after an Israeli strike, he saw a boy in front of him burn to death in a fire.

“I must have seen at least 5,000 bodies. I saw them with my own eyes,” he tells our cameraman.

Zakaria is one of the children and young people we spent nine months following for our BBC documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone.

It’s a film that my colleague Yousef Hammash and I co-directed from London, because international journalists have not been allowed by Israel to enter the Gaza Strip and report independently since the start of the war 16 months ago.

To gather the footage and the interviews, we employed two cameramen who live in Gaza – Amjad Al Fayoumi and Ibrahim Abu Ishaiba – communicating with them regularly using messaging apps, internet calls and mobile phone networks.

Yousef and I wanted to make this documentary to show what everyday life is like for Gazan people trying to survive the horrors of this conflict as it unfolded. We finished filming a few weeks ago, on the day the current ceasefire started.

We focused on three children and a young woman with a newborn because they are the innocents in this war, which came to a shaky pause on 19 January when a hostage release deal between Hamas and Israel took effect.

More than 48,200 people have been killed in Gaza during Israel’s offensive, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. The military action followed the attacks on southern Israel by Hamas on 7 October 2023 in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage.

By and large we filmed in an area of southern and central Gaza earmarked by Israel’s army as a “humanitarian zone”, where Palestinians were told to go for their own safety. Despite its designation, the zone itself was struck almost 100 times between May 2024 and January this year, according to analysis by BBC Verify. The Israel Defense Forces said it was targeting Hamas fighters operating there.

We wanted to know how children found food, decided where to sleep and how they occupied themselves while trying to survive.

Abdullah, 13, narrates the film. He speaks excellent English having attended the British school in Gaza before the war and does all he can to keep going with his education.

Renad, 10, does a cooking show on TikTok with the help of her older sister. They make many kinds of dishes, even though the war means they can’t get the proper ingredients, and have more than one million followers.

We also followed Rana, 24, who has given birth to a baby girl prematurely. She has been displaced three times and lives near the hospital with her two sons and her parents.

Some of the film also looks at how medics fought to keep people alive in al-Aqsa hospital, which was described in January 2024 by British doctors as the only functioning hospital in central Gaza.

That’s where we found Zakaria.

Everyone working at the hospital knows the boy. He is, of course, still a child and not a qualified medic but he is always hanging around, waiting for an opportunity to help someone, in the hope he might receive some food or money in return.

Sometimes he helps carry equipment for local journalists, other times stretchers with people injured or dying.

When there is a quiet moment he helps clean the blood and dirt from the ambulances.

There is no school for him to go to and he is the only person in his family making any money. He doesn’t stay with them as they have little food or water, he says, and instead lives on his own at the hospital and sleeps where he can. One night it’s in the CT scan room, another in the journalists’ tent or the back of an ambulance.

There were plenty of nights he fell asleep hungry.

As much as they try, hospital staff can’t keep him away from the chaos of caring for casualties.

Zakaria idolises the paramedics and wants to be considered part of the team. One of them, Said, takes him under his wing. Whenever he treats Zakaria as a child, he says, the boy gets upset.

Other staff see the care and attention Zakaria pays to them and the patients in the hospital and teach him to give someone an IV drip.

In recognition of his efforts, they even make him a miniature set of blue scrubs – which he takes great pride in.

Said tries to ensure the boy still gets a semblance of childhood and in the film we follow them on a trip to the beach.

Sitting under the fronds of a tree branch, Zakaria tucks into the lunch Said has bought. The shawarma, he says, is perfect. Said jokes it’s the only time the boy ever “shuts up”.

But Said worries Zakaria has seen so much death and destruction that he may never fit in with children his age again.

Zakaria is himself looking beyond childhood.

“I want to be a paramedic,” he says. “But first I need to get out of here.”

Hamas has released the names of three hostages due to be freed on Saturday in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israel, after days of fears over the future of the ceasefire.

They are Russian-Israeli Alexander Troufanov, Argentine-Israeli Yair Horn, and US-Israeli Sagui Dekel-Chen.

Israel has said it will resume bombing if the three are not released on time. The warning came after Hamas said it was postponing the releases in response to alleged Israeli violations of the ceasefire.

President Trump said the ceasefire should be scrapped if Hamas did not release all the hostages held in Gaza by midday on Saturday.

• Hamas hostages: Stories of the people taken from Israel

Since the ceasefire began on 19 January, 16 Israeli and five Thai hostages have been released in exchange for 766 prisoners.

During the first six-week phase of the ceasefire, a total of 33 hostages should be freed in exchange for around 1,900 Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israel.

The war was triggered by Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, when gunmen killed about 1,200 people and took 251 hostages.

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

There are 73 hostages taken on 7 October who are still being held in Gaza. There are also three other Israeli hostages – one of whom is dead – who have been held in Gaza for a decade or more.

Alexander Troufanov, 29, Yair Horn, 46, and Sagui Dekel-Chen, 36, were all seized from Kibbutz Nir Oz on the edge of Gaza.

The ceasefire has been under strain since it began, with each side taking reciprocal action over alleged violations. Intense efforts by mediators US, Egypt and Qatar have managed to stop it from collapsing.

Israel has been especially infuriated by the staged way hostages have been released – publicly displayed on platforms alongside gunmen and in front of crowds of spectators, before being handed over to the Red Cross in chaotic scenes.

For its part, Hamas has accused Israel of preventing what the group says are the amount of tents and aid lorries required to be let into Gaza under the terms of the ceasefire. Israel denies this.

Meanwhile the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) published video of what it said was a rocket fired at Israel from Gaza on Thursday. It said the rocket failed and landed inside Gaza. A source in the Hamas-run police said the rocket was an unexploded Israeli ordinance that had fired into the air while it was being moved away, Reuters news agency reported.

West Bank-based Palestinian news agency Wafa said a 14-year-old boy, Hammoudeh Alaa Saud, was killed the same day by what it said was Israeli ordnance which blew up in Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp.

An Indian court’s ruling that a man’s forced “unnatural sex” with his wife is not an offence has led to huge outrage and sparked renewed calls for better protections for married women.

The controversial order has also brought back into the spotlight the issue of marital rape in a country which has stubbornly refused to criminalise it.

Earlier this week, a high court judge in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh set free a 40-year-old man who was convicted by a trial court in 2019 of rape and unnatural sex with his wife, who died within hours of the alleged assault.

The lower court had also found the man guilty of “culpable homicide not amounting to murder”. He was sentenced to “rigorous imprisonment for 10 years” on each count, with all the sentences to run concurrently.

But on Monday, the High Court’s Justice Narendra Kumar Vyas acquitted the man of all charges, saying that since India did not recognise marital rape, the husband could not be considered guilty of non-consensual sex or any non-consensual unnatural sexual act.

The judgement has been met with anger, as activists, lawyers and campaigners renew their calls to criminalise marital rape in India.

“To watch this man walk away is unacceptable. This judgement may be correct legally, but it is ethically and morally abhorrent,” said lawyer and gender rights activist Sukriti Chauhan.

“An order that absolves a man of such a crime, to say it’s not a crime, is the darkest hour in our legal system,” she told the BBC.

“It has shaken us to the core. This needs to change and change quickly.”

Priyanka Shukla, a lawyer in Chhattisgarh, said a judgement like this “sends out the message that because you’re the husband, you have rights. And you can do anything, you can even get away with murder”.

She added that this is not the first time a court has given such a judgement, and there is always anger.

“This time, the outrage is more because it is so gruesome and the woman died.”

The court documents make for grim reading.

According to the prosecution, the incident took place on the night of 11 December 2017, when the husband, who worked as a driver, “committed unnatural sex with the victim against her will… causing her a lot of pain”.

After he left for work, she sought help from his sister and another relative, who took her to hospital where she died a few hours later.

In her statement to the police and her dying declaration to a magistrate, the woman said she became ill “due to forceful sexual intercourse by her husband”.

A dying declaration carries weight in court and legal experts say it is generally enough for conviction, unless contradicted by other evidence.

While convicting the man in 2019, the trial court had relied heavily on her dying declaration and the post-mortem report, which stated “the cause of death was peritonitis and rectal perforation” – simply put, severe injuries to her abdomen and rectum.

Justice Vyas, however, saw matters differently – he questioned the “sanctity” of the dying statement, noted that some of the witnesses had retracted their statements and, most importantly, said that marital rape was not an offence in India.

The lower court’s conviction was “a rarest of rare case”, Ms Shukla said, “probably because the woman died”.

“But what is shocking about the high court order is that there’s not even one sympathetic comment from the judge.”

Considering the nature of the assault, the high court’s order has come as a shock for many, who believe the judge should not have dismissed the case so lightly.

India is among more than 30 countries – along with Pakistan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia – where marital rape is not a criminal offence.

A number of petitions have been filed in recent years seeking to strike down Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code, which has been in existence since 1860.

The British colonial-era law mentions several “exemptions” – or situations in which sex is not rape – and one of them is “by a man with his own wife” if she is not under 15 years.

Britain outlawed marital rape in 1991 but India, which recently rewrote its criminal code, retained the regressive law in its new statute book.

• India government says criminalising marital rape ‘excessively harsh’
• In India, growing clamour to criminalise rape within marriage

The idea is rooted in the belief that consent for sex is “implied” in marriage and that a wife cannot retract it later. Campaigners say such an argument is untenable in this day and age, and that forced sex is rape, regardless of who does it.

But in a country where marriage and family are considered sacrosanct, the issue has polarised opinions and there’s strong resistance to the idea of criminalising marital rape.

The Indian government, religious leaders and men’s rights activists have strongly opposed the move.

In October last year, the government told the Supreme Court that criminalisation of marital rape would be “excessively harsh”. The federal home ministry said it “may lead to serious disturbances in the institution of marriage”.

Authorities also insist that there are enough laws to protect married women against sexual violence. But campaigners say India cannot hide behind archaic laws to deny women bodily agency.

“A lot of people say the constitution cannot enter your bedroom,” Ms Chauhan said.

“But doesn’t it grant women – like all citizens – fundamental rights to safety and security? What kind of redundant country do we live in that we remain quiet when a woman has to face this level of violence?” she asks.

Violence within marriage is rampant in India.

According to a recent government survey, 32% of married women face physical, sexual or emotional violence by their husbands and 82% have experienced sexual violence by their husbands.

And even that doesn’t give the true scale of the problem, Ms Shukla said, because a majority of women do not report violence, especially sexual violence, out of shame.

“In my experience, women are not trusted when they complain, everyone says it must be fake. The only time such cases are taken seriously is when a woman dies or the assault is particularly gruesome,” the lawyer said.

Ms Chauhan believes nothing will change until the law changes.

“We need to criminalise marital rape. The wife not getting justice after such a gruesome incident deserves a nationwide campaign, which is not born of anger but is serious [and] well thought out.”

She added that the government and men’s activists try to project it as a “man versus woman debate”.

“But the demand for criminalising marital rape is not against men, but for the safety and wellbeing of women. Is it not important to ensure women’s safety?”

A lawsuit against Sean “Diddy” Combs and Jay-Z, which alleged the rape of a 13-year-old girl in 2000, has been dismissed, according to a legal filing submitted on Friday in New York.

The attorney representing the anonymous plaintiff, referred to as Jane Doe, voluntarily withdrew the case, court records show.

The filing was submitted by lawyer Tony Buzbee, who is representing dozens of plaintiffs in lawsuits alleging sexual misconduct against Mr Combs.

The filings states that the plaintiff “hereby gives notice that the… action is voluntarily dismissed, with prejudice”.

Because the dismissal is with prejudice, the lawsuit cannot again be refiled in its current form.

Roc Nation, the entertainment company founded by Jay-Z, whose legal name is Shawn Carter, issued a statement signed by him, referring to the dismissal as a “victory”.

“The frivolous, fictitious and appalling allegations have been dismissed,” he wrote.

“This civil suit was without merit and never going anywhere. The fictional tale they created was laughable, if not for the seriousness of the claims.”

“The trauma that my wife, my children, loved ones and I have endured can never be dismissed,” said the rapper, who is married to singer Beyoncé.

He continued: “The courts must protect the innocent from being accused without a shred of evidence. May the truth prevail for all victims and those falsely accused equally.”

Jay-Z’s attorney, Alex Spiro, emphasised in a separate statement that the case “never should have been brought”.

“By standing up in the face of heinous and false allegations, Jay has done what few can – he pushed back, he never settled, he never paid 1 red penny, he triumphed and cleared his name,” he said in a statement to the BBC.

Jane Doe initially filed the lawsuit against Mr Combs in October before adding Jay-Z’s name in December. She alleged that both men assaulted her in 2000 after an MTV Video Music Awards afterparty.

• Diddy: When is the trial and what are the charges?

Jay-Z strongly denied the allegations, claiming that his attorney had been sent “blackmail” in an attempt to force a settlement. He said the attempt had the “opposite effect” and instead motivated him to publicly challenge the accusations.

In December, Jane Doe gave an interview that raised questions about her credibility. She admitted that “not all the facts are clear” and stated, “I have made some mistakes. I may have made a mistake in identifying.”

Last month, Jay-Z formally requested the court to dismiss the lawsuit, citing inconsistencies in the accuser’s account. The request was approved by United States District Judge Analisa Torres, leading to the lawsuit’s dismissal.

While Jay-Z is no longer facing legal action in this case, Mr Combs continues to battle over three dozen civil suits.

In response to Friday’s dismissal, Mr Combs’ legal team issued a statement declaring his innocence.

“For months, we have seen case after case filed by individuals hiding behind anonymity, pushed forward by an attorney more focused on media headlines than legal merit. Just like this claim, the others will fall apart because there is no truth to them,” the statement says.

It added: “This is just the first of many that will not hold up in a court of law.”

Mr Combs has been held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, since September 2024 on federal criminal charges related to racketeering and sex trafficking.

He’s been denied bail three times, and will remain in custody until his trial on 5 May 2025.

The first thing kayaker Adrián Simancas noticed after he was eaten by a whale was the slime.

“I spent a second realising I was inside the mouth of something, that maybe it had eaten me, that it could have been an orca or a sea monster,” the 23-year-old told BBC Mundo.

Adrián had started to think how he might survive inside the humpback whale “like Pinocchio” – then the creature spat him back out.

The Venezuelan kayaker had been paddling through the Strait of Magellan, off Chile’s Patagonian coast, with his father when he felt something “hit me from behind, closing in on me and sinking me”.

His father, Dall, was able to capture the short-lived ordeal on video just metres away.

“I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, I realised I was inside the whale’s mouth,” Adrián told the BBC.

“I felt a slimy texture brush my face,” he recalled, adding that all he could see was dark blue and white.

“I wondered what I could do if it had swallowed me since I could no longer fight to stop it,” he said.

“I had to think about what to do next.”

But within seconds, Adrián started to feel as though he was rising toward the surface.

“I was a little afraid of whether I would be able to hold my breath because I didn’t know how deep I was, and I felt like it took me a long time to come up.

“I went up for two seconds, and finally I got to the surface and realised that it hadn’t eaten me.”

In a nearby kayak, Adrián’s father Dall Simancas watched on in disbelief.

The pair had just crossed Eagle Bay – down the coast from Punta Arenas, Chile’s southernmost city – when he heard a crash behind him. “When I turned around, I didn’t see Adrián.”

“I was worried for a second, until I saw him coming up out of the sea,” the 49-year-old said.

“Then I saw something, a body, which I immediately interpreted as most likely being a whale because of its size.”

Dall had fixed a camera to the back of his kayak to record the rising waves – which captured his son’s remarkable experience.

Watching the footage back, Adrián – who moved with his father to Chile from Venezuela seven years ago in search of a better quality of life – was shocked to see just how enormous the whale had been.

“I hadn’t seen the moment when the back appears, and the fin is visible. I didn’t see it, I heard it. That made me nervous,” he said.

“But later, with the video, I realised that it actually appeared before me in such a huge size that perhaps if I had seen it, it would have scared me even more.”

For Adrián, the experience was not just about survival – but he said felt he had received a “second chance” when the whale spat him out.

The “unique” experience in one of the most extreme places on Earth had “invited me to reflect on what I could have done better up until that point, and on the ways I can take advantage of the experience and appreciate it as well”, he added.

But there is a simple reason he was able to escape the whale so quickly, according to a wildlife expert.

Humpback whales have narrow throats “about the size of a household pipe” designed for swallowing small fish and shrimp, Brazilian conservationist Roched Jacobson Seba told the BBC.

“They physically cannot swallow large objects like kayaks, tires, or even big fish like tuna,” he said.

“Ultimately, the whale spit out the kayak because it was physically impossible to swallow.”

The humpback whale likely engulfed Adrián by accident, Mr Seba suggested.

“The whale was likely feeding on a school of fish when it unintentionally scooped up the kayak along with its meal.

“When whales surface too quickly while feeding, they can accidentally hit or engulf objects in their path.”

He warned that the encounter served as “an important reminder” to avoid using paddleboards, surfboards or other silent vessels in areas where whales usually swim.

Boats used for whale watching and research must always keep their engines on, he added, as the noise helps whales detect their presence.

Despite the hype, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first visit to Washington under Donald Trump’s second term was a sober, business-first affair – unsurprising for a working visit, which lacks the pomp of a state visit.

Trump announced expanded US military sales to India from 2025, including F-35 jets, along with increased oil and gas exports to narrow the trade deficit. Both sides agreed to negotiate a trade deal and finalise a new defence framework.

He also confirmed the US had approved the extradition of Tahawwur Rana, a Chicago businessman accused of playing a role in the 2008 terror attack in Mumbai.

“That’s a lot of deliverables for an administration less than a month old,” Michael Kugelman of the Wilson Center’s South Asia Institute in Washington told the BBC

“Overall, both sides seem comfortable continuing Biden-era collaborations, particularly in tech and defence, though many will be rebranded under Trump.”

Still, major challenges lie ahead. Here are the key takeaways:

Modi’s visit came as Trump ordered that US trading partners should face reciprocal tariffs – tit-for-tat import taxes to match similar duties already charged by those countries on American exports. He ordered advisers to draft broad new tariffs on US trade partners, warning they could take effect by 1 April.

India enjoys a trade surplus with the US, its top trading partner. India cut average tariffs from 13% to 11% in its federal budget in a bid to pre-empt Trump’s tariff moves.

The jury is out on whether India appears to have dodged tariff shocks for now.

Ajay Srivastava, founder of the Delhi-based think tank Global Trade Research Institute (GTRI), says he doesn’t see any “problems with tariffs”.

The main reason, he says, is that 75% of the US exports to India attract import taxes of less than 5%.

“Trump points to extreme outlier tariffs like 150% on select items, but that’s not the norm. India has little reason to fear reciprocal tariffs,” Mr Srivastava told the BBC.

Abhijit Das, former head of the Centre for WTO Studies at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, isn’t convinced.

“The devil lies in the details. Reciprocal tariffs won’t just mirror India’s import taxes -other factors will come into play,” he told the BBC.

Trump’s approach could go beyond import duties, factoring in value added tax (VAT), non-tariff barriers and trade restrictions. While India’s goods and services tax (GST) on imported goods aligns with WTO rules, Trump may still use it to justify higher tariffs.

A US government memo on reciprocal tariffs hints at this strategy, citing costs to American businesses from non-tariff barriers, subsidies and burdensome regulations abroad. It also cites VAT and government procurement restrictions as non-tariff barriers.

Mr Das says the US is expected to push for access to India’s government procurement market, which is currently protected under WTO rules.

“This will hamper India’s ability to prioritise domestic producers, posing a direct challenge to the ‘Make in India’ initiative. This is certainly not good news for us.”

Mr Das suggests that India should counter Trump’s reciprocal tariff logic, particularly in agriculture where the US imposes strict non-tariff barriers that restrict Indian exports such as stiff maximum residue limits on chemicals.

He argues that since the US “heavily subsidises” its farm sector, India should highlight these subsidies to push back against American claims.

Tariffs alone may not help bridge the trade deficit between the two countries. Defence and energy purchases will go some way in addressing the deficit, experts say.

The new $500bn (£400bn) trade goal aims to more than double the $190bn trade between the two countries in 2023.

Modi and Trump committed to negotiating the first phase of a trade agreement by autumn 2025. Talks will focus on market access, tariff reductions and supply chain integration across goods and services.

“The announcement that the two sides will pursue a trade deal gives India an opportunity to negotiate for reduced tariffs on both sides. That would be a boon not only for the US-India relationship, but also for an Indian economy that’s sputtered in recent months,” says Mr Kugelman.

What is not clear is what kind of trade deal the both sides will be aiming at.

“What is this trade agreement? Is it a full blown free trade agreement or is it a reciprocal tariff deal?” wonders Mr Srivastava.

Mr Das believes we’ll have to wait for details on the trade agreement.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean a free trade deal – if that were the case, it would have been stated explicitly. It could simply involve tariff reductions on select products of mutual interest.”

Priyanka Kishore, principal economist at the Singapore-based consultancy firm, Asia Decoded, says $500bn is a “tall target but there are low hanging fruit we can immediately exploit”.

“For instance the US sanctions on Russian shadow fleet are soon going to kick in, so India can easily pivot to the US for more oil. This will not be too difficult.”

Trump said at the joint press conference that the US would hopefully become India’s number one supplier of oil and gas.

India’s defence trade with the US has surged from near zero to $20 billion, making the US its third-largest arms supplier.

While Russia remains India’s top source, its share has dropped from 62% to 34% (2017-2023) as India shifts toward US procurement.

In a major announcement to deepen defence ties, Trump said the US would increase military equipment sales to India “by many billions of dollars starting this year” ultimately paving the way to providing the F-35 stealth warplanes.

But this will be easier said than done, say experts.

“This sounds good, but it may be a case of putting the cart before the horse,” says Mr Kugelman.

Despite rising US arms sales to India, bureaucratic hurdles and export controls limit the transfer of sensitive technologies, he says. The new defence framework announced at the summit may help address these challenges.

Also India isn’t “taking the F-35 offer seriously” due to high maintenance demands, says strategic affairs expert Ajai Shukla.

Shukla notes that US arms deals come with challenges – private firms prioritise profit over long-term partnerships.

Yet with delays and cost overruns affecting some of India’s arms deals with Russia, Delhi’s defence ties with the US look set to deepen.

Modi met Tesla CEO Elon Musk to discuss AI and emerging tech, India’s foreign ministry said.

It’s unclear if they addressed Musk’s stalled plans for Starlink’s India launch or Tesla’s market entry.

Musk has pushed for direct spectrum allocation, clashing with Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani, who favours auctions. His licence remains under review.

India is also courting Tesla to set up a car factory, cutting EV import taxes for automakers committing $500m and local production within three years. Tesla has yet to confirm its plans.

In a rare move, Modi joined Trump at a press conference, answering two questions – on illegal immigration and the US Department of Justice (DOJ) bribery charges against the Adani Group.

Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, accused of close ties with Modi, was charged with fraud in the US last November over an alleged $250m bribery scheme.

Modi said he hadn’t discussed the issue with Trump. On immigration, he stated India was ready to take back verified illegal Indian migrants.

This was only Modi’s third direct press Q&A in his almost 11-year tenure as India’s prime minister. He has never held a solo press conference. In 2019 he sat beside then party president Amit Shah as Shah answered all the questions and in 2023, he took just two questions alongside former President Joe Biden.

A woman in Japan has been arrested for allegedly squashing a bun at a convenience store and leaving without buying the packet of bread.

Authorities in the southern city of Fukuoka confirmed to the BBC that the 40-year-old had been arrested on Monday for “criminal damage”.

The woman, who said she was unemployed, claimed she “only checked the firmness of [the bun] by pressing lightly with my hand”, according to police.

The woman had allegedly touched a bag of four black sesame and cream cheese buns. While the bag’s wrapper was intact, police said one of the buns was damaged after she pressed it with her right thumb, and the entire bag could not be sold.

Police said the owner of the Lawson convenience store had claimed he had seen the woman squashing buns several times in the past.

As the woman was leaving the shop on Monday, the owner noticed the bun was damaged and he urged her to pay for the bread, according to police. The bag of buns cost about 180 yen (£0.95; $1.20).

She allegedly refused. After following her for 1km (0.6mi), the manager restrained her. The police were called to the scene and they arrested her.

In recent years, police have been also cracking down on pranksters who have committed “sushi terrorism” in sushi conveyor belt restaurants, such as licking communal soy sauce bottles and squashing sushi meant for diners.

M23 rebels in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo have entered Bukavu, the eastern region’s second-largest city.

Corneille Nangaa, leader of the Congo River Alliance which includes M23 rebels, told Reuters news agency the rebels had entered the South Kivu provincial capital on Friday evening and would continue their advance on Saturday.

The Rwandan-backed militants’ progress comes despite international calls for a ceasefire and a resumption of peace talks.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced from their homes in recent weeks as a result of the rebel advance.

Last month, the Tutsi-led M23, which is backed by neighbouring Rwanda, seized Goma, the main city in the mineral-rich east. The Congolese government accuses Rwanda of sowing chaos in the region in order to benefit from its resources, a claim Rwanda has denied.

The M23 briefly captured Goma in a previous conflict in 2012, but the taking of Bukavu, which is the capital of South Kivu province, would represent a new phase in the turbulent recent history of the region.

The city, which borders Rwanda, is on the southern tip of Lake Kivu and is an important transit point for the local mineral trade.

Earlier on Friday, rebel fighters had entered the airport some 30km (19 miles) north of Bukavu, as the Congolese army and a militia allied with it withdrew without putting up much resistance.

But there were heavy clashes on the outskirts of Bukavu, South Kivu’s Deputy governor Jean Elekano, had told the BBC.

In a village further north – Mayba – 70 bodies were found in a church, according to local media reports.

A local community coordinator in North Kivu, Vianney Vitswamba, told the DR Congo news agency 7Sur7 that the bodies were found tied up. Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels – an Islamic State-linked group – were blamed, but the BBC has not confirmed the report.

• The DR Congo rebel leader whose fighters have created turmoil
• What’s the fighting in DR Congo all about?

Residents of Bukavu contacted by the BBC said the authorities advised residents to remain indoors.

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, DR Congo’s President Félix Tshisekedi called for Rwanda to be sanctioned, accusing it of having “expansionist ambitions”, the AFP news agency reports.

“We will no longer put up with our strategic resources being plundered for the benefit of foreign interests under the complicit gaze of those who feed on chaos,” he is quoted as saying.

As well as being accused of backing the rebels, which Rwanda has denied, the country is also said to have its own troops in eastern DR Congo.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame has said his country’s priority is security. He has said Rwanda is in danger from Hutu rebels in DR Congo and has dismissed any threat of sanctions.

The news of the latest advance comes as the continent’s heads of state are due to meet at an African Union (AU) summit in Ethiopia on Saturday.

The head of the AU commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat is quoted by AFP as saying that a ceasefire “must be observed” adding that “military campaigns are not going to solve these problems. There is a general mobilisation of Africa today on this issue and I hope that we will be able to impose this ceasefire”.

• Who’s pulling the strings in the DR Congo crisis?
• The evidence that shows Rwanda is backing rebels in DR Congo
• DR Congo’s failed gamble on Romanian mercenaries

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has hailed a “mega partnership” with the US, as he and US President Donald Trump agreed on a deal for Delhi to import more American oil and gas.

Modi’s two-day visit comes as Trump recently ordered that all the US’ trading partners – including India – should face sweeping reciprocal tariffs.

While both men praised each other’s leadership, Trump criticised India for having some of the highest trade tariffs in the world, calling them a “big problem”.

The Indian leader, seeking to soften impending trade barriers, said he was open to reducing tariffs on US goods, repatriating undocumented Indian nationals and buying military fighter jets from the US.

At a joint news conference, Modi made several references to Trump’s “make America great again” slogan, including his own spin to it: “It’s Make India Great Again – Miga,” Modi said.

“Maga plus Miga…[is a] Mega partnership for prosperity”.

Trump also added that India would be “purchasing a lot of our oil and gas” in an effort to close the trade deficit between both countries.

“They need it. And we have it,” Trump said.

With India already being reliant on imported oil, which it sources from multiple countries, the energy deal with the US “presents a relatively low hanging fruit for both parties”, Radhika Rao, a senior economist at Singapore’s DBS bank told the BBC.

“The US is the largest export market for India’s goods and services, which underscores the administration’s willingness to pre-emptively smoothen trade relations and offer concessions to narrow the bilateral trade deficit that the US runs with India,” she said.

However, “India’s challenge will be to balance its own trade deficit because US oil and gas might be more expensive due to a stronger dollar,” Amitendu Palit, senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Institute of South Asian Studies said.

“Reciprocal tariffs are likely to follow on India too at some stage. Hopefully for India, they won’t turn out to be larger than expected,” said Dr Palit.

Trump also added that the US would increase sales of military hardware to India by millions of dollars, eventually supplying Delhi with F-35 fighter jets.

The two also spoke about immigration – another pain point in bilateral relations – with Trump announcing that the US would extradite a man who allegedly plotted 2008 Mumbai terror attack to “face justice in India”.

Modi thanked Trump for allowing the extradition and vowed to accept repatriations of Indian nationals illegally living in the US.

Last week, US deported on a military plane 104 Indians accused of being illegal immigrants, with a video showing deportees in shackles. A second flight is expected to land in India on Saturday.

Indians are one of the largest populations of unauthorised immigrants in the US. They also hold the majority of H-1B visas – a programme that Trump had temporarily banned during his first term and is now coming under fresh scrutiny.

Shortly before his meeting with Modi, Trump had ordered his advisers to calculate broad new tariffs on US trading partners around the globe, warning they could start coming into effect by 1 April.

He acknowledged the risks of his tariff policy but argued the policy would boost American manufacturing and the country would be “flooded with jobs”.

Trump told reporters that “our allies are worse than our enemies”, when it comes to import taxes.

“We had a very unfair system to us,” the Republican president said before meeting Modi. “Everybody took advantage of the United States.”

The White House also issued a news release that fired a trade shot across the bows of India and other countries.

The document noted that the average US tariff on agricultural goods was 5% for countries to which Washington had granted most favoured nation (MFN) status.

“But India’s average applied MFN tariff is 39%,” the White House fact sheet said.

“India also charges a 100% tariff on US motorcycles, while we only charge a 2.4% tariff on Indian motorcycles.”

Trump has already placed an additional 10% tariff on imports from China, citing its production of fentanyl, a deadly opioid that has stoked a US overdose epidemic.

He has also readied tariffs on Canada and Mexico, America’s two largest trading partners, that could take effect in March after being suspended for 30 days.

Earlier this week, he removed exemptions from his 2018 steel and aluminium tariffs.

South Korean football player Hwang Ui-jo has been handed a suspended one-year jail term for illegally filming his sexual encounters with a woman, Yonhap News Agency reported.

The 32-year-old, a former Norwich City and Nottingham Forest striker, now plays for the Turkish club Alanyaspor. He also plays for the South Korea national team but was suspended in 2023 amid the allegations.

The Seoul court said that “given the seriousness of the socially harmful effects of illegal filming, it is necessary to punish [Hwang] strictly”.

However, it noted Hwang had shown remorse and the videos were posted on social media by a third party.

Hwang had said he was “deeply sorry” for causing “disappointment” during his first court appearance last December.

The videos came to light after Hwang’s sister-in-law shared them on social media last June, in an attempt to blackmail him.

She was sentenced to three years in prison in September for the blackmail after Hwang sued her.

However, the charges against him proceeded as prosecutors said he filmed sexual encounters with two women without their consent on four occasions in 2022.

He had initially claimed innocence, but pleaded guilty to illegal filming charges last October.

He was convicted of the charges related to one woman but acquitted of those related to the other.

Hidden cameras designed to secretly film women and their sexual encounters are a nationwide problem in South Korea.

Over the past decade, thousands have been arrested for filming voyeuristic images and videos, sparking fear and anger among women across the country.

Donald Trump has ordered his team to come up with plans to impose a new set of taxes – known as tariffs – on goods coming into the United States.

Trump wants to introduce “reciprocal tariffs” – taxes on imports to the US which are set at a similar rate to taxes other countries put on goods they import from the US.

The president says other countries often have higher tariffs on imports from the US than the other way round and believes America “has been treated unfairly by trading partners, both friend and foe”.

BBC Verify has explored whether he has a valid case.

First, it is important to understand the rules of global trade.

Under the terms of membership of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), countries are permitted to impose tariffs on imports.

Those tariffs can differ depending on the item being imported.

So, for instance, a nation can impose a 10% levy on rice imports and a 25% tariff on car imports.

But under WTO rules, they are not supposed to discriminate between nations when setting the tariff they charge on a particular imported good.

So Egypt, for example, would not be allowed to impose a 2% tariff on wheat coming from Russia, but a 50% tariff on wheat coming from Ukraine.

This is known as the “Most Favoured Nation” (MFN) principle in international trade: everyone has to be subject to the same tariff by the country imposing the tariff.

There is an exception when two nations sign a free trade agreement between themselves that covers most of their trade. Under these circumstances they can charge no tariffs on goods passing between them but maintain tariffs on goods coming from everywhere else in the world.

While most countries have a range of tariff rates covering different goods imports, they also report an average external tariff to the WTO, which reflects the overall average tariff rate applied to all imports.

The US had an average external tariff of 3.3% in 2023.

That was slightly lower than the UK’s average tariff of 3.8%.

It was also below the European Union’s average tariff of 5% and China’s average tariff of 7.5%.

America’s average tariff was considerably lower than the average tariff of some of its other trading partners.

For instance, India’s average tariff was 17%, while South Korea’s was 13.4%.

America’s average tariff was lower than Mexico’s (6.8%) and Canada’s (3.8%), though trade agreements between the US and these countries mean that American exports to them are not subject to tariffs. The same is true for South Korea, with which the US has a free trade agreement

But, broadly speaking, it is legitimate for Trump to point out that some countries have a higher average tariff on imports than America’s.

And those tariffs push up the cost of many American exports to those countries, which might be said to disadvantage US exporters relative to exporters in those countries selling into the US.

However, whether this amounts to unfair trade that serves to harm the US is not clear cut.

Most economists judge that the costs of import tariffs are, ultimately, borne by households in the country that imposes them because they can mean that imported goods become more expensive.

This could mean nations with higher average external tariffs than the US would be penalising their own consumers rather than Americans.

• Will Trump tariffs hurt US consumers?
• Three things that could rise in price due to metal tariffs

On 10 February, Trump suggested it could mean the US imposing the same average external tariff on imports from each individual nation as those countries impose.

He told reporters: “If they charge us, we charge them. If they’re at 25, we’re at 25. If they’re at 10, we’re at 10.”

This would likely break the MFN rules of the WTO, which require a nation to impose the same tariff on particular goods, regardless of where they came from.

If the US imposed, say, a tariff of 9.4% on all goods coming from Vietnam but 3.8% on all goods coming from the UK (the same as their own average external tariffs) that would be a breach of the rules.

If the US could show the targeted country was already itself breaching the organisation’s rules in some way it might be able to claim that specific retaliatory tariffs against that country are justified under WTO rules.

But simply imposing reciprocal tariffs as a general principle would likely constitute a breach.

Another possibility is that Trump could attempt to match not average national tariff rates, but tariff rates on individual items imposed by different countries.

For example, the EU imposes a 10% tariff on all imported cars from outside the bloc, including from America.

But the US imposes only a 2.5% tariff on imported cars, including those from the EU.

The US might decide to impose a 10% tariff on cars from the EU in order to level the playing field.

However, if it tried to match tariffs on every type of import with every different country this would be an extremely lengthy and complex exercise, given the vast range of goods involved in global trade and the distinct tariff regimes operated by the 166 members of the WTO.

Trump’s official memorandum outlining the policy said the administration’s reciprocal tariffs might also be designed to offset so called “non-tariff barriers” to trade such as other countries’ regulations, domestic subsidies, currency values and Value Added Taxes (VAT).

America does not charge VAT on goods, but most other nations do, including the UK.

This could make the exercise of designing the tariffs even more complex.

While economists agree that domestic regulations and subsidies can constitute important non-tariff barriers to trade, they insist that VAT does not fall into this category because it is levied on all goods sold domestically, and therefore does not lead to any relative cost disadvantage for imports from the US.

The WTO does not list VAT as a trade barrier.

If Trump were serious about exactly matching individual tariffs from other nations it could also, in theory, require the US to lower some tariffs, not to raise them.

The US has higher tariffs on certain agricultural products than some of its trading partners.

For instance, the US currently imposes effective tariffs on many milk imports of more than 10%. But New Zealand, a major global milk producer, has 0% tariffs on its dairy imports.

The US milk tariffs are designed to protect US dairy farmers, including many in the swing state of Wisconsin, and lowering the tariff for milk exporters from New Zealand would likely face political resistance from politicians from that state.

Similarly, a genuinely reciprocal US tariff regime based on individual goods would pose challenges for the US automotive industry.

The US imposes a 25% tariff on imported trucks, including from the EU.

But the EU’s own tariff on imported trucks, including from the US, is only 10%.

So a US reciprocal tariff with the EU on imported trucks would, in theory, mean the US lowering its tariff here.

While a reciprocal tariff on EU cars might be welcomed by American automakers, a reciprocal tariff on EU trucks might not be.

However, Trump on Thursday made clear that some of his planned tariffs such as on steel and aluminium would be “over and above” his reciprocal tariffs, suggesting that true reciprocity on trade is not, in fact, his principal objective.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

Ukraine’s future is the focus of the Munich Security Conference (MSC), just days after a shock phone call between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in which they agreed to begin negotiations to end the Ukraine war.

Describing the call earlier this week as “great”, Trump said there was a “good possibility of ending that horrible, very bloody war”.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that his country must not be left out of any peace talks.

European allies seemed surprised at the nature of the call, with French President Emmanuel Macron warning that any peace agreement which involved capitulating to Russia would end “badly for everyone”.

It is still unclear when peace negotiations could begin, but when they do issues around territory, security negotiations and Ukraine’s future in Nato will be among the key topics for discussion. Here’s where the different sides stand.

• Ukraine in maps: Tracking the war with Russia

• Frank Gardner on the importance of the Munich Security Conference

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

Following the overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Russian president in 2014, Russia annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea and backed pro-Russian separatists in bloody fighting in the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.

The conflict then burst into all-out war nearly three years ago after Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Moscow’s attempts to seize the capital Kyiv were thwarted, but Russian forces have since slowly expanded their territorial control, mostly in the east.

Ukrainian forces, supported by arms and equipment from the US and European allies, have made those advances as difficult as possible and have at times been able to retake territory, as well as stage a counter-offensive into western Russia.

Ukraine has always insisted any peace deal must include the full withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine back to the pre-2014 borders, including Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk.

“We will never recognise occupied territories as Russian,” Zelensky said at a press conference during the MSC.

Russia, on the other hand, has formally annexed four regions of east and south Ukraine and wants them to be recognised as part of Russia – despite not being in control of all the territory in those regions.

In an interview with the Guardian, Zelensky suggested that Russian-held territory in Ukraine could be swapped for territory seized by Ukraine in Russia’s western Kursk region as part of a peace deal. However, the Kremlin swiftly ruled that out.

Until recently, Ukraine’s western allies stood by Zelensky’s position that all of Ukraine, including Crimea, should be returned.

But the new US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth poured cold water on those hopes, saying at a summit in February that achieving pre-2014 borders was an “unrealistic objective”.

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

Ukraine wants to join Nato, arguing that the western military alliance – in which members pledge to defend one another if attacked – is the best way to ensure its security.

For Kyiv, Russia’s full-scale invasion is proof that only Nato membership can guarantee its security.

However, Russia has consistently opposed the idea of Ukraine becoming a member, fearing it would bring Nato forces too close to its borders.

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

As he arrived for the MSC, Zelensky said Ukraine trusted Nato’s security guarantees, before adding that he thought membership would be “the cheapest option for everyone”.

Europe needs to unite around Ukraine to protect itself, he added.

Nato members have consistently argued that Ukraine should become a Nato member in the future, with UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer telling Zelensky that the country is on “an irreversible path” to membership.

But those guarantees are now looking less solid, after the US defence secretary downplayed the likelihood of Nato membership for Ukraine in any peace settlement.

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

Zelensky has said previous discussions with US President Donald Trump are “definitely not enough to form a plan” for peace.

Speaking as he arrived at the MSC, he said that signals coming from the US were “strong” but “varied”.

Hegseth claimed Trump was the “one man in the world” capable of bringing both sides together and insisted US attempts to negotiate peace were “certainly not a betrayal” of the Ukrainian soldiers fighting invading Russian forces.

Meanwhile, the US vice-president said sending troops to Ukraine is “still on the table” should Russia fail to negotiate a peace deal in good faith.

“The president is not going into this with blinders on,” JD Vance told the told the Wall Street Journal.

Back in October, Zelensky laid out his victory plan to Ukraine’s parliament, which included key points like Nato membership, joint US and EU protection of critical natural resources, and the containment of Russia via a non-nuclear strategic deterrent package deployed on Ukrainian soil.

The US president at the time, Joe Biden, was given a briefing on this plan – as were then-presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

It is unclear whether any part of Zelensky’s plans will be taken forward to peace talks, but Hesgeth has warned there would be no US troops on the ground Ukraine in any future security arrangement.

Zelensky told the Guardian that he does not believe security guarantees without US involvement will work.

UK defence sources quoted in the Times newspaper claim that the US could provide some form of air defence – possibly Patriot missiles – to a peacekeeping force in Ukraine in return for access to minerals.

“I have no plans for the future at all,” says Oleksandr Bezhan, standing next to an empty, frozen paddock where he used to work as a fisherman on the bank of the Dnipro river in southern Ukraine. “If I wake up in the morning, that’s already pretty good.”

Malokaterynivka sits just 15km (9 miles) north of the front line in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region.

If US President Donald Trump succeeds in halting the war, Malokaterynivka is hoping to end up on the right side of that front line.

I last visited this area in 2023, when Ukraine launched a much-anticipated counter-offensive.

At the time, Ukrainians dared to dream of winning this war. They had, after all, won the battle of Kyiv and liberated swathes of territory elsewhere.

But 18 months on, thunder-like artillery exchanges reflect the failure of that operation, and Russia’s dominance.

The front line here is broadly in the same place – but the broad expanse of river has gone.

When the Russian-occupied Kakhovka dam downstream was destroyed, this became a vast, uninterrupted expanse of scrubland.

The barren surroundings reflect the frozen limbo in which Ukraine finds itself. The White House wants to end the war, but it’s not as simple as blowing a full-time whistle.

“If the front line becomes a border, it would be scary… fighting could break out at any moment,” explains Oleksandr.

The exposed riverbed separates our location from Russian-occupied territory. Distant sunlight bounces off the metallic Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, in Moscow’s grip since 2022.

Ukraine and the US both want peace, but that is where the consensus seems to end.

Washington’s vision of it, along with battlefield realities, means Russia will probably keep hold of the Ukrainian land it’s seized.

Ukraine wants meaningful security guarantees that would prevent invading forces from pushing across the river.

Instead, Trump has denied Kyiv’s dream of joining the Nato alliance as he focuses on Russia.

Having watched and reported on Ukraine’s fight for more than three years, it is an especially tough hand for the country to receive.

There are feelings of betrayal. Commentators criticise either Ukrainian President Zelensky or the new foreign policy of its biggest ally.

“The border wouldn’t depend on us,” says Oleksandr. “It probably won’t work out, but Seoul is 30km from North Korea, and they somehow live and prosper.”

Malokaterynivka’s challenge of finding a new purpose lies at the heart of Ukraine’s future.

And while politicians talk about talks, Ukrainians continue to fight and die.

Villagers gather for the funeral of a local soldier, also named Oleksandr. Half of the graves in the cemetery are freshly dug.

The ceremony cannot last more than 25 minutes because of the threat of artillery. Mourners flinch and duck for cover when his comrades fire off a gun salute.

“I don’t have hope for a ceasefire,” says his widow Natalya, who nevertheless wants to be proved wrong.

“They just keep sending more and more of our boys to the front. If only they could find some way to end it.”

Alongside the river is a disused rail line surrounded by barbed wire.

“It’s to stop Russian agents from sabotaging the track,” explains Lyudmyla Volyk, who has lived in Malokaterynivka her whole life.

Trains used to run all the way to Crimea in the south.

“We hope that one day it will be restored,” says the 65-year-old, optimistically. “And that one day we’ll go to our Crimea.”

The peninsula’s 11 years of Russian occupation makes it hard to imagine.

President Zelensky insists he won’t sign any agreement which doesn’t include Ukraine, so does Lyudmyla trust him to get a deal which protects her?

“We want to believe,” she replies after a deep breath.

If Trump does bring peace to Ukraine, it would be welcomed in many quarters.

The prospect of uninterrupted nights, sirens falling silent and soldiers returning home is yearned for.

But as things stand, any relief would quickly be swamped by the unanswered questions of how a ceasefire would hold and who would enforce it.

Kyiv will see this absence of detail as something still to play for. The problem for Ukraine, is that so will Russia.

A Russian drone has hit the protective shelter over Chernobyl’s damaged nuclear reactor, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.

The overnight strike at the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident caused a fire that has since been extinguished, he added.

The UN’s nuclear watchdog (the IAEA) said radiation levels inside and outside Chernobyl were normal and stable – but later the plant’s chief engineer, Oleksandr Titarchuk, said the possibility of radioactive substances leaking “now exists”.

Russia has denied any claims it attacked Chernobyl, stating its military does not strike Ukrainian nuclear infrastructure and “any claims that this was the case do not correspond to reality”.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which monitors nuclear safety around the world, said fire safety personnel and vehicles responded within minutes to an overnight explosion. No casualties were reported, the agency added.

The agency remains on “high alert” after the incident, with its director general Rafael Grossi saying there is “no room for complacency”.

Mr Titarchuk told Ukraine’s state news agency that “the situation is under control”.

A catastrophic explosion at Chernobyl in 1986 sent a plume of radioactive material into the air, triggering a public health emergency across Europe.

While the immediate disaster was mitigated and an area where people were told not to live established, the incident saw a rise in cancer rates in the surrounding population.

The radiation shield is designed to prevent further radioactive material leaking out over the next century. It measures 275m (900ft) wide and 108m (354ft) tall and cost $1.6bn (£1.3bn) to construct.

Zelensky posted footage on X appearing to show damage to the giant shield, made of concrete and steel, which covers the remains of the reactor that lost its roof in the explosion.

“Another 15 metres [50ft] to the side and there would have been a radiation accident,” Hryhoriy Ishchenko, chief of the agency that manages the exclusion zone around Chernobyl, told reporters, according to local media.

Since 1990, Prof Jim Smith from the UK’s University of Portsmouth has studied the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and, while he admits the strike was a “horrendous attack on a very important structure”, he is “not concerned” about the radiation risk.

Prof Smith told the BBC a thick concrete “sarcophagus” below the damaged outer shield covers radioactive particles and dust from the explosion.

Simon Evans from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) was head of the Chernobyl Shelter Fund, which oversaw the construction of the protective dome in the 2010s.

He described the apparent strike as “an incredibly reckless attack on a vulnerable nuclear facility”.

The shield “was never built to withstand external drone attack”, he told the BBC, but a “complex piece of decommissioning kit” built to contain the radioactive materials inside and to help safely deconstruct the broken reactor.

The strike appeared to hit the maintenance system of a crane designed to remotely take the reactor apart, he said.

There appears to be “pretty serious” damage to the outer and inner cladding, he added, but said a fuller assessment of the damage will be needed before the bank can determine its costs.

Mr Evans said the mission to build the shelter was the “world’s largest ever collaboration on nuclear safety”, with more than 40 counties working together on it.

“Ever since the start of the war, it’s been tragic to see that international co-operation undermined by reckless acts,” he added.

Zelensky claimed the attack showed Russian President Vladimir Putin was “definitely not preparing for negotiations”, after US President Donald Trump said Putin had agreed to begin talks to end the war earlier this week.

The incident at Chernobyl comes after increased military activity around the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in southern Ukraine, the IAEA said.

In December, Ukraine and Russia accused each other of launching a drone attack on a convoy of vehicles transporting IAEA experts heading to the Zaporizhzhia plant, which is Europe’s largest nuclear station.

The agency last year urged restraint when an attack on Zaporizhzhia raised the risk of a “major nuclear incident”. Russia and Ukraine traded blame over the attack in August.

“I’m more concerned about Zaporizhzhia than Chernobyl,” Prof Smith said.

“The reactors [at Zaporizhzhia] are currently shut down but there is more live fuel there. Chernobyl is still very radioactive, but it’s not in a ‘hot state’ because of its age.”

The number of people who died in the Chernobyl disaster remains disputed.

According to the official, internationally recognised death toll, just 31 people died as an immediate result of Chernobyl while the UN estimates that 50 deaths can be directly attributed to the disaster.

In 2005, it predicted a further 4,000 might eventually die as a result of the radiation exposure.

Sir Keir Starmer has reaffirmed the UK will continue to back Ukraine’s “irreversible path” to joining Nato despite leading figures in President Donald Trump’s administration appearing to rule out membership.

The prime minister told Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky he stood by a pledge – made alongside ex-US president Joe Biden at last year’s Nato summit in Washington – to support Ukraine’s bid for membership.

Sir Keir and Zelensky spoke on the phone ahead of a global leaders’ meeting at the Munich Security Conference.

Sir Keir’s comments are in stark contrast to those of the Trump administration, which has said this week that Nato membership for Ukraine is not a “realistic prospect”.

In a readout of the call, a Downing Street spokeswoman said: “The prime minister began by reiterating the UK’s concrete support for Ukraine, for as long as it’s needed.

“He was unequivocal that there could be no talks about Ukraine, without Ukraine.

“Ukraine needed strong security guarantees, further lethal aid and a sovereign future, and it could count on the UK to step up, he added.

“The prime minister reiterated the UK’s commitment to Ukraine being on an irreversible path to Nato as agreed by allies at the Washington Summit last year.”

The leaders agreed it was an “important moment to demonstrate international unity and support for Ukraine” and “agreed to stay in close contact”, the statement added.

The UK has had to walk a fine line between its support for Kyiv and maintaining good relations with Trump, who this week agreed to open negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin while signalled his willingness to make concessions to Moscow.

Trump’s defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, has said restoring Ukraine’s territory to where it was before the first Russian invasion in 2014 is simply “not realistic”.

Speaking at a defence summit in Brussels on Wednesday, Hegseth also downplayed the prospect of Ukraine joining Nato.

His remarks were 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.

Ukraine has repeatedly called for Nato membership and has rejected ceding territory as part of any peace deal.

Nato’s official position is that Ukraine is on an “irreversible” path to joining the alliance, which was established at a meeting in Washington last year and signed off by Sir Keir and ex-president Biden.

Sir Keir also took a phone call from Trump late on Thursday night, when they discussed “his forthcoming visit to the US”, Number 10 said.

Zelensky has warned Putin is “definitely not preparing for negotiations”, but to “continue deceiving the world” as he appealed for unified pressure from allies on Russia.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy sat down for talks with US Vice President JD Vance on Friday, on the first day of the Munich Security Conference.

Afterwards, Lammy said he was “very encouraged” by their conversations on Ukraine, and he and Vance were in agreement about Kyiv having a seat at the table when it comes to negotiating a peaceful end to the war.

“We share the view that there has to be an enduring peace,” Lammy told Reuters news agency following the meeting.

“There was an agreement that Zelensky and the Ukrainians have to be part of that negotiated deal.”

Lammy said it was “not surprising” that Trump wanted to speak to Putin and Zelensky about negotiations to end the war, but added: “These are just talks at the moment. We are some way from a negotiated peace.”

Earlier in the day, Vance had said he hoped his discussion with Lammy would focus on what they “spoke about a couple of years ago when we met, which is our shared belief that Europe really should take a bigger role in its own security”.

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America is under new management. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky is joining a growing list of US allies who are finding that the world according to Donald Trump is a colder, more uncertain and potentially more dangerous place for them.

It must have been bad enough for Zelensky to hear Trump’s abrupt announcement that he had welcomed Russia’s President Vladimir Putin back to international diplomacy with a 90-minute phone call, to be followed by a face-to-face meeting, perhaps in Saudi Arabia.

After Putin, the White House dialled up Zelensky’s number. Speaking to journalists in Ukraine the morning after, Zelensky accepted the fact that Putin received the first call, “although to be honest, it’s not very pleasant”.

What stung Zelensky more was that Trump, who rang him after he spoke to Putin, seemed to regard him, at best, as a junior adjunct to any peace talks. One of Zelensky’s many nightmares must be the prospect of Trump and Putin attempting to settle Ukraine’s future without anyone else in the negotiation.

He told the journalists that Ukraine “will not be able to accept any agreements” made without its involvement.

It was vital, he said, that “everything does not go according to Putin’s plan, in which he wants to do everything to make his negotiations bilateral”.

• Follow the latest updates from the Munich Security Conference

President Zelensky is heading to the Munich security conference, starting on Friday, where he will attempt to rally Ukraine’s allies. He faces a tough meeting with Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, who was one of the sternest critics of Joe Biden’s aid to Ukraine.

The argument Zelensky will hear from the Americans is that Ukraine is losing and it needs to get real about what happens next. He will argue that Ukraine can win – with the right backing.

The European Union is worried too. After meeting and praising the Ukrainian defence minister Rustem Umerov, the EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas posted that Europe must have a central role in any negotiation. “Our priority now must be strengthening Ukraine and providing robust security guarantees,” Kallas said.

Zelensky is painfully aware that while his European allies are sounding much more steadfast than the Americans, the US remains the world’s strongest military power. He told the Guardian last week that “security guarantees without America are not real security guarantees”.

Collectively, European allies have given Ukraine more money than the US. But the Americans have weapons and air defence systems – like the Patriot missile batteries that protect Kyiv – that Europeans simply cannot provide.

Putin will be delighted that he is getting a much easier ride than he had from Biden. The former US president called Putin, among other things, a “pure thug”, a “brutal tyrant” and a “murderous dictator” and cut off contact after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Just to drive home the point that everything had changed, Trump followed up yesterday’s positive assessment of his talk with Putin with an upbeat early morning post on his platform, Truth Social, reflecting on “great talks with Russia and Ukraine yesterday”. There was now a “good possibility of ending that horrible, very bloody war!!!”

Putin is not just back in conversation with the most powerful country in the world. With Trump, he may now see himself as the arbiter of the endgame in the war he started when he broke international law with the all-out invasion of Ukraine almost exactly three years ago.

At the White House, Trump seemed to suggest that the huge numbers of dead and wounded in the Russian military gave some kind of legitimacy to Putin’s demand to keep the land captured and annexed by Russia.

“They took a lot of land and they fought for that land,” Trump said. As for Ukraine, “some of it will come back”.

His defence secretary Pete Hegseth’s remarks at a Nato meeting in Brussels were more direct. He wanted Ukraine to be “sovereign and prosperous”. 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.”

Trump is still at the easy end of what could become an impossibly tough diplomatic challenge. Boasting that he has the key to ending the Russo-Ukraine war is one thing. Making that happen is something else.

His declaration before any talks with Russia start that Ukraine will not join Nato nor get back all its occupied land has been widely criticised as a poor start by a man who claims to be the world’s best dealmaker.

The veteran Swedish diplomat and politician Carl Bildt posted an ironic rebuke on X.

“It’s certainly an innovative approach to a negotiation to make very major concessions even before they have started. Not even Chamberlain went that low in 1938. That Munich ended very bad anyhow.”

Bildt posted a photo of Britain’s then prime minister Neville Chamberlain on his return from Munich in 1938, waving the notorious and worthless agreement he had made with Adolf Hitler – the price of which was the capitulation and break-up of Czechoslovakia and a faster slide towards a second world war.

After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Vladimir Putin was widely portrayed in the west as the new threat to European peace. Trump’s approach to him is very different.

He will have to try to bridge the gap between Putin and Zelensky’s positions, which are polar opposites.

Zelensky’s declared objective is to regain Ukraine’s lost territory, which amounts to around a fifth of its total land mass. He also wants Ukraine to become a full member of Nato.

Putin insists that any peace deal would require Ukraine to give up the land Russia has captured, as well as areas it has not occupied, including the city of Zaporizhzhia which has a population of more than half a million. Ukraine would also become neutral, demilitarised and would never join Nato.

Ukraine’s demands will not be acceptable to Moscow, and Trump has indicated he doesn’t like them either.

But Russia’s amount to an ultimatum, not a serious peace proposal. Trump, once a developer, likes deals that involve tangible real estate. But Putin wants more than land. He wants Ukraine to go back to the relationship it had with the Kremlin during the days when it was part of the Soviet Union. For that to happen, Ukraine would have to lose its independence and sovereignty.

Biden offered Ukraine enough not to lose, because he took Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons if Nato intervened seriously. Trump must be aware of nuclear danger, but he also believes backing Ukraine indefinitely is a bad deal for the US, and he can do better.

As for the Europeans, he might force them to face up to the gross disparity between their military promises to Ukraine and their military capabilities. Only Poland and the Baltic states are backing their public statements about the threat from Russia with qualitatively increased defence spending.

With Russia grinding forward on the battlefields of eastern Ukraine, this is the toughest moment Zelensky will have faced since the dark and desperate first months of the war, when Ukraine fought off Russia’s attack on Kyiv.

It is also a moment of decision for his western allies. They face tough choices that cannot be put off much longer.

Donald Trump is threatening to introduce big tariffs on EU car imports, unhappy that Europeans don’t buy more American vehicles. But why are US cars, with the notable exception of Tesla, not more popular in Europe?

Italy’s ancient towns and cities, with their narrow, cobbled streets, offer an obvious explanation why, in the words of US President Donald Trump, Europeans “don’t take our cars”.

Or as car industry analyst Hampus Engellau puts it: “Try to go around Italy in a big SUV. I’ve done it, and it’s very difficult”.

Add cost to the question, and it becomes obviously why you don’t see too many American pick-up trucks on European roads, observes Mike Hawes, CEO of The Society of Motor Manufacturers & Traders, which represents the industry in the UK.

“We tend to have higher fuel prices than the Americans, so we prefer smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles, while they generally prefer larger vehicles.”

Mr Engellau, who works for Swedish investment bank Handelsbanken Capital Markets, also highlights petrol prices being substantially cheaper in the US. “They pay per gallon what we pay per litre,” he says. There are 3.8 litres to one US gallon.

Yet these differences have done little to deter European carmakers from gaining market share in the US. Again, in the words of Mr Trump, the US has “millions of cars coming in – BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagen and many others”.

In 2022, 692,334 new EU-made cars were exported to the US, worth €36bn ($37bn; £30bn). While only 116,207 new US-made cars went in the opposite direction, for €5.2bn.

This imbalance is caused by unfair trading rules and needs correcting, according to Mr Trump.

“Mr Trump is concerned because the terms of trade are not really equal,” explains Mr Engellau, pointing out that the EU’s 10% tariffs on cars imported from the US far exceeds the 2.5% tariffs the US – currently – charges on cars imported from the EU.

These disparities have prompted Trump to say he wants to raise US tariffs on European automotive imports. He has already announced 25% import tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, two metals crucial for carmakers.

Trump’s move appears to have prompted EU officials to consider reducing their own tariffs in order to protect Europe’s automotive industry from a potential trade war.

Trump’s intervention has not impressed Jim Farley, the boss of US carmaker Ford. “So far what we’ve been seeing is a lot of cost and a lot of chaos,” NBC News recently reported him as saying.

In fact, the very focus on trade is perhaps misplaced, according to automotive industry veteran Andy Palmer, formerly the chief operating officer of Nissan and CEO of Aston Martin, and currently a consultant. “If you can help it, you don’t want to ship cars around the world. They’re big boxes of expensive air,” he says.

The automotive industry is global, adds the SMMT’s Mr Hawes, so carmakers generally want to “manufacture close to where the customer is based”.

As such, several European carmakers, most notably marques such as BMW, Mercedes and Audi, are making some of their largest cars in North America, and some of these vehicles are exported back to Europe.

US carmakers have historically pursued similar strategies in Europe. General Motors owned and manufactured European marques such as Opel/Vauxhall and Saab, but it sold the former in 2017, and shut the latter back in 2009.

Meanwhile, Ford offloaded Aston Martin in 2007, Jaguar and Land Rover in 2008, and Volvo in 2010.

After years of losing money, Ford is currently redirecting its European business towards electric and commercial vehicles and away from small, affordable cars, such as its Focus models.

Ford plans to cut 800 jobs in the UK and 2,900 jobs in Germany by 2027, which represents a 14% reduction in its 28,000-strong European workforce.

Elon Musk’s Tesla has a factory near Berlin in Germany, where it makes its Model Y cars for the European market, but even here there are headwinds as low-cost Chinese imports in particular see their share of Europe’s market for electric cars grow.

Europe is a very tough marketplace for carmakers, according to Jose Asumendi, head of European automotive research at JP Morgan, an investment bank. “You need to have the right products, and you need to run the manufacturing plants well.”

He also points to brands having a competitive advantage in their home countries, be it BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagen and Audi in Germany, Peugeot, Citroen and Renault in France, or Fiat and Alfa Romeo in Italy.

“There’s a natural inclination for people to buy local champions, especially in Germany, France and Italy,” explains Mr Asumendi.

He adds that while other European countries are more open to different brands, the market is crowded, with a slew of Japanese, South Korea, and, increasingly, Chinese cars.

Adding to Europe’s complexities for overseas carmakers are different taxation regulations, and the need to communicate in many different languages.

Mr Palmer does not think “European customers have any particular objections to American cars”, and Mr Asumendi agrees. “I think Europeans do like American brands, but there are many other brands available in Europe, so competition is fierce,” he says.

Mr Trump’s ambition is to make the US car industry stronger, by bringing more production and innovation home. But Mr Palmer insists that a car trade war with Europe will not deliver this.

Not least, he says, since tariffs tend to “insulate the beneficiaries from the free market, and this merely makes them lazy, so they stop innovating and fail to remain competitive”.

“It’s not about trade,” adds Mr Palmer. “It’s about investment and collaboration.”

A proposal to amend a decades-old law that governs properties worth millions of dollars donated by Indian Muslims over centuries has triggered protests in the country.

The properties, which include mosques, madrassas, shelter homes and thousands of acres of land, are called waqf and are managed by a board.

The new bill – which introduces more than 40 amendments to the existing law – was introduced in August but was later sent to a joint committee of MPs for discussion.

On 13 February, the committee’s report on the bill was tabled in both houses of parliament amid protests by opposition leaders.

They claimed that their notes of dissent had been deleted, but the federal government denied the allegation.

The new bill is likely to incorporate changes suggested by the committee and put to vote in parliament. If it is passed by both houses of parliament, it will be sent to President Droupadi Murmu for her assent before becoming a law.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government says that the changes they have proposed to the bill are necessary to root out corruption in the management of these properties and address demands for reform from the Muslim community.

But several Muslim groups and opposition parties have called the changes politically motivated and an attempt by Modi’s Hindu nationalist party to weaken the rights of minorities.

In Islamic tradition, a waqf is a charitable or religious donation made by Muslims for the benefit of the community. Such properties cannot be sold or used for any other purpose – which implies that waqf properties belong to God.

A vast number of these properties are used for mosques, madrassas, graveyards and orphanages, and many others are vacant or have been encroached upon.

The tradition of waqf in India can be traced back to the Delhi Sultanate period in the 12th Century when the early Muslim rulers from Central Asia came to India.

The properties are now governed by the Waqf Act, 1995, which mandated the formation of state-level boards. These boards include nominees from the state government, Muslim lawmakers, members of the state bar council, Islamic scholars and managers of waqf properties.

The government says that the waqf boards are among India’s largest landholders. There are at least 872,351 waqf properties across India, spanning more than 940,000 acres, with an estimated value of 1.2 trillion rupees ($14.22bn; £11.26bn).

Muslim groups agree that corruption is a serious issue in waqf boards – its members have been accused several times of colluding with encroachers to sell waqf land.

But critics also say that a significant number of these properties have been encroached by individuals, businesses and government bodies – which too requires immediate attention.

A report submitted in 2006 by the Justice Sachar Committee – formed by the earlier Congress party-led government to assess the socioeconomic conditions of Muslims in India – had recommended waqf reform, as it found that the revenues from the boards were low compared to the vast number of properties they managed.

The committee estimated that efficient use of the land had the potential to generate an annual revenue of about 120bn rupees (1.4bn; £1.1bn). The current annual revenue, according to some estimates, is around 2bn rupees.

The committee also noted that “encroachments by the State, who is the custodian of the Wakf interests, is common”, listing hundreds of instances of such “unauthorised occupation” of waqf land by government authorities.

According to government data, at least 58,889 of waqf properties are currently encroached upon, while more than 13,000 are under litigation. The status of more than 435,000 properties remains unknown.

The amendments, the government says, address these issues and advance the recommendations made by the Sachar Committee.

Parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju told The Times of India newspaper that the reforms were also necessary as only an elite section in the Muslim community managed these properties.

But many Muslims see the proposed changes with scepticism.

One of the most contentious aspects of the bill is the change to ownership rules, which would impact historical mosques, dargahs and graveyards owned by the board.

Many of these properties – in use by Muslims for generations – lack formal documentation as they were donated orally or without legal records decades or centuries ago.

The 1954 Waqf Act recognised such properties under the category of “waqf by user”, but the proposed law omits the provision, leaving the fate of a significant number of these properties uncertain.

Professor Mujibur Rehman, author of Shikwa-e-Hind: The Political Future of Indian Muslims, explains that tracing the ownership of such long-standing community properties is complicated, as their management and deed systems have shifted over the centuries from the Mughal system to the British colonial system, and now to the current system.

“You can trace personal properties up to a few generations, but tracing community properties is more difficult, as their management keeps changing over time,” Prof Rehman says.

Others worry that the new bill may not address the community’s concerns but could instead considerably take away the role of Muslims in controlling waqf properties.

That’s because the proposed changes include tweaks to the composition of waqf boards, making it compulsory to include non-Muslims as its members.

Some agree that a general law mandating people of all religions to be part of boards that run religious institutions is not a bad idea – as it would make processes more secular.

But the current move appears to favour majoritarian politics, Prof Rehman says. “There seems to be an attempt not only to get the state’s control over Muslims’ properties, but also of Hindu community over Muslim community’s lives.”

Among other crucial changes is the mandatory requirement for boards to register their properties with district collectors, who would recommend to the government whether the waqf’s claim to a property is valid.

Critics say this will undermine the powers of the waqf boards.

Asaduddin Owaisi, a prominent Muslim MP, alleges that these changes are intended to strip Muslims of their land.

The current law requires state governments to appoint a survey commissioner who identifies waqf properties, and subsequently prepares a list. The list is then sent to the state government which issues a legally mandated notification. If unchallenged for a year, the final nature of the property becomes waqf.

But some of the changes would mean that the status of several waqf properties will have to be re-established.

“Many have illegally encroached upon waqfs. This means they will get a chance to claim that the property is theirs,” Owaisi recently told reporters.

This process, Muslim groups say, will put many historical dargahs and masjids at risk. They say that reform is needed but it must keep the sensitivity and interests of the community in mind.

“The diagnosis may be correct,” Prof Rehman says, “but the treatment is not.”

“Tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A-minor.”

Kendrick Lamar’s most famous lyric was the heard around the world at last weekend’s Super Bowl.

An estimated 127 million viewers saw the rapper flash a devious smile to the camera as he delivered the line – a withering takedown of bitter rival Drake.

Taken from Grammy-winning track Not Like Us, it refers to accusations that the Canadian star had relationships with underage women – something he’s denied.

But as 70,000 fans inside New Orlean’s Caesars Superdome belted it out with him, it felt like Kendrick’s winning play in the pair’s long-running beef.

It’s been public, personal and petty, but Kendrick has implied that he’s waging a much wider war.

Not just against Drake, but against what he represents.

“Drake is the face of the hip-hop scene as it is,” says Margs, a London rapper who hosts rap battles on his channel Pen Game.

The Canadian is a huge commercial success – the most streamed artist of the 2010s, 143 million Instagram followers and a fixture on party playlists and nightclub set lists.

His style is melodic and accessible. He sings.

In other words, he’s as much a pop star as he is a rapper. And where Drake goes, others follow.

“A lot of people see him as being responsible for the watering down of the product,” says Margs.

“There’s people that like the commercial side of music that just want to dance and enjoy themselves and it have no substance to it.

“And then there’s the other side which is deep-rooted in the hip-hop culture.”

It’s a culture Kendrick wants to defend and celebrate.

Speaking before the Super Bowl show, he said the “grit” had gone from the genre.

“When people talk about rap, the conversations I’m hearing, they think it’s just rapping, it’s not an actual art form,” he said.

Kendrick also took issue with rap being “minimised to a catchy song or verse”, and said his feud with Drake actually came “more from a space of more people putting rap to the back”.

“You didn’t see that grit, you didn’t see that bite any more. So I always took that into consideration with my music,” he said.

Not everyone agrees that a more mainstream-friendly version of rap makes Drake less credible.

His one-time rival Common recently defended him against the “pop star” label – saying that “he’s still an MC” even though his songs are popular.

Kendrick, though, is passionate about rap as an artform, and said the success of Not Like Us and being chosen as the first solo hip-hop artist to front the halftime show “meant everything”.

“To represent it on this type of stage is just everything that I’ve worked for and everything I believe in for the culture, I live and die by it,” he said.

Hip-hop, a genre which has been around for 50 years, has a long history of protest.

Margs says “a lot of that has been lost” when comparing current trends with the genre’s origins.

“They cared about the message and what it stands for because hip-hop was something that was heavily politicised,” he says.

“People used to use their voices in hip-hop to protest and get their messages out.”

The political messaging in Kendrick’s halftime show came from the start when actor Samuel L Jackson, dressed as US government icon Uncle Sam, introduced the rapper.

From there, it included references to the black power movement, imagery of a divided United States and, just before the finale, the line: “This is bigger than the music.”

It’s a time of political change in the US following the re-election of Donald Trump, who was at the Super Bowl.

“There’s no better time for people to stand on business and talk about things that matter,” Margs says.

Kendrick – and his beef with Drake – also hark back to the origins of hip-hop in another way.

He’s said he sees rap as a sport – and battle raps were his inspiration for the back-and-forth with Drake.

These face-offs – as seen in the Eminem film 8Mile – are where artists compete live, swapping disses and trying to spit the best bars to take home the prize.

It’s rap in its purest form – substance over style and a focus on lyricism.

Kendrick said it’s always been that way for him, and it’s a vital part of finding the “grit” and “bite” he feels is missing.

“I still watch battle raps, this has always been the core definition of who I am and it’s been this way since day one,” he said.

Margs thinks Kendrick’s success will shine a light on battle rap, but he acknowledges emerging rappers are now finding new ways to cut their teeth.

Among them is Layyah, who was the first female rapper to win The Rap Game UK.

She’s Team Kendrick, but doesn’t plan on following his example on battle rap.

Layyah says rap artists she looks up to like Central Cee are “definitely not battle rappers” but have found success and respect through other routes.

“We have so many platforms,” she says. “It’s more like who can make a great song and then who can make the best routine to it.

“If that goes viral then it’s a great song, you don’t really have to do the battle raps.”

Margs thinks that’s “taken away from the art form a little bit”.

“You can win a battle on social media just through popularity or being funny… whereas with battle rap it’s all about your lyrics and your skill.”

As for Kendrick’s beef with Drake, it’s stayed quiet since Not Like Us was released last summer.

Some people took the “Game Over” at the end of Kendrick’s Super Bowl set as the end of the battle, and Drake’s just released Gimme a Hug.

In that he suggests he wants to put the beef behind him and “get the party lit”.

But there’s still an ongoing legal case over Not Like Us – with the potential of a bitter courtroom face-off.

Margs says that’s a big contrast to settling scores on the battle rap stage.

“There’s a sportsmanship to it but never spills over into more than that,” says Margs.

“After the fight, they always hug it out and show respect for their competitor.”

Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays – or listen back here.

Elon Musk’s children have been to places many will never see.

From meetings with foreign leaders to the control room of a SpaceX launch, Musk’s children have debuted as constant sidekicks to their father’s endeavors in tech, business and now, politics.

They have made frequent appearances in the nation’s capital since President Donald Trump tapped the tech billionaire and Tesla co-founder to lead the newly-formed Department of Government Efficiency.

Musk’s four-year-old, “Lil X”, hung on the corner of the Resolute desk in the Oval Office on Wednesday sporting a tan pea coat and a collared shirt.

On Thursday, X and two of his siblings exchanged gifts with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi while their father discussed technology and innovation with the foreign leader.

Musk has frequently been seen with his children even before coming to Washington – at a meeting with the president of Turkey, a memorial service at Auschwitz concentration camp, and a Time magazine ceremony where he was named the 2021 person of the year.

But why do Musk’s children tag along?

“The inclusion of the kids in many public appearances is very much a politician move or a political move to make him seem a bit more personable (and) take a human approach to how the public views him,” says Kurt Braddock, an American University professor of public communication.

Still, Mr Braddock thought the decision to bring Musk’s preschooler to the Oval Office was unusual.

X appeared bored during the 30-minute press briefing as he mimicked his father, sat on the floor and received the occasional side glance and smile from the leader of the free world. At one point, it appeared he told someone in the room to “shush” their mouth.

Mr Braddock said he believes their inclusion is intentional – a distraction that benefits both Musk and Trump.

“I do think that there is a bit of a strategy here trying to draw attention to some things while diverting attention to other things,” he said.

Jon Haber, a strategic communication consultant who has worked with five presidential campaigns and teaches at Harvard, said Musk’s children making frequent appearances – and creating viral moments – is beneficial for Trump.

“For Trump, the more chaos, the more he floods the zone, the less anybody can really focus on. Chaos works for him,” Mr Haber said.

Grimes, Musk’s ex-girlfriend and the mother of X, criticised her son’s appearance in the Oval Office.

“He should not be in public like this,” she wrote in a post on X. “I did not see this… but I’m glad he was polite. Sigh.”

In a 2022 Vanity Fair article, she said that she wasn’t a fan of her son being in the spotlight.

“Whatever is going on with family stuff, I just feel like kids need to stay out of it, and X is just out there. I mean, I think E is really seeing him as a protégé and bringing him to everything and stuff.… X is out there. His situation is like that. But, yeah, I don’t know.”

Long before politics, Musk allowed his children to tag along.

A decade ago, when he was still building his profile and eager to draw attention to his electric-vehicle maker Tesla, it wasn’t unusual to see them at events.

As analysts and reporters waited for one unveiling to begin at a Tesla facility in Silicon Valley in 2015, his five children could be seen running through the hallways chasing after each other and shrieking with laughter.

Despite being forced to wait for hours for attendees, the presence of Musk’s children created an atmosphere that felt relaxed and even joyous.

It was a departure from the stiff, far more formal events held by other companies for which the prospect of seeing an executive’s very young children would have come across as odd.

Musk has had 12 children with three different women.

His most-recognised son, X Æ A-12?, goes by “Lil X”, the same letter Musk used to re-name Twitter when he purchased the social media company.

The four-year-old has been dubbed an “emotional support human” by Musk himself.

Walter Isaacson, the author of Musk’s biography, said on The Diary of a CEO podcast that Musk is “deeply committed” to his children and is “almost obsessed by them”.

“With his own children, his lovers, his wives, there is the same intensity that is baked into everything he does,” Mr Isaacson said.

“He always likes having some of his children around him. He always likes having a companion, but that doesn’t mean that he likes calmness.”

Life for Mike Elvis Tusubira, a motorcycle taxi rider with HIV in Uganda, has been turned upside down since US President Donald Trump halted foreign aid last month.

Not only does the 35-year-old fear for his own survival as he takes life-saving anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs – but he says he will have to split up from his wife as they can no longer have safe sex.

His partner is HIV-negative and relies on PrEP, a medicine that reduces the risk of contracting HIV.

“It means that even my marriage will end, because actually without the preventive measures, she’s not going to stay,” he told the BBC.

“No condoms, no [anti-HIV] lubricants, no PrEP, nothing. We can’t stay in marriage without meeting. It means that I have to stay single.”

All the couple’s medicines and contraceptives were supplied thanks to funding from the US government’s main overseas aid agency USAID.

Since the sudden shutdown, which he heard about on social media, they have not been able to replenish their supplies. His wife has completely run out of PrEP now and they are both afraid that relying just on condoms – they have some left – is too risky.

Trump ordered the 90-day pause on foreign aid on his first day back in office, after which stop-work orders began to be issued to organisations funded by USAID.

Waivers were subsequently issued for humanitarian projects, but by that time the HIV programme Mr Tusubira was part of – run out of Marpi Clinic in the north of the capital, Kampala – had closed.

He phoned his counsellor at the Kiswa Health Centre III in the city to find out what was going on.

“My counsellor was in the village. He told me that he is no longer at the clinic.”

The father of one, who tested positive for HIV in 2022, has since missed a test to determine how much virus is in his blood and the strength of his immune system.

“I’m moving in the dark, in the darkness. I don’t know whether my viral load is suppressed. I’m traumatised.”

He does not think his job driving a motorbike taxi – known locally as a “boda-boda” – will be able to help his family get over the hurdles they now face.

“Some other people say that the drugs will be in private pharmacies… as a boda-boda rider I don’t know whether I can raise the money to sustain my treatment.”

They have also been impacted by the loss of services provided by non-government organisations (NGOs) that received funding from USAID, he says.

His wife was getting her PrEP via an NGO at Marpi and his five-year-old son was benefitting from one that provided school and food for vulnerable children.

“My child is no longer at school now,” he said.

Uganda’s health sector is heavily reliant on donor funding, which supports 70% of its Aids initiatives.

The East African nation is among the top 10 recipients of USAID funds in Africa. According to US government data, the country received $295m (£234m) in health funding from the agency in 2023 – ranking third after Nigeria which received $368m and Tanzania with $337m.

USAID also supports its malaria, tuberculosis and leprosy programmes – as well as funding maternal and child health services and emergency health assistance.

Thousands of healthcare workers have been impacted by the US funding freeze.

Dr Shamirah Nakitto, a clinician with Reach Out Mbuya (Rom) – a faith-based community organisation providing medical and psychosocial support to people living with HIV in Uganda – was based at Kisenyi Health Centre IV, which serves a densely populated slum in Kampala.

On average, she attended to 200 patients with HIV/Aids and tuberculosis daily. But after the stop-work order, all Rom-supported health workers were laid off.

Its tuberculosis unit now stands silent and its orphans and vulnerable children section has also been shut at Kisenyi.

“We are waiting for the 90 days. So, this compulsory leave, I hadn’t prepared for it,” she told the BBC.

“It was so abrupt. We didn’t have a proper handover at the facility. We just stopped working.”

Uganda’s health ministry says it is exploring ways to minimise disruptions.

Dr Diana Atwine, the top civil servant at the ministry, urged staff “willing to continue working in the spirit of patriotism as volunteers” to get in contact.

Further south in Malawi, USAID-funded activities have also ground to a halt.

The country received $154m from USAID’s health budget in 2023, making it the 10th largest recipient in Africa.

In the northern city of Mzuzu, the gates are shut at a clinic that has been a key provider of HIV services in the region. Vehicles sit idle; there is no sign of activity at the Macro Mzuzu Clinic. Workers locked the doors, turned off the lights and went home 18 days ago.

Despite the US State Department’s waiver on 28 January allowing the delivery of medicine such as ARVs, many clinics have closed as without the critical staff who co-ordinate USAID’s activities, distributing medicines is a challenge.

Even where services are technically permitted to resume, many contracts remain in limbo. Health workers are unsure of what they can and cannot do.

The Trump administration plans to reduce USAID staff by more than 90%.

Atul Gawande, USAID’s former global health assistant administrator, posted on X that the agency’s workforce would be slashed from 14,000 to 294 – with only 12 staff assigned to Africa.

More than 30 NGOs in Malawi have also been severely impacted by the funding freeze.

Eddah Simfukwe Banda, a 32-year-old subsistence farmer, has been getting ARVs since 2017 from the Macro clinic, where various NGOs were providing HIV programmes.

She is worried about her own fate – and that of her sister-in-law, who also relies on donor-funded medication – and says they little option but to pray.

“We have to pray as Malawians. Those of us that believe depend on a God who opens doors when one is closed,” she told the BBC.

The mother of three, who has a three-week supply of ARVs left, also said systemic failures were to blame: “As Malawians, we depend too much on receiving aid. At times we are lazy and squander and rely on other countries to help us.

“Let this be a lesson that we have to be independent,” she said.

But this is difficult for one of the poorest and most aid-dependent countries in the world. According to the World Bank, Malawi is vulnerable to external shocks – including prolonged droughts, cyclones and erratic rainfall.

A disruption of this magnitude in its healthcare system presents an enormous challenge.

For decades, the US has been Africa’s most significant public health partner.

In particular through its ground-breaking programme to counter the global spread of HIV, which was launched in 2003. Called the US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar), it has saved more than 25 million lives.

According to head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), USAID gave $8bn of aid assistance to Africa over the past year.

“Seventy-three per cent went to healthcare,” Jean Kaseya told BBC Newsday last month.

Health experts warn that replacing this funding will be extremely difficult.

African governments have made strides in reducing aid dependency. Kenya now funds nearly 60% of its HIV response. South Africa covers almost 80%.

But for many low-income nations, debt burdens, climate disasters and economic shocks make self-sufficiency nearly impossible.

Amref Health Africa, one of the leading health NGOs on the continent, warns that without urgent action, global health security is at risk.

“This would require African governments and Africa CDC to increase their own funding, which is almost impossible under the current debt distress conditions,” its CEO Dr Githinji Gitahi told the BBC.

“With accelerating outbreaks from climate change and human-environmental conflict, this would leave the world fragile and unsafe – not only for Africa but for everyone.”

Worldwide in 2023, there were 630,000 Aids-related deaths and 1.5 million new infections.

While infection rates have been declining in the worst-affected countries, the impact of the USAID shutdown could reverse these gains.

“If you take away this major contribution by the United States government, we expect that in the next five years, there’ll be an additional 6.3 million Aids-related deaths,” Winnie Byanyima, the head of UNAids, told the BBC’s Africa Daily podcast this week.

“There will be 8.7 million new infections, 3.4 million additional Aids orphans. I don’t want to sound like a prophet of doom, but I have a duty to give the facts as we see them.”

The medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has also warned of the dangers of interrupting HIV treatments.

“HIV medicines must be taken daily or people run the risk of developing resistance or deadly health complications,” Tom Ellman, from MSF Southern Africa, has said in a statement.

Back in Uganda, Mr Tusubira feels bleak about the future.

He has about 30 days left of his ARV medication – and may opt to leave Kampala and go home to his village after that.

“At least it will be a bit simpler. If I die, they just bury me there, instead of disturbing my people here in Kampala.

“Because I have no way I can live here without ARV services.”

• What is USAid and why is Trump poised to ‘close it down’?
• Ugandan teenage cancer patient: How a bed saved my life
• ‘I found out I had cervical cancer while I was pregnant’
• Why trainee Kenyan doctors are taking their own lives
• Why South Africa’s health insurance is causing ructions
• How Trump locked out contraception in Africa in his first term

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.

In the bustling heart of Cairo, coffee shops teem with Gazans who managed to flee at the start of Israel’s devastating war on Hamas. Although they have found safety, they remain worried about loved ones back home.

In the past few days here, Egyptian intelligence officials have been meeting Hamas leaders to shore up the shaky ceasefire. Tens of millions of Egyptians – tuning into the constant news updates – already feel their country’s intimate involvement in the war in Gaza.

But now – with President Trump’s surprise post-war vision, which proposes displacing two million Palestinians to “a parcel of land” in Egypt and Jordan, so that the US can take over the territory – they fear an existential threat.

Egyptians flocking to Friday prayers say Trump’s idea needs a reality check.

“We’d be moving the battlefront from their land into our own!” says Abdo, a civil engineer. “The Israeli army and the Palestinian resistance are eternal enemies and there is no peace between them. This would mean us giving Israel a pretext to attack them on our land in the name of self-defence.”

Others stress how the idea of permanently displacing Gazans would be tantamount to the liquidation of the Palestinian quest for statehood. But, they say, it would also breed extremism and cause instability in Egypt.

To try to convey a similar message, Egypt’s President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi has launched a behind-the-scenes diplomatic blitz. He is facing one of the most challenging moments of his rule, which could reset relations with his country’s key Western ally.

Egypt is dangling the threat to its peace treaty with neighbouring Israel – long seen as a cornerstone of stability and US influence in the Middle East.

Since Washington brokered the breakthrough 1979 deal, it has seen Cairo as a close ally. Egypt has consistently been one of the biggest recipients of US military aid, agreed as part of the treaty. Last year, it was allocated $1.3bn in military assistance.

However, on Egypt’s influential night-time talk shows, commentators have been voicing strong criticism. American military aid “does not constitute any value to Egypt,” Ahmed Mousa, a popular host on a private TV channel, recently said. He insisted Egyptians refuse “pressure” or “blackmail”.

Egypt’s leader is choosing a different approach to Jordan’s King Abdullah II, who recently met Trump at the White House. There, Abdullah adopted a placatory tone and promised to take in sick Gazan children, while not giving ground on the idea of resettlement for Gazans.

Egyptian reports say that Sisi refuses to visit Washington while displacement is on the agenda, although the US maintains no trip has been scheduled.

Egypt’s own economy has been hard-hit by the Gaza war; it says it has lost $8bn in Suez Canal revenues due to attacks by Yemen’s Houthis on ships in the Red Sea which began in response to Israel’s Gaza offensive.

The hope now is that by devising its own “masterplan” for Gaza reconstruction, Egypt can both avoid the hugely problematic mass displacement of Palestinians and boost its own economy.

The Egyptian real estate tycoon, Hisham Talaat Moustafa – who is close to Sisi – has been on TV, pushing a $20bn (£16bn; 19bn euros) proposal for building 200,000 homes in Gaza in just three years, without Palestinians being moved away.

The plan is feasible, says Professor Mustafa Kamel al-Sayyid of Cairo University: “I don’t think it will be impossible for the Egyptians to find safe areas for Palestinians to move there while their part of Gaza is being rebuilt.”

Various “innovative ideas” are being put forward, he adds, including one for rubble to be used as a building material in reconstruction.

Speaking ahead of a Middle East trip, the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged that Arab states “don’t like” the Trump Gaza plan. “Now, if someone has a better plan – and we hope they do,” he went on, “now’s the time to present it.”

Some Arab leaders are due to meet soon in Saudi Arabia, with Egypt calling for an Arab summit to discuss an alternative “comprehensive vision” for Gaza in Cairo on 27 February.

Proposals are believed to involve a Gulf-led fund to help foot the hefty bill for reconstruction, and a deal to sideline Hamas. Israel and the US have made clear that the Palestinian armed group which has governed in Gaza since 2007 must have no future role.

Egypt’s idea involves training a new security force and identifying Palestinian technocrats – not affiliated to any political faction – who would be in charge of early recovery projects.

However, coming up with a deal that satisfies Israel’s hardline government will be challenging.

The former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken envisaged world powers and the UN playing a temporary role in Gaza, until the Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs parts of the occupied West Bank, could take charge. But the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, sought to block the PA’s involvement, as part of his opposition to Palestinian statehood.

Egypt, along with other Arab states, remains committed to the long-time international formula for peace, the two-state solution which conceives an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. Its foreign ministry has stated that it wants to work with President Trump to “achieve a comprehensive and just peace in the region by reaching a just settlement of the Palestinian cause.”

Back outside the mosque in Cairo, worshippers quietly point out how their country must try to avoid troubling repetitions of history.

Already Egypt says it hosts more than 100,000 Gazans. With the idea of taking in many more, some worry their country could become a base for Hamas – an ideological offshoot of the country’s own banned Muslim Brotherhood – which, they argue, could be reinforced, stirring up domestic turmoil.

Ultimately there is strong support for Egypt taking a strong position and standing up to the US.

“Life is getting more difficult for us with the number of refugees we’ve already got. Imagine if we take in more!” exclaimed a shop owner, who did not want to give his name.

“The Palestinians need to live on their own land not ours. We don’t need anything from the USA.

“I stand by Sisi and the government and we’re ready to face the full consequences.”

US Vice-President JD Vance has launched a scalding attack on European democracies, saying the greatest threat facing the continent was not from Russia and China, but “from within”.

It had been expected that Vance would use his speech at the Munich Security Conference to address possible talks to end the war in Ukraine.

Instead, he spent the majority accusing European governments – including the UK’s – of retreating from their values, and ignoring voter concerns on migration and free speech.

The address was met by silence in the hall, and later denounced by several politicians at the conference. German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said it was “not acceptable”.

Vance repeated the Trump administration’s line that Europe must “step up in a big way to provide for its own defence”.

The Ukraine war was mentioned, with Vance saying he hoped a “reasonable settlement” could be reached, after US President Donald Trump’s surprise announcement earlier this week that he and Russia’s Vladimir Putin had agreed to begin peace talks.

But Vance’s address otherwise focused on culture-war issues and key themes of Trump’s campaign for the US presidency – a departure from the usual security and defence discussions at the annual conference.

He alleged European Union “commissars” were suppressing free speech, blamed the continent for mass migration, and accused its leaders of retreating from “some of its most fundamental values”.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, characterised Vance as “trying to pick a fight” with Europe, home to some of the US’s closest allies.

Michael McFaul, the former US ambassador to Russia, told Politico Vance’s remarks were “insulting” and “just empirically not true”.

Vance used his 20-minute speech to single out several European nations, including the UK.

He raised a legal case in which an army veteran who silently prayed outside an abortion clinic was convicted of breaching an 150-metre safe zone around the centre.

The safe zone, introduced in October 2022, bans activity in favour or against abortion services, including protests, harassment and vigils.

But Vance argued that the “basic liberties of religious Britons, in particular” were under threat.

Nine days before a tense national election in Germany, he touched on a heated debate in the country around mainstream political parties maintaining a so-called “firewall” of non-cooperation with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

In the decades since democracy was restored in Germany after the defeat of the Nazis, there has been a consensus among its main political parties not to work with far-right parties.

“Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters,” Vance said. “There’s no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle or you don’t.”

The AfD’s candidate for chancellor, Alice Weidel, later shared parts of his speech on X, praising it as “excellent”. The two reportedly met afterwards, according to German public broadcaster ZDF.

In his own speech, Pistorius directly addressed Vance, saying: “Democracy was called into question by the US vice-president for the whole of Europe.

“He speaks of the annihilation of democracy,” Pistorius continued. “And if I have understood him correctly, he is comparing conditions in parts of Europe with those in authoritarian regimes… that is not acceptable.”

Vance also made reference to the presidential election in Romania, which was annulled in December after declassified documents suggested it had been targeted by Russian state interference.

Vance told the conference: “If your democracy can be destroyed with a few $100,000 of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with.”

Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu said his country remains “a defender of the democratic values that Europe shares with the USA”.

“All RO [Romanian] authorities are committed to organising free and fair elections by empowering citizens and guaranteeing the freedom to vote,” he wrote on X.

Vance later met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the sidelines of the conference, which has otherwise mainly focussed on Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Zelensky said during the meeting that more work was needed on planning to end the fighting, while Vance said the pair shared a “fruitful” conversation.

Trump had said US, Russian and Ukrainian officials would meet in Munich, but Moscow has said it is not sending a delegation to the summit.

Elon Musk’s children have been to places many will never see.

From meetings with foreign leaders to the control room of a SpaceX launch, Musk’s children have debuted as constant sidekicks to their father’s endeavors in tech, business and now, politics.

They have made frequent appearances in the nation’s capital since President Donald Trump tapped the tech billionaire and Tesla co-founder to lead the newly-formed Department of Government Efficiency.

Musk’s four-year-old, “Lil X”, hung on the corner of the Resolute desk in the Oval Office on Wednesday sporting a tan pea coat and a collared shirt.

On Thursday, X and two of his siblings exchanged gifts with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi while their father discussed technology and innovation with the foreign leader.

Musk has frequently been seen with his children even before coming to Washington – at a meeting with the president of Turkey, a memorial service at Auschwitz concentration camp, and a Time magazine ceremony where he was named the 2021 person of the year.

But why do Musk’s children tag along?

“The inclusion of the kids in many public appearances is very much a politician move or a political move to make him seem a bit more personable (and) take a human approach to how the public views him,” says Kurt Braddock, an American University professor of public communication.

Still, Mr Braddock thought the decision to bring Musk’s preschooler to the Oval Office was unusual.

X appeared bored during the 30-minute press briefing as he mimicked his father, sat on the floor and received the occasional side glance and smile from the leader of the free world. At one point, it appeared he told someone in the room to “shush” their mouth.

Mr Braddock said he believes their inclusion is intentional – a distraction that benefits both Musk and Trump.

“I do think that there is a bit of a strategy here trying to draw attention to some things while diverting attention to other things,” he said.

Jon Haber, a strategic communication consultant who has worked with five presidential campaigns and teaches at Harvard, said Musk’s children making frequent appearances – and creating viral moments – is beneficial for Trump.

“For Trump, the more chaos, the more he floods the zone, the less anybody can really focus on. Chaos works for him,” Mr Haber said.

Grimes, Musk’s ex-girlfriend and the mother of X, criticised her son’s appearance in the Oval Office.

“He should not be in public like this,” she wrote in a post on X. “I did not see this… but I’m glad he was polite. Sigh.”

In a 2022 Vanity Fair article, she said that she wasn’t a fan of her son being in the spotlight.

“Whatever is going on with family stuff, I just feel like kids need to stay out of it, and X is just out there. I mean, I think E is really seeing him as a protégé and bringing him to everything and stuff.… X is out there. His situation is like that. But, yeah, I don’t know.”

Long before politics, Musk allowed his children to tag along.

A decade ago, when he was still building his profile and eager to draw attention to his electric-vehicle maker Tesla, it wasn’t unusual to see them at events.

As analysts and reporters waited for one unveiling to begin at a Tesla facility in Silicon Valley in 2015, his five children could be seen running through the hallways chasing after each other and shrieking with laughter.

Despite being forced to wait for hours for attendees, the presence of Musk’s children created an atmosphere that felt relaxed and even joyous.

It was a departure from the stiff, far more formal events held by other companies for which the prospect of seeing an executive’s very young children would have come across as odd.

Musk has had 12 children with three different women.

His most-recognised son, X Æ A-12?, goes by “Lil X”, the same letter Musk used to re-name Twitter when he purchased the social media company.

The four-year-old has been dubbed an “emotional support human” by Musk himself.

Walter Isaacson, the author of Musk’s biography, said on The Diary of a CEO podcast that Musk is “deeply committed” to his children and is “almost obsessed by them”.

“With his own children, his lovers, his wives, there is the same intensity that is baked into everything he does,” Mr Isaacson said.

“He always likes having some of his children around him. He always likes having a companion, but that doesn’t mean that he likes calmness.”

The first thing kayaker Adrián Simancas noticed after he was eaten by a whale was the slime.

“I spent a second realising I was inside the mouth of something, that maybe it had eaten me, that it could have been an orca or a sea monster,” the 23-year-old told BBC Mundo.

Adrián had started to think how he might survive inside the humpback whale “like Pinocchio” – then the creature spat him back out.

The Venezuelan kayaker had been paddling through the Strait of Magellan, off Chile’s Patagonian coast, with his father when he felt something “hit me from behind, closing in on me and sinking me”.

His father, Dall, was able to capture the short-lived ordeal on video just metres away.

“I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, I realised I was inside the whale’s mouth,” Adrián told the BBC.

“I felt a slimy texture brush my face,” he recalled, adding that all he could see was dark blue and white.

“I wondered what I could do if it had swallowed me since I could no longer fight to stop it,” he said.

“I had to think about what to do next.”

But within seconds, Adrián started to feel as though he was rising toward the surface.

“I was a little afraid of whether I would be able to hold my breath because I didn’t know how deep I was, and I felt like it took me a long time to come up.

“I went up for two seconds, and finally I got to the surface and realised that it hadn’t eaten me.”

In a nearby kayak, Adrián’s father Dall Simancas watched on in disbelief.

The pair had just crossed Eagle Bay – down the coast from Punta Arenas, Chile’s southernmost city – when he heard a crash behind him. “When I turned around, I didn’t see Adrián.”

“I was worried for a second, until I saw him coming up out of the sea,” the 49-year-old said.

“Then I saw something, a body, which I immediately interpreted as most likely being a whale because of its size.”

Dall had fixed a camera to the back of his kayak to record the rising waves – which captured his son’s remarkable experience.

Watching the footage back, Adrián – who moved with his father to Chile from Venezuela seven years ago in search of a better quality of life – was shocked to see just how enormous the whale had been.

“I hadn’t seen the moment when the back appears, and the fin is visible. I didn’t see it, I heard it. That made me nervous,” he said.

“But later, with the video, I realised that it actually appeared before me in such a huge size that perhaps if I had seen it, it would have scared me even more.”

For Adrián, the experience was not just about survival – but he said felt he had received a “second chance” when the whale spat him out.

The “unique” experience in one of the most extreme places on Earth had “invited me to reflect on what I could have done better up until that point, and on the ways I can take advantage of the experience and appreciate it as well”, he added.

But there is a simple reason he was able to escape the whale so quickly, according to a wildlife expert.

Humpback whales have narrow throats “about the size of a household pipe” designed for swallowing small fish and shrimp, Brazilian conservationist Roched Jacobson Seba told the BBC.

“They physically cannot swallow large objects like kayaks, tires, or even big fish like tuna,” he said.

“Ultimately, the whale spit out the kayak because it was physically impossible to swallow.”

The humpback whale likely engulfed Adrián by accident, Mr Seba suggested.

“The whale was likely feeding on a school of fish when it unintentionally scooped up the kayak along with its meal.

“When whales surface too quickly while feeding, they can accidentally hit or engulf objects in their path.”

He warned that the encounter served as “an important reminder” to avoid using paddleboards, surfboards or other silent vessels in areas where whales usually swim.

Boats used for whale watching and research must always keep their engines on, he added, as the noise helps whales detect their presence.

An Indian court’s ruling that a man’s forced “unnatural sex” with his wife is not an offence has led to huge outrage and sparked renewed calls for better protections for married women.

The controversial order has also brought back into the spotlight the issue of marital rape in a country which has stubbornly refused to criminalise it.

Earlier this week, a high court judge in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh set free a 40-year-old man who was convicted by a trial court in 2019 of rape and unnatural sex with his wife, who died within hours of the alleged assault.

The lower court had also found the man guilty of “culpable homicide not amounting to murder”. He was sentenced to “rigorous imprisonment for 10 years” on each count, with all the sentences to run concurrently.

But on Monday, the High Court’s Justice Narendra Kumar Vyas acquitted the man of all charges, saying that since India did not recognise marital rape, the husband could not be considered guilty of non-consensual sex or any non-consensual unnatural sexual act.

The judgement has been met with anger, as activists, lawyers and campaigners renew their calls to criminalise marital rape in India.

“To watch this man walk away is unacceptable. This judgement may be correct legally, but it is ethically and morally abhorrent,” said lawyer and gender rights activist Sukriti Chauhan.

“An order that absolves a man of such a crime, to say it’s not a crime, is the darkest hour in our legal system,” she told the BBC.

“It has shaken us to the core. This needs to change and change quickly.”

Priyanka Shukla, a lawyer in Chhattisgarh, said a judgement like this “sends out the message that because you’re the husband, you have rights. And you can do anything, you can even get away with murder”.

She added that this is not the first time a court has given such a judgement, and there is always anger.

“This time, the outrage is more because it is so gruesome and the woman died.”

The court documents make for grim reading.

According to the prosecution, the incident took place on the night of 11 December 2017, when the husband, who worked as a driver, “committed unnatural sex with the victim against her will… causing her a lot of pain”.

After he left for work, she sought help from his sister and another relative, who took her to hospital where she died a few hours later.

In her statement to the police and her dying declaration to a magistrate, the woman said she became ill “due to forceful sexual intercourse by her husband”.

A dying declaration carries weight in court and legal experts say it is generally enough for conviction, unless contradicted by other evidence.

While convicting the man in 2019, the trial court had relied heavily on her dying declaration and the post-mortem report, which stated “the cause of death was peritonitis and rectal perforation” – simply put, severe injuries to her abdomen and rectum.

Justice Vyas, however, saw matters differently – he questioned the “sanctity” of the dying statement, noted that some of the witnesses had retracted their statements and, most importantly, said that marital rape was not an offence in India.

The lower court’s conviction was “a rarest of rare case”, Ms Shukla said, “probably because the woman died”.

“But what is shocking about the high court order is that there’s not even one sympathetic comment from the judge.”

Considering the nature of the assault, the high court’s order has come as a shock for many, who believe the judge should not have dismissed the case so lightly.

India is among more than 30 countries – along with Pakistan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia – where marital rape is not a criminal offence.

A number of petitions have been filed in recent years seeking to strike down Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code, which has been in existence since 1860.

The British colonial-era law mentions several “exemptions” – or situations in which sex is not rape – and one of them is “by a man with his own wife” if she is not under 15 years.

Britain outlawed marital rape in 1991 but India, which recently rewrote its criminal code, retained the regressive law in its new statute book.

• India government says criminalising marital rape ‘excessively harsh’
• In India, growing clamour to criminalise rape within marriage

The idea is rooted in the belief that consent for sex is “implied” in marriage and that a wife cannot retract it later. Campaigners say such an argument is untenable in this day and age, and that forced sex is rape, regardless of who does it.

But in a country where marriage and family are considered sacrosanct, the issue has polarised opinions and there’s strong resistance to the idea of criminalising marital rape.

The Indian government, religious leaders and men’s rights activists have strongly opposed the move.

In October last year, the government told the Supreme Court that criminalisation of marital rape would be “excessively harsh”. The federal home ministry said it “may lead to serious disturbances in the institution of marriage”.

Authorities also insist that there are enough laws to protect married women against sexual violence. But campaigners say India cannot hide behind archaic laws to deny women bodily agency.

“A lot of people say the constitution cannot enter your bedroom,” Ms Chauhan said.

“But doesn’t it grant women – like all citizens – fundamental rights to safety and security? What kind of redundant country do we live in that we remain quiet when a woman has to face this level of violence?” she asks.

Violence within marriage is rampant in India.

According to a recent government survey, 32% of married women face physical, sexual or emotional violence by their husbands and 82% have experienced sexual violence by their husbands.

And even that doesn’t give the true scale of the problem, Ms Shukla said, because a majority of women do not report violence, especially sexual violence, out of shame.

“In my experience, women are not trusted when they complain, everyone says it must be fake. The only time such cases are taken seriously is when a woman dies or the assault is particularly gruesome,” the lawyer said.

Ms Chauhan believes nothing will change until the law changes.

“We need to criminalise marital rape. The wife not getting justice after such a gruesome incident deserves a nationwide campaign, which is not born of anger but is serious [and] well thought out.”

She added that the government and men’s activists try to project it as a “man versus woman debate”.

“But the demand for criminalising marital rape is not against men, but for the safety and wellbeing of women. Is it not important to ensure women’s safety?”

Donald Trump is threatening to introduce big tariffs on EU car imports, unhappy that Europeans don’t buy more American vehicles. But why are US cars, with the notable exception of Tesla, not more popular in Europe?

Italy’s ancient towns and cities, with their narrow, cobbled streets, offer an obvious explanation why, in the words of US President Donald Trump, Europeans “don’t take our cars”.

Or as car industry analyst Hampus Engellau puts it: “Try to go around Italy in a big SUV. I’ve done it, and it’s very difficult”.

Add cost to the question, and it becomes obviously why you don’t see too many American pick-up trucks on European roads, observes Mike Hawes, CEO of The Society of Motor Manufacturers & Traders, which represents the industry in the UK.

“We tend to have higher fuel prices than the Americans, so we prefer smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles, while they generally prefer larger vehicles.”

Mr Engellau, who works for Swedish investment bank Handelsbanken Capital Markets, also highlights petrol prices being substantially cheaper in the US. “They pay per gallon what we pay per litre,” he says. There are 3.8 litres to one US gallon.

Yet these differences have done little to deter European carmakers from gaining market share in the US. Again, in the words of Mr Trump, the US has “millions of cars coming in – BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagen and many others”.

In 2022, 692,334 new EU-made cars were exported to the US, worth €36bn ($37bn; £30bn). While only 116,207 new US-made cars went in the opposite direction, for €5.2bn.

This imbalance is caused by unfair trading rules and needs correcting, according to Mr Trump.

“Mr Trump is concerned because the terms of trade are not really equal,” explains Mr Engellau, pointing out that the EU’s 10% tariffs on cars imported from the US far exceeds the 2.5% tariffs the US – currently – charges on cars imported from the EU.

These disparities have prompted Trump to say he wants to raise US tariffs on European automotive imports. He has already announced 25% import tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, two metals crucial for carmakers.

Trump’s move appears to have prompted EU officials to consider reducing their own tariffs in order to protect Europe’s automotive industry from a potential trade war.

Trump’s intervention has not impressed Jim Farley, the boss of US carmaker Ford. “So far what we’ve been seeing is a lot of cost and a lot of chaos,” NBC News recently reported him as saying.

In fact, the very focus on trade is perhaps misplaced, according to automotive industry veteran Andy Palmer, formerly the chief operating officer of Nissan and CEO of Aston Martin, and currently a consultant. “If you can help it, you don’t want to ship cars around the world. They’re big boxes of expensive air,” he says.

The automotive industry is global, adds the SMMT’s Mr Hawes, so carmakers generally want to “manufacture close to where the customer is based”.

As such, several European carmakers, most notably marques such as BMW, Mercedes and Audi, are making some of their largest cars in North America, and some of these vehicles are exported back to Europe.

US carmakers have historically pursued similar strategies in Europe. General Motors owned and manufactured European marques such as Opel/Vauxhall and Saab, but it sold the former in 2017, and shut the latter back in 2009.

Meanwhile, Ford offloaded Aston Martin in 2007, Jaguar and Land Rover in 2008, and Volvo in 2010.

After years of losing money, Ford is currently redirecting its European business towards electric and commercial vehicles and away from small, affordable cars, such as its Focus models.

Ford plans to cut 800 jobs in the UK and 2,900 jobs in Germany by 2027, which represents a 14% reduction in its 28,000-strong European workforce.

Elon Musk’s Tesla has a factory near Berlin in Germany, where it makes its Model Y cars for the European market, but even here there are headwinds as low-cost Chinese imports in particular see their share of Europe’s market for electric cars grow.

Europe is a very tough marketplace for carmakers, according to Jose Asumendi, head of European automotive research at JP Morgan, an investment bank. “You need to have the right products, and you need to run the manufacturing plants well.”

He also points to brands having a competitive advantage in their home countries, be it BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagen and Audi in Germany, Peugeot, Citroen and Renault in France, or Fiat and Alfa Romeo in Italy.

“There’s a natural inclination for people to buy local champions, especially in Germany, France and Italy,” explains Mr Asumendi.

He adds that while other European countries are more open to different brands, the market is crowded, with a slew of Japanese, South Korea, and, increasingly, Chinese cars.

Adding to Europe’s complexities for overseas carmakers are different taxation regulations, and the need to communicate in many different languages.

Mr Palmer does not think “European customers have any particular objections to American cars”, and Mr Asumendi agrees. “I think Europeans do like American brands, but there are many other brands available in Europe, so competition is fierce,” he says.

Mr Trump’s ambition is to make the US car industry stronger, by bringing more production and innovation home. But Mr Palmer insists that a car trade war with Europe will not deliver this.

Not least, he says, since tariffs tend to “insulate the beneficiaries from the free market, and this merely makes them lazy, so they stop innovating and fail to remain competitive”.

“It’s not about trade,” adds Mr Palmer. “It’s about investment and collaboration.”

South Korean football player Hwang Ui-jo has been handed a suspended one-year jail term for illegally filming his sexual encounters with a woman, Yonhap News Agency reported.

The 32-year-old, a former Norwich City and Nottingham Forest striker, now plays for the Turkish club Alanyaspor. He also plays for the South Korea national team but was suspended in 2023 amid the allegations.

The Seoul court said that “given the seriousness of the socially harmful effects of illegal filming, it is necessary to punish [Hwang] strictly”.

However, it noted Hwang had shown remorse and the videos were posted on social media by a third party.

Hwang had said he was “deeply sorry” for causing “disappointment” during his first court appearance last December.

The videos came to light after Hwang’s sister-in-law shared them on social media last June, in an attempt to blackmail him.

She was sentenced to three years in prison in September for the blackmail after Hwang sued her.

However, the charges against him proceeded as prosecutors said he filmed sexual encounters with two women without their consent on four occasions in 2022.

He had initially claimed innocence, but pleaded guilty to illegal filming charges last October.

He was convicted of the charges related to one woman but acquitted of those related to the other.

Hidden cameras designed to secretly film women and their sexual encounters are a nationwide problem in South Korea.

Over the past decade, thousands have been arrested for filming voyeuristic images and videos, sparking fear and anger among women across the country.

A lawsuit against Sean “Diddy” Combs and Jay-Z, which alleged the rape of a 13-year-old girl in 2000, has been dismissed, according to a legal filing submitted on Friday in New York.

The attorney representing the anonymous plaintiff, referred to as Jane Doe, voluntarily withdrew the case, court records show.

The filing was submitted by lawyer Tony Buzbee, who is representing dozens of plaintiffs in lawsuits alleging sexual misconduct against Mr Combs.

The filings states that the plaintiff “hereby gives notice that the… action is voluntarily dismissed, with prejudice”.

Because the dismissal is with prejudice, the lawsuit cannot again be refiled in its current form.

Roc Nation, the entertainment company founded by Jay-Z, whose legal name is Shawn Carter, issued a statement signed by him, referring to the dismissal as a “victory”.

“The frivolous, fictitious and appalling allegations have been dismissed,” he wrote.

“This civil suit was without merit and never going anywhere. The fictional tale they created was laughable, if not for the seriousness of the claims.”

“The trauma that my wife, my children, loved ones and I have endured can never be dismissed,” said the rapper, who is married to singer Beyoncé.

He continued: “The courts must protect the innocent from being accused without a shred of evidence. May the truth prevail for all victims and those falsely accused equally.”

Jay-Z’s attorney, Alex Spiro, emphasised in a separate statement that the case “never should have been brought”.

“By standing up in the face of heinous and false allegations, Jay has done what few can – he pushed back, he never settled, he never paid 1 red penny, he triumphed and cleared his name,” he said in a statement to the BBC.

Jane Doe initially filed the lawsuit against Mr Combs in October before adding Jay-Z’s name in December. She alleged that both men assaulted her in 2000 after an MTV Video Music Awards afterparty.

• Diddy: When is the trial and what are the charges?

Jay-Z strongly denied the allegations, claiming that his attorney had been sent “blackmail” in an attempt to force a settlement. He said the attempt had the “opposite effect” and instead motivated him to publicly challenge the accusations.

In December, Jane Doe gave an interview that raised questions about her credibility. She admitted that “not all the facts are clear” and stated, “I have made some mistakes. I may have made a mistake in identifying.”

Last month, Jay-Z formally requested the court to dismiss the lawsuit, citing inconsistencies in the accuser’s account. The request was approved by United States District Judge Analisa Torres, leading to the lawsuit’s dismissal.

While Jay-Z is no longer facing legal action in this case, Mr Combs continues to battle over three dozen civil suits.

In response to Friday’s dismissal, Mr Combs’ legal team issued a statement declaring his innocence.

“For months, we have seen case after case filed by individuals hiding behind anonymity, pushed forward by an attorney more focused on media headlines than legal merit. Just like this claim, the others will fall apart because there is no truth to them,” the statement says.

It added: “This is just the first of many that will not hold up in a court of law.”

Mr Combs has been held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, since September 2024 on federal criminal charges related to racketeering and sex trafficking.

He’s been denied bail three times, and will remain in custody until his trial on 5 May 2025.

Despite the hype, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first visit to Washington under Donald Trump’s second term was a sober, business-first affair – unsurprising for a working visit, which lacks the pomp of a state visit.

Trump announced expanded US military sales to India from 2025, including F-35 jets, along with increased oil and gas exports to narrow the trade deficit. Both sides agreed to negotiate a trade deal and finalise a new defence framework.

He also confirmed the US had approved the extradition of Tahawwur Rana, a Chicago businessman accused of playing a role in the 2008 terror attack in Mumbai.

“That’s a lot of deliverables for an administration less than a month old,” Michael Kugelman of the Wilson Center’s South Asia Institute in Washington told the BBC

“Overall, both sides seem comfortable continuing Biden-era collaborations, particularly in tech and defence, though many will be rebranded under Trump.”

Still, major challenges lie ahead. Here are the key takeaways:

Modi’s visit came as Trump ordered that US trading partners should face reciprocal tariffs – tit-for-tat import taxes to match similar duties already charged by those countries on American exports. He ordered advisers to draft broad new tariffs on US trade partners, warning they could take effect by 1 April.

India enjoys a trade surplus with the US, its top trading partner. India cut average tariffs from 13% to 11% in its federal budget in a bid to pre-empt Trump’s tariff moves.

The jury is out on whether India appears to have dodged tariff shocks for now.

Ajay Srivastava, founder of the Delhi-based think tank Global Trade Research Institute (GTRI), says he doesn’t see any “problems with tariffs”.

The main reason, he says, is that 75% of the US exports to India attract import taxes of less than 5%.

“Trump points to extreme outlier tariffs like 150% on select items, but that’s not the norm. India has little reason to fear reciprocal tariffs,” Mr Srivastava told the BBC.

Abhijit Das, former head of the Centre for WTO Studies at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, isn’t convinced.

“The devil lies in the details. Reciprocal tariffs won’t just mirror India’s import taxes -other factors will come into play,” he told the BBC.

Trump’s approach could go beyond import duties, factoring in value added tax (VAT), non-tariff barriers and trade restrictions. While India’s goods and services tax (GST) on imported goods aligns with WTO rules, Trump may still use it to justify higher tariffs.

A US government memo on reciprocal tariffs hints at this strategy, citing costs to American businesses from non-tariff barriers, subsidies and burdensome regulations abroad. It also cites VAT and government procurement restrictions as non-tariff barriers.

Mr Das says the US is expected to push for access to India’s government procurement market, which is currently protected under WTO rules.

“This will hamper India’s ability to prioritise domestic producers, posing a direct challenge to the ‘Make in India’ initiative. This is certainly not good news for us.”

Mr Das suggests that India should counter Trump’s reciprocal tariff logic, particularly in agriculture where the US imposes strict non-tariff barriers that restrict Indian exports such as stiff maximum residue limits on chemicals.

He argues that since the US “heavily subsidises” its farm sector, India should highlight these subsidies to push back against American claims.

Tariffs alone may not help bridge the trade deficit between the two countries. Defence and energy purchases will go some way in addressing the deficit, experts say.

The new $500bn (£400bn) trade goal aims to more than double the $190bn trade between the two countries in 2023.

Modi and Trump committed to negotiating the first phase of a trade agreement by autumn 2025. Talks will focus on market access, tariff reductions and supply chain integration across goods and services.

“The announcement that the two sides will pursue a trade deal gives India an opportunity to negotiate for reduced tariffs on both sides. That would be a boon not only for the US-India relationship, but also for an Indian economy that’s sputtered in recent months,” says Mr Kugelman.

What is not clear is what kind of trade deal the both sides will be aiming at.

“What is this trade agreement? Is it a full blown free trade agreement or is it a reciprocal tariff deal?” wonders Mr Srivastava.

Mr Das believes we’ll have to wait for details on the trade agreement.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean a free trade deal – if that were the case, it would have been stated explicitly. It could simply involve tariff reductions on select products of mutual interest.”

Priyanka Kishore, principal economist at the Singapore-based consultancy firm, Asia Decoded, says $500bn is a “tall target but there are low hanging fruit we can immediately exploit”.

“For instance the US sanctions on Russian shadow fleet are soon going to kick in, so India can easily pivot to the US for more oil. This will not be too difficult.”

Trump said at the joint press conference that the US would hopefully become India’s number one supplier of oil and gas.

India’s defence trade with the US has surged from near zero to $20 billion, making the US its third-largest arms supplier.

While Russia remains India’s top source, its share has dropped from 62% to 34% (2017-2023) as India shifts toward US procurement.

In a major announcement to deepen defence ties, Trump said the US would increase military equipment sales to India “by many billions of dollars starting this year” ultimately paving the way to providing the F-35 stealth warplanes.

But this will be easier said than done, say experts.

“This sounds good, but it may be a case of putting the cart before the horse,” says Mr Kugelman.

Despite rising US arms sales to India, bureaucratic hurdles and export controls limit the transfer of sensitive technologies, he says. The new defence framework announced at the summit may help address these challenges.

Also India isn’t “taking the F-35 offer seriously” due to high maintenance demands, says strategic affairs expert Ajai Shukla.

Shukla notes that US arms deals come with challenges – private firms prioritise profit over long-term partnerships.

Yet with delays and cost overruns affecting some of India’s arms deals with Russia, Delhi’s defence ties with the US look set to deepen.

Modi met Tesla CEO Elon Musk to discuss AI and emerging tech, India’s foreign ministry said.

It’s unclear if they addressed Musk’s stalled plans for Starlink’s India launch or Tesla’s market entry.

Musk has pushed for direct spectrum allocation, clashing with Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani, who favours auctions. His licence remains under review.

India is also courting Tesla to set up a car factory, cutting EV import taxes for automakers committing $500m and local production within three years. Tesla has yet to confirm its plans.

In a rare move, Modi joined Trump at a press conference, answering two questions – on illegal immigration and the US Department of Justice (DOJ) bribery charges against the Adani Group.

Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, accused of close ties with Modi, was charged with fraud in the US last November over an alleged $250m bribery scheme.

Modi said he hadn’t discussed the issue with Trump. On immigration, he stated India was ready to take back verified illegal Indian migrants.

This was only Modi’s third direct press Q&A in his almost 11-year tenure as India’s prime minister. He has never held a solo press conference. In 2019 he sat beside then party president Amit Shah as Shah answered all the questions and in 2023, he took just two questions alongside former President Joe Biden.

It’s the early hours of the morning in March 2024 and Ben is woken by shouting and swearing. It’s aimed at him, and he says it feels threatening. It’s the woman who lives in the flat below.

An hour before, Ben could see and hear threats on the screen of his doorbell camera. It’s been rung multiple times and he says he’s barely slept.

This is the 78th incident on a meticulous log Ben has been keeping since the anti-social behaviour started about a year before.

He says he’s been “abused” and “physically threatened that we would be shot, stabbed and have our knees broken if we leave the house”. He says he now lives in a constant state of fear.

Ben bought the ex-council flat in Wandsworth almost three years ago and around six months later, Drina Gray moved into the flat below. He says the issues began soon after.

As well as threats, he says he and his girlfriend Emma are plagued by noise from her flat below, including the tenant’s dogs barking, music, shouting and vacuuming all through the night.

He says the disruption even affected his ability to work.

“Because I was so sleep-deprived, I was getting to work quite late. I couldn’t focus on my job. Ultimately due to just so much stress, so much anxiety, I lost my job.”

Ben eventually got a new job but says he’s been left feeling “really helpless” and says the whole experience has had a detrimental impact on his mental health.

Emma adds that she too has been left “terrified”.

“We just feel trapped,” she says.

Ben and Emma are not alone in experiencing anti-social behaviour. According to the latest official data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales, 36% of people experienced or witnessed anti-social behaviour last year, up from 34% the previous year.

Ben is a leaseholder in a council-owned block and says many of his complaints to Wandsworth Council went unanswered.

He says he feels ignored, despite mentioning concerns about mental health and violent threats.

Ben and Emma have called the police to their address more than 20 times and say while local neighbourhood officers have been helpful, they feel failed by the system and “let down” by response times when they call 999.

In August, an official review panel – made up of police and public officials – found there had “not been good communication between agencies” and “none of the agencies has taken ownership of the case”.

Wandsworth council has accepted it “could have acted more swiftly.”

Ben has now complained to the housing ombudsman.

Over the last year, across the UK, the Housing Ombudsman has ruled that of the 809 anti-social behaviour cases he has presided over, 67% of social landlords hadn’t dealt with the issue to an adequate standard.

Richard Blakeway, the Housing Ombudsman, said: “Anti-social behaviour can cause unimaginable distress to people, have a profound impact on the community, and be complex for landlords to manage.”

He added that he repeatedly sees cases where “failures prolong issues and leaves residents feeling unheard and continuing to suffer”.

The BBC showed some of Ben’s footage to Baroness Helen Newlove, the victims’ commissioner for England and Wales.

“It shows that the system isn’t working, once again, to protect innocent people,” she says.

Baroness Newlove’s husband Garry died in hospital after being attacked outside his home in Warrington, Cheshire, in August 2007 by three youths after he went to speak to a gang he believed had been vandalising his wife’s car.

She says 17 years later, agencies still don’t understand the impact anti-social behaviour has on victims. She fears it will take another death for it to be taken more seriously and for it not be treated as “low-level” crime.

She says her inbox is full of complaints from victims about anti-social behaviour.

Baroness Newlove hopes new powers in the Crime and Policing Bill, being drafted this year, will improve protection for victims.

In December, Ben’s neighbour, Drina Gray, pleaded guilty to charges including harassment and criminal damage and will be sentenced in March.

Ben says the anti-social behaviour has continued and Gray has been rearrested multiple times since. She returned to the flat after the first arrest but the BBC understands she is temporarily staying elsewhere as per her bail conditions.

The council says following the court case, it is now seeking possession of the property.

But Ben says he has no idea when Gray will be permanently moved.

In a statement, Wandsworth Council said it “takes criminal and anti-social behaviour very seriously, and we work with partners to both support residents and to take the appropriate action against those responsible.

“This is a complex case where housing officers have been working closely with a number of different agencies, including the Police, to resolve the matter.”

A spokesperson for the Met Police said: “Any form of anti-social behaviour is taken seriously and we work in partnership with local authority colleagues to ensure that issues raised are addressed”.

Addressing Ben and Emma’s specific case, the spokesperson said the police were working to “ensure that the offender is brought before the courts when there is evidence to support it”.

The BBC contacted Drina Gray for comment.

A woman in Japan has been arrested for allegedly squashing a bun at a convenience store and leaving without buying the packet of bread.

Authorities in the southern city of Fukuoka confirmed to the BBC that the 40-year-old had been arrested on Monday for “criminal damage”.

The woman, who said she was unemployed, claimed she “only checked the firmness of [the bun] by pressing lightly with my hand”, according to police.

The woman had allegedly touched a bag of four black sesame and cream cheese buns. While the bag’s wrapper was intact, police said one of the buns was damaged after she pressed it with her right thumb, and the entire bag could not be sold.

Police said the owner of the Lawson convenience store had claimed he had seen the woman squashing buns several times in the past.

As the woman was leaving the shop on Monday, the owner noticed the bun was damaged and he urged her to pay for the bread, according to police. The bag of buns cost about 180 yen (£0.95; $1.20).

She allegedly refused. After following her for 1km (0.6mi), the manager restrained her. The police were called to the scene and they arrested her.

In recent years, police have been also cracking down on pranksters who have committed “sushi terrorism” in sushi conveyor belt restaurants, such as licking communal soy sauce bottles and squashing sushi meant for diners.

The world’s frozen oceans, which help to keep the planet cool, currently have less ice than ever previously recorded, satellite data shows.

Sea-ice around the north and south poles acts like a giant mirror by reflecting much of the Sun’s energy back into space.

But as rising temperatures cause this bright layer to shrink, the dark ocean below can absorb more heat, warming the planet further.

This latest sea-ice low appears to have been driven by a combination of warm air, warm seas and winds breaking apart the ice.

Over the 5 days to 13 February, the combined extent of Arctic and Antarctic sea-ice was 15.76 million sq km (6.08 million sq miles), according to BBC analysis of data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

This breaks the previous 5-day record low of 15.93 million sq km (6.15 million sq miles) from January-February 2023.

Arctic sea-ice is currently at its smallest recorded extent for the time of year, while Antarctic sea-ice is close to a new low in satellite records going back to the late 1970s.

The decline of Arctic sea-ice in response to a warming planet is well-established. Its end-of-summer extent fell from an average of 7 million sq km in the 1980s to 4.5 million sq km in the 2010s.

But until the mid-2010s, Antarctic sea-ice had been remarkably resilient, defying predictions that it would shrink.

Since then, Antarctica has shown a series of very low sea-ice extents, although there is still lots of natural variability.

“Every year, every data point that we get suggests that this isn’t a temporary shift, but something more permanent, like what we’ve seen in the Arctic,” Walter Meier, senior research scientist at NSIDC, told BBC News.

“It is indicating that the Antarctic has moved into a new regime of lower ice extents.”

Antarctic sea-ice is relatively thin and mobile – being surrounded by ocean rather than continents like the Arctic – so it can be particularly sensitive to winds breaking up the ice.

But warmer air and warmer waters look to have played a key role in this latest 2025 low, towards the end of the southern hemisphere summer.

The Antarctic ice-shelves – ice flowing off the Antarctic continent, rather than sea-ice – appears to have had a particularly extreme season of surface melting, driven by high air temperatures.

“Atmospheric conditions in December and January looked like they were strongly promoting surface melting on the ice-shelves,” said Tom Bracegirdle, research scientist at the British Antarctic Survey.

“That could also have contributed to what we’ve seen in Antarctic sea-ice, and ongoing ocean warming is setting the backdrop to all of this as well.”

Antarctica’s record sea-ice low of 2023 would have been a one-in-2,000 year event without climate change, according to a recent study. Yet 2025 is not far from eclipsing it.

At the other end of the planet, the Arctic should be reaching its annual maximum, with cold winter temperatures helping the oceans to freeze over.

But current sea-ice extent is nearly 0.2 million sq km below anything previously recorded for the time of year, and has been tracking very low since late 2024.

This is partly as a result of a late freeze-up of ice around Hudson Bay, with unusually warm ocean waters taking a long time to cool down.

As well as warmer seas, some storms also disrupted ice around the Barents and Bering Seas, with the consequences likely amplified by long-term reductions in sea-ice thickness.

“A thinner ice cover is more responsive to weather [… so] weather events can have a stronger impact than they used to,” said Julienne Stroeve, professor of polar observation and modelling at University College London.

In recent weeks, Arctic sea-ice has moved even further below average. Temperatures around the north pole were about 20C above normal in early February, leading to melting conditions in places like Svalbard.

This “is quite astonishing” for the time of year, according to Dr Bracegirdle.

This very low winter extent doesn’t necessarily mean the Arctic will end up with record conditions throughout 2025, as conditions can change quickly at the poles.

But, with the Arctic warming nearly four times faster than the global average, declines over the coming decades are almost inevitable.

The Arctic is expected to be essentially free of sea-ice at the end of its summer at least once before 2050, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Some recent studies suggest it could happen sooner.

Declining sea-ice at both poles not only has implications for local wildlife like polar bears and penguins, but also the Earth’s climate.

Polar sea-ice has already lost around 14% of its natural cooling effect since the early-to-mid 1980s, as the area of bright, reflective ice has declined, according to a study published last year.

“If you significantly change the sea ice distribution in and around Antarctica, you modify that part of the planet which is actually helping us fight against climate change,” said Simon Josey, a professor at the National Oceanography Centre.

Sea-ice also plays an important role in the great ocean conveyor, the mass movement of water that helps distribute heat around the planet and keeps places like the UK and north-west Europe relatively mild.

“If we see another strong winter loss [of Antarctic sea-ice], people are going to start to worry about what it’s doing to the ocean circulation,” said Prof Josey.

Sign up for our Future Earth newsletter to get exclusive insight on the latest climate and environment news from the BBC’s Climate Editor Justin Rowlatt, delivered to your inbox every week. Outside the UK? Sign up to our international newsletter here.

TikTok is again available on the US app stores of Apple and Google, after President Donald Trump postponed enforcement of a ban of the Chinese-owned social media platform until 5 April.

The popular app, which is used by more than 170 million American users, went dark briefly last month in the US as the ban deadline approached.

Trump then signed an executive order granting TikTok a 75-day extension to comply with a law banning the app if it is not sold.

TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BBC News.

According to Bloomberg, which first reported TikTok’s return to app stores in the US, the decision to resume its availability came after Apple and Google received assurances from the Trump administration that they would not be held liable for allowing downloads, and the ban wouldn’t be enforced yet.

The ban, which passed with a bipartisan vote in Congress, was signed into law by former President Joe Biden. It ordered TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance to sell the US version of the platform to a neutral party to avert an outright ban.

The Biden administration had argued that TikTok could be used by China as a tool for spying and political manipulation.

China and TikTok have repeatedly denied those accusations. Beijing has also previously rejected calls for a sale of TikTok’s US operations.

The law banning the app was supported by US lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and it was ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court.

Trump himself had supported banning the app during his first term in office but he appeared to have a change of heart last year during the presidential race.

He professed a “warm spot” for the app, touting the billions of views he says his videos attracted on the platform during last year’s presidential campaign.

• What does Trump’s executive order mean for TikTok and who might buy it?
• TikTok restores service in US after Trump pledge
• Legal showdown looms as Trump tests limits of presidential power

When the app started working again in the US last month, a popup message was sent to its millions of users that thanked Trump by name.

TikTok chief executive Shou Chew met Trump in Mar-a-Lago after his electoral victory in November and later attended his inauguration ceremony.

Trump has said he wants to find a compromise with the Chinese company that complies with the spirit rather than the letter of law, even floating an idea of TikTok being jointly owned.

“What I’m thinking of saying to someone is buy it and give half to the US, half, and we’ll give you a permit,” he said recently during a news conference about artificial intelligence.

And he also said he would be open to selling the app to Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, as well as billionaire Elon Musk, who leads the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency.

Previous names linked with buying TikTok include billionaire Frank McCourt and Canadian businessman Kevin O’Leary – a celebrity investor on Shark Tank, the US version of Dragon’s Den.

The biggest YouTuber in the world Jimmy Donaldson – AKA MrBeast – has also claimed he is in the running after a number of investors contacted him after he posted on social media that he was interested.

Pope Francis will be admitted to hospital in Rome to undergo treatment and tests for bronchitis, the Vatican has said.

The 88-year-old will arrive at the Gemelli hospital after his morning audiences on Friday, a short statement said.

The Pope has had bronchitis symptoms for several days and has delegated officials to read his prepared speeches at recent events.

“This morning, after his audiences, Pope Francis will be admitted to the Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic for necessary diagnostic tests and to continue hospital treatment for his ongoing bronchitis,” the statement said.

On Wednesday, the Pope asked a priest to read part of his speech because of his difficulties with the illness.

“Let me ask the priest to continue to read, because I cannot yet, with my bronchitis. I hope that next time I can,” the 88-year-old said shortly after starting the speech.

He had also asked aides to read on his behalf at a mass on Sunday and at last Wednesday’s general audience.

He held meetings at his Vatican residence last week in an attempt to rest and recover.

The Pope was treated for bronchitis at the same hospital in March 2023, spending three nights there.

In December the same year, he was forced to cancel his trip to the United Arab Emirates for the COP28 climate summit because of another bout of illness.

The Argentine pontiff has spent nearly 12 years as leader of the Roman Catholic Church.

He has suffered a number of health issues throughout his life, including having part of one of his lungs removed at age 21.

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.

Even after 5,000 years in a sarcophagus, mummified bodies from ancient Egypt still smell quite nice, scientists have discovered.

Researchers who examined nine mummies found that though there was some difference in the intensity of their odours, all could be described as “woody”, “spicy” and “sweet”.

They say recreating the composition of the smells chemically will allow others to experience a mummy’s whiff – and help to tell when the bodies inside may be starting to rot.

“We want to share the experience we had smelling the mummified bodies, so we’re reconstructing the smell to be presented in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo,” Cecilia Bembibre, one of the researchers, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

During the mummification process, ancient Egyptians would surround the body with pleasant smells as an important part of preparing a spirit to enter the afterlife.

As a result, pharaohs and members of the nobility were adorned with oils, waxes and balms during the mummification process.

“In films and books, terrible things happen to those who smell mummified bodies,” said Dr Bembibre said.

“We were surprised at the pleasantness of them.”

The authors of the academic study, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society on Thursday, had to get the smell from inside the sarcophagus without interfering with the mummy inside.

The researchers, from UCL and the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, did so by inserting a tiny tube so they were able measure the scent without taking any physical samples.

Dr Bembibre explained that heritage scientists are always trying to find “non-destructive” ways to discover new information.

Visitors who smell the scents in the museums will be able to experience ancient Egypt and the mummification process from a totally different perspective.

Ally Louks, an English literature supervisor at the University of Cambridge who wrote her PhD thesis on the politics of smell, described this as a “really innovative” way to communicate history.

“To engage your nose produces a strong emotional and physical reaction,” she told the BBC.

“We know smells were essential to social, religious and personal practises [in ancient Egypt],” Dr Louks said.

Matija Strlič, another member of the study team, told the Associated Press the scents may even suggest what social class a mummy was from.

“We believe that this approach is potentially of huge interest to other types of museum collections,” he said.

As well as providing museum-goers with a new sensory insight into mummies, the discovery also presents a potential breakthrough for mummy conservationists.

The researchers used a technique called gas chromatography to separate the different smells inside the sarcophagus that combined to make its scent.

They found odours relating to the break-down of animal fats used in the embalming process, which could indicate the body is beginning to decompose.

Because of these findings, it will be possible to “practically intervene” in the conservation of the mummies, identifying how best to store and wrap the bodies, the research paper said.

“This is useful for conservators who care for this collection [as] we can ensure it reaches future generations,” Dr Bembibre said.

“My love, I will eat burgers & fries and fish & chips with you forever. Thank you for you,” wrote Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, in a Valentine’s Day message to Prince Harry.

Apart from being an insight into what everyone really wants, even among Californian health fadsters, it was a chance to send a message to her husband, who is attending the Invictus Games in Canada.

“Back home taking care of our babies, and missing my Valentine,” Meghan wrote on social media, saying she was “beyond proud” of his sports event for disabled and wounded veterans.

The Prince and Princess of Wales also put out their own social media message, with a single heart emoji and a picture of the couple holding hands and kissing.

The picture of Prince William and Catherine was particularly poignant, as a still from the video that she had issued last September alongside an announcement that she had completed her cancer treatment.

It’s a slightly retro-image, with autumn colours and Enid Blyton shorts, taken in woodland in Norfolk and showing Prince William kissing Catherine.

Prince Harry and Meghan are also kissing in their picture on social media, in a black and white photo of the couple behind what could be the two dishes linking the US and the UK, with a burger and fries and fish and chips a culinary marker of their own transatlantic “special relationship”.

Meghan added the tag #lovewins to her Valentine’s message and signed off “As ever, M.”

There’s also another important part of the romantic mood, with what looks like a big glass of red wine.

Although as far as can be seen, neither of the couples had bought a bunch of garage flowers on the way home and laboured over a witty message.

Why say it with flowers when you can say it on social media, with 4.6 million followers to offer their hearts?

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Dozens of people confirmed their love for each other on a special Valentine’s Day event at a city cathedral.

Organised by BBC CWR, the We Still Do celebration saw 80 couples fill Coventry Cathedral with family and friends to renew their commitment to each other.

Some turned up in their original wedding outfits, several now had children in tow – and one couple even brought their beloved dog with them.

Guests were also treated to a surprise appearance from pop star Pixie Lott as well as a reading from actor Yasmin Wilde – with the event streamed live on the BBC iPlayer.

As part of the ceremony, the couples were invited to say these words: