Ukraine has agreed the terms of a major minerals deal with the US, a senior official in Kyiv has told the BBC.

“We have indeed agreed it with a number of good amendments and see it as a positive outcome,” the official said, without providing any further details.

Media reports say Washington has dropped initial demands for a right to $500bn (£395bn) in potential revenue from utilising the natural resources but has not given firm security guarantees to war-torn Ukraine – a key Ukrainian demand.

US President Donald Trump said he was expecting his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington to sign the deal this week, after the two leaders exchanged strong words about each other.

Without confirming that an agreement had been reached, Trump said on Tuesday that in return for the deal Ukraine would get “the right to fight on”.

“They’re very brave,” he told reporters, but “without the United States and its money and its military equipment, this war would have been over in a very short period of time”.

Asked whether supplies of US equipment and ammunition to Ukraine would continue, he said: “Maybe until we have a deal with Russia… We need to have a deal, otherwise it’s going to continue.”

There would be a need for “some form of peacekeeping” in Ukraine following any peace deal, Trump added, but that would need to be “acceptable to everyone”.

Just last week, Trump described Zelensky as a “dictator”, and appeared to blame Ukraine – not Russia – for starting the war, after the Ukrainian leader rejected US demands for $500bn in mineral wealth and suggested that the American president was living in a “disinformation space” created by Russia.

Trump has been pushing for access to Ukraine’s minerals in return for previous military and other aid to the country since Moscow launched a full-scale invasion three years ago.

Zelensky argued nowhere near that much American aid had been provided, adding: “I can’t sell our state.”

On Tuesday, Trump said the US had given Ukraine between $300bn and $350bn.

“We want to get that money back,” he said. “We’re helping the country through a very very big problem… but the American taxpayer now is going to get their money back plus.”

Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Olha Stefanishyna told the Financial Times – which first reported the minerals deal on Tuesday – that the deal was “only part of the picture”.

“We have heard multiple times from the US administration that it’s part of a bigger picture,” said Stefanishyna, who has led the negotiations.

According to Ukrainian sources, the US has had to back away from some of its more onerous demands from the war-torn nation and many of the details of this agreement will require further negotiation.

The precedent, however, is set. US aid in the Trump era comes with strings attached. Aid for aid’s sake – whether given for humanitarian or strategic reasons – is a thing of the past.

That represents a fundamental reordering of American foreign policy for more than 75 years, from the days of the Marshall Plan to post-Cold War idealism and George W Bush’s “Freedom Agenda” push to promote global democracy.

Ukraine is just the start. Expect Trump and his foreign policy team to apply their “America First” principles around the world over the course of the next four years.

Ukraine’s news site Ukrainska Pravda reported that the minerals deal was set to be signed by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The news site’s economics unit EP said the two countries had also agreed to set up a reconstruction investment fund.

Ukraine holds huge deposits of critical elements and minerals, including lithium and titanium, as well as sizeable coal, gas, oil and uranium deposits – supplies worth billions of dollars.

Last year, Zelensky presented a “victory plan” to Ukraine and its Western partners which proposed that foreign firms could gain access to some of the countries’ mineral wealth at the end of the war.

On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was open to offering the US access to rare minerals, including from Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine.

Ukraine and its European allies have become increasingly alarmed over a recent thaw in US-Russian ties, including their bilateral talks in Saudi Arabia last week.

There is concern in Kyiv and across Europe that they might be excluded from any negotiations aimed at ending the war, and that the continent’s future security as a whole could be decided behind their backs.

It is estimated that about 5% of the world’s “critical raw materials” are in Ukraine – including:

• 19 million tonnes of proven reserves of graphite, which is used to make batteries for electric vehicles

• A third of all European lithium deposits, the key component in current batteries.

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion began three years ago, Ukraine also produced 7% of the world’s titanium, used in construction for everything from aeroplanes to power stations.

Ukrainian land also contains significant deposits of rare earth metals, a group of 17 elements that are used to produce weapons, wind turbines, electronics and other products vital in the modern world

Some mineral deposits have been seized by Russia. According to Yulia Svyrydenko, Ukraine’s economy minister, resources worth $350bn remain in Russian-occupied territories today.

European leaders have been left stunned by the open rapprochement between US President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin – and not-so-subtle hints that the US may abandon its obligation to defend European allies.

After World War Two, West European countries joined the US and Canada to set up Nato (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) to counter the then-Soviet Union.

The alliance’s famous Article 5 holds that Nato members will come to the defence of an ally which comes under attack.

The US has long been the anchoring power, but now questions are being asked openly about Nato’s future – most recently by the man set to become Germany’s chancellor. Friedrich Merz said his aim would be to achieve independence from the US in terms of security.

“The events of the past week have shown that Trump has undermined Nato, undermined its secretary general and undermined the Article 5 of collective defence,” said Armida van Rij, head of the European programme at the UK-based Chatham House think tank.

“The idea behind it was this all for one and one for all belief – and that’s been broken.”

• What is Nato, why isn’t Ukraine a member and what has Trump said?

While the Trump administration says it is not pulling out of Nato and remains committed to the defence partnership with Europe, it has warned that it will “no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship which encourages dependency”.

Trump has consistently told European allies to considerably raise their financial contributions – at one stage last year he openly encouraged Putin to invade those who failed to pay their bills.

But what is alarming, say experts, is how the message is being delivered as the war in Ukraine – the greatest security crisis for the continent in decades – rages.

Under Trump, the US has started to even promote Russian objectives, said Chatham House defence analyst Minna Alander. “It even looks like Trump outright switched sides into Russia’s team.”

• Read more: Trump echoes Russia as he flips US position on Ukraine

Some of this pivoting by Trump includes:

• Praise for Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who he called earlier this month – the first phone call between the White House and Kremlin since Russia’s full-scale invasion three years ago
• Talks between the US and Russia last week – which, though aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, cut out Ukrainian officials and European allies
• Attacks on Ukraine’s President Volodymr Zelensky, who Trump called a “dictator”
• Repeating Putin’s lies that Ukraine had started the war – not Russia

“This war is far more important to Europe than it is to us – we have a big, beautiful ocean as separation,” Trump has said.

• Zelensky willing to give up presidency in exchange for Nato membership

The phrasing of Article 5 has long been understood as an automatic obligation by member states – and most significantly, the US military – to come to the other members’ defence.

But that does not always mean sending troops.

For example, if Estonia was invaded by Russia, the US could send a single surveillance plane in support and “that would meet the letter if not the spirit of Article 5”, explained Edward Arnold, an analyst with the Royal United Services Institute, a defence and security think tank in London.

“There’s nothing to suggest that the US has to put its full forces in,” he said.

“But the assumption has always been under previous US presidents that that would happen, so now people are starting to worry.”

The US is the dominant military power in Nato – committing about 70% of its capabilities and command, Mr Arnold said.

Along with sheer numbers – the US has more than 100,000 troops deployed in Europe – Nato has relied on the US for key capabilities such as planes refuelling mid-air, moving troops or supplies via aircraft, and military mobility.

The US also provides the bulk of nuclear weapons, as well as significant intelligence, logistics, and reconnaissance tools.

And it has always been seen as group leader. The Supreme Allied Commander for Europe – the top military leader in Nato – has always been an American and Americans are in most senior Nato roles.

“Because the US is militarily so overpowering, it has always been a natural leader of Nato,” says Ms Rij. No other single European Nato ally can step into that space, she says “because no one has the capabilities or troop levels”.

The US warned a decade before Trump that Europe would need to step up its defence.

Under Joe Biden, it declared its top security priority would be the Indo-Pacific theatre, amid its competition with China, and thus a shift away from Europe.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pulled the US’s focus back on Europe. But Trump’s direction this past fortnight has been the push for a drastic rethink.

Merz said after his German election victory that his “absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA”.

He even said he wasn’t sure if an alliance leaders meeting in June “would still be talking about Nato in its current form or whether we will have to establish an independent European defence capability much more quickly”.

Once in office, Merz will be one of the European Big Three, which includes the UK and France in addition to Germany.

The UK prime minister heads to Washington on Thursday, following the visit there on Monday by French President Emmanuel Macron.

• How much do Nato members spend on defence?

“I don’t think there are any good options for Europe at the moment. It’s more about avoiding the worst one,” said Mr Arnold.

“It is about mitigating risk. It’s not about keeping NATO together in its current form.”

The Europeans are acting quickly. Greece, Norway and others have voiced concerns while Denmark last week announced a major increase in defence spending.

The UK also announced a hike on Tuesday, cutting foreign aid to fund the extra £13bn a year. Keir Starmer warned it was a “painful” choice, but said defence and security of the country comes first.

Mr Arnold says it’s the price Europeans will have to pay, especially as “we’ve sent so much stuff to Ukraine now, our own stocks are quite dry”.

We are seeing now what is a “long term shift” in the global security order, he said.

“The US is not the ally that it once was, and it is very, very unlikely to ever go back to that view,” he said.

A Sydney nurse who was suspended over a video in which she allegedly made threats against Israeli patients has been charged by police.

Sarah Abu Lebdeh, 26, is facing three charges: threatening violence to a group, using a carriage service to threaten to kill, and using a carriage service to harass or cause offence.

Ms Abu Lebdeh and another man were both suspended from their duties at Bankstown Hospital after the video – filmed on an anonymous online platform which pairs people randomly for a chat – was released online.

Authorities say there is “no evidence” the pair actually harmed patients.

In the footage, which appeared to have been filmed inside a hospital and was published by an Israeli content creator, Ms Abu Lebdeh and Ahmad Rashad Nadir allegedly bragged about refusing to treat Israeli patients, killing them, and said they would go to hell.

The video spread widely online and caused public outcry, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese describing it as “disgusting” and “vile”.

New South Wales Police Commissioner Karen Webb said the charges are a significant breakthrough in what has been a complicated investigation as it involves an overseas witness.

“Detectives must be commended for acting swiftly under enormous pressure and public expectation,” she said.

Ms Abu Lebdeh was granted bail – although she is banned from social media and from leaving the country – and will return to court on 19 March.

Mr Nadir is receiving medical treatment and has not been charged but is still under investigation, NSW Police said.

Earlier this month Australia passed tougher laws against hate crimes following a wave of unrelated antisemitic attacks.

In recent months, there have been a several of arson and graffiti incidents involving homes, cars, and synagogues in Jewish communities across Australia.

A caravan packed with power gel explosives that police warned had the potential to cause a “mass casualty event” was found in New South Wales in January, alongside a document with antisemitic sentiments and a list of Jewish targets in Sydney.

Pop star Charli XCX has been named songwriter of the year by the Brit Awards, indicating that she could dominate this year’s ceremony when it takes place on Saturday.

The English singer already had the most nominations of any artist this year – five in total – recognising the global success of her agenda-setting album, Brat.

The songwriting prize is her first Brit Award, and comes 12 years into her career. She has previously been nominated for best female and best pop act, but never won.

In 2023, she criticised the Brits for failing to nominate any female musicians in the artist of the year category.

“We’re doing everything right, I don’t think it’s our fault, I think it might be theirs,” alluding to the Brits’ voting academy.

This year, Charli, 32, is the front-runner for best artist, where she goes up against seven-time Brit winner Dua Lipa, rap star Central Cee and indie singer Sam Fender.

She is also up for album of the year, best dance act, best pop artist and song of the year – for Guess, her duet with Billie Eilish.

Her long-time collaborator AG Cook was also named producer of the year by the Brits earlier this week.

It caps an incredible year for the star, whose real name is Charlotte Emma Aitchison, that saw her cross over from cult pop artist to commercial success, without compromising her artistic vision.

Her seventh album, Brat, was named the best album of 2024 in multiple end of year lists, with critics calling it “pop music for the future“, and praising the way its “painfully relatable” lyrics captured Charli’s insecurities, anxieties and obsessions.

In the star’s own words, the record is “chaos and emotional turmoil set to a club soundtrack”.

With it’s brash, lime-green artwork, and a viral dance craze linked to the song Apple, it quickly became a cultural phenomenon, dubbed “Brat summer”.

Earlier this month, she won best dance album and best packaging at the Grammy Awards – marking her first victories at the US ceremony as a solo artist.

She also closed the show with a wild performance of the singles Von Dutch and Guess, which ended with the stage being showered in underwear (later donated to the domestic violence charity, I Support Girls).

The 2025 Brit Awards take place at the O2 Arena in London on Saturday, 1 March, hosted by Jack Whitehall.

Performances will come from Lola Young, Sam Fender, Sabrina Carpenter, Jade, Myles Smith, The Last Dinner Party and Teddy Swims.

The nominees in the main categories are as follows:

Artist of the year

• Beabadoobee
• Central Cee
• Charli XCX
• Dua Lipa
• Fred Again
• Jamie xx
• Michael Kiwanuka
• Nia Archives
• Rachel Chinouriri
• Sam Fender

Group of the year

• Bring Me The Horizon
• Coldplay
• The Cure
• Ezra Collective
• The Last Dinner Party

Album of the Year

• Charli XCX – Brat
• The Cure – Songs of A Lost World
• Dua Lipa – Radical Optimism
• Ezra Collective – Dance, No One’s Watching
• The Last Dinner Party – Prelude to Ecstasy

Read the full list of nominees here.

India is home to 1.4 billion people but around a billion lack money to spend on any discretionary goods or services, a new report estimates.

The country’s consuming class, effectively the potential market for start-ups or business owners, is only about as big as Mexico, 130-140 million people, according to the report from Blume Ventures, a venture capital firm.

Another 300 million are “emerging” or “aspirant” consumers but they are reluctant spenders who have only just begun to open their purse strings, as click-of-a-button digital payments make it easy to transact.

What is more, the consuming class in Asia’s third largest economy is not “widening” as much as it is “deepening”, according to the report. That basically means India’s wealthy population is not really growing in numbers, even though those who are already rich are getting even wealthier.

All of this is shaping the country’s consumer market in distinct ways, particularly accelerating the trend of “premiumisation” where brands drive growth by doubling down on expensive, upgraded products catering to the wealthy, rather than focusing on mass-market offerings.

This is evident in zooming sales of ultra-luxury gated housing and premium phones, even as their lower-end variants struggle. Affordable homes now constitute just 18% of India’s overall market compared with 40% five years ago. Branded goods are also capturing a bigger share of the market. And the “experience economy” is booming, with expensive tickets for concerts by international artists like Coldplay and Ed Sheeran selling like hot cakes.

• Why global stars like Coldplay and Ed Sheeran are hitting India

Companies that have adapted to these shifts have thrived, Sajith Pai, one of the report’s authors, told the BBC. “Those who are too focused at the mass end or have a product mix that doesn’t have exposure to the premium end have lost market share.”

The report’s findings bolster the long-held view that India’s post-pandemic recovery has been K-shaped – where the rich have got richer, while the poor have lost purchasing power.

In fact, this has been a long-term structural trend that began even before the pandemic. India has been getting increasingly more unequal, with the top 10% of Indians now holding 57.7% of national income compared with 34% in 1990. The bottom half have seen their share of national income fall from 22.2% to 15%.

The latest consumption slump, however, has deepened amid not just a destruction in purchasing power, but also a precipitous drop in financial savings and surging indebtedness among the masses.

The country’s central bank has also cracked down on easy unsecured lending that propped up demand after the Covid pandemic.

Much of the consumption spending of the “emerging” or “aspirant” class of Indians was led by such borrowing and “turning off that tap will definitely have some impact on consumption”, says Pai.

In the short run, two things are expected to help boost spending – a pick-up in rural demand on the back of a record harvest and a $12 billion tax give-away in the recently concluded budget. It will not be “dramatic” but could boost India’s GDP – largely driven by consumption – by over half a percent, says Pai.

But major longer-term headwinds remain.

India’s middle class – which has been a major engine for consumer demand – is being squeezed out, with wages pretty much staying flat, according to data compiled by Marcellus Investment Managers.

“The middle 50% of India’s tax-paying population has seen its income stagnate in absolute terms over the past decade. This implies a halving of income in real terms [adjusted for inflation],” says the report, published in January.

“This financial hammering has decimated the middle class’s savings – the RBI [Reserve Bank of India] has repeatedly highlighted that net financial savings of Indian households are approaching a 50-year low. This pounding suggests that products and services associated with middle-class household spending are likely to face a rough time in the years ahead,” it adds.

The Marcellus report also points out that white-collar urban jobs are becoming harder to come by as artificial intelligence automates clerical, secretarial and other routine work. “The number of supervisors employed in manufacturing units [as a percentage of all employed] in India has gone down significantly,” it adds.

The government’s recent economic survey has flagged these concerns as well.

It says labour displacement as a result of these technological advancements is of particular concern for a mainly services-driven economy like India, where a significant share of the IT workforce is employed in low value-added services sectors that are most prone to disruption.

“India is also a consumption-based economy, thus the fall in consumption that can result from the displacement of its workforce is bound to have macroeconomic implications. If the worst-case projections materialise, this could have the potential to set the country’s economic growth trajectory off course,” the survey says.

An Australian couple have spoken of the “traumatic” moment the body of a dead passenger was placed next to them on a Qatar Airways flight.

Mitchell Ring and Jennifer Colin, who were travelling to Venice for a dream holiday, told Australia’s Channel 9 a woman had died in the aisle beside them during the flight from Melbourne to Doha.

The couple say cabin crew placed her corpse, covered in blankets, next to Mr Ring for the remaining four hours of the flight without offering to move him, despite there being empty seats.

Qatar Airways said it apologised for “any inconvenience or distress this incident may have caused”, adding that it was in the process of contacting passengers.

The couple said they had not been contacted or offered support by Qatar Airways or Qantas, the airline through which they booked the flight.

They said there should be a protocol to ensure passengers onboard were looked after in such situations.

Mr Ring told Channel Nine’s Current Affair programme that staff had responded “in no time” when the woman collapsed, but that “unfortunately the lady couldn’t be saved, which was pretty heart-breaking to watch”.

He said the cabin crew had tried to move her body towards business class “but she was quite a large lady and they couldn’t get her through the aisle”.

Mr Ring said the crew had seen seats were available beside him.

“They said, ‘Can you move over please?’ and I just said, ‘Yes no problem’.

“Then they placed the lady in the chair I was in.”

While Ms Colin was able to move to an empty seat nearby, Mr Ring said he had not been given the option to do so by cabin crew – even though there were vacant seats.

When the plane landed four hours later, he said passengers were asked to stay put while medical staff and police came on board.

He said ambulance officers had then started pulling blankets off the woman and he had seen her face.

The couple said there needed to be a “duty of care” for customers and staff.

“We should be contacted to make sure, do you need some support, do you need some counselling?”

Ms Colin called the experience “traumatic” and said: “We totally understand that we can’t hold the airline responsible for the poor lady’s death, but there has to be a protocol to look after the customers on board.”

In a statement, Qatar Airways said: “First and foremost our thoughts are with the family of the passenger who sadly passed away on board our flight.

“We apologise for any inconvenience or distress this incident may have caused, and are in the process of contacting passengers in line with our policies and procedures.”

A Qantas spokesperson said: “The process for handling incidents onboard an aircraft like this is managed by the operating airline, which in this case is Qatar Airways.”

BP is expected to announce it will slash its renewable energy investments and instead focus on increasing oil and gas production.

The energy giant will outline its strategy later following pressure from some investors unhappy its profits and share price have been much lower than its rivals.

Shell and Norwegian company Equinor have already scaled back their plans to invest in green energy. Meanwhile US President Donald Trump’s “drill baby drill” comments have encouraged investment in fossil fuels and a move away from low carbon projects.

Some shareholders and environmental groups have voiced concerns over any potential ramping up on production of fossil fuels.

Five years ago, BP set some of the most ambitious targets among large oil companies to cut production of oil and gas by 40% by 2030, while significantly ramping up investment in renewables.

In 2023, the company lowered this oil and gas reduction target to 25%.

It is now expected to abandon it altogether while confirming it is cutting investments in renewable energy by more than half in what chief executive Murray Auchincloss called a “fundamental reset”.

In 2024, BP’s net income fell to $8.9bn (£7.2bn) down from $13.8bn the previous year.

Mr Auchincloss is under pressure to boost profits from some shareholders including the influential activist group Elliot Management, which took a near £4 billion stake in the £70 billion company to push for more investment in oil and gas.

Since 2020 when former chief executive Bernard Looney first unveiled his strategy, shareholders have received total returns including dividends of 36% over the last five years. In contrast, shareholders in rivals Shell and Exxon have seen returns of 82% and 160% respectively.

BP’s under performance has prompted speculation that it may be a takeover target or may consider moving its main stock market listing to the US where oil and gas companies command higher valuations.

Not all shareholders want the company to change course so radically.

Last week, a group of 48 investors called on the company to allow them a vote on any potential plans to move away from its previous commitments to renewables.

A spokesperson for one of the signatories, Royal London Asset Management, said: “As long-term shareholders, we recognise BP’s past efforts toward energy transition but remain concerned about the company’s continued investment in fossil fuel expansion.”

The environmental group Greenpeace UK has warned BP could expect “pushback and challenge at every turn if it doubles down on fossil fuels – not just from green campaigners but from its own shareholders”.

Senior climate adviser Charlie Kronick said: “Government policies will also need to prioritise renewable power, and as extreme weather puts pressure on insurance models – policymakers will be looking to fossil fuel profits as a way to fund extreme weather recovery. BP might want to seriously put the brakes on this U-turn.”

AJ Bell analyst Russ Mould said this was one of the most significant moments for BP in the last four or five years.

“Other energy companies have been clearer about their intentions thus far than BP,” he said.

“They need to prove to people that after a difficult operational and share price performance compared to their peers, that they’re looking to do something about it, not just let things drift along, he added.

BP has already placed its offshore wind business in a joint venture with Japanese company Jera and is looking to find a partner to do the same with its solar business.

The refocus on oil and gas could also see sales of other businesses in order to get “non-core stuff off the books” as insiders describe it.

It is over 20 years since former chief executive Lord John Browne said BP could stand for “Beyond Petroleum” as he launched the company’s first tentative moves away from oil and gas.

Today’s strategy shift could be dubbed “Back to Petroleum” – to the delight of some shareholders and to the dismay of others.

Both BP and Elliott management declined to comment.

Republicans in the US House of Representatives narrowly passed a multi-trillion dollar government spending bill on Tuesday, a major boost for President Donald Trump that advances his 2025 agenda.

The 217-215 vote was seen as a key early test for Republican House speaker Mike Johnson, who cancelled an earlier vote as it appeared he did not have enough support.

Several Republicans wanted more fiscal discipline from a budget that includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, funded partially by spending cuts but also by potentially increasing the US government’s substantial debt pile.

But the bill eventually passed along party lines, with all Democrats voting against and just one Republican opposing it.

That Republican was Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a prominent fiscal hawk who wanted deeper spending cuts. One Democrat did not vote.

The House budget seeks $2 trillion in spending cuts over the next 10 years to pay for President Trump’s agenda. It includes more than $100bn in new spending on immigration enforcement and the military.

It would also extend tax breaks passed during his first term in office, which are due to expire at the end of the year.

However there are still a number of steps the spending plan must go through in order to become law.

The budget will have to be merged with a separate budget which is under consideration by the US Senate, in a process called reconciliation.

And even if both chambers ultimately agree on a spending plan, many finer details will need to be negotiated before it can be sent to President Trump’s desk to be signed.

• Johnson re-elected as House Speaker in razor-tight vote
• Has Trump kept his day one promises?
• 19 things Trump and his team did this week

House Republican leaders initially delayed Tuesday’s vote when it was unclear whether they would have enough support to pass the measure.

Speaker Johnson and the second most senior House Republican, Steve Scalise, spent hours working to convince wavering party members to back the plan which, as well as tax cuts, would fund border security measures, deportations and military spending.

Trump personally called some of the holdouts to encourage them to pass the bill, the two Republican leaders said.

“Trump helped us with a number of members,” Scalise told reporters. “Talking to anybody that we asked that really needed to clarify things.”

Three of the four party holdouts who had been initially seen as firm no votes – Representatives Tim Burchett, Victoria Spartz and Warren Davidson – ultimately voted in favour.

“We have a lot of hard work ahead of us, but we are going to deliver the American First agenda,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters after the vote.

“We’re going to celebrate tonight, and we’ll roll up our sleeves and get right back in the morning.”

Democrats lined up to criticise the budget as a tax cut mostly for the wealthy, which they said would hurt low-income families who rely on the government-funded health care programme Medicaid.

The party worked to get as many members in the chamber for the crucial vote, with Representative Brittany Petterson arriving with her son while on maternity leave.

The Senate will be under pressure to take up the House’s spending framework because President Trump has endorsed it, despite their separate bill which was introduced last week.

Shares in electric car maker Tesla have slumped more than 9% after EU and UK sales fell by almost half in January.

The drop in Tesla shares took the company’s valuation back below $1trn for the first time since November 2024.

Tesla has been facing stiff competition in the European market from Chinese and other manufacturers.

In addition, Tesla owner Elon Musk has been making controversial political waves on both sides of the Atlantic, an analyst said.

Tesla sales in January bucked European electric car sale trends, which grew by more than a third in the month, according to trade body Acea.

Instead, Tesla sales across the EU, EFTA and the UK fell more that 45%, and more than 50% in the EU alone.

It comes after Tesla sales fell last year for the first time in more than a decade as demand faltered and rivals gained pace.

The main factor in the January sales slump was likely to be increasing competition, AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould said.

Chinese manufacturer BYD has been making big strides, in part because it includes as standard some features which cost extra from other makers, Mould said.

However, some car buyers may also be taking a “principled stand” on Musk’s political interventions, he said.

Musk has made waves in the US with his involvement in slashing US development funds and efforts to drastically reduce US federal funding.

In the UK he supports jailed far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson, and repeatedly criticised prime minister Sir Keir Starmer.

Musk also supports the far-right AfD party in Germany, and congratulated its leader after the party’s record second-place result in elections.

There are other political factors which may be dampening Tesla’s prospects, Mould said.

Tesla shares got a big boost after the US election due to Musk’s closeness to Donald Trump – Musk has described himself as “first buddy” to the US president.

Investors thought this would stand his businesses in good stead.

However, Trump is not a supporter of electric vehicles, and has said he will cancel efforts to boost their ownership.

“How anybody thought this was going to be good for Tesla, I don’t know,” Mould said.

There is also general market skittishness about the path of interest rate cuts and concerns about Trump tariff plans that could be contributing to the fall, Mould added.

Media reports say some power has been restored in parts of Chile’s capital Santiago, after a near nation-wide cut left huge swathes of the country without electricity.

A state of emergency was declared with a curfew in affected areas, where soldiers have been deployed.

The Viña del Mar festival, the largest music event in Latin America, has had its third day cancelled.

Hospitals and prisons across the country are on emergency generators and transport is severely disrupted. The government blamed a system failure.

Addressing the nation on TV, President Gabriel Boric said eight million homes had been affected but power had been restored to about half of them.

“What happened today is outrageous,” he said. “It’s not tolerable that one or several companies affect the everyday life of millions of Chileans, and that’s why it’s the state’s duty to hold them responsible.”

The national service for disaster prevention and response said earlier that the outage stretched from the regions of Arica and Parinacota in the north to Los Lagos in the south.

Reuters news agency reported that the world’s largest copper mine, Escondida, was without power, citing a source close to the matter.

Latam Airlines said some of its flights might also be disrupted while power supplies were down, and urged passengers to check their journey status.

In a post on X, the Santiago Metro operator said its service had been temporarily suspended due to the ongoing power outage, with stations being evacuated and closed.

Footage from the city showed passengers evacuating stations by walking up switched-off escalators, while traffic signals were also shown not working.

There were also long queues for buses which were still running on the city’s roads.

Maria Angelica Roman, 45, told AFP news agency: “They let us leave work because of the power cut but now I don’t know how we will get home because all the buses are full.”

Chile’s Interior Minister, Carolina Toha, also posted on X to say that a meeting would be called to discuss ongoing measures to restore services.

Skywatchers are in for a treat this week as seven planets – Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Venus, Neptune, Mercury, and Saturn will all be briefly visible in the evening sky.

This phenomenon, known as a ‘planetary parade’ is a rare sight, and it will be the last time seven planets can be seen simultaneously so well until 2040.

The best chance to see as many planets as possible will be just after sunset on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

Four of the planets – Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, and Mars – will be visible to the naked eye. Saturn will be harder to see because it will be low in the horizon. You will need a telescope to spot the other two planets – Uranus and Neptune.

A good view of the horizon and clear skies will offer the best chance of spotting them all. However, the window to see all seven planets will be very brief.

Dr Edward Bloomer, astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich said: “There’s a rare opportunity to have seven planets in essentially a convenient place for you to look for them.”

As the sun sets, Saturn and Mercury will also be setting, making them particularly difficult to see.

“You really only have a few minutes after sunset to catch them before they drop below the horizon. After that, you’ll still be able to see Venus, Jupiter, and Mars clearly for a much longer time,” Dr Bloomer added.

The planets in our solar system orbit the Sun within roughly the same flat plane as the Earth.

As they orbit at different speeds and distances from the Sun, there are moments when they appear to line up from Earth’s perspective creating a spectacular visual display, although the planets remain separated by vast distances in space.

• Send us your pictures of the planetary parade.

Venus and Jupiter will be the easiest to spot due to their brightness, while Mars will have a distinct reddish hue.

“Uranus is technically visible with the naked eye, but you’d need perfect eyesight and ideal conditions,” Dr Bloomer explains.

To improve your chances of seeing as many planets as possible, Dr Bloomer advises heading to a location with a clear view of the horizon and minimal light pollution.

“If you just pop out of your kitchen into your back garden, you will take time to adjust to the light levels. Give it a bit of time – your eyes take about half an hour to fully adjust,” said Dr Bloomer.

“Avoid looking at your phone, get comfortable, and ensure you have an unobstructed view of the horizon.”

While this is an exciting opportunity, Dr Bloomer encourages people to make a habit of gazing at the night sky.

“See how things change,” he said, adding that observing the heavens is “a chance to witness the ongoing mechanics of the solar system at work.”

Whilst the weather is still rather unsettled currently, clearer and calmer conditions are expected to develop later in the week.

Tuesday evening will start with clear spells, but cloud and rain will move in from the west later.

On Wednesday night, skies will be generally cloudier with showery rain at times.

By Thursday, expect a drier, clearer view of the night sky. Earlier in the evening is best, as mist and fog patches may develop further into the night.

For Friday high pressure is expected to dominate, keeping dry conditions for most with clear spells. Soon after sunset is most favoured as mist and fog patches may develop later.

A 22-member Bangladeshi delegation of political leaders, civil society activists, academics and journalists have begun a 10-day visit to China.

They will be having talks with Chinese government officials and senior members of the ruling Communist Party, a delegation leader confirmed with the BBC.

Analysts say China is making overtures while diplomatic tensions have risen between Bangladesh and India on a range of issues.

This includes ousted Bangladeshi leader Sheikh Hasina living in exile in India. Dhaka has requested her extradition but Delhi has refused.

Abdul Moyeen Khan, a senior official from the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) who’s leading the delegation in Beijing, told the BBC: “It’s basically a goodwill visit, initiated by Beijing.”

“It is unique because China this time has invited a team representing various groups in Bangladesh.”

Many of the delegation members are from the BNP and its allies. The BNP, headed by former prime minister Begum Khaleda Zia, is one of the main parties in Bangladesh, besides the Awami League led by Hasina.

The delegation also includes several representatives from the student movement that began the mass uprising against Hasina that eventually ousted the prime minister in August last year.

An interim government led by the Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus is currently in charge.

It has been urging India to repatriate Hasina to face charges of crimes against humanity and money laundering, among other allegations. The UN says Hasina’s government’s crackdown on protesters during the uprising killed about 1,400 people.

So far India has showed no sign of extraditing Hasina, who denies the charges.

Delhi and Dhaka had maintained close ties during the 15-year rule of Ms Hasina, who was widely seen by her critics as pro-India, although she also balanced it with her relationship with Beijing.

Following the fall of Hasina, Beijing has stepped up its interaction with Bangladeshi leaders, activists and delegations, including those from Islamist parties.

This week’s visit follows a meeting between the Bangladesh interim government’s foreign policy advisor Touhid Hossain and the Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi in Beijing in January.

It also marks the second time BNP officials have visited China in recent months, after Beijing hosted a BNP delegation late last year.

With the political vacuum and absence of India’s influence, analysts say, Beijing is trying to increase its foothold in Bangladesh, a country of about 170 million people.

China is Bangladesh’s largest trading partner with bilateral trade amounting to around $24bn (£19bn) – the vast majority of that consists of Chinese exports to the South Asian country.

The Bangladeshi military also heavily relies on Chinese equipment and ammunition with more than 70% of supplies coming from China.

Compared to Beijing’s overtures, India has had very limited interactions with the interim government and other Bangladeshi political leaders in the past six months.

The BNP held a protest in December alleging India’s interference in Bangladesh’s internal matters by hosting Hasina. Some advisors of the interim government have also criticised Delhi on the same issue.

This criticism has sparked sharp reaction from Delhi.

The Indian foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said last week that it was up to Bangladesh to decide on “what kind of relationship they want with us”.

He described the criticism of India by Bangladeshi officials and politicians as “absolutely ridiculous”.

Some argue that this increasingly tense rhetoric between Dhaka and Delhi could push Bangladesh towards China.

The latest events indicate that Bangladesh has joined fellow South Asian countries Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Nepal as a target for both Delhi and Beijing, as the superpowers jostle for influence.

“I don’t believe India should consider the whole subcontinent is under Delhi’s sphere of influence. That attitude would make India suffer,” Chinese analyst Zhou Bo, a senior fellow at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, told the BBC.

To reach north-east Syria, we cross a rickety floating bridge over the River Tigris. Our minibus rattles as it takes us from Iraqi Kurdistan through Syrian oil fields, where jacks pumping crude oil line the roads.

This part of Syria is controlled by Kurds, who call it Rojava – meaning western Kurdistan. Since 2012, after the outbreak of civil war, they have run it as a self-declared autonomous region, protected by Kurdish-led armed forces.

But Bashar al-Assad’s regime never recognised it and, despite his fall from power, its future remains uncertain.

As well as more than a decade of civil war, the Syrian Kurds have faced years of conflict with its northern neighbour, Turkey – a battle they are still fighting.

A decade ago, the Islamic State group (IS) swept through this region, capturing cities and villages with little resistance – until it reached the city of Kobane, next to the Turkish border, in September 2014.

IS militants didn’t manage to enter the city, but they imposed a brutal siege that lasted for months.

Kurdish-led factions, supported by the US-led military coalition, broke the siege in early 2015. This January, I join the city’s residents as they mark the 10-year anniversary.

At the entrance to Kobane, women in their 50s, armed with AK-47 assault rifles, guard the checkpoints. Women played a crucial role in the fight against IS – many volunteered in the all-female Women’s Protection Units (YPJ).

As we drive around the city, the scars of war are still visible, along with posters of young men and women who lost their lives.

But in the main square, the mood is festive. Young girls and boys, dressed in colourful Kurdish outfits dance hand in hand, singing as they celebrate.

For the older generation, though, it is a bittersweet moment. “Last night I lit candles for my martyred brother and others killed in Kobane,” says Newrouz Ahmad, a 45-year-old mother of four. “It is a joyful day, but also a painful one. I wish he was here to see it.”

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) declared victory over IS in north-east Syria in 2019. But freedom from IS hasn’t brought lasting peace.

Turkey and a coalition of Turkish-backed rebel groups known as the Syrian National Army (SNA) have launched several military operations against SDF-controlled territories since 2016, and captured a swathe of territory running along hundreds of kilometres of the border.

Turkey considers the largest component in the SDF – the People’s Protection Units (YPG) – an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has fought for Kurdish autonomy in Turkey for decades and is listed by Ankara as a terrorist organisation. The country wants to push the SDF back from its border.

As the Assad regime collapsed in late 2024, the Turkish-backed SNA launched a new offensive to capture territory west of the River Euphrates from the SDF.

Now battles have reached areas near Kobane. A Kurdish commander in the city quietly tells me: “Don’t film here, we have built tunnels beneath the city to prepare for another siege.”

In the city, the smell of gasoline fills the air, and the deafening sound of generators can be heard everywhere. Locals tell me that most of the power stations, refineries, and even telecommunications antennas have been destroyed by Turkish air strikes over the past two years.

Newrouz Ahmad says that having “defeated IS in Kobane… we won’t allow Turkey and its proxies to occupy our city, we will defeat them too”.

At a restaurant, the moment people realise we are not locals, they surround us. I ask an old man with grey hair and a stick in his hands how old he is. I guess he is about 80, but the answer he gives embarrasses me. “I am 60,” he says.

It’s clear that people here have been exhausted by war, having witnessed so much death and bloodshed.

And now the threat of another battle is looming.

Turkish-made drones and Turkish jets have targeted SDF positions and supply routes around the city. Even civilians protesting have been hit.

In a regional hospital, I find one of the wounded – Lea Bunse, a 28-year-old German peace activist who has been volunteering at a women’s shelter in Rojava for over two years.

She shows me a video of an attack on a demonstration she says she was part of in January. The footage shows two projectiles dropping from the sky and hitting a crowd of people dancing.

The protest was held near the strategic Tishreen Dam, where fighting has been ongoing. The SDF says six civilians were killed, and dozens more injured.

“An old man next to me was also injured,” she tells me from her bed.

“I lost some blood… but when we got into the ambulance, another drone attack was carried out next to our ambulance,” she adds.

Human Rights Watch has condemned an attack that hit a Kurdish Red Crescent ambulance as an “apparent war crime” by the Turkish-SNA coalition.

The Turkish foreign ministry told the BBC that “reports claiming Turkey is involved in the attacks against civilians and critical infrastructure do not reflect the truth” adding that the SDF sends civilians to a “conflict-ridden area on purpose” to use them as “human shields… in order to not to lose control on the said dam”.

It accused the SDF of using “violence and terror” to pursue “its own separatist agenda”, violating a ceasefire and stopping technical teams from getting access to the dam for repairs.

Syria’s new leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

The interim president – whose Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) led the rebel offensive that overthrew Assad – has been promising to form an inclusive government in Damascus, and he has asked all armed factions to lay down their weapons. Negotiations are reportedly being held with the SDF to find a solution for the north-east.

But the inclusion of the Kurdish factions puts Sharaa in a difficult position with one of his main allies – Turkey.

And when Sharaa opened a conference for national dialogue on Syria’s future on Tuesday, the Kurdish autonomous administration was absent – it said it had not been invited.

Speaking to me from a discreet location near an American base in Hassakeh province in the north-east of Syria, SDF commander Gen Mazloum Abdi tells me he has met Sharaa in Damascus before.

But the two sides have still not reached an agreement.

“In reality, we are still at war with Turkey and its proxies. Turkish jets and drones continue to bomb us,” he says, adding: “In Damascus, it remains unclear what steps the new government will take. Their statements are positive, but they are under pressure from Turkey to act against the areas under our control.

“But the US, France, and some Arab nations are pushing them to recognize Kurdish rights,” he says.

For the US, SDF fighters have been the most reliable allies in the fight against IS.

Today, hundreds of US troops remain in Kurdish-controlled areas, to counter IS sleeper cells.

But the Kurds now fear President Donald Trump might withdraw these troops, leaving the region vulnerable to any Turkish military operation, and a possible IS resurgence.

It’s estimated that there are still about 40,000 IS family members and up to 10,000 jihadist fighters held in SDF-controlled camps and prisons in the north-east, says Gen Abdi.

“If Turkey attacks, we will have no choice but to redirect our forces,” he warns. “That would give IS an opportunity to attack prisons and free its fighters.”

There is further uncertainty for the women who fought against IS in the all-female YPJ ranks.

The walls in the office of 29-year-old YPJ spokesperson Roksana Mohamed are covered with pictures of fellow female commanders killed in battle.

“So far, we haven’t seen any roles given to women in Damascus’ new leadership,” she says. “Why shouldn’t a woman be defence minister?”

Ms Mohamed says women fought for their rights in this region. They have been actively involved in every aspect of political, social, and military life.

“If our rights are not respected, how can we be expected to lay down our arms?” she asks.

So while some believe stability in Syria is on the horizon, for the Kurds, the future remains unclear. Will they be recognised as partners in a new Syria, or face another existential battle?

“I just wanted to own a house and pay off my debts – that’s why I decided to sell my kidney,” says Zeya, a farm worker in Myanmar.

Prices had soared after a military coup in 2021 triggered civil war. He could barely feed his young family and was badly in debt.

They all lived in his mother-in-law’s house, in a village where thatched houses lined dirt roads, a few hours’ drive from the country’s largest city, Yangon.

Zeya, whose name has been changed to conceal his identity, knew of local people who had sold one of their kidneys. “They looked healthy to me,” he says. So he started asking around.

He is one of eight people in the area who told BBC Burmese they had sold a kidney by travelling to India.

Illegal organ trading is a problem across Asia, and Zeya’s story gives an insight into how it takes place.

Buying or selling human organs is illegal in both Myanmar and India, but Zeya says he soon found a man he describes as a “broker”.

He says the man arranged medical tests and, a few weeks later, told him a potential recipient – a Burmese woman – had been found, and that both of them could travel to India for the surgery.

In India, if the donor and recipient are not close relatives, they must demonstrate that the motive is altruistic and explain the relationship between them.

Zeya says the broker forged a document, which every household in Myanmar must have, listing the details of family members.

“The broker put my name in the recipient’s family tree,” he explains.

He says the broker made it appear as if he was donating to someone he was related to by marriage: “Someone who is not a blood relative, but a distant relative”.

Then, he says, the broker took him to meet the recipient in Yangon. There, he says a man who introduced himself as a doctor completed more paperwork and warned Zeya he would have to pay a substantial fee if he backed out.

The BBC contacted this man afterwards, who said his role was to check whether a patient was fit to undergo the procedure, not to check the relationship between donor and recipient.

Zeya says he was told he would receive 7.5m Myanmar kyats. This has been worth somewhere between $1,700 and $2,700 over the past couple of years – the unofficial exchange rate has fluctuated since the coup.

He says he flew to northern India for the operation and it took place in a large hospital.

All transplants involving foreign nationals in India must be approved by a panel called an authorisation committee, established either by the hospital or by local government.

Zeya says he was interviewed, via a translator, by about four people.

“They asked me if I was willingly donating my kidney to her, not by force,” he says.

He says he explained the recipient was a relative and the transplant was approved.

Zeya remembers the doctors administering the anaesthetic before he lost consciousness.

“There were no big issues after the surgery, except that I couldn’t move without pain,” he says, adding that he stayed in hospital for a week afterwards.

Another donor, Myo Win – also not his real name – told the BBC he too had pretended to be related to a stranger.

“The broker gave me a piece of paper, and I had to memorise what was written on it,” he says, adding that he was told to say the recipient was married to one of his relatives.

“The person assessing my case also called my mum, but the broker arranged a fake mum for the call,” he says. He adds that the person who answered the call confirmed he was donating his kidney to a relative with her permission.

Myo Win says he was offered the same amount of money as Zeya, but that it was described as a “charitable donation”, and he had to pay the broker about 10% of the amount.

Both men say they were given a third of the money up front. Myo Win says this was in his thoughts as he entered the operating theatre: “I made up my mind that I had to do it because I had already taken their money.”

He adds that he “chose this desperate way” as he was struggling with debt and medical bills for his wife.

Unemployment rates have climbed in Myanmar since the coup – the war has ravaged the economy and sent foreign investors fleeing. In 2017, a quarter of the population were living in poverty – but by 2023, this had risen to half, according to the UN’s development agency, UNDP.

Myo Win says the broker did not tell him selling his kidney was illegal. “I wouldn’t have done it if he did. I am afraid of ending up in prison,” he says.

The BBC is not naming any of organisations or individuals involved in order to protect the anonymity and safety of the interviewees.

However, another man in Myanmar, also speaking anonymously, told the BBC he had helped about 10 people buy or sell kidneys via surgery in India.

He said he referred people to an “agency” in Mandalay in central Myanmar, which he said made arrangements.

“But don’t worry about donors,” he said. “We have a list of donors who are queuing up to donate their kidneys.”

He too said documents were faked to label strangers as related by marriage. When asked whether he received money for his help, he did not answer.

Organ transplants have increased by more than 50% worldwide since 2010, with about 150,000 carried out annually, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). But it says the supply of organs meets only about 10% of global need.

Trading in human body parts is illegal in nearly all countries and is hard to measure. In 2007, the WHO estimated that 5-10% of transplanted organs came from the black market, but the figure may be higher.

Illegal kidney sales driven by poverty have been documented in recent years across Asia, including in Nepal, Pakistan, Indonesia, Afghanistan, India and Bangladesh.

India has long been a hub for medical tourism and concern there about kidney sales has been rising, following accounts in media reports and a recent police investigation.

Last July, Indian police said they had arrested seven people in connection with an alleged kidney racket, including an Indian doctor and her assistant.

Police allege the group arranged for poor Bangladeshis to sell their kidneys, using forged documents to secure approval for the transplants.

Dr Vijaya Rajakumari, who had been working at the prestigious Indraprastha Apollo Hospital in Delhi, is alleged to have carried out the operations as a visiting consultant at a different hospital, Yatharth, a few kilometres away.

Her lawyer told the BBC the allegations “are entirely baseless and without evidence”, that she only carried out surgeries approved by authorisation committees and always acted in accordance with the law. According to her bail order, she is not accused of preparing forged documents.

Yatharth Hospital told the BBC all its cases, including those managed by visiting consultants, “are subject to our robust protocols to ensure compliance with legal and ethical standards”.

“We have further enhanced our processes to prevent any such occurrences in the future,” the hospital said.

After her arrest, Apollo Hospitals said Dr Rajakumari was a freelance consultant engaged on a fee-for-service basis and it had discontinued all clinical engagements with her.

Dr Rajakumari has not been charged in court.

Last April, a senior health ministry official wrote to Indian states warning of a “surge” in transplants involving foreigners and calling for better monitoring.

Under Indian law, foreign nationals who wish to donate or receive organs must have their documents, including those showing the relationship between donor and recipient, verified by their own country’s embassy in India.

The BBC contacted India’s heath ministry and the National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organization, as well as Myanmar’s military government for comment, but has received no response.

A public health campaigner in Myanmar, Dr Thurein Hlaing Win, said: “Law enforcement is not effective.”

He added that potential donors need to be aware of the risks, including of bleeding during surgery and damage to other organs, adding that proper follow-up care is needed.

The BBC last heard from Zeya several months after his surgery.

“I was able to settle my debts and bought a plot of land,” he said.

But he said he couldn’t afford to build a house and had not been able to construct one while recovering from the surgery. He said he had been suffering from back pain.

“I have to restart working soon. If the side effects strike again, I have to deal with it. I have no regrets about it,” he added.

He said he stayed in touch with the recipient for a while, and she had told him she was in good health with his kidney.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, she told the BBC she paid 100m kyats (between around $22,000 and $35,000 in recent years) in total. She denied that documents were forged, maintaining that Zeya was her relative.

Six months after his surgery, Myo Win told the BBC he had paid off most of his debts, but not all.

“I have no job and not even a penny left,” he said, adding that he had been experiencing some stomach problems since the surgery.

He said he had no regrets, but then added: “I am telling other people not to do this. It is not good.”

In 2020, Duarte Dias, a Portuguese software engineer, accepted a job offer to work in Microsoft’s Dublin subsidiary.

A little over a year later, he joined a team at Microsoft’s headquarters in Seattle, where he still works.

Even though he misses the Portuguese laid-back approach to life, and the family-like team spirit of the work environments there, he does not regret, not for one second, his choice of pursuing an international career.

Mr Dias’s decision was made easier by all the financial impact of moving.

The verdict of the spreadsheet was clear: staying in Portugal would be financially ruinous.

“I did simulations of how much money I would save a year in Portugal, and I quickly realised that I wouldn’t be able to have a comfortable life financially, even if I got one of the most well-paying jobs available in engineering for my experience level,” says.

A two-year job experience in Portugal while Mr Dias was concluding his masters at Lisbon’s Instituto Superior Técnico cemented his conviction: his yearly income amounted to €35,000 ($36,000; £29,000).

But his take home salary was much, much less.

His income placed him in a tax bracket which meant up to 40% of this gross salary went to the state.

“Financially it was bad. It would be very hard to save money if I didn’t live with my parents,” he recalls.

Moving to Ireland meant an immediate hike in his salary prospects, almost doubling to €60,000.

The money is even better in the US, where he now earns upwards of $160,000 before a 20% income tax rate, much lower than at home.

Mr Dias intends to return to Lisbon in two years’ time with “with many more savings”.

Keeping skilled workers like Mr Dias in Portugal has been a concern for recent governments.

In 2020, the administration led by the Socialist Party’s Antonio Costa launched IRS Jovem, a programme of tax reductions for workers less than 30 years old and tiered by level of education.

In 2022, 73,684 taxpayers benefitted from this incentive, according to official data.

After a snap election in March, the new centre-right Portuguese government led by Luis Montenegro doubled down on the idea and expanded it from five to 10 years, and to all workers under 35 independently of their educational levels.

The proposal, passed by the Portuguese parliament in late November, is due to benefit up to 400,000 workers, according to the Portuguese Ministry of Finance.

But specialists say it likely won’t be enough to keep the young from going abroad.

“It is unlikely that, on its own, the tax regime will make young workers remain in the country, whether because professional opportunities are more abundant in foreign countries, or due to the fact this tax benefit applies only to yearly incomes under €28,000,” says Sérgio Vasques, professor of tax law at the Católica Lisbon School of Law.

He points out that the Portuguese government still takes more of the average worker’s salary than most richer nations.

Known as the tax wedge, the ratio between the amount of taxes paid by an average single worker without children and the corresponding total labour cost for the employer, stands at 42.3% in Portugal.

That’s the 8th highest among the 38 member countries of the OECD.

“This is a tax regime that is an enemy of qualified work and professional success. This regime will not solve this problem,” adds Mr Vasques.

Mr Vasques, also a former secretary of state for tax affairs in the early 2010s, adds: “I also cannot imagine a young professional deciding to move to Portugal just because of an extra couple hundred euros at the end of the year.

“Not even a low-skilled worker will make a decision based on that. Portuguese food works probably better as an incentive to move here than that tax regime”.

Rita de La Feria, chair of tax law at the University of Leeds, reminds that the exodus of young people isn’t just a Portuguese problem, and that Europe is grappling with the challenges of young emigration.

According to a study requested by the Portuguese Parliament, as of July, in the European Union Portugal, Poland and Croatia had special tax regimes based on the taxpayers’ ages.

“The challenges are very obvious: worker mobility is higher. The problem is that the country spends very large amounts on training for them to leave for other countries as soon as they enter the workforce,” she said.

Ms de La Feria, who moved to the UK at a young age, told the BBC that when she left Portugal she did not intend to “leave for good: many leave their countries of origin thinking they will come back at some point. But once they form a family, it’s almost impossible to return.”

Antonio Almeida, a software engineer like Mr Dias, left Portugal during the pandemic in late 2020 for a job in Berlin, right after finishing his degree. He would change the German capital for Brussels two years later. All his work experience was done abroad.

“Back in 2020, we were offered monthly salaries of €1,300, gross, in Lisbon. Berlin offered me €4,200 for a junior role.”

Even with a 40% income tax rate in Germany, there was a considerable net gain. “It wasn’t a difficult decision,” says Mr Almeida.

Now in Belgium – where taxes are higher, he stresses – returning to his homeland isn’t a priority. “I think of returning eventually, mainly for family reasons.

“But at the moment my life standards are very high and I like the way of life of central Europe. And the main problem in Portugal is low salaries, not taxes.”

Mr Almeida does not consider the Portuguese tax changes as a major factor when thinking of the pros and cons of coming back home.

“Up until today I never thought about it.”

Mr Dias agrees: “Salaries outside Portugal will always be higher, and all those who don’t have any personal or familial connections to the country won’t have any kind of financial or career incentive to stay there”.

For months, Japan’s entertainment industry has been rocked by a scandal that unseated one of its most popular celebrities and put one of its biggest broadcasters at risk.

But some believe it has also marked a turning point in how cases of sexual assault are perceived in Japan – where traditionally victims have been shamed into silence.

At its heart was Masahiro Nakai, a household name and leading presenter for Fuji TV, one of the country’s biggest broadcasters.

Nakai, who is also a former member of J-pop boy band SMAP, was accused of sexually assaulting a woman at a dinner party in 2023.

The revelations, which appeared last December in the weekly tabloid magazine Josei Seven and were then picked up by the Shukan Bunshun, marked the latest of a series of scandals involving celebrities in Japan, including that of late entertainment mogul Johnny Kitagawa, who was found by investigators to have abused hundreds of boys and young men over six decades.

Nakai didn’t admit guilt and denied using force against the woman. But he apologised for “causing trouble” in a statement and said that he had “resolved” the matter in a settlement, reportedly worth more than half a million dollars.

But as public anger mounted, he was forced to announce his retirement from the entertainment industry in January. Another channel, the Tokyo Broadcasting System, has also stopped airing a program that Nakai regularly appeared on as an MC.

The impact on Fuji TV has been devastating.

The broadcaster’s reputation is now in ruins. Its revenue is under threat and some of its top executives have also been forced to step down.

High-profile companies like Nissan and Toyota were among those who pulled advertising from the broadcaster as outrage grew. Fuji TV has since admitted it allowed Nakai to continue presenting shows even after finding out about the allegations.

“If this had happened 10 years ago, there would not have been this outcry,” Keiko Kojima, who worked in Japan’s media industry for 15 years as a TV presenter, told the BBC.

Sexual violence against women is one of Japan’s worst-kept secrets. A 2020 survey claimed that more than 70% of sexual assaults in the country go unreported. And according to a 2024 study published in the International Journal of Asian Studies, for every 1,000 rapes in Japan, only 10–20 result in a criminal conviction – and fewer than half of convicted rapists are incarcerated.

“There’s still a prevalent attitude of ‘Shoganai ‘ or ‘there’s nothing you can do’ that is being projected on women – so they’re encouraged to keep silent,” Machiko Osawa, professor emeritus at Japan Women’s University in Tokyo, told the BBC.

She added that women were seldom believed and did not have proper mechanisms to even report such incidents, which contributed to this culture of silence.

Ms Kojima said that the media industry, in particular, has long had a culture of impunity and lack of accountability where many young women felt they must keep silent to keep their jobs.

“It was common for men to make rude comments about women’s bodies or appearance or age. I remember my colleagues and I being asked how many people we’ve had sex with,” she said.

“We were expected to reply with a sense of humour without getting angry or offended. I saw sexual harassment and other forms of derogatory treatment of women on a daily basis. For a woman, adapting to these situations was the only way to become a full-fledged TV or media professional.”

The Fuji TV case has also raised questions about dinners and drinking parties involving celebrities and young women – and how common they were.

Although Shukan Bunshun retracted an earlier report that claimed the alleged assault took place at a party organised by Fuji TV, Ms Kojima told the BBC that it was indeed common to use women as “tools for entertaining”.

“In Japanese working culture, it’s an everyday practice to half-forcibly take young female employees to events to entertain clients,” she said.

“Men are happy when young women join them. The idea that women are like a gift and that taking a young woman with you is a way of offering hospitality to the other person is very common.”

That is why the fallout from this scandal has encouraged women’s rights activists.

Minori Kitahara, one of the founders of the Flower Demo movement – where groups of sexual violence survivors and their supporters gather in public spaces on the 11th of every month – admitted she was surprised at how swiftly and severely the sponsors reacted.

“Even if it’s more of self-preservation than human rights for sponsors, this is a turning point for the MeToo movement in Japan,” she told the BBC.

“It’s up to us how big we make it.”

Nearly 50 companies have walked away from the now-tarnished Fuji TV.

The Japanese government has also withdrawn all its recent and planned advertisements with the network. And it has called on the broadcaster to regain the trust of viewers and sponsors. So far Fuji TV seems to have done neither.

The scandal and Fuji TV’s role in hiding it have sent the company on a crisis-management frenzy that seems to have led to deeper disgrace, fuelling even more public anger.

Fuji TV president Koichi Minato admitted that the company had known about the allegation shortly after the alleged incident.

But he said they chose not to disclose it at the time because they “prioritised the woman’s physical and mental recovery as well as the protection of her privacy.”

After a press conference held in the hope of defusing the outrage turned into a PR disaster, the company held a second one that lasted 10 hours.

It was intended to show remorse.

Both Fuji TV’s chairman Shuji Kano and its President Koichi Minato stepped down, bowing humbly as they announced their resignations. The firm said its executive vice-president Kenji Shimizu would replace Mr Minato as president.

But this was seen as a mere face-saving exercise to appease advertisers rather than a sign of substantial change – especially because the president’s replacement belonged to the same leadership cadre.

Professor Osawa told the BBC, however, that high-profile cases like Fuji TV become important precedents for real change.

And this is the latest saga in a series of prominent sexual misconduct cases that have generated conversation about women’s rights in Japan.

These include the case of journalist Shiori Ito, who became a symbol of the country’s MeToo movement in 2017. She took the rare step of going public with allegations that Noriyuki Yamaguchi, a well-known TV journalist, had raped her after she met him for drinks. While he denied the allegations, she won a civil lawsuit against him in 2019

“People have now started to realise that it was OK to speak out and say that this [sexual harassment] is a problem. We are changing what we take as the norm,” Ms Kojima said.

But Ms Kojima and Ms Kitahara both say that Japan is not moving fast enough.

“I think it’s time for that generation [of media leadership] to step down. The industry needs to create a new corporate culture. The change is slow,” Ms Kojima said.

“The TV industry has long neglected the issue of exploitation and violence and has not dealt with the victims properly. If the root of the problem doesn’t change, the same will happen again.”

Professor Osawa agrees that Japan still has a long way to go because of the ubiquitous power imbalance in the country.

She adds that while women have been part of the workforce for decades they’re still seen as the “caretakers” and men as the “breadwinners” by a society that is heavily shaped by patriarchal values.

“This is an important time… But it’s unclear how far attitudes will change,” she said.

While Ms Kitahara is hopeful, she says she’s also angry: “The sexual violence never stops.”

“I still meet new survivors at Flower Demo [protests] every month and learn what happened to them. We had a high school girl other day. When we started the movement [in 2019] she was probably in junior high, ” she said.

“I hope for the day when I will never have to go to a Flower Demo protest again.”

After back-to-back debates in both English and French, the candidates to replace Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as leader of the Liberal Party in Canada have made their case to voters.

Card-holding Liberals will now choose between former governor of the banks of Canada and England Mark Carney, former finance minister Chrystia Freeland, House government leader Karina Gould and businessman and former MP Frank Baylis.

Whoever wins the vote on 9 March will become Canada’s next prime minister and will lead the Liberals in the forthcoming general election, which must be held on or before 20 October of this year.

A big focus of the debates has been how Canada should respond to US President Donald Trump, who has threatened steep tariffs on America’s northern neighbour and has suggested that Canada become the “51st state.”

Here are five big takeaways from the two Liberal leadership debates.

How Canada should respond to what many have dubbed an “existential threat” from US President Donald Trump has unsurprisingly dominated the agenda at both debates.

Trump has said he plans to impose a 25% tariff on all Canadian exports, with the exception of energy that would be tariffed at a lower 10% – a move that economists say would be devastating for Canada while increasing prices for Americans.

He has also repeatedly proposed that the US should annex Canada, which has been met with alarm and anger from large swathes of the Canadian population.

Freeland, a former top minister who served during Trump’s first term, positioned herself as an experienced negotiator who has fought – and won – against the US president and his previous tariffs.

But Carney warned that the Trump of today was not the Trump of the past. “He is more isolationist. He is more aggressive,” Carney said. “In the past he wanted our markets. Now he wants our country.”

Gould, the youngest candidate, suggested that Canada should “put everything on the table” to protect its sovereignty, and that the federal government should help businesses diversify their portfolios to depend less on the US.

Baylis, meanwhile, said Canada needed to forge closer economic ties with the UK, New Zealand and Australia, saying all four were like-minded countries with shared values, culture, and government systems.

Trump’s threats are made more alarming by Canada’s current economic situation.

The country’s GDP has shrunk in the past year, along with the value of the Canadian dollar, and Canadians have voiced frustrations over the stubborn high cost of living.

Carney – an economist by trade – focused much of his messaging on this issue. He promised a plan that would balance Canada’s operational budget in three years and proposed that Canada rethink the way it spends its money.

But he has also noted his support for key Liberal programmes, like affordable childcare and dental care.

As the former finance minister, Freeland defended her track record, saying the country’s finances were still “very strong”. She added that Canada should capitalise on the surge of patriotism in the face of Trump’s threats, using that momentum to support Canadian industries and promote job growth.

Baylis drew on his expertise as a businessman to say that Canada should work on building its productivity.

Gould, on the other hand, said the Liberal Party should be “realistic with Canadians” and that balancing the budget in three years was not possible without significant cuts, which she did not support. She said Canada should instead focus on “modernising its social safety net” to help those who are struggling.

“We are facing extreme threats from the US, so we have to be able to invest in our people and in our businesses to protect them,” Gould said.

The four candidates were debating with each other but they often presented a united front against their shared opponent, Conservative party leader Pierre Poilievre, whose party is favoured in the polls as the most likely to form Canada’s next government.

Liberal leadership hopefuls threw several jabs at Poilievre throughout the debate. Gould called him “our little version of Trump here at home” while Freeland said Poilievre was looking to “imitate” Trump.

Carney criticised Poilievre as “irresponsible” and added that Canada could “not afford” to have him as prime minister.

Poilievre, who has enjoyed a sizable lead in the polls ahead of an unpopular Trudeau, has had to pivot his pitch to Canadians since Trudeau’s resignation.

His message changed from criticising the sitting prime minister for leading a “broken” Canada to putting “Canada First” in the face of threats from the US. He has also shifted his focus to attacking Carney, who is favoured to win the Liberal leadership race.

Poilievre is still polling ahead nationally, but some polls suggest that the lead between him and the Liberals has shrunk since Trudeau’s exit.

Responding to shifting US policy on the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, all four candidates affirmed their commitment to continuing Canada’s support for Ukraine.

All of them also backed the need for Canada to hit its 2% military spending target as set out in its commitments to the Nato alliance, though they disagreed on the timeline and how to get there.

Freeland said Canada should hit the target by 2027, and should do so by investing in the “next generation of warfare”. Baylis and Carney have said their plan would be for Canada to reach that target by 2030.

Both Freeland and Carney said Canada needed to invest that money into Canadian military ventures instead of into the US.

Freeland noted that Canada should reduce its reliance on the US, and should look to work with the EU and other Nato partners on security assurances.

A tax on carbon for consumers and businesses has been the cornerstone of the Trudeau government’s policy on climate change.

But that tax has proven to be unpopular with Canadians, forcing Carney and Freeland to promise that they would ditch the policy.

Carney, a former UN special envoy on climate action and finance, has long been a proponent of the carbon tax. In the debates, however, he acknowledged the tax on consumers had become divisive, and said he would instead focus on taxing big polluters and growing clean energy projects in Canada.

Freeland, who resigned from Trudeau’s government because of disagreements with the prime minister on spending, said that history would judge his climate action favourably despite his policies’ unpopularity. But she, too, vowed to scrap the carbon tax.

“Democracy is about listening to people, and Canadians were very clear with us that they did not think that policy worked for them,” she said.

Gould and Baylis, on the other hand, said they would keep some version of the consumer tax on carbon in place, saying that fighting climate change comes with a price.

Hollywood has had another eventful year: Deadpool faced off with Wolverine, Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni sued each other, Inside Out 2 conquered the box office and Joker’s sequel emphatically did not.

The Oscars race, meanwhile, played out against the grim backdrop of wildfires which devastated Los Angeles and left thousands of homes destroyed.

Awards season had its fair share of scandal. While The Brutalist’s use of AI and Anora’s lack of an intimacy co-ordinator were storms in a Twitter teacup, there was one genuine controversy when some historic tweets nearly brought down Emilia Pérez.

Ahead of the Academy Awards on Sunday (2 March), here are 17 of the quirks, trends, patterns, and record breakers from this year’s batch of nominees.

1. This is the first time two musicals have been nominated for best picture in more than five decades.

Wicked and Emilia Pérez are the first tuneful twosome to be up for the top prize since Funny Girl and Oliver! in 1969.

The musical resurgence is partly down to it being twice as easy to score a best picture nomination nowadays, after the top category was expanded to 10 slots.

The last musical to win best picture was Chicago in 2003.

2. Adrien Brody already holds one Oscars record, and he could break another.

The US star is currently the youngest ever winner of best actor – he was 29 when he won for his performance in 2002’s The Pianist.

But Brody wasn’t nominated again until this year, with his nod for The Brutalist. If he wins again, he will become the first person to win the leading actor category with his first two nominations.

Only seven other actors currently have a 100% win rate at the Oscars from two or more nominations – Vivien Leigh, Hilary Swank, Kevin Spacey, Luise Rainer, Christoph Waltz, Helen Hayes and Mahershala Ali.

3. But Timothée Chalamet is a major threat.

The Dune and Wonka star is Brody’s toughest competition in best actor, thanks to his acclaimed portrayal of Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown.

If he won, not only would Chalamet halt Brody’s winning streak, he would also take Brody’s record as the youngest-ever winner. There isn’t much in it – Chalamet would be just 10 months younger than Brody was when he won.

4. Netflix’s Emilia Pérez could follow a dubious pattern for streaming films.

It might have the most nominations, but the Spanish-language musical could share the same fate as other recent streaming films which were heavily nominated, but failed to follow through with many wins.

• The Irishman (Netflix) won zero Oscars, from 10 nominations
• Mank (Netflix) won two out of 10
• The Power of the Dog (Netflix) won one out of 12
• Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple) won zero out of 10

Emilia Pérez is strong in a couple of categories, but it’s similarly unlikely to sweep the board.

Only one streaming film has ever won best picture – Apple’s Coda – which only had three nominations overall.

5. Two Succession stars share a disadvantage.

Kieran Culkin and Jeremy Strong are both nominated for best supporting actor, for their performances in A Real Pain and The Apprentice respectively.

But the pair are the only two nominees in the category who don’t come from best picture-nominated films.

A Real Pain’s absence in best picture shouldn’t stop frontrunner Culkin from winning. The last person to win the category without a best picture nomination was Christopher Plummer in 2012, for Beginners.

Every actor in the category this year is Oscar-nominated for the first time, except Edward Norton, who has three previous nods.

6. The Substance is the first body horror to be nominated for best picture, and only the seventh horror overall.

The other six were The Exorcist, Get Out, The Silence of the Lambs, Jaws, The Sixth Sense and Black Swan.

The Substance is a strong contender in best make-up and hairstyling, a category where the winner often overlaps with the acting winners. That could work in Demi Moore’s favour in a tight best actress race.

7. Isabella Rossellini is nominated for an eight-minute performance in Conclave, but that isn’t the shortest in Oscars history.

Beatrice Straight won the same category, best supporting actress, for her role in Network, which lasted 5min 02sec.

Dame Judi Dench is only marginally ahead, winning for a performance in Shakespeare in Love which lasted 5min 52sec.

Winners aside, the shortest nominee is thought to be Hermione Baddeley’s performance in 1959’s Room at the Top, lasting 2min 19sec.

On the subject of durations, The Brutalist (3hrs 35mins including an intermission) would be the fourth-longest best picture winner of all time, after Gone With the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia and Ben-Hur.

8. Sing Sing star Colman Domingo is nominated for best actor, just a year after his last nomination in the same category for Rustin.

Quite an achievement, no doubt. But he has some way to go to catch up with Bette Davis and Greer Garson, who both managed five consecutive Oscar nominations in the 1930s and 40s.

Just behind them are Al Pacino, Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando, Thelma Ritter and Jennifer Jones, who each scored four back-to-back nods.

Bradley Cooper, Renée Zellweger, Russell Crowe, Glenn Close, Jane Fonda, Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson, William Hurt, Richard Burton, Deborah Kerr, Gregory Peck, Ingrid Bergman, Gary Cooper and Spencer Tracy all managed three in a row.

9. All five best actress nominees come from films which are also nominated for best picture.

That might not sound like much, but it’s the first time it’s happened since 1977.

The historic lack of overlap between the two categories has often been attributed to the Academy being less likely to give female-focused films the top prize.

But that trend has shifted in recent years, with films featuring female leads such as Nomadland, Coda and Everything Everywhere All At Once scoring best picture.

10. Before Sebastian Stan’s nomination for The Apprentice, only seven other actors had been Oscar-nominated for playing a US president.

Frank Langella was recognised for his portrayal of Richard Nixon, while Daniel Day-Lewis and Raymond Massey were both nominated for playing Abraham Lincoln.

Sam Rockwell was nominated for playing George W Bush, Alexander Knox for Woodrow Wilson, and James Whitmore for Harry Truman.

Perhaps most notably, Sir Anthony Hopkins has been nominated twice for portraying two different presidents in separate films – once as Nixon and another as John Quincy Adams.

Stan is slightly different in that he portrays Trump in his younger years as a real estate tycoon, rather than during his tenure as president, but we’re still chalking that up as worthy of induction into this exclusive club.

11. Robbie Williams’ biopic Better Man is nominated for best visual effects, but he also has a connection to two other films in the race.

The British singer’s track Swing Supreme features in a pivotal scene of Emilia Pérez, while his former Take That bandmates feature at the beginning of Anora as a remix of Greatest Day plays in a nightclub.

Its prominence in the film led to the remaining members of Take That performing the song at this year’s Bafta Film Awards.

12. Ralph Fiennes could be a good omen for Conclave.

The last two times the British star was nominated for best actor, for Schindler’s List and The English Patient, his film won best picture.

If Conclave wins, Fiennes would set a record for having appeared in the most best picture winners, becoming the only actor with roles in four (the other being The Hurt Locker).

However, Edward Berger’s absence in the best director category significantly weakens Conclave’s chances. Only six films have ever won best picture without a corresponding director nomination.

On the plus side, three of those have been in the last 12 years (Argo, Coda and Green Book), suggesting this is less of an obstacle than it used to be.

Why wasn’t Berger nominated? One possible factor is that, unlike the five directors who were, he didn’t write or co-write his film’s screenplay. Conclave was adapted from Robert Harris’s novel by British screenwriter Peter Straughan.

13. Diane Warren really wants to win.

The songwriter scored her 16th best original song nomination this year, for writing The Journey, from The Six Triple Eight.

But Warren has never won. With Emilia Pérez’s campaign damaged and potentially splitting votes with two songs in the category, could this finally be her year?

She certainly hopes so. Earlier this month, when a film account on X asked followers: “Which Oscar winner would make you happiest?” Warren brilliantly replied: “Me!”

14. Wicked has a tall hill to climb to win best picture, having missed both a directing and screenplay nomination.

It did score several technical nods as well as acting nominations for Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, but neither are frontrunners in their category.

The last film to win best picture without a corresponding win in a director, screenplay or acting category was Rebecca in 1942.

15. Two nominees are following in their mothers’ footsteps.

I’m Still Here star Fernanda Torres is nominated for best actress – after her mother Fernanda Montenegro became the first Brazilian nominee in the same category in 1999 for Central Station.

Meanwhile, Conclave star Isabella Rossellini’s mother, Ingrid Bergman, was nominated for best actress six times in her career, winning twice, and won best supporting actress.

16. Anora’s director could become the first person to win four Oscars for the same film.

As Sean Baker was involved in so many aspects of the film’s production, he could personally win best picture, editing, director and screenplay.

Nobody has ever done this before.

Walt Disney did win four Oscars in the same night in 1953, but for four different films.

And Parasite’s Bong Joon-Ho came incredibly close in 2020, but as the best international film prize technically goes to the country that submitted it rather than the director, he only took home three for his own trophy cabinet.

If Anora does win the top prize, it will be the second consecutive year the director of best picture co-wins with his wife. Baker and wife Samantha Quan would follow Oppenheimer’s Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas.

Anora would also be the first 18-rated film to win best picture since The Departed in 2007.

17. It’s official: The cat in Flow is named Flow.

The delightful movie about a cat who survives a flood is a dark horse in the animated film category, having beaten box office juggernauts Inside Out 2 and The Wild Robot to the prize at the Golden Globes.

“While we worked on Flow the cat didn’t have a name,” the film’s director Gints Zilbalodis said earlier this month. “We just called it the cat.

“I’ve heard from multiple people that they think that its name is Flow. People have even named their cats Flow now! So I think we can call the cat Flow.”

Roaring crowds, faces painted blue and green, flags waving like battle standards.

This is the opening of The Greatest Rivalry: India v Pakistan, a new Netflix documentary on one of cricket’s most storied contests.

India’s Virender Sehwag sets the tone: “This is a contest bigger than one between the bat and ball”. Cut to dramatic footage of some of the matches, the Wagah border, partition refugees. A nation split into two, but forever bound by cricket.

Pakistan’s Waqar Younis doesn’t hesitate: “I put this rivalry right at the top. There’s no match like India v Pakistan.” India’s R Ashwin agrees: “I think this is bigger than the Ashes.” Ramiz Raja says it’s “the political garnish that makes this rivalry world-class”.

Despite wars, border standoffs and terror attacks, the India-Pakistan cricket rivalry has endured, driven by history and national pride. Even when politics halts the bilateral series, International Cricket Council (ICC) tournaments keep the fire alive, turning every match into a high-stakes spectacle.

But Pakistan’s crushing defeat by India on Sunday at the Champions Trophy has reignited the question: is this rivalry overhyped, propped up by slogans like “war minus the shooting” – a phrase George Orwell coined in 1945 to criticise excessive nationalism in sports?

Is this still the premier clash in cricket, or just one of its most dramatic? Has it lost its competitive edge, running more on history than intensity?

Consider this. From an eight-wicket thrashing in 2018 to a 228-run demolition in 2023, India has dominated, winning six of the last eight ODIs. Pakistan’s last victory? The 2017 Champions Trophy final – a fading memory in an increasingly one-sided rivalry.

What rivalry, asked Dawn – a leading Pakistani newspaper – pointedly after the latest debacle. A cricket war that’s now just a big yawn, headlined India Today magazine.

The loss would be easier to accept if Pakistan were at least putting up a fight, according to Dawn’s Zohaib Ahmed Majeed.

Majeed believes the troubled politics between the two neighbours is the only thing that has kept the rivalry alive.

“In a way we must thank the politicians of these two nations for keeping this rivalry alive, because the cricketers, especially from our side, are certainly incapable of putting up a show that is worthy of its billing,” he wrote.

“Cut out the war of words and the actual wars and what you’ll be left with is a professional cricketing unit against a haphazardly put together team at the last minute. There is no rivalry as far as pure cricketing merits are concerned.”

India Today was no less acerbic. “With its history of one-sided losses to India in recent years, Pakistan cricket is fast sliding into pity territory. And unless it reverses the trend, Pakistan’s dream of competing with India could soon turn into a butt of jokes for cricket fans,” wrote Sandipan Sharma.

To be true, Pakistan’s cricketing woes keep mounting. They have missed the final four in the last three ODI World Cups, crashed out in the T20 World Cup group stage and now, as hosts of the Champions Trophy, they’ve hit rock-bottom.

Since the 2009 attack on Sri Lanka’s team bus, Pakistan cricket has battled isolation, political turmoil, board instability, frequent coaching changes and selection controversies – all adding to its struggles. Meanwhile, across the border, India has risen as cricket’s powerhouse, backed by a strong domestic system and the IPL, cricket’s richest international league.

Pakistani cricket writer Osman Samiuddin also notes a sense of “marginalisation” among his country’s cricketers, who remain excluded from the IPL and its franchise ecosystem (no Pakistani player has featured in the IPL since 2009, as they were banned after the Mumbai terror attacks). “I think they see Indian cricketers and others as well, like Australian and English cricketers, as partaking in a world of cricket they have been excluded from,” he told a programme.

This has all contributed to the team’s fast-declining fortunes.

“It is a futile exercise to wonder if this is the lowest Pakistan cricket has ever been. However, even when Pakistan have plummeted to spectacular lows in the past, they have done it in a way that justifies the cliché of their mercurial nature,” wrote Sidharth Monga in ESPNcricinfo, after Sunday’s game.

“This slide just feels like a terminal, slow decline. Players are not fighting with each other, there is no backdoor intrigue, there are no cliques in the team plotting to dethrone the captain, there are no comical run-outs or misfields, no defeats snatched from the jaws of victory.”

The “war without guns” narrative once held weight, especially when Imran Khan’s Pakistan, armed with a fearsome pace attack of Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis and batting stars like Javed Miandad and Inzamam-ul-Haq, regularly got the better of India.

“The narrative may have been true till the early 2000s because this is how the actual fans felt. But it was soon hijacked by the multinationals and the media to cash in on the hyper-pathos of it all,” Nadeem Farooq Paracha, Pakistani author and columnist, told me.

“The quality of cricket between the two sides isn’t the same anymore. Indian cricket continues to get better. In fact, I think the narrative in question here has ended up pressuring Pakistani side more. They underplay it, even though they’re more than willing to pocket its financial benefits.”

The cricket boards and broadcasters are doing all they can to keep the rivalry alive, and the ICC won’t dial down the hype – it’s too valuable in an era of overexposure of cricket, limited stars and competition from franchise cricket.

This one game has become a financial juggernaut, fuelling a parallel economy wherever it’s played – Dubai, London, Ahmedabad – drawing fans who spend big just to be there. “Pakistan has talent, but the contest now feels more psychological,” says cricket writer Gautam Bhattacharyya.

Brand consultant Santosh Desai feels the real contest between the arch rivals plays out beyond the cricket ground and the “rivalry thrives more in imagination than in reality”.

“The asymmetry [between the two sides] only fuels the hype. India’s dominance makes it an easy narrative to sell, a battle royale where the outcome feels preordained. If Pakistan were winning consistently, the marketing appeal would fade. The rivalry’s commercial power lies in India’s superiority, feeding a script designed for validation, not uncertainty,” Desai told me.

India’s vice-captain Shubman Gill dismisses talk of overhyping, calling it a contest fans love to watch. “It is an exciting contest when both of these teams play. Everyone enjoys watching it. If so many people are happy to watch the match, then who are we to say that it is underhyped or overhyped,” he told reporters on eve of Sunday’s game.

Gill is possibly right. Tickets for India-Pakistan games still fly off the shelves – the ICC reported sellouts within minutes. An astonishing 600 plus million viewers tuned in to watch Sunday’s match on Indian streaming platform JioHotstar, setting new records.

But for now, as cricket writer Ayaz Memon puts it, “the hype is more thrilling than the cricket itself”.

“He told me that if I tried to escape, he would kill me.”

Pascaline, 22, recalls the words of her rapist at a prison in Goma, the largest city in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, in the early hours of 27 January.

“I was forced to let it happen instead of losing my life,” Pascaline tells the BBC.

He was the second man to rape her at Munzenze prison. The first attack was so violent that she passed out.

Her attackers came over the wall from the men’s block right next door called “Safina”, she says.

“We heard a noise as they jumped on the water tanks. There were so many of them, and we were so scared. The ones who were unlucky were raped. The ones who were lucky got out without being raped.”

Chaos was spreading through the jail, and the surrounding city. Rwandan-backed M23 rebels were closing in on Goma, after a rapid advance through the region.

Most of the prison guards and the city authorities had already fled. Shooting could be heard outside the jail.

Hours later, inside the compound, there was a fire – apparently set by male prisoners as they tried to escape.

By morning, about 4,000 male inmates had broken out. But few of the women managed to get away. A total of 132 female prisoners and at least 25 children burned to death, according to two sources.

A UN official told the BBC that “at least 153 women had perished”, quoting “reliable sources in the prison”.

A month on, Pascaline has come back to the charred shell of the prison complex, where an empty watch tower still stands.

She wants to tell her story and is willing to be identified. She is also a voice for the dead.

She walks through the main yard of the women’s section, glancing at the scorched walls, scattered cooking pots and piles of clothing. Her hand comes to her mouth in wordless horror, and she shakes her head.

“At one point I didn’t know what was happening any more,” she says. “It was after seeing the others die that I began to pull myself together, I would say that it was God who wanted me to be saved.”

Pascaline, an onion seller, wound up behind bars here when her employer accused her of theft.

Nadine, 22, has also come back to the prison for the first time. In her mind, she cannot escape it.

“When I sleep at night, everything I’ve seen here comes back to me. I see the dead again – as many dead bodies as I saw here until I got out. Instead of opening the door, they let us die like animals here.”

Nadine says she was also raped by two men.

“They came with alcohol,” she tells the BBC. “They wanted to drug people. They took me by force. They took all the women here.”

The BBC cannot verify how many women were raped that night, out of a total of 167 who, sources say, were being held.

Nadine is furious at the authorities – for locking her up in the first place over an unpaid debt, she says, and then failing to let her out.

“I don’t think that justice can exist in Congo,” she says. “I condemn the way the government is running things.”

The DR Congo government – more than 1,500km (1,000 miles) away in the capital Kinshasa – is no longer running anything in Goma. The rebels are in full control and are continuing to advance in the east.

Among the piles of ash that carpet the prison floor after the fire, there is a tiny pink sandal, which is burnt on one side. Some shiny buttons glitter in the dirt beside it, perhaps from children’s clothing.

Women prisoners were allowed to keep one of their children in the jail with them. Only two children out of 28 survived the blaze in the prison, according to a source. Child prisoners – held in a separate block – were released earlier in the day.

It was not just the smoke and the flames that killed the most vulnerable, according to a detailed account from another survivor aged 38, who does not want to be identified. We are calling her Florence.

She says “children started to die” when tear gas was fired into the women’s section.

“The prison was surrounded by soldiers and police who, instead of coming to put out the fire, were firing bullets and throwing tear gas at us,” Florence says.

“When the tear gas was dropped on us, the fire became intense. Our eyes tingled as if chilli had been poured into them. There was almost no way to breathe,” she adds.

The fire and the rapes are shrouded in confusion, with all sides eager to blame someone else.

Human rights groups say rape is widely used as a weapon of war in DR Congo by both the M23 rebels and government forces.

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However, in this case, Florence says it was fellow inmates.

“You could see they were prisoners. Some came without shoes. When they climbed onto the roof of the women’s prison, they were calling the names of those they knew. And none of the attackers were armed or in uniform.”

Florence says she heard “bullets crackling” outside the prison from 23:00 onwards, and escaping prisoners were being killed by police outside.

“If a prisoner got out, they shot him. When the bullets were flying, I was on my knees begging God to deliver us from this bad situation.”

Some of the prisoners who broke into the women’s section were looking for a safer escape route, she says.

They breached one of the walls facing the outside – a place where police were not normally stationed. But soon that gap was filled – by the fire.

Florence first saw the flames at about 04:00. Then hour after hour, she rushed from body to body.

“People were dying in front of our eyes. I couldn’t count them. We tried to revive them by giving them water. Some women were suffocated by the fire, as well as the gas. Some died of heart attacks,” Florence tells the BBC.

She too blames the Congolese authorities for the loss of so many lives.

“The state should have opened the doors when it saw the fire or come and put it out.”

The BBC has contacted the government in Kinshasa asking for a response to what the survivors have told us but we have not yet received one.

Florence says the women’s prison was finally opened at 11:00 – she does not know by who – and she emerged with 18 other survivors. They were offered no help.

“Even the policemen we found on the road, did not ask for news of the prisoners, or ask if anyone had been hurt, or how we were,” she says.

By then rebel fighters were in parts of the city, having entered at around 08:00. Goma was falling.

The women did not seem to matter – in or out of prison.

In a tent in the grounds of Goma’s hospital, we meet another survivor, Sifa, 25, who was pulled from the flames by a friend.

She lies on her left side – any other position is too painful. Her right arm is heavily bandaged, and there are burn marks on her arm and her face. She also has burns on her back. When her dressings are changed the nurses have to give her morphine.

But her agony is more than physical.

Her two-year-old daughter Esther died in the prison.

“I had Esther on my back. When we wanted to escape, something fell on her. A bomb? I don’t know what. She died on the spot,” Sifa tells the BBC.

She adds that Esther was just starting to walk and was “without sin”. Sometimes she would play with the other children in the prison, but mostly she was by her mother’s side.

How did Sifa, a peanut seller, wind up behind bars in a teeming prison with her daughter?

She was accused of involvement in a robbery, which she denies. She says she was jailed without being convicted. Local sources say that is a common occurrence.

The full story of what happened in Munzenze Prison may never be known. It seems those in power are in no rush to find out.

Sifa and the other survivors we spoke to told us that no-one had contacted them to take their testimony about the horrors of 27 January – not the rebels in control of Goma now, nor the government in Kinshasa who used to run the prison.

“No-one will follow [this case],” Sifa says. “No-one will be pursued. It’s already over.”

• How DR Congo’s Tutsis become foreigners in their own country
• Rebels leave families devastated in wake of DR Congo advance
• The DR Congo rebel leader whose fighters have created turmoil

Ukraine has agreed the terms of a major minerals deal with the US, a senior official in Kyiv has told the BBC.

“We have indeed agreed it with a number of good amendments and see it as a positive outcome,” the official said, without providing any further details.

Media reports say Washington has dropped initial demands for a right to $500bn (£395bn) in potential revenue from utilising the natural resources but has not given firm security guarantees to war-torn Ukraine – a key Ukrainian demand.

US President Donald Trump said he was expecting his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington to sign the deal this week, after the two leaders exchanged strong words about each other.

Without confirming that an agreement had been reached, Trump said on Tuesday that in return for the deal Ukraine would get “the right to fight on”.

“They’re very brave,” he told reporters, but “without the United States and its money and its military equipment, this war would have been over in a very short period of time”.

Asked whether supplies of US equipment and ammunition to Ukraine would continue, he said: “Maybe until we have a deal with Russia… We need to have a deal, otherwise it’s going to continue.”

There would be a need for “some form of peacekeeping” in Ukraine following any peace deal, Trump added, but that would need to be “acceptable to everyone”.

Just last week, Trump described Zelensky as a “dictator”, and appeared to blame Ukraine – not Russia – for starting the war, after the Ukrainian leader rejected US demands for $500bn in mineral wealth and suggested that the American president was living in a “disinformation space” created by Russia.

Trump has been pushing for access to Ukraine’s minerals in return for previous military and other aid to the country since Moscow launched a full-scale invasion three years ago.

Zelensky argued nowhere near that much American aid had been provided, adding: “I can’t sell our state.”

On Tuesday, Trump said the US had given Ukraine between $300bn and $350bn.

“We want to get that money back,” he said. “We’re helping the country through a very very big problem… but the American taxpayer now is going to get their money back plus.”

Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Olha Stefanishyna told the Financial Times – which first reported the minerals deal on Tuesday – that the deal was “only part of the picture”.

“We have heard multiple times from the US administration that it’s part of a bigger picture,” said Stefanishyna, who has led the negotiations.

According to Ukrainian sources, the US has had to back away from some of its more onerous demands from the war-torn nation and many of the details of this agreement will require further negotiation.

The precedent, however, is set. US aid in the Trump era comes with strings attached. Aid for aid’s sake – whether given for humanitarian or strategic reasons – is a thing of the past.

That represents a fundamental reordering of American foreign policy for more than 75 years, from the days of the Marshall Plan to post-Cold War idealism and George W Bush’s “Freedom Agenda” push to promote global democracy.

Ukraine is just the start. Expect Trump and his foreign policy team to apply their “America First” principles around the world over the course of the next four years.

Ukraine’s news site Ukrainska Pravda reported that the minerals deal was set to be signed by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The news site’s economics unit EP said the two countries had also agreed to set up a reconstruction investment fund.

Ukraine holds huge deposits of critical elements and minerals, including lithium and titanium, as well as sizeable coal, gas, oil and uranium deposits – supplies worth billions of dollars.

Last year, Zelensky presented a “victory plan” to Ukraine and its Western partners which proposed that foreign firms could gain access to some of the countries’ mineral wealth at the end of the war.

On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was open to offering the US access to rare minerals, including from Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine.

Ukraine and its European allies have become increasingly alarmed over a recent thaw in US-Russian ties, including their bilateral talks in Saudi Arabia last week.

There is concern in Kyiv and across Europe that they might be excluded from any negotiations aimed at ending the war, and that the continent’s future security as a whole could be decided behind their backs.

It is estimated that about 5% of the world’s “critical raw materials” are in Ukraine – including:

• 19 million tonnes of proven reserves of graphite, which is used to make batteries for electric vehicles

• A third of all European lithium deposits, the key component in current batteries.

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion began three years ago, Ukraine also produced 7% of the world’s titanium, used in construction for everything from aeroplanes to power stations.

Ukrainian land also contains significant deposits of rare earth metals, a group of 17 elements that are used to produce weapons, wind turbines, electronics and other products vital in the modern world

Some mineral deposits have been seized by Russia. According to Yulia Svyrydenko, Ukraine’s economy minister, resources worth $350bn remain in Russian-occupied territories today.

India is home to 1.4 billion people but around a billion lack money to spend on any discretionary goods or services, a new report estimates.

The country’s consuming class, effectively the potential market for start-ups or business owners, is only about as big as Mexico, 130-140 million people, according to the report from Blume Ventures, a venture capital firm.

Another 300 million are “emerging” or “aspirant” consumers but they are reluctant spenders who have only just begun to open their purse strings, as click-of-a-button digital payments make it easy to transact.

What is more, the consuming class in Asia’s third largest economy is not “widening” as much as it is “deepening”, according to the report. That basically means India’s wealthy population is not really growing in numbers, even though those who are already rich are getting even wealthier.

All of this is shaping the country’s consumer market in distinct ways, particularly accelerating the trend of “premiumisation” where brands drive growth by doubling down on expensive, upgraded products catering to the wealthy, rather than focusing on mass-market offerings.

This is evident in zooming sales of ultra-luxury gated housing and premium phones, even as their lower-end variants struggle. Affordable homes now constitute just 18% of India’s overall market compared with 40% five years ago. Branded goods are also capturing a bigger share of the market. And the “experience economy” is booming, with expensive tickets for concerts by international artists like Coldplay and Ed Sheeran selling like hot cakes.

• Why global stars like Coldplay and Ed Sheeran are hitting India

Companies that have adapted to these shifts have thrived, Sajith Pai, one of the report’s authors, told the BBC. “Those who are too focused at the mass end or have a product mix that doesn’t have exposure to the premium end have lost market share.”

The report’s findings bolster the long-held view that India’s post-pandemic recovery has been K-shaped – where the rich have got richer, while the poor have lost purchasing power.

In fact, this has been a long-term structural trend that began even before the pandemic. India has been getting increasingly more unequal, with the top 10% of Indians now holding 57.7% of national income compared with 34% in 1990. The bottom half have seen their share of national income fall from 22.2% to 15%.

The latest consumption slump, however, has deepened amid not just a destruction in purchasing power, but also a precipitous drop in financial savings and surging indebtedness among the masses.

The country’s central bank has also cracked down on easy unsecured lending that propped up demand after the Covid pandemic.

Much of the consumption spending of the “emerging” or “aspirant” class of Indians was led by such borrowing and “turning off that tap will definitely have some impact on consumption”, says Pai.

In the short run, two things are expected to help boost spending – a pick-up in rural demand on the back of a record harvest and a $12 billion tax give-away in the recently concluded budget. It will not be “dramatic” but could boost India’s GDP – largely driven by consumption – by over half a percent, says Pai.

But major longer-term headwinds remain.

India’s middle class – which has been a major engine for consumer demand – is being squeezed out, with wages pretty much staying flat, according to data compiled by Marcellus Investment Managers.

“The middle 50% of India’s tax-paying population has seen its income stagnate in absolute terms over the past decade. This implies a halving of income in real terms [adjusted for inflation],” says the report, published in January.

“This financial hammering has decimated the middle class’s savings – the RBI [Reserve Bank of India] has repeatedly highlighted that net financial savings of Indian households are approaching a 50-year low. This pounding suggests that products and services associated with middle-class household spending are likely to face a rough time in the years ahead,” it adds.

The Marcellus report also points out that white-collar urban jobs are becoming harder to come by as artificial intelligence automates clerical, secretarial and other routine work. “The number of supervisors employed in manufacturing units [as a percentage of all employed] in India has gone down significantly,” it adds.

The government’s recent economic survey has flagged these concerns as well.

It says labour displacement as a result of these technological advancements is of particular concern for a mainly services-driven economy like India, where a significant share of the IT workforce is employed in low value-added services sectors that are most prone to disruption.

“India is also a consumption-based economy, thus the fall in consumption that can result from the displacement of its workforce is bound to have macroeconomic implications. If the worst-case projections materialise, this could have the potential to set the country’s economic growth trajectory off course,” the survey says.

An Australian couple have spoken of the “traumatic” moment the body of a dead passenger was placed next to them on a Qatar Airways flight.

Mitchell Ring and Jennifer Colin, who were travelling to Venice for a dream holiday, told Australia’s Channel 9 a woman had died in the aisle beside them during the flight from Melbourne to Doha.

The couple say cabin crew placed her corpse, covered in blankets, next to Mr Ring for the remaining four hours of the flight without offering to move him, despite there being empty seats.

Qatar Airways said it apologised for “any inconvenience or distress this incident may have caused”, adding that it was in the process of contacting passengers.

The couple said they had not been contacted or offered support by Qatar Airways or Qantas, the airline through which they booked the flight.

They said there should be a protocol to ensure passengers onboard were looked after in such situations.

Mr Ring told Channel Nine’s Current Affair programme that staff had responded “in no time” when the woman collapsed, but that “unfortunately the lady couldn’t be saved, which was pretty heart-breaking to watch”.

He said the cabin crew had tried to move her body towards business class “but she was quite a large lady and they couldn’t get her through the aisle”.

Mr Ring said the crew had seen seats were available beside him.

“They said, ‘Can you move over please?’ and I just said, ‘Yes no problem’.

“Then they placed the lady in the chair I was in.”

While Ms Colin was able to move to an empty seat nearby, Mr Ring said he had not been given the option to do so by cabin crew – even though there were vacant seats.

When the plane landed four hours later, he said passengers were asked to stay put while medical staff and police came on board.

He said ambulance officers had then started pulling blankets off the woman and he had seen her face.

The couple said there needed to be a “duty of care” for customers and staff.

“We should be contacted to make sure, do you need some support, do you need some counselling?”

Ms Colin called the experience “traumatic” and said: “We totally understand that we can’t hold the airline responsible for the poor lady’s death, but there has to be a protocol to look after the customers on board.”

In a statement, Qatar Airways said: “First and foremost our thoughts are with the family of the passenger who sadly passed away on board our flight.

“We apologise for any inconvenience or distress this incident may have caused, and are in the process of contacting passengers in line with our policies and procedures.”

A Qantas spokesperson said: “The process for handling incidents onboard an aircraft like this is managed by the operating airline, which in this case is Qatar Airways.”

Hundreds of thousands of people have signed a petition to revoke Elon Musk’s Canadian citizenship amid tensions between the Trump administration and Canada.

The petition, which opened to signatures five days ago, accuses Mr Musk of acting against Canada’s national interest and undermining its sovereignty.

In Canada, citizenship can be revoked only if someone has committed fraud, misrepresented themselves or knowingly hid information on an immigration or citizenship application. Mr Musk, who was born in South Africa, holds both Canadian and US citizenship.

Responding to the petition, the billionaire wrote on X: “Canada is not a real country.” The post was later deleted.

The petition claims the billionaire “has used his wealth and power to influence our elections” and “has now become a member of a foreign government that is attempting to erase Canadian sovereignty”. Mr Musk has Canadian citizenship through his mother, who was born in Saskatchewan.

Launched on 20 February, the petition, already signed by more than 250,000 Canadians, remains open for signatures until 20 June.

It is mostly symbolic and has no legal force. But petitions with at least 500 signatures and a member of parliament’s backing typically receive a government response, this one may not, as a spring election could dissolve parliament.

It was created by a British Columbia author and endorsed by MP Charlie Angus of the New Democratic Party. Angus, a 20-year MP for Timmins–James Bay, has announced he will not seek re-election.

The BBC has contacted his office for comment.

US-Canada tensions have escalated since Trump’s return, with the president repeatedly suggesting Canada could become a US state and threatening tariffs on steel, aluminium, and other imports.

Canadian leaders have pushed back, vowing counter-tariffs.

The spat has spilled out beyond government, with Canadians cancelling US trips, boycotting American products, and booing opposing anthems at hockey and basketball games.

Mr Musk moved to Canada from South Africa at 18, and worked odd jobs before studying at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. He later emigrated to the US.

The billionaire has backed Trump’s hardline immigration policies but now faces scrutiny over claims he worked illegally in the US on a student visa.

In a recent interview, Steve Bannon, a former advisor to President Trump, called Mr Musk a “parasitic illegal immigrant”.

The Tesla CEO has denied the accusations, and has said he did not work illegally. He became a naturalised US citizen in 2002, according to a recent biography.

The BBC has contacted Mr Musk via his businesses for comment.

European leaders have been left stunned by the open rapprochement between US President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin – and not-so-subtle hints that the US may abandon its obligation to defend European allies.

After World War Two, West European countries joined the US and Canada to set up Nato (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) to counter the then-Soviet Union.

The alliance’s famous Article 5 holds that Nato members will come to the defence of an ally which comes under attack.

The US has long been the anchoring power, but now questions are being asked openly about Nato’s future – most recently by the man set to become Germany’s chancellor. Friedrich Merz said his aim would be to achieve independence from the US in terms of security.

“The events of the past week have shown that Trump has undermined Nato, undermined its secretary general and undermined the Article 5 of collective defence,” said Armida van Rij, head of the European programme at the UK-based Chatham House think tank.

“The idea behind it was this all for one and one for all belief – and that’s been broken.”

• What is Nato, why isn’t Ukraine a member and what has Trump said?

While the Trump administration says it is not pulling out of Nato and remains committed to the defence partnership with Europe, it has warned that it will “no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship which encourages dependency”.

Trump has consistently told European allies to considerably raise their financial contributions – at one stage last year he openly encouraged Putin to invade those who failed to pay their bills.

But what is alarming, say experts, is how the message is being delivered as the war in Ukraine – the greatest security crisis for the continent in decades – rages.

Under Trump, the US has started to even promote Russian objectives, said Chatham House defence analyst Minna Alander. “It even looks like Trump outright switched sides into Russia’s team.”

• Read more: Trump echoes Russia as he flips US position on Ukraine

Some of this pivoting by Trump includes:

• Praise for Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who he called earlier this month – the first phone call between the White House and Kremlin since Russia’s full-scale invasion three years ago
• Talks between the US and Russia last week – which, though aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, cut out Ukrainian officials and European allies
• Attacks on Ukraine’s President Volodymr Zelensky, who Trump called a “dictator”
• Repeating Putin’s lies that Ukraine had started the war – not Russia

“This war is far more important to Europe than it is to us – we have a big, beautiful ocean as separation,” Trump has said.

• Zelensky willing to give up presidency in exchange for Nato membership

The phrasing of Article 5 has long been understood as an automatic obligation by member states – and most significantly, the US military – to come to the other members’ defence.

But that does not always mean sending troops.

For example, if Estonia was invaded by Russia, the US could send a single surveillance plane in support and “that would meet the letter if not the spirit of Article 5”, explained Edward Arnold, an analyst with the Royal United Services Institute, a defence and security think tank in London.

“There’s nothing to suggest that the US has to put its full forces in,” he said.

“But the assumption has always been under previous US presidents that that would happen, so now people are starting to worry.”

The US is the dominant military power in Nato – committing about 70% of its capabilities and command, Mr Arnold said.

Along with sheer numbers – the US has more than 100,000 troops deployed in Europe – Nato has relied on the US for key capabilities such as planes refuelling mid-air, moving troops or supplies via aircraft, and military mobility.

The US also provides the bulk of nuclear weapons, as well as significant intelligence, logistics, and reconnaissance tools.

And it has always been seen as group leader. The Supreme Allied Commander for Europe – the top military leader in Nato – has always been an American and Americans are in most senior Nato roles.

“Because the US is militarily so overpowering, it has always been a natural leader of Nato,” says Ms Rij. No other single European Nato ally can step into that space, she says “because no one has the capabilities or troop levels”.

The US warned a decade before Trump that Europe would need to step up its defence.

Under Joe Biden, it declared its top security priority would be the Indo-Pacific theatre, amid its competition with China, and thus a shift away from Europe.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pulled the US’s focus back on Europe. But Trump’s direction this past fortnight has been the push for a drastic rethink.

Merz said after his German election victory that his “absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA”.

He even said he wasn’t sure if an alliance leaders meeting in June “would still be talking about Nato in its current form or whether we will have to establish an independent European defence capability much more quickly”.

Once in office, Merz will be one of the European Big Three, which includes the UK and France in addition to Germany.

The UK prime minister heads to Washington on Thursday, following the visit there on Monday by French President Emmanuel Macron.

• How much do Nato members spend on defence?

“I don’t think there are any good options for Europe at the moment. It’s more about avoiding the worst one,” said Mr Arnold.

“It is about mitigating risk. It’s not about keeping NATO together in its current form.”

The Europeans are acting quickly. Greece, Norway and others have voiced concerns while Denmark last week announced a major increase in defence spending.

The UK also announced a hike on Tuesday, cutting foreign aid to fund the extra £13bn a year. Keir Starmer warned it was a “painful” choice, but said defence and security of the country comes first.

Mr Arnold says it’s the price Europeans will have to pay, especially as “we’ve sent so much stuff to Ukraine now, our own stocks are quite dry”.

We are seeing now what is a “long term shift” in the global security order, he said.

“The US is not the ally that it once was, and it is very, very unlikely to ever go back to that view,” he said.

Republicans in the US House of Representatives narrowly passed a multi-trillion dollar government spending bill on Tuesday, a major boost for President Donald Trump that advances his 2025 agenda.

The 217-215 vote was seen as a key early test for Republican House speaker Mike Johnson, who cancelled an earlier vote as it appeared he did not have enough support.

Several Republicans wanted more fiscal discipline from a budget that includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, funded partially by spending cuts but also by potentially increasing the US government’s substantial debt pile.

But the bill eventually passed along party lines, with all Democrats voting against and just one Republican opposing it.

That Republican was Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a prominent fiscal hawk who wanted deeper spending cuts. One Democrat did not vote.

The House budget seeks $2 trillion in spending cuts over the next 10 years to pay for President Trump’s agenda. It includes more than $100bn in new spending on immigration enforcement and the military.

It would also extend tax breaks passed during his first term in office, which are due to expire at the end of the year.

However there are still a number of steps the spending plan must go through in order to become law.

The budget will have to be merged with a separate budget which is under consideration by the US Senate, in a process called reconciliation.

And even if both chambers ultimately agree on a spending plan, many finer details will need to be negotiated before it can be sent to President Trump’s desk to be signed.

• Johnson re-elected as House Speaker in razor-tight vote
• Has Trump kept his day one promises?
• 19 things Trump and his team did this week

House Republican leaders initially delayed Tuesday’s vote when it was unclear whether they would have enough support to pass the measure.

Speaker Johnson and the second most senior House Republican, Steve Scalise, spent hours working to convince wavering party members to back the plan which, as well as tax cuts, would fund border security measures, deportations and military spending.

Trump personally called some of the holdouts to encourage them to pass the bill, the two Republican leaders said.

“Trump helped us with a number of members,” Scalise told reporters. “Talking to anybody that we asked that really needed to clarify things.”

Three of the four party holdouts who had been initially seen as firm no votes – Representatives Tim Burchett, Victoria Spartz and Warren Davidson – ultimately voted in favour.

“We have a lot of hard work ahead of us, but we are going to deliver the American First agenda,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters after the vote.

“We’re going to celebrate tonight, and we’ll roll up our sleeves and get right back in the morning.”

Democrats lined up to criticise the budget as a tax cut mostly for the wealthy, which they said would hurt low-income families who rely on the government-funded health care programme Medicaid.

The party worked to get as many members in the chamber for the crucial vote, with Representative Brittany Petterson arriving with her son while on maternity leave.

The Senate will be under pressure to take up the House’s spending framework because President Trump has endorsed it, despite their separate bill which was introduced last week.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said he is open to offering the US access to rare minerals, including from Russian-occupied Ukraine.

This comes after US President Donald Trump has repeatedly pushed for Ukraine to give up some of its minerals in exchange for support, in a deal which is currently being finalised, according to a Ukrainian minister.

In a state TV interview on Monday, Putin said he was ready to “offer” resources to American partners in joint projects, including mining in Russia’s “new territories” – a reference to parts of eastern Ukraine that Russia has occupied since launching a full-scale invasion three years ago.

The proposal could also see the two countries collaborating on aluminium extraction and supply to the US to stabilise prices, he added.

In his televised interview, Putin countered Trump’s push to access Ukraine’s mineral deposits, saying they were ready to work with “foreign partners” including companies on mining minerals.

Putin said a potential US-Ukraine deal on rare minerals was not a concern and that Russia “undoubtedly have, I want to emphasise, significantly more resources of this kind than Ukraine”.

“As for the new territories, it’s the same. We are ready to attract foreign partners to the so-called new, to our historical territories, which have returned to the Russian Federation,” he added.

He also suggested that Russia and the US could collaborate on aluminium production in Krasnoyarsk, in Siberia, where one Russian aluminium maker, Rusal, has its largest smelters.

The televised comments followed a cabinet meeting on Russia’s natural resources.

On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists the proposal opened up “quite broad prospects”, adding that the US needed rare earth minerals and Russia had “a lot of them”.

Offering the US access to minerals is an eye-catching move by Putin, given how much pride the Kremlin has taken in keeping Russia’s natural wealth in Russian hands. In 2023 Putin accused the West, particularly the US, of trying to “dismember” Russia to gain access to its natural resources.

• Live coverage of this story
• Why is Ukraine negotiating a minerals deal with the US?

Putin’s intervention comes as Ukraine has been facing growing pressure from the Trump administration to sign a deal for access to its mineral deposits.

Kyiv estimates that about 5% of the world’s critical raw materials are in Ukraine. However, some of the mineral deposits have been seized by Russia in the three years since its invasion of Ukraine.

Trump said earlier this month that the US military and economic aid to Ukraine amounted to about $500bn (£396bn), and he wants the US to have access to Ukrainian minerals of that value.

Zelenzky has disputed that figure and is also said to want any deal to include security guarantees.

On Monday Ukraine’s deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration, Olga Stefanishyna, said negotiations on such a deal “have been very constructive, with nearly all key details finalised”.

Similarly – albeit in a different approach to the US – the European Union has also proposed a partnership with Ukraine that would give it access to minerals in what the the European Commissioner for industrial strategy, Stéphane Séjourné, called a “win-win”.

Skywatchers are in for a treat this week as seven planets – Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Venus, Neptune, Mercury, and Saturn will all be briefly visible in the evening sky.

This phenomenon, known as a ‘planetary parade’ is a rare sight, and it will be the last time seven planets can be seen simultaneously so well until 2040.

The best chance to see as many planets as possible will be just after sunset on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

Four of the planets – Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, and Mars – will be visible to the naked eye. Saturn will be harder to see because it will be low in the horizon. You will need a telescope to spot the other two planets – Uranus and Neptune.

A good view of the horizon and clear skies will offer the best chance of spotting them all. However, the window to see all seven planets will be very brief.

Dr Edward Bloomer, astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich said: “There’s a rare opportunity to have seven planets in essentially a convenient place for you to look for them.”

As the sun sets, Saturn and Mercury will also be setting, making them particularly difficult to see.

“You really only have a few minutes after sunset to catch them before they drop below the horizon. After that, you’ll still be able to see Venus, Jupiter, and Mars clearly for a much longer time,” Dr Bloomer added.

The planets in our solar system orbit the Sun within roughly the same flat plane as the Earth.

As they orbit at different speeds and distances from the Sun, there are moments when they appear to line up from Earth’s perspective creating a spectacular visual display, although the planets remain separated by vast distances in space.

• Send us your pictures of the planetary parade.

Venus and Jupiter will be the easiest to spot due to their brightness, while Mars will have a distinct reddish hue.

“Uranus is technically visible with the naked eye, but you’d need perfect eyesight and ideal conditions,” Dr Bloomer explains.

To improve your chances of seeing as many planets as possible, Dr Bloomer advises heading to a location with a clear view of the horizon and minimal light pollution.

“If you just pop out of your kitchen into your back garden, you will take time to adjust to the light levels. Give it a bit of time – your eyes take about half an hour to fully adjust,” said Dr Bloomer.

“Avoid looking at your phone, get comfortable, and ensure you have an unobstructed view of the horizon.”

While this is an exciting opportunity, Dr Bloomer encourages people to make a habit of gazing at the night sky.

“See how things change,” he said, adding that observing the heavens is “a chance to witness the ongoing mechanics of the solar system at work.”

Whilst the weather is still rather unsettled currently, clearer and calmer conditions are expected to develop later in the week.

Tuesday evening will start with clear spells, but cloud and rain will move in from the west later.

On Wednesday night, skies will be generally cloudier with showery rain at times.

By Thursday, expect a drier, clearer view of the night sky. Earlier in the evening is best, as mist and fog patches may develop further into the night.

For Friday high pressure is expected to dominate, keeping dry conditions for most with clear spells. Soon after sunset is most favoured as mist and fog patches may develop later.

Shares in electric car maker Tesla have slumped more than 9% after EU and UK sales fell by almost half in January.

The drop in Tesla shares took the company’s valuation back below $1trn for the first time since November 2024.

Tesla has been facing stiff competition in the European market from Chinese and other manufacturers.

In addition, Tesla owner Elon Musk has been making controversial political waves on both sides of the Atlantic, an analyst said.

Tesla sales in January bucked European electric car sale trends, which grew by more than a third in the month, according to trade body Acea.

Instead, Tesla sales across the EU, EFTA and the UK fell more that 45%, and more than 50% in the EU alone.

It comes after Tesla sales fell last year for the first time in more than a decade as demand faltered and rivals gained pace.

The main factor in the January sales slump was likely to be increasing competition, AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould said.

Chinese manufacturer BYD has been making big strides, in part because it includes as standard some features which cost extra from other makers, Mould said.

However, some car buyers may also be taking a “principled stand” on Musk’s political interventions, he said.

Musk has made waves in the US with his involvement in slashing US development funds and efforts to drastically reduce US federal funding.

In the UK he supports jailed far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson, and repeatedly criticised prime minister Sir Keir Starmer.

Musk also supports the far-right AfD party in Germany, and congratulated its leader after the party’s record second-place result in elections.

There are other political factors which may be dampening Tesla’s prospects, Mould said.

Tesla shares got a big boost after the US election due to Musk’s closeness to Donald Trump – Musk has described himself as “first buddy” to the US president.

Investors thought this would stand his businesses in good stead.

However, Trump is not a supporter of electric vehicles, and has said he will cancel efforts to boost their ownership.

“How anybody thought this was going to be good for Tesla, I don’t know,” Mould said.

There is also general market skittishness about the path of interest rate cuts and concerns about Trump tariff plans that could be contributing to the fall, Mould added.

BP is expected to announce it will slash its renewable energy investments and instead focus on increasing oil and gas production.

The energy giant will outline its strategy later following pressure from some investors unhappy its profits and share price have been much lower than its rivals.

Shell and Norwegian company Equinor have already scaled back their plans to invest in green energy. Meanwhile US President Donald Trump’s “drill baby drill” comments have encouraged investment in fossil fuels and a move away from low carbon projects.

Some shareholders and environmental groups have voiced concerns over any potential ramping up on production of fossil fuels.

Five years ago, BP set some of the most ambitious targets among large oil companies to cut production of oil and gas by 40% by 2030, while significantly ramping up investment in renewables.

In 2023, the company lowered this oil and gas reduction target to 25%.

It is now expected to abandon it altogether while confirming it is cutting investments in renewable energy by more than half in what chief executive Murray Auchincloss called a “fundamental reset”.

In 2024, BP’s net income fell to $8.9bn (£7.2bn) down from $13.8bn the previous year.

Mr Auchincloss is under pressure to boost profits from some shareholders including the influential activist group Elliot Management, which took a near £4 billion stake in the £70 billion company to push for more investment in oil and gas.

Since 2020 when former chief executive Bernard Looney first unveiled his strategy, shareholders have received total returns including dividends of 36% over the last five years. In contrast, shareholders in rivals Shell and Exxon have seen returns of 82% and 160% respectively.

BP’s under performance has prompted speculation that it may be a takeover target or may consider moving its main stock market listing to the US where oil and gas companies command higher valuations.

Not all shareholders want the company to change course so radically.

Last week, a group of 48 investors called on the company to allow them a vote on any potential plans to move away from its previous commitments to renewables.

A spokesperson for one of the signatories, Royal London Asset Management, said: “As long-term shareholders, we recognise BP’s past efforts toward energy transition but remain concerned about the company’s continued investment in fossil fuel expansion.”

The environmental group Greenpeace UK has warned BP could expect “pushback and challenge at every turn if it doubles down on fossil fuels – not just from green campaigners but from its own shareholders”.

Senior climate adviser Charlie Kronick said: “Government policies will also need to prioritise renewable power, and as extreme weather puts pressure on insurance models – policymakers will be looking to fossil fuel profits as a way to fund extreme weather recovery. BP might want to seriously put the brakes on this U-turn.”

AJ Bell analyst Russ Mould said this was one of the most significant moments for BP in the last four or five years.

“Other energy companies have been clearer about their intentions thus far than BP,” he said.

“They need to prove to people that after a difficult operational and share price performance compared to their peers, that they’re looking to do something about it, not just let things drift along, he added.

BP has already placed its offshore wind business in a joint venture with Japanese company Jera and is looking to find a partner to do the same with its solar business.

The refocus on oil and gas could also see sales of other businesses in order to get “non-core stuff off the books” as insiders describe it.

It is over 20 years since former chief executive Lord John Browne said BP could stand for “Beyond Petroleum” as he launched the company’s first tentative moves away from oil and gas.

Today’s strategy shift could be dubbed “Back to Petroleum” – to the delight of some shareholders and to the dismay of others.

Both BP and Elliott management declined to comment.

President Donald Trump has said he will invite the Philadelphia Eagles to the White House to celebrate their recent Super Bowl win, despite rumours that the champions may decline the invitation.

“Absolutely, they’ll be extended an invitation,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Tuesday. “They deserve to be down here, and we hope to see them.”

The Eagles skipped a visit to the White House when they won in 2018, but the team plans to attend the event this year, US media report.

Rumours of the Eagles declining an invitation to the White House created a firestorm on social media after a weeks-old report from The US Sun resurfaced online.

The Eagles defeated the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 earlier this month, securing the team’s second Super Bowl.

Sports teams visiting the White House after winning a championship is a tradition that dates back to the 19th Century, but in the past decades some have used it to make a statement.

Only one of the four teams that won the Super Bowl during Trump’s first term in office made a trip to the White House. That was the New England Patriots in 2017.

The Philadelphia Eagles did not go to the White House after their victory in 2018.

The president said at the time that the players disagreed with his view “that they proudly stand for the national anthem”, although the team or players never confirmed that as the reason.

Instead, Trump invited a group of Eagles fans to a “celebration of the American flag”.

In 2017, NBA champions the Golden State Warriors were uninvited from the White House event by Trump after star player Stephen Curry said he did not want to go. The Warriors were not invited when they won the NBA Championship again in 2018.

There were, however, some memorable sporting visits to the White House under Trump. He famously welcomed Clemson University’s football team in 2018 with burgers from McDonald’s, Wendy’s and other fast food restaurants.

Louis Moore, a professor of history at Grand Valley State University, told the BBC that these celebratory visits to the White House are political, even if they do not initially seem that way.

“For some guys [going to the White House] is a lifelong dream,” he said. “But in basketball and football and women’s soccer, it’s definitely political. The idea not to go is political, and even the idea to go is political.”

He added that the event has become even more political since Trump’s first election victory in 2016.

“Early on in Trump’s presidency, teams weren’t going to the White House. Before that, there were no announcements,” he said. “But now you see people announcing that they’re not going.”

Mr Moore said that every presidential candidate since the 1930s has sought an athlete’s endorsement.

“Presidents want to be around winners, and winners want to be around the president,” he said.

Trump is not the only president who has been snubbed by sports teams and players.

NBA legend Larry Bird declined to visit Ronald Reagan in the White House after becoming an NBA champion with the Boston Celtics in 1984.

“If the president wants to see me, he knows where to find me,” he said.

In 2013, Matt Birk of the Baltimore Ravens declined to visit the White House celebration because he opposed Barack Obama’s stance on abortion.

According to CBS Sports, Birk complained of an Obama speech where the president had said “God bless Planned Parenthood”.

Hundreds of thousands of people have signed a petition to revoke Elon Musk’s Canadian citizenship amid tensions between the Trump administration and Canada.

The petition, which opened to signatures five days ago, accuses Mr Musk of acting against Canada’s national interest and undermining its sovereignty.

In Canada, citizenship can be revoked only if someone has committed fraud, misrepresented themselves or knowingly hid information on an immigration or citizenship application. Mr Musk, who was born in South Africa, holds both Canadian and US citizenship.

Responding to the petition, the billionaire wrote on X: “Canada is not a real country.” The post was later deleted.

The petition claims the billionaire “has used his wealth and power to influence our elections” and “has now become a member of a foreign government that is attempting to erase Canadian sovereignty”. Mr Musk has Canadian citizenship through his mother, who was born in Saskatchewan.

Launched on 20 February, the petition, already signed by more than 250,000 Canadians, remains open for signatures until 20 June.

It is mostly symbolic and has no legal force. But petitions with at least 500 signatures and a member of parliament’s backing typically receive a government response, this one may not, as a spring election could dissolve parliament.

It was created by a British Columbia author and endorsed by MP Charlie Angus of the New Democratic Party. Angus, a 20-year MP for Timmins–James Bay, has announced he will not seek re-election.

The BBC has contacted his office for comment.

US-Canada tensions have escalated since Trump’s return, with the president repeatedly suggesting Canada could become a US state and threatening tariffs on steel, aluminium, and other imports.

Canadian leaders have pushed back, vowing counter-tariffs.

The spat has spilled out beyond government, with Canadians cancelling US trips, boycotting American products, and booing opposing anthems at hockey and basketball games.

Mr Musk moved to Canada from South Africa at 18, and worked odd jobs before studying at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. He later emigrated to the US.

The billionaire has backed Trump’s hardline immigration policies but now faces scrutiny over claims he worked illegally in the US on a student visa.

In a recent interview, Steve Bannon, a former advisor to President Trump, called Mr Musk a “parasitic illegal immigrant”.

The Tesla CEO has denied the accusations, and has said he did not work illegally. He became a naturalised US citizen in 2002, according to a recent biography.

The BBC has contacted Mr Musk via his businesses for comment.

The White House plans to determine which news outlets have access to President Donald Trump, taking control from an association of journalists after more than a century.

The changes, announced by Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday, mean the White House will determine which outlets participate in the “pool” that covers presidential events and shares material with other media outlets.

The rotation of pool reporters was previously determined by the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), which said the decision “tears at the independence of a free press”.

The surprise announcement comes as the Associated Press fights to restore its access to presidential events after it was blocked.

“The White House press team in this administration will determine who gets to enjoy the very privileged and limited access in spaces such as Air Force One and the Oval Office,” Leavitt said at a news briefing on Tuesday.

She said the changes would allow “new media” outlets – including streaming services and podcasts – to “share in this awesome responsibility”.

“Legacy media outlets who have been here for years will still participate in the pool, but new voices are going to be welcomed in as well,” she said.

“[By] deciding which outlets make up the limited press pool on a day-to-day basis, the White House will be restoring power back to the American people,” Leavitt added.

Founded in 1914, the WHCA has historically handled some logistics around day-to-day coverage of the president, most notably the “pool” of reporters, which includes a camera crew from one of the five major US networks, a radio correspondent and a rotating group of print outlets.

The WHCA has long claimed the pool is beneficial both for the president – who is able to quickly disseminate news – as well as for the wider media who receive pool reports, photographs, video and audio.

Pool reporters are on-duty every day – including weekends and holidays – both at the White House or when the president is travelling.

BBC News is among the outlets that participate in the radio pool.

The WHCA expressed concern that the move will benefit the White House by giving access to news outlets that it sees as sympathetic or friendly.

“This move does not give power back to the people – it gives power to the White House,” Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich, a WHCA board member, wrote on X.

In its own statement, the WHCA said that the decision “suggests the government will choose the journalists who cover the president”.

The WHCA said it was not given any notice about the White House’s decision before Tuesday’s news briefing.

Leavitt, meanwhile, said the WHCA would no longer have a “monopoly” on controlling the pool.

President Trump was asked about the announcement in the Oval Office later on Tuesday. “We’re going to be calling those shots,” he said of the changes.

Earlier this week, a US judge declined a request by the Associated Press to immediately restore its access to presidential events after the Trump administration blocked the agency in a dispute over the term “Gulf of America”.

The news agency has refused to change its style from the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America”, after President Trump renamed it with an executive order.

The AP argues the ban is retaliatory and infringes on First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and the press.

The ban has meant that the AP – which hundreds of news outlets rely on – has been unable to access press events alongside the rest of the pool at the White House as well as Air Force One.

A hearing has been scheduled for 20 March.

A Spanish city has honoured two Senegalese migrants for their heroism in trying to save a gay man beaten to death by a homophobic mob.

Ibrahima Diack and Magatte N’Diaye were given “adopted sons of the city” status in A Coruña on Monday in a formal ceremony recognising their actions.

The men were the only ones to intervene in July 2021, when Samuel Luiz was set upon by a group of men and kicked and punched outside a nightclub in the north-western city.

The 24-year-old later died of his injuries in hospital – an event which sparked national outrage and condemnation.

On Monday, at a formal ceremony in the city council’s hall, Mayor Inés Rey described the migrants’ actions as “pure altruism”.

Footage of that night showed other bystanders watching on, some filming on mobiles, and the two being the only ones who intervened.

“That two undocumented migrants were the only ones who physically risked themselves to help the victim of a pack thirsting for horror leaves much food for thought and a series of lessons,” Mayor Rey said.

“Thank you for your example in risking everything despite having a lot to lose,” said another councillor, Rosalía López, on Instagram in a post sharing videos of the ceremony.

Mr Diack and Mr N’Diaye had been living in the city without papers at the time and doing irregular work, putting them at risk of arrest and deportation if they came into contact with authorities.

But both men on Monday said they had just done what they thought was the right thing in trying to stop the violence. In front of friends, civic servants and other guests on Monday, they were handed plaques by the mayor bestowing them with the status of “Adopted Sons of A Coruña”.

“We are not heroes, we did what we had to do,” said Mr N’Diaye, according to an AFP report.

Mr Diack said: “I was born in a family that doesn’t have much… but they gave me many things more valuable than money. They gave me respect, education and above all, values.”

The two were also crucial witnesses in the trial of Mr Luiz’s killers last November, Spanish media reported.

A jury found four men guilty of the murder, with the court ordering sentences between 10 and 24 years. The court found the main accused – given a 24-year sentence – had shouted homophobic insults during the attack.

Tens of thousands of migrants reach Spain illegally every year through boat crossings across the Atlantic – with the most common arrivals from Mali, Senegal and Morocco.